[Footnote 19: Daughter of Lord Gerard, widow of the Duke of Hamilton,
who in 1712 was killed in a duel with Lord Mohun.]

[Footnote 20: Pope: Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope) VII. p. 420.]

[Footnote 21: _B.M._, Add MSS., 22626, f. 22.]




CHAPTER VI

1720


"Poems on Several Occasions"--Gay Invests His Earnings in the South
Sea Company--The South Sea "Bubble" Breaks, and Gay Loses all His
Money--Appointed a Commissioner of the State Lottery--Lord Lincoln
Gives Him an Apartment in Whitehall--At Tunbridge
Wells--Correspondence with Mrs. Howard.

Gay in 1720 was in his thirty-fifth year, and he had commenced author
some twelve years before this date. During this period his output had
been very small, and his success not conspicuous. As a dramatist he had
been a complete failure--his first play, "The Wife of Bath," was
still-born, and the others, "The What D'ye Call It" and "Three Hours
After Marriage," had practically been hooted off the stage, and had
brought him in their train a considerable degree of unpopularity. Of his
poems, the only ones of any marked merit were "The Shepherd's Week," and