* * * * *

Gay, of course, expected some reward for this courtier-like attention to
the son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the poet and his
friends again believed that his future was assured when they heard that
Her Royal Highness had said, or at least was reported to have said, that
she should "take up the hare"--an allusion to the "Fable" of "The Hare
and Many Friends":--

A Hare who in a civil way,
Complied with ev'ry thing, like Gay,
Was known by all the bestial train,
Who haunt the wood, or graze the plain.
Her care was never to offend.
And ev'ry creature was her friend.

On June 12th, 1727, George I. died, and Gay felt sure that at last the
hour had struck when the "place" so long and diligently sought, would be
bestowed on him. The new Queen did not, indeed, forget him; she did what
in his eyes was far worse, she offered him the sinecure post of
Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa,[15] then two years old, with a
salary of £200 a year. Gay's disappointment was bitter, and for a person
usually so placid, his indignation tremendous. What ground for hope he
had had, he, as Dr. Johnson has said, "had doubtless magnified with all
the wild expectation and vanity,"[16] "The Queen's family is at last
settled," Gay wrote bitterly to Swift on October 22nd, "and in the list
I was appointed Gentleman Usher to the Princess Louisa, the youngest
Princess, which, upon account that I am so far advanced in life, I had
declined accepting, and have endeavoured, in the best manner I could, to