l
employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus early exhibited his
life-long disposition to rely upon others for support. 'Providence,'
Swift writes, 'never designed Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his
thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age,
sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.' His
weakness, it has been said, appealed to Swift's strength, and Swift,
Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay's most faithful friends. They found
something in him to laugh at and to love. Ladies, too, treated him with
the kind of friendliness which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay
was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which he owed to
Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that year brought the Whigs into
office, and destroyed the poet's prospects. Prior to this he had been
secretary to the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left without
money or employment, and owed much to the generosity of Pope. It was
Gay's lot 'in suing long to bide,' to be always hoping, and nearly
always disappointed. 'He seems,' says his latest biographer, 'to have
begun his career under the impression that it was somebody's duty to
provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to him through
nearly the whole of a lifetime.'[27] Ten years before his death he was
eagerly looking to others for support. Writing to Swift, he says: 'I
lodge at present in Burlington House, and have received many civilities
from many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder at each
other for not providing for me, and I wonder at them all.'

Gay's first poem of any mark was _The Shepherd's Week_ (1714), six
burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him by Pope, who was then
smarting from the praise Philips had received in _The Guardian_. But if
Pope meant Gay to poke his fun at Philips in _The Shepherd's Week_, he
must have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as genuine
bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are, to say the least, more
true to rustic life than the pastorals either of Philips or of Pope.
_The Shepherd's Week_ was followed by _Trivia_ (1715), a piece suggested
by Swift's _City Shower_. It is one of Gay's most notable productions,
not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets of London
nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation he obtained as the
author of _The Fables_ (1727), and still more of _The Beggar's Opera_
(1728), the idea of which was suggeste