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for that elderly gentleman was in high spirits all day long, and never tired. Uneasiness of body, however, he can bear without complaint, while his chief uneasiness of mind is on Martha's account. Then follows one of those characteristic "preachments" to which Miss Blount must have been pretty well inured by this time.

"You have a temper that would make you easy and beloved (which is all the happiness one needs to wish in this world), and content with moderate things. All your point is not to lose that temper by sacrificing yourself to others, out of a mistaken tenderness which hurts you, and profits not them. And this you must do soon, or it will be too late. Habit will make it as hard for you to live independent as for Lyttelton to live out of a Court.

"You must excuse me for observing what I think any defect in you: you grow too indolent, and give up things too easily; which would be otherwise when you found and felt yourself your own: spirits would come in as ill-usage went out. While you live under a kind of perpetual oppression and dejection, nothing at all belongs to you, not your own honour nor your own sense.

"You cannot conceive how much you would find resolution rise and cheerfulness grow upon you, if you would once try to live independent for two or three months. I never think tenderly of you but this comes across me, and therefore excuse my repeating it, for whenever I do not I dissemble half that I think of you."

This is an important letter, since it throws a flash-light upon the degree of intimacy that existed.

between Miss Blount and the poet at this time. It shows, too, that Pope, whether consciously or unconsciously, was urging Martha to take a step that must have been detrimental to her own best interests. If she had left her mother's roof and broken with her family, after the scandals that had attacked her name, she would have been committing social suicide.

Earlier in the year Swift had written, at Pope's request, a long letter to Patty, which contains a good deal of chaff and many allusions to intimate jokes, with a covert hint that the lady might mend her ways and assert her independence.

"I am told," he says, "you grow every day younger, and more of a fool, which is directly contrary to me, who grow wiser and older, and at this rate we shall never agree. I long to see you a London lady, where you are forced to wear whole clothes, and visit in a chair, for which you must starve next summer at Petersham with a mantua out at the sides; and spunge once a week at our house without ever inviting us in a whole season to a cow-heel at home. I wish you would bring Mr. Pope over with you when you come, but we will leave Mr. Gay to his Beggars and his operas till he is able to pay his club. How will you pass this summer for want of a squire to Ham Common and Walpole's Lodge? for as to Richmond Lodge and Marble Hill, they are abandoned as much as Sir Spencer Compton.

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1 Lady Worsley, in a letter to Swift, alluded to Miss Blount as "dirty Patty." Swift protested against the description, declaring that Patty, very sensibly, wore old gowns for country walks, and saved her money to make more show in London.

us,

"Your greatest happiness is that you are out of the chiding of Mrs. Howard and the dean; but I suppose Mr. Pope is so just as to pay our arrears, and that you edify as much by him as by unless you are so happy that he now looks upon you as reprobate and a castaway, of which I think he has given me some hints. However, I would advise you to pass this summer at Kensington, where you will be near the Court, and out of his jurisdiction, where you will be teased with no lectures of gravity and morality, and where you will have no other trouble than to get into the mercer's books, and take up a hundred pounds of your capital for quadrille. Monstrous, indeed, that a fine lady, in the prime of life and gaiety, must take up with an antiquated dean, an old gentlewoman of four-score, and a sickly poet. I will stand by my dear Patty against the world if Teresa beats you for your good, and I will bring her a fine new whip for the purpose. My greatest concern in the matter is, that I am afraid I continue in love with you, which is hard after near six months' absence. I hope you have done with your rash and other little disorders, and that I shall see you a fine, young, healthy, plump lady; and if Mr. Pope chides you, threaten him that you will turn heretic. . . . Since I can never live in England, my greatest happiness would be to have you and Mr. Pope condemned, during my life, to live in Ireland-he at the deanery, and you, for reputation's sake, just at next door, and I will give you eight dinners a week, and a whole half-dozen of pint bottles of good French wine at your lodgings-a thing you could

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never expect to arrive at-and every year a suit of fourteen-penny stuff, that should not be worn out at the right side; and a chair costs but sixpence a job; and you shall have as much Catholicity as you please, and the Catholic Dean of St. Patrick's, as old again as I, for your

confessor."

Patty's sensible and humorous reply to the above has been preserved. She was She was not apparently a very ready writer, but in her laconic style she could express her meaning, and answer a bit of chaff as neatly as any of her witty friends. She has been indisposed, she explains, and confined to the house for a week.

"This confinement, together with my mourning, has enabled me to be very easy in my chair-hire : for a dyed black gown and a scoured white one have done my business very well; and they are now just fit for Petersham, where we talk of going in three weeks; and I am not without hopes I shall have the same squire I had last year. I am very unwilling to change and moreover, I begin to fear I have no great prospect of getting any new danglers; and therefore, in order to make a tolerable figure, I shall endeavour to behave myself well, that I may keep my old old ones. Arbuthnot I am very angry with; he neglects me for those he thinks finer ladies. Mr. Gay's fame continues, but his riches are in a fair fair way of diminishing. He is gone to the Bath. I wish you were ordered there; for I believe that would carry Mr. Pope, who is always inclined to do more for his friends than himself."

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Dr.

CHAPTER XXXVI

1728-9

The Prohibition of "Polly "-The Complete Edition of "The Dunciad "-Retaliation

HE visit to the Bath, which was then regarded

THE

as a panacea for nearly all physical ills, brought no return of health to the poet. "I do not think,” he wrote to Lord Bathurst in November, "I shall ever enjoy any health for four days together for the remaining sands I have to run. The Bath was tried, after all other remedies, as a last resource, and that has proved wholly ineffectual."

In December 1728, Gay had finished Polly, the sequel to The Beggar's Opera, and he looked forward to having it brought upon the stage without delay. But, to his consternation and amazement, the performance of the opera was prohibited, owing to the attacks it contained upon the Court and the GovernAlthough the subscription for the printed version was very large, and although he received the protection and support of the Duchess of Queensberry, Gay took his disappointment bitterly to

1 The duchess was forbidden the Court for soliciting subscriptions to Polly at the Drawing-room. Mrs. Pendarves says, "One might have imagined her beauty would have secured her from such

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