186 



POETRY AND POETS. 



made usher to the young princess. 

 Secretary Craggs made Gay a pre- 

 sent of stock in the South Sea year ; 

 and he was once worth 20,000, but 

 lost it all again. He got about 

 500 by the first Beggar's Opera, 

 and 1100 or 1200 by the second. 

 He was negligent, and a bad man- 

 ager. Latterly, the Duke of Queens- 

 berry took his money into his keep- 

 ing, and let him only have what 

 was necessaiy out of it, and, as he 

 lived with them, he could not have 

 occasion for much. He died worth 

 upwards of 3000. (Pope.) 



GAY'S PORTRAIT. 



In the portraits of the literary 

 worthies of the early part of the 

 last centmy, Gay's face is the plea- 

 santest perhaps of all. It appears 

 adorned with neither periwig nor 

 night-cap (the full dress and negli- 

 gee of learning, without which the 

 painters of those days scarcely ever 

 pourtrayed wits), and he laughs 

 at you over his shoulder with an 

 honest boyish glee an artless 

 sweet humour. It was so kind, so 

 gentle, so jocular) so delightfully 

 brisk at times, so dismally woe-be- 

 gone at others, such a natural good 

 creature, that the giants loved him. 

 (Thackeray.) 



GAY'S APPETITE AT TABLE. 



Thackeray says that the Duke and 

 Duchess of Queensberry over-fed 

 the poetical Gay, who " was lapped 

 in cotton, and had his plate of chic- 

 ken, and his saucer of cream, and 

 frisked, and barked, and wheezed, 

 and grew fat, and so ended." Con- 

 greve testified that Gay was a great 

 eater. "As the French philosopher 

 used to prove his existence by co- 

 gito, ergo sum, the greatest proof of 

 Gay's existence is edit, ergo est." 



CRITICISM ON GRAY'S " ELEGY." 

 This work was published anony- 

 mously, and was designed to form a 

 continuation of Dr. Johnson's Criti- 



cism on the Poems of Gray. It 

 was written by Professor Young, of 

 Glasgow, who has imitated, with sin- 

 gular felicity, the style and construc- 

 tion of the fabric of which it was to 

 form a part. Dr. Johnson says, 

 " Of the imitation of my style in a 

 criticism on Gray's Churchyard, I 

 forgot to make mention. The au- 

 thor is, I believe, utterly unknown, 

 for Mr. Stevens cannot hunt him out. 

 I know little of it ; for though it was 

 sent me I never cut the leaves open. 

 I had a letter with it representing 

 it to me as my own work. In such 

 an account to the public there may 

 be humour, but to me it was neither 

 serious nor comical. I suspect the 

 writer to be wrong-headed. As to 

 the noise which it makes I have 

 never heard it, and am inclined to 

 believe that few attacks, either of 

 ridicule or invective, make much 

 noise, but by the help of those that 

 they provoke." (Dr. Johnson to 

 Mrs. Thrale.) 



EXTEMPORE POETS OF ITALY. 



The improvvisatori, or extempore 

 poets in Italy, are actually what 

 they are called. They do it with 

 great emulation and warmth, gene- 

 rally in octaves, in which the an- 

 swerer is obliged to form his octave 

 to the concluding line of the chal- 

 lenger, so that all the octaves after 

 the first must be extempore, unless 

 they act in concert together. " The 

 first time I heard them," says 

 Spence, " I thought it impossible 

 for them to go on so readily as 

 they did, without having arranged 

 things beforehand. 



" It was at Florence, at our resi- 

 dent's, Mr. Colman. When Mr. 

 C. asked me what I thought of it, 

 I told him that I could not con- 

 ceive how they could go on so 

 readily and so evenly, without 

 some collusion between them. He 

 said that it amazed everybody at 

 first ; that he had no doubt of its 

 being all fair, and desired me, to 



