DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.

  Dublin, February 26th, 1728.

“I wonder whether you begin to taste the pleasures of independency; or whether you do not sometimes leer upon the Court, sculo retorto?  Will you now think of an annuity when you are two years older, and have doubled your purchase-money?  Have you dedicated your opera, and got the usual dedication fee of twenty guineas?  Does W[alpole] think you intended an affront to him in your opera?  Pray God he may, for he has held the longest hand at hazard that ever fell to any sharper’s share, and keeps his run when the dice are charged.  I bought your Opera to-day for sixpence—­a cussed print.  I find there is neither dedication nor preface, both which wants I approve; it is the grand gout.”

JOHN GAY TO DEAN SWIFT.

  March 20th, 1728.

“‘The Beggar’s Opera’ has been acted now thirty-six times, and was as full the last night as the first; and as yet there is not the least probability of a thin audience; though there is a discourse about the town, that the directors of the Royal Academy of Music design to solicit against its being played on the outlandish opera days, as it is now called.  On the benefit day of one of the actresses, last week, they were obliged to give out another play, or dismiss the audience.  A play was given out, but the people called for ‘The Beggar’s Opera’; and they were forced to play it, or the audience would not have stayed.

“I have got by all this success between seven and eight hundred pounds, and Rich (deducting the whole charge of the house) has cleared already near four thousand pounds.  In about a month I am going to the Bath with the Duchess of Marlborough and Mr. Congreve; for I have no expectation of receiving any favours from the Court.  The Duchess of Queensberry is in Wiltshire, where she has had the small-pox in so favourable a way that she had not above seven or eight on her face; she is now perfectly recovered.

“There is a mezzotinto print published to-day of Polly, the heroine of ‘The Beggar’s Opera,’ who was before unknown, and is now in so high vogue that I am in doubt whether her fame does not surpass that of the Opera itself."[21]

* * * * *

Pope and Swift were keenly interested in Gay’s triumph, and in their correspondence are many references to the piece.  “Mr. Gay’s Opera has been acted near forty days running, and will certainly continue the whole season,” Pope wrote to Swift, March 23rd, 1728.  “So he has more than a fence about his thousand pounds; he will soon be thinking of a fence about his two thousand.  Shall no one of us live as we would wish each other to live?  Shall he have no annuity, you no settlement on this side, and I no prospect of getting to you on the other?"[22]

DEAN SWIFT TO JOHN GAY.