and not christened till full age, which sets all right. However it be, the accident is very singular, that these two names should be united.
Mr. Gay's opera has acted near forty days running, and will certainly continue the whole season. So he has more than a fence about his thousand pounds[1]: 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? This world is made for Cæsar as Cato said; for ambitious, false, or flattering people to domineer in: nay they would not, by their good will, leave us our very books, thoughts, or words, in quiet. I despise the world yet, I assure you, more than either Gay or you, and the court more than all the rest of the world. As for those scribblers for whom you apprehend I would suppress my Dulness, (which by the way, for the future you are to call by a more pompous name, the Dunciad) how much that nest of hornets are my regard, will easily appear to you when you read the Treatise of the Bathos.
At all adventures, yours and my name shall stand linked as friends to posterity, both in verse and prose, and (as Tully calls it) in consuetudine studiorum.
- ↑ Before Mr. Gay had fenced his thousand pounds, he had a consulsation with his friends about the disposal of it. Mr. Lewis advised him to intrust it to the funds, and live upon the interest; Dr. Arbuthnot, to intrust it to Providence, and live upon the principal; and Mr. Pope was for purchasing an annuity for life. In this uncertainty he could only say with the old man in Terence;
fecistis probe:
Incertior sum multo, quam dudum.
