royalty. "Gay is writing tales for Prince William,"[5] Pope wrote to
Swift on December 10th. "Mr. Philips[6] will take this very ill for two
reasons, one that he thinks all childish things belong to him, and the
other because he will take it ill to be taught that one may write things
to a child without being childish." Than which last few prettier
compliments have been paid to Gay.

Though they had long been in correspondence, Swift and Gay had not yet
met. Swift, of course, had often in his mind a visit to London--he
admitted the temptation, but resisted it. "I was three years reconciling
myself to the scene, and the business to which fortune had condemned me,
and stupidity was what I had recourse to,"[7] he had written to Gay from
Dublin, January 8th, 1723. "Besides, what a figure should I make in
London, while my friends are in poverty, exile, distress, or
imprisonment, and my enemies with rods of iron?" At last, however, in
March, 1726, he did come to London, and he was the guest of Gay, whom he
subsequently referred to as "my landlord at Whitehall." He saw much of
Gay. "I have lived these two months past for the most part in the
country, either at Twickenham with Mr. Pope, or rambling with him and
Mr. Gay for a fortnight together. Yesterday Lord Bolingbroke and Mr.
Congreve made up five at dinner at Twickenham,"[8] Swift wrote to
Tickell from London on July 7th. Like the rest, Swift came to love Gay
dearly, and Gay was no whit less attracted to the great man, who
promised on his next visit to stay again in Whitehall. "My landlord," he
wrote in a letter addressed jointly to Pope and Gay, October 15th, 1726,
"who treats me with kindness and domesticity, and says that he is laying
in a double stock of wine."[9] Swift had been introduced to Mrs.
Howard--it may be by Gay--and she too wished to entertain him. "I hope
you will get your house and wine ready, to which Mr. Gay and I are to
have access when you are at Court; for, as to Mr. Pope, he is not worth