at the rival editor:--

Tickell, whose skiff (in partnership they say)
Set forth for Greece, but founder'd on the way.

and in his "Epistle to the Right Honourable Paul Methuen, Esq.," he
pilloried one of his friend's most violent critics:--

Had Pope with grovelling numbers fill'd his page,
Dennis had never kindled into rage.
'Tis the sublime that hurt the critic's ease;
Write nonsense, and he reads and sleeps in peace.

"You say truly," Pope wrote to Swift, on April 2nd, 1733, "that death is
only terrible to us as it separates us from those we love; but I really
think those have the worst of it who are left by us, if we are true
friends. I have felt more (I fancy) in the loss of Mr. Gay, than I shall
suffer in the thought of going away myself into a state that none of us
can feel this sort of losses. I wished vehemently to have seen him in a
condition of living independent, and to have lived in perfect indolence
the rest of our days together, the two most idle, most innocent,
undesigning poets of our age."[23]

Through the long years Gay was present to the minds of these, his
dearest friends. "Dr. Arbuthnot's daughter is like Gay, very idle, very
ingenuous, and inflexibly honest,"[24] Pope wrote to Swift, May 17th,
1739; and two years earlier, on July 23rd, 1737, Swift had written to
Erasmus Lewis: "I have had my share of affliction in the loss of Dr.
Arbuthnot, and poor Gay, and others.[25] Such devotion, from such very
different people puts it beyond question that Gay was a very lovable
creature. How deeply he returned that devotion it is difficult to
say--gratitude he felt, no doubt, but of love ... a man of such weak
character, a man so devoted to the fleshpots, probably received more
than he could give." Perhaps Swift, whose affections never blinded his
intelligence, had some inkling of this when he said in the "Verses on
His Own Death,"

Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay
A week, and Arbuthnot a day.

When Gay, in "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece," wrote:--

Thou, too, my Swift, dost breathe Boeotian air,
When will thou bring back wit and humour here?

the formal tribute is agreeable, but in this set of verses, while there
is much that is complimentary, there is something perfunctory about the
tributes he paid. He wrote of Pope and Swift and the rest as witty or
humorous or generous or clever or learned or honest of mind: they wrote
of the love they bore him. The two great li