14
LETTERS TO AND FROM
ness and good nature. I fancy Arsalla[1] has cured the lady of her spleen.
I heartily wish you many new years, with health and happiness; and am, most entirely, &c.
I am told poor Gay's play is now in rehearsal, and will please. It was that brought him to town a little before he died[2]; though, without his fever, he could not probably have held out long any where.
TO MRS. PILKINGTON.
MADAM,
DEANERY HOUSE, JAN. 1, 1732-3.
I SEND you your bit of a newspaper with the verses[3], than which I never saw better in their kind. I have the same opinion of those you were pleased to
write
- ↑ The seat of Peter Ludlow, esq., father to the first earl of Ludlow.
- ↑ Nov. 16, 1732, Mr. Gay tells the dean, "I am at last come to London before the family, to follow my own inventions. — If my present object succeeds, you may expect a better account of my fortune a little while after the holidays. But I promise myself nothing." See the preceding letter. He died Dec. 4, only eighteen days after.
- ↑ Mrs. Pilkington, when she was about sixteen, having been teased by her brother to write some verses as a school exercise for him, asked him what she should write upon: Why, said he pertly, what should you write upon but paper? So taking it for her subject, she writ the following lines; which, four years after, were printed in one of the London newspapers. See Pilkington's Memoirs, vol. I, p. 88.
O spotless
