“This piece was received with greater applause than was ever known.
Besides being acted in London sixty-three days without interruption,
and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread into all
the great towns of England; was played in many places to the
thirtieth and fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol fifty, etc. It made
its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was
performed twenty-four days successively. The ladies carried about
with them the favourite songs of it in fans, and houses were
furnished with it in screens. The fame of it was not confined to the
author only. The person who acted Polly, till then obscure, became
all at once the favourite of the town; her pictures were engraved and
sold in great numbers; her life written, books of letters and verses
to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests.
Furthermore, it drove out of England (for that season) the Italian
Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years.”
Of this performance, when it was printed, the reception was different,
according to the different opinions of its readers. Swift commended it
for the excellence of its morality, as a piece that “placed all kinds of
vice in the strongest and most odious light;” but others, and among them
Dr. Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, censured it as giving
encouragement, not only to vice, but to crimes, by making a highwayman
the hero and dismissing him at last unpunished. It has been even said
that after the exhibition of the _Beggar’s Opera_ the gangs of robbers
were evidently multiplied.
Both these decisions are surely exaggerated. The play, like many others,
was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is
therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more
speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil.
Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in
any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he
may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.
This objection, however, or some other rather political than moral,
obtained such prevalence that when Gay produced a second part under the
name of Polly, it was prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain; and he was
forced to recompense his repulse by a subscription, which is said to have
been so liberally bestowed that what he called oppression ended in
profit. The publication was so much favoured that though the first part
gained him four hundred pounds, near thrice as much was the profit of the
second. He received yet another recompense for this supposed hardship,
in the affectionate attention of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry,
into whose house he was taken, and with whom he passed the remaining part
of his life. The Duke, considering his want of economy, undertook the
management of his money, and gave it to him as he wanted it. But it is
supposed that the discountenance of the Court sunk deep into his heart,
and gave him more discontent than the applauses or tenderness of his
friends could overpower. He soon fell into his old distemper, an
habitual colic, and languished, though with many intervals of ease and
cheerfulness, till a violent fit at last seized him and carried him to
the grave, as Arbuthnot reported, with more precipitance than he had ever
known. He died on the 4th of December, 1732, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey. The letter which brought an account of his death to
Swift, was laid by for some days unopened, because when he received it,
he was impressed with the preconception of some misfortune.
After his death was published a second volume of “Fables,” more political
than the former. His opera of Achilles was acted, and the profits were
given to two widow sisters, who inherited what he left, as his lawful
heirs; for he died without a will, though he had gathered three thousand
pounds. There have appeared likewise under his name a comedy called the
_Distressed Wife_, and the _Rehearsal at Gotham_, a piece of humour.
The character given him by Pope is this, that “he was a natural man,
without design, who spoke what he thought, and just as he thought it,”
and that “he was of a timid temper, and fearful of giving offence to the
great;” which caution, however, says Pope, was of no avail.
As a poet he cannot be rated very high. He was, I once heard a female
critic remark, “of a lower order.” He had not in any great degree the
_mens divinior_, the dignity of genius. Much, however, must be allowed
to the author of a new species of composition, though it be not of the
highest kind. We owe to Gay the ballad opera, a mode of comedy which at
first was supposed to delight only by its novelty, but has now, by the
experience of half a century, been found so well accommodated to the
disposition of a popular audience that it is likely to keep long
possession of the stage. Whether this new drama was the product of
judgment or of luck, the praise of it must be given to the inventor; and
there are many writers read with more reverence to whom such merit or
originality cannot be attributed.
His first performance, the _Rural Sports_, is such as was easily planned
and executed; it is never contemptible, nor ever excellent. _The Fan_ is
one of those mythological fictions which antiquity delivers ready to the
hand, but which, like other things that lie open to every one’s use, are
of little value. The attention naturally retires from a new tale of
Venus, Diana, and Minerva.
His “Fables” seem to have been a favourite work; for, having published
one volume, he left another behind him. Of this kind of Fables the
author does not appear to have formed any distinct or settled notion.
Phædrus evidently confounds them with Tales, and Gay both with Tales and
Allegorical Prosopopoeias. A Fable or Apologue, such as is now under
consideration, seems to be, in its genuine state, a narrative in which
beings irrational, and sometimes inanimate, _arbores loquuntur_, _non
tantum feræ_, are, for the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act
and speak with human interests and passions. To this description the
compositions of Gay do not always conform. For a fable he gives now and
then a tale, or an abstracted allegory; and from some, by whatever name
they may be called, it will be difficult to extract any moral principle.
They are, however, told with liveliness, the versification is smooth, and
the diction, though now and then a little constrained by the measure or
the rhyme, is generally happy.
To “Trivia” may be allowed all that it claims; it is sprightly, various,
and pleasant. The subject is of that kind which Gay was by nature
qualified to adorn, yet some of his decorations may be justly wished
away. An honest blacksmith might have done for Patty what is performed
by Vulcan. The appearance of Cloacina is nauseous and superfluous; a
shoe-boy could have been produced by the casual cohabitation of mere
mortals. Horace’s rule is broken in both cases; there is no _dignus
vindice nodus_, no difficulty that required any supernatural
interposition. A patten may be made by the hammer of a mortal, and a
bastard may be dropped by a human strumpet. On great occasions, and on
small, the mind is repelled by useless and apparent falsehood.
Of his little poems the public judgment seems to be right; they are
neither much esteemed nor totally despised. The story of “The
Apparition” is borrowed from one of the tales of Poggio. Those that
please least are the pieces to which Gulliver gave occasion, for who can
much delight in the echo of an unnatural fiction?
“Dione” is a counterpart to “Amynta” and “Pastor Fido” and other trifles
of the same kind, easily imitated, and unworthy of imitation. What the
Italians call comedies from a happy conclusion, Gay calls a tragedy from
a mournful event, but the style of the Italians and of Gay is equally
tragical. There is something in the poetical Arcadia so remote from
known reality and speculative possibility that we can never support its
representation through a long work. A pastoral of an hundred lines may
be endured, but who will hear of sheep and goats, and myrtle bowers and
purling rivulets, through five acts? Such scenes please barbarians in
the dawn of literature, and children in the dawn of life, but will be for
the most part thrown away as men grow wise and nations grow learned.