“Wine,” a subject on which Gay, even at the age of twenty-two, could write with some authority, secured a sufficient popularity to be paid the doubtful compliment of piracy in 1709, by Henry Hill, of Blackfriars, on whom presently the author neatly revenged himself in his verses, “On a Miscellany of Poems to Bernard Lintott,” by the following reference:—­

  While neat old Elzevir is reckon’d better
  Than Pirate Hill’s brown sheets and scurvy letter.

This blank-verse poem, which may have been suggested by John Philips’ “Cider,” published in 1708, is written in the mock-heroic strain, and although it has no particular value, shows some sense of humorous exaggeration, of which Gay was presently to show himself a master.

  Of happiness terrestrial, and the source
  Whence human pleasures flow, sing, Heavenly Muse,
  Of sparkling juices, of th’ enlivening grape,
  Whose quick’ning taste adds vigour to the soul. 
  Whose sov’reign power revives decaying Nature,
  And thaws the frozen blood of hoary age,
  A kindly warmth diffusing—­youthful fires
  Gild his dim eyes, and paint with ruddy hue
  His wrinkled visage, ghastly wan before—­
  Cordial restorative to mortal man,
  With copious hand by bounteous gods bestow’d.

These are the opening lines.  The concluding passage describing the tippling revellers leaving the tavern suggests, as has more than once been pointed out, the hand that afterwards wrote “Trivia.”

  Thus we the winged hours in harmless mirth
  And joys unsullied pass, till humid night
  Has half her race perform’d; now all abroad
  Is hush’d and silent, now the rumbling noise
  Of coach or cart, or smoky link-boy’s call
  Is heard—­but universal Silence reigns: 
  When we in merry plight, airy and gay. 
  Surprised to find the hours so swiftly fly. 
  With hasty knock, or twang of pendent cord. 
  Alarm the drowsy youth from slumb’ring nod;
  Startled he flies, and stumbles o’er the stairs
  Erroneous, and with busy knuckles plies
  His yet clung eyelids, and with stagg’ring reel
  Enters confused, and muttering asks our wills;
  When we with liberal hand the score discharge,
  And homeward each his course with steady step
  Unerring steers, of cares and coin bereft.

So far as is known, Gay preserved a profound silence for three years after his publication of “Wine,” and then, on May 3rd, 1711, appeared from his pen, “The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country,” sold at the reasonable price of three-pence.  This attracted the attention of Swift.  “Dr. Freind[9] ... pulled out a two-penny pamphlet just published, called ‘The State of Wit’, giving the characters of all the papers that have come out of late,” he wrote in the “Journal to Stella,” May 12:  “The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called the Examiner,