Deanery-house; there is a set of company in this town sufficient for one
man; folks will admire you, because they have read you, and read of you;
and a good employment will make you live tolerably in London, or
sumptuously here; or, if you divide between both places, it will be for
your health."[7]

* * * * *

Gay's friends, who had persistently been on the look-out to help him, at
last met with some small measure of success. "I am obliged to you for
your advice, as I have been formerly for your assistance in introducing
me into business," Gay wrote to Swift from London, February 3rd, 1723.
"I shall this year be Commissioner of the State Lottery, which will be
worth to me a hundred and fifty pounds. And I am not without hopes that
I have friends that will think of some better and more certain provision
for me."[8] In addition to this post, the Earl of Lincoln was persuaded
to give him an apartment in Whitehall. The Commissionship and the
residence to some small extent soothed Gay's ruffled vanity, and were
beyond question convenient.


JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

London, February 3rd, 1723.

"As for the reigning amusements of the town, it is entirely music; real
fiddles, bass-viols and hautboys; not poetical harps, lyres and reeds.
There's nobody allowed to say, I sing, but an eunuch or an Italian
woman. Everybody is grown now as great a judge of music, as they were in
your time of poetry, and folks that could not distinguish one tune from