written to benefit that amiable Prince, the Duke of Cumberland, the warrior of Dettingen and Culloden, I have not, I own, been able to peruse since a period of very early youth; and it must be confessed that they did not effect much benefit upon the illustrious young Prince, whose manners they were intended to mollify, and whose natural ferocity our gentle-hearted Satirist perhaps proposed to restrain. But the six pastorals called the "Shepherd's Week," and the burlesque poem of "Trivia," any man fond of lazy literature will find delightful at the present day, and must read from beginning to end with pleasure. They are to poetry what charming little Dresden china figures are to sculpture: graceful, minikin, fantastic; with a certain beauty always accompanying them. The pretty little personages of the pastoral, with gold clocks to their stockings, and fresh satin ribbons to their crooks and waistcoats and bodices, dance their loves to a minuet-tune played on a birdorgan, approach the charmer, or rush from the false one daintily on their red-heeled tiptoes, and die of despair or rapture, with the most pathetic little grins and ogles; or repose, simpering at each other, under an arbor of pea-green crockery; or piping to pretty flocks that have just been washed with the best Naples in a stream of Bergamot. Gay's gay plan seems to me far pleasanter than that of Phillips-his rival and Pope's a serious and dreary idyllic cockney; not that Gay's "Bumkinets" and "Hobnelias" are a whit more natural than the would-be serious characters of the other posture-master; but the quality of this true humorist was to laugh and make laugh, though always with a secret kindness and tenderness, to perform the drollest little antics and capers, but always with a certain grace, and to sweet music as you may have seen a Savoyard boy abroad, with a hurdy-gurdy and a monkey, turning over head and heels, or clattering and pirouetting in a pair of wooden shoes, yet always with a look of love and appeal in his bright eyes, and a smile that asks and wins affection and protection. Happy they who have that sweet gift of nature! It was this which made the great folks and court ladies free and friendly with John Gay which made Pope and Arbuthnot love him - which melted the savage heart of Swift when he thought of him and drove away, for a moment or two, the dark frenzies which obscured the lonely tyrant's brain, as he heard Gay's voice with its simple melody and artless ringing laughter. What used to be said about Rubini, qu'il avait des larmes dans la voix, may be said of Gay,' and of one other humorist of whom we shall have to speak. In almost every ballad of his, however slight, in the 1 "Gay, like Goldsmith, had a musical talent. He could play on the flute,' says Malone, and was, therefore, enabled to adapt so happily some of the airs in the "Beggar's Opera."'" — Notes to Spence. 2" "T was when the seas were roaring With hollow blasts of wind, A damsel lay deploring All on a rock reclined. Wide o'er the foaming billows She cast a wistful look ; Her head was crown'd with willows "Twelve months are gone and over, Ah! what's thy troubled motion Beggar's Opera" and in its wearisome continuation (where the verses are to the full as pretty as in "The merchant, robb'd of pleasure, Sees tempests in despair; But what's the loss of treasure To losing of my dear? Should you some coast be laid on, You'd find a richer maiden, But none that loves you so. "How can they say that Nature That lurk beneath the deep, "All melancholy lying, Thus wailed she for her dear; When o'er the white wave stooping, His floating corpse she spy'd; Then like a lily drooping, She bow'd her head, and died." A Ballad from the "What d'ye call it ? ' " "What can be prettier than Gay's ballad, or rather Swift's, Arbuthnot's, Pope's and Gay's, in the 'What d'ye call it?'''T was when the seas were roaring'? I have been well informed that they all contributed." - Cowper to Unwin, 1783. 1 "Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay, what an odd pretty sort of thing a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a thing for some time, but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to the Beggar's Opera.' He began on it, and when he first mentioned it to Swift, the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us; and we now and then gave a correction, or a word or two of |