operas; much fuller, indeed, of grime and foul strokes than Mr. Gilbert's contagious sing-song; but possessing very much of his briskness and quaint turns of thought, and of that pretty shimmer of language which lends itself to melody as easily as the thrushes do.

This John Gay *-whose name literary-mongers will come upon in their anthologies - was an alert, well-looking young fellow, who had come out of Devonshire to make his way in a silk-mercer's shop in London. He speedily left the silk-mercer's; but he had that about him of joyousness and amiability, added to a clever but small literary faculty, which won the consideration of helpful friends; and he never lost friends by his antagonisms or his moodiness. Everybody seemed to love to say a good word for John Gay. Swift was almost kind to him; and said he was born to be always twenty-two, and no older. Pope befriended and commended him; great ladies petted him; and neither Swift nor Pope were jealous of a petting to such as Gay; his range was amongst the daisies

* John Gay, b. 1685; d. 1732.

-and theirs above the tree-tops. A little de

scriptive poem of his, called Trivia, brings before us the London streets of that day - the coaches,

the boot-blacks, the red-heeled cavaliers, the bookstalls, the markets, the school-boys, the mud, the swinging sign-boards, and the tavern-doors. In the course of it he gives a score or more of lines to a description of the phenomena of the solidly frozen Thames-sharply remembered by a good many living in his time *- with booths all along the river, and bullocks cooked upon the frozen roads which bridged the water; and he tells of an old apple-woman, who somehow had her head lopped off when the break-up came, and the icecakes piled above the level tells it, too, in a very

-

Gilbert-like way, as you shall see :

"She now a basket bore;

That head alas! shall basket bear no more!
Each booth she frequent past, in quest of gain,
And boys with pleasure heard her thrilling strain.

*"O roving muse! recall that wondrous year,

When hoary Thames, with frosted osiers crown'd,
Was three long moons in icy fetters bound."

The allusion is doubtless to the year 1684, famous for its exceeding cold.

Ah, Doll! all mortals must resign their breath,
And industry itself submit to Death;

The cracking crystal yields; she sinks; she dies,
Her head chopt off, from her lost shoulder flies;
Pippins! she cry'd; but death her voice confounds;
And-Pip-Pip-Pip-along the ice resounds!

Then there is the ballad, always quoted when critics would show what John Gay could do, and which the Duchess of Queensberry (who greatly befriended him) thought charming; I give the two final verselets only:

"How can they say that nature

Has nothing made in vain ;

Why then beneath the water

Should hideous rocks remain ?

No eyes the rocks discover,

That lurk beneath the deep,
To wreck the wandering lover,
And leave the maid to weep?

“All melancholy lying,

Thus wailed she for her dear;
Repaid each blast with sighing,

Each billow with a tear;
When o'er the white wave stooping,

His floating corpse she spied;

Then, like a lily drooping,

She bowed her head, and died!"

I think I have shown the best side of him; and it is not very imposing. A man to be petted; one for confections and for valentines, rather than for those lifts of poetic thought which buoy us into the regions of enduring song.

Yet Swift says in a letter, "The Beggar's Opera' hath knocked down Gulliver!" This joyous poet lies in Westminster Abbey, with an epitaph by Alexander Pope. How, then, can we pass him by?

Jonathan Swift.

But Dean Swift* does not lie in Westminster Abbey. We must go to St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, to find his tomb, and that bust of him which looks out upon the main aisle of the old church.

He was born in Dublin, at a house that might have been seen only a few years ago, in Hoey's

*Jonathan Swift, b. 1667; d. 1745. Most noticeable biographies are those by Scott, Craik, and Stephen; the latter not minute, but having judicial repose, and quite delightful. Scott's edition of his works (originally published in 1814) is still the fullest and best.

Court. His father, however, was English, dying before Swift was born; his mother, too, was English, and so poor that it was only through the charity of an uncle the lad came to have schooling and a place at Trinity College—the charity being so doled out that Swift groaned under it; and groaned under the memory of it all his life. He took his degree there, under difficulties; squabbling with the teachers of logic and metaphysics, and turning his back upon them and upon what they taught.

After some brief stay with his mother in Leicestershire, he goes, at her instance, and in recognition of certain remote kinship with the family of Sir William Temple, to seek that diplomat's patronage. He was received charitably-to be cordial was not Temple's manner-at the beautiful home of Sheen; * and thereafter, on Temple's change of res

* Sir William Temple did not finally abandon his home at Sheen-where he had beautiful gardens — until the year 1689. A stretch of Richmond Park, with its deer-fed turf, now covers all traces of Temple's old home; the name however is kept most pleasantly alive by the pretty Sheen cottage (Professor Owen's home), with its carp-pond in front, and its charming, sequestered bit of wild garden in the rear.