ious to make it known on the smallest
provocation and on any occasion or none that Queen Anne is dead. Open
him where you will, and you find him full of this important news and
determined on imparting it. Thus, in _The Scold and the Parrot_:

'One slander must ten thousand get,
The world with int'rest pays the debt';

that is to say, Queen Anne is dead. Thus, too, in _The Persian_, _the
Sun_, _and the Cloud_:

'The gale arose; the vapour tost
(The sport of winds) in air was lost;
The glorious orb the day refines.
Thus envy breaks, thus merit shines';

in _The Goat without a Beard_:

'Coxcombs distinguished from the rest
To all but coxcombs are a jest';

in _The Shepherd's Dog and the Wolf_:

'An open foe may prove a curse,
But a pretended friend is worse';

and so to the end of the chapter. The theme is not absorbing, and the
variations are proper to the theme.

After All.

How long is it that the wise and good have ceased to say (striking their
pensive bosoms), '_Here_ lies Gay'? It is--how long? But for all that
Gay is yet a figure in English letters. As a song-writer he has still a
claim on us, and is still able to touch the heart and charm the ear. The
lyrics in _Acis and Galatea_ are not unworthy their association with
Handel's immortal melodies, the songs in _The Beggars' Opera_ have a part
in the life and fame of the sweet old tunes from which they can never be
divided. I like to believe that in the operas and the _Trivia_ and _The
Shepherd's Week_ is buried the material of a pleasant little book.

ESSAYS AND ESSAYISTS

The Good of Them.

It is our misfortune that of good essayists there should be but few. Men
there have been who have done the essayist's part so well as to have
earned an immortality in the doing; but we have had not many of them, and
they make but a poor figure on our shelves. It is a pity that things
should be thus with us, for a good essayist is the pleasantest companion
imaginable. There are folk in plenty who have never read Montaigne at
all; but there are few indeed who have read but a page of him, and that
page but once. And the same may be said of Addison and Fielding, of Lamb
and Hazlitt, of Sterne and Bacon and Ben Jonson, and all the members of
their goodly fellowship. To sit down with any one of them is to sit down
in the company of one of the 'mighty wits, our elders and our betters,'
who have done much to