JOHN GAY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 54, 5 March 1927, Page 29

JOHN GAY

AS HE APPEARS TO-DAY SCHOLARLY REVIEW BY ARTHUR WAUGH '■ "The Poetical AVorks of John Gay," edited by Mr. G. C. Faber, has just been published by Humphrey Milf ord, Ltd. In reviewing the works for .the "Daily Telegr ph," Mr. Arthur Waugh remarks that the "Oxford Poets" have long since set a high standard of editorship, and Mr. Faber's elaborate and punctiliously conscientious re-issue of the poems and dramas of Gay is more than worthy of the traditions it sustains. Ho has spent- over ten years upon the preparation of his text, and he has studied his originals with.an indefatigable sense of resp<_ -sibility. His bibliographical notes are of the very first value, and bear witness to his con-, stant persistency and care. In every' editorial respect he has given to the world by far +he most complete and attractive recension to which the author ■f "The Bepgar's Opera" has ever •eon subjected. This is indeed no ■mall achievement, and may well excuse" a little preliminary impatience with others who .nay have been more easily satisfied with a less searching and meticulous examination. '' THE BEGGAR' S OPERA. None the less,-holds Mr. Waugh, it would be interesting to witness Gay's own surprise at this subjection of hiii text to the busy toothcomb of textual criticism, no less than his pleasure at the extraordinary revival of popularity which the last five years have brought him, through the energies of Mr. Playfair and the late Lovat Fraser. For, if any man ever lived in his own time, and wrote for his own time, Gay was I just such a mf n, and 200 years is a long period for contemporary satire to survive and flourish. Dr. Johnson, at any rate, would have been amazed, for he dismissed Gay's poetry with a shrug of the shoulders. It had not "the: nignity of genius," and without dignity no work passed under the ; approval of the Great Cham of Eighhteenth Century literature. It happens, however, that there are other antiseptics of fame than .dignity, and " ope put his finger upon the saving quality of all Gay's work when he declared that he was a natural man, without design, who spoke what he thought, and just as he thought it." To be'sincere, and in the exercise of sincerity to reflect the natural man's attitude to life, that is unquestionably a side issue of talent very near to genius; and it was; Gay's property in a high degree. He was also a natural mocker, and the objects of his mockery were justly chosen. "He was a general favourite, ' said Johnson,' "of the whole association of -its, but they regarded him as a playfellow rather than a partner, and treated him with more fondness than respect." That may well be true, yet beneath the superficial gloss of Gay's topical observation there lurked a depth of sound common-sense which has preserved his humour "fresh and buoyant to a generation widely different from his own, alike. in taste and tolerance. • -.-. , -.. ■ . THE POET BEHIND THE COUNTER. No doubt theso eigliteenth-eentUry men of lotters make heavy demandsupon modern acquiescence. Theirs was the ago of the patron, when it was no more than common fashion to expect that literary.. poverty should be provided for by aristocratic opulence. And Gay was never backward in availing himself of the opportunities of patronage. Sir Edmund Gosse has described him as "a plump, indolent man, who liked to. nestle into war sinecures in tho families of people of quality," and the glove fits closely enough. When ho left his counter in a silk-mercer's shop Gay got a comfortable job as Steward to tho Duchess of Moumouth; when ho. lost that position Swift found him a secretaryship; and, after ho had put his fortune to the touch in the South Sea Bubble, lie was provided with somothing cosy in tho shapo a lottery commissionorship. Tho last years of his life were spent in tho houses of the Duke and Duchess of Quoensberry, who took such enro of him and of his savings that ho left no less than £6000 —no mean legacy in those days. Gay lived by his wits in other ways than these, for no man was ever sharper at picking up a hint; Ho owod to Pope the suggestion for the mock pastorals witli which ho first t^ok tho town, and "Tho Beggar's Opera" sprang out of a stray remark of Swift's, that "a Ncwgato pastoral might mako an odd, I'retty sort of thing." Others, no doubt, heard Swift say so; but it needed the applicability of Gay to pounce upon tho notion, and turn it over to the tuno of £800. Ho kopt his eyes and open, and Reproduced tho lifo about .town, tinged by a not too bitter spico of satire. Tho daily commerce of tho streets, the exploits of tho* Mohocks, tho intrigues that flashed about the flutter of a fan—he invested these' popular themes with an air of moral sensibility. Ho was "a natural man, without design, who spoko what ho thought, and just as ho thought it"; and tho world of natural men of tho time saw thei own faces in his glass, and laughed with him at tho reflection. But '•'icro was something more than topical satire in his composition; thero was tho shrewd philosophy of commonsense, which remains milch tho same from generation to generation, and which lent to "Tho Beggar's Opera" in our own day a second harvest of almost unprecedented vitality. . . All tho political satire which it ontained was by thorn as dead as cottonwool. Not ono in a thousand of its crowded audience kne anything of Sir Robert Walpole, or Miss Skcrrett; yet its human touches wevo eternal. SOME UMAN TOUCHES. "Do you think your mother arid I should have lived comfortably so long together, if over we had married, Bag--6 ge?" .. . . "1 always loved a woman of wit and spirit; they make charming mistresses, but plaguy wives." . . . "To cheat a man is nothing; but tiie woman ii.ust have fine parts indeed who cheats a woman." • •. . "No woman would every marry, if she had not the chance of mortality for a release." ... How tho house used to ring with laughter down at Hammersmith, and that to jests-which, as the date above the scene reminded us, were close upon two centuries old! . . ..

Life is a jest, and all tilings show it; I thought so once, and now I know it. ...

It may be argued that the humour of tho "Fables" is narrow in scope, and irpt to insist with tiresome iteration upon the meanness and servility of social life; but meanness and servility, alas! -were not the monopolies of the eighteenth eeutihy, and the appetites, passions, and emotions of men are much the same from age to age. Gay knew those frailties by heart, and made a jest of them; and, so long as the miss its laugh.

"When I was at Clifton I met Conan Doyle, who had lectured at the college. I said something about Sherlock Holmes to him. 'Thank "God-I've killed the brute,' said Boyle. 'Don't let me hear another word about him.'."—From "Experiences of a Literary Man." by Mr. Stephen Gwynne.