country, by judicious loans of small sums on Lucian's notes of hand and
other analogous devices, Rigby contrived to keep the wit in a fair state
of bondage and dependence.

One thing Rigby was resolved on: Gay should never get into Monmouth House.
That was an empyrean too high for his wing to soar in. Rigby kept that
social monopoly distinctively to mark the relation that subsisted between
them as patron and client. It was something to swagger about when they
were together after their second bottle of claret. Rigby kept his
resolution for some years, which the frequent and prolonged absence of the
Marquess rendered not very difficult. But we are the creatures of
circumstances; at least the Rigby race particularly. Lord Monmouth
returned to England one year, and wanted to be amused. He wanted a jester:
a man about him who would make him, not laugh, for that was impossible,
but smile more frequently, tell good stories, say good things, and sing
now and then, especially French songs. Early in life Rigby would have
attempted all this, though he had neither fun, voice, nor ear. But his
hold on Lord Monmouth no longer depended on the mere exercise of agreeable
qualities, he had become indispensable to his lordship, by more serious if
not higher considerations. And what with auditing his accounts, guarding
his boroughs, writing him, when absent, gossip by every post and when in
England deciding on every question and arranging every matter which might
otherwise have ruffled the sublime repose of his patron's existence, Rigby
might be excused if he shrank a little from the minor part of table wit,
particularly when we remember all his subterranean journalism, his acid
squibs, and his malicious paragraphs, and, what Tadpole called, his
'slashing articles.'

These 'slashing articles' were, indeed, things which, had they appeared as
anonymous pamphlets, would have obtained the contemptuous reception which