wits; but they regarded him as a playfellow rather than as a partner,
and treated him with more fondness than respect."[4] There is some truth
in this view, but of the affection he inspired there is no doubt. To
know him was to love him. Wherein exactly lay his charm it is not easy
now to say; but his gentle good-nature and his utter helplessness seems
to have appealed to those of sterner mould. The extracts already given
from Pope's correspondence show the affection with which he was inspired
for his brother of the pen. Pope took him so completely under his
massive wing that he remarked later, "they would call him one of my
_éleves_."[5] Pope accepted the position, and introduced him to his
circle. He made him known to Swift, and that great man loved him as he
loved no other man; and to Parnell, Arbuthnot, Ford--the "joyous Ford"
of "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece"--and Bolingbroke, in all of whom he
inspired an affection, which endured through life. Parnell and Pope
wrote jointly to him, and while in 1714 Pope was still addressing him as
"Dear Mr. Gay," Parnell had already thrown aside all formality and
greeted him as "Dear Gay." His old schoolfellow, William Fortescue,
cleaved to him, and they were in such constant communication that when
Pope wanted to see Fortescue, it was to Gay he appealed to arrange a
meeting. The terms on which Gay was with the set is shown in Pope's
letter to him, written from Binfield, May 4th, 1714: "Pray give, with
the utmost fidelity and esteem, my hearty service to the Dean, Dr.
Arbuthnot, Mr. Ford, and to Mr. Fortescue. Let them also know at
Button's that I am mindful of them."[6] Erasmus Lewis Gay knew now, and
Caryll too, and the rest of the small literary set, who, with gusto,
made him welcome among them. Indeed, when the "Memoirs of Scriblerus"
were in contemplation, and, indeed, begun in 1713, Gay, then
comparatively unknown, was invited to take a hand in the composition
with the greatest men of the day. "The design of the Memoirs of
Scriblerus was to have ridiculed all the false tastes in learning, under