or dissatisfaction which attended us. I am not in the
spleen, though I write thus; on the contrary, it is a sort of pleasure
to think over his good qualities: his loss was really great, but it is a
satisfaction to have once known so good a man." Her affection endured
until the end. Although she was then a very old woman, when "Polly" was
produced at the Haymarket Theatre on June 19th, 1777, nothing would
content her but she must be present. Within a few weeks, on the
following July 17th, she passed away.

Lord Bathurst, too, deplored the loss of Gay; he of whom the poet had
written in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":--

Bathurst impetuous, hastens to the coast.
Whom you and I strive who shall love the most.

"Poor John Gay!" he wrote to Swift on March 29th, 1733. "We shall see
him no more; but he will always be remembered by those who knew him,
with a tender concern." Arbuthnot, who also had had tribute paid him in
"Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece":--

Arbuthnot there I see, in physic's art,
As Galen learned or famed Hippocrate;
Whose company drives sorrow from the heart
As all disease his medicines dissipate.

knew him well and loved him deeply. "We have all had another loss of our
worthy and dear friend, Mr. Gay," he wrote to Swift on January 13th,
1733. "It was some alleviation of my grief to see him so universally
lamented by almost everybody, even by those who knew him only by
reputation. He was interred at Westminster Abbey, as if he had been a
peer of the realm; and the good Duke of Queensberry, who lamented him as
a brother, will set up a handsome monument upon him. These are little
affronts put upon vice and injustice, and is all that remains in our
power. I believe 'The Beggar's Opera,' and what he had to come upon the
stage, will make the sum of the diversions of the town for some time to
come."[22]

By virtue of their fame, towering high above the rest of the select band
of Gay's dearest friends, were Pope and Swift:--

Blest be the great! for those they take away,
And those they left me; for they left me Gay,

Pope had written in the "Epistle to Arbuthnot"; and Gay, as has been
said, had more than once entered the lists and broken a lance on his
brother poet's behalf, as when he parodied Ambrose Philips in "The
Shepherd's Week." His "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece," written when
Pope had finished his translation of the "Iliad," was a fine panegyric,
in which he had a sly dig