she a clear voice?--and will she let him sit at her left hand, for his right ear is the better? Can the parson of the parish play at backgammon, and hold his tongue? Has she a good nurse among her women, in case he should fancy himself sick? How long will she maintain him and his equipage if he comes? A week or two later, in the form of another postscript to Gay, follows the reply of the Duchess: 'It was Mr. _Gay's_ fault that I did not write sooner; which if I had, I should hope you would have been here by this time; for I have to tell you, all your articles are agreed to; and that I only love my own way, when I meet not with others whose ways I like better. I am in great hopes that I shall approve of yours; for to tell you the truth, I am at present a little tired of my own. I have not a clear or distinct voice, except when I am angry; but I am a very good nurse, when people don't fancy themselves sick. Mr. _Gay_ knows this; and he knows too how to play at backgammon. Whether the parson of the parish can, I know not; but if he cannot hold his tongue, I can. Pray set out the first fair wind and stay with us as long as ever you please. I cannot name my fixed time, that I shall like to maintain you and your equipage; but if I don't happen to like you, I know I can so far govern my temper as to endure you for about five days. So come away directly; at all hazards you'd be allowed a good breathing time. I shall make no sort of respectful conclusions; for till I know you, I cannot tell what I am to you.' And so the correspondence, always conducted on the one side by Gay and his kind protectress, or Gay and the Duke, protracts itself until arrives to Swift that fatal missive from Pope and Arbuthnot announcing Gay's sudden death,--a missive which, overmastered by a foreboding of its contents, he kept unopened for days. At a later date some further communications followed between Swift and the Duchess. But he liked best her postscripts to his dead friend's letters. 'They made up,' he told Pope unaffectedly, 'a great part of the little happiness I could have here.' Swift survived Gay for nearly fifteen years, and the Duchess lived far into the reign of George the Third. In the changing procession of Walpole's pages one gets glimpses of her from time to time, generally emphasized by some malicious anecdote or epithet. At the coronation she returned to Court, appearing with perfectly white hair. Yet, four years before her death, Walpole says of her that (by twilight) you would sooner 'take her for a young beauty of an old-fashioned century than for an antiquated goddess of this age.' Indeed her all-conquering charms seduced him into panegyric; and one day in 1771, she found these verses on her toilet-table, wrung from her most persistent detractor:= ````'To many a Kitty, Love his car `````Will for a day engage, ````But Prior's Kitty, ever fair, `````Obtained it for an age!'=