TO MR. GAY.
I ENTIRELY approve your refusal of that employment, and your writing to the queen. I am perfectly confident you have a keen enemy in the ministry. God forgive him, but not till he puts himself in a state to be forgiven. Upon reasoning with myself, I should hope they are gone too far to discard you quite, and that they will give you something; which, although much less than they ought, will be (as far as it is worth) better circumstantiated: and since you already just live, a middling help will make you just tolerable. Your lateness in life (as you so soon call it) might be improper to begin the world with, but almost the eldest men may hope to see changes in a court. A minister is always seventy: you are thirty years younger; and consider, Cromwell himself did not begin to appear till he was older than you. I beg you will be thrifty, and learn to value a shilling, which Dr. Birch said was a serious thing. Get a stronger fence about your 1000l. and throw the inner fence into the heap, and be advised by your Twickenham landlord and me about an annuity. You are the most refractory, honest, good natured man I ever have known; I could argue out this paper — I am very glad your opera is finished, and hope your friends will join the readier to make it succeed, because you are ill used by others.
I have known courts these thirty-six years, and know they differ; but in some things they are extremely constant: First, in the trite old maxim of
