Thus we the winged hours in harmless mirth And joys unsullied pass, till humid night Has half her race perform'd; now all abroad Is hush'd and silent, now the rumbling noise Of coach or cart, or smoky link-boy's call Is heard--but universal Silence reigns: When we in merry plight, airy and gay. Surprised to find the hours so swiftly fly. With hasty knock, or twang of pendent cord. Alarm the drowsy youth from slumb'ring nod; Startled he flies, and stumbles o'er the stairs Erroneous, and with busy knuckles plies His yet clung eyelids, and with stagg'ring reel Enters confused, and muttering asks our wills; When we with liberal hand the score discharge, And homeward each his course with steady step Unerring steers, of cares and coin bereft. So far as is known, Gay preserved a profound silence for three years after his publication of "Wine," and then, on May 3rd, 1711, appeared from his pen, "The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country," sold at the reasonable price of three-pence. This attracted the attention of Swift. "Dr. Freind[9] ... pulled out a two-penny pamphlet just published, called 'The State of Wit', giving the characters of all the papers that have come out of late," he wrote in the "Journal to Stella," May 12: "The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called the _Examiner_, and says the supposed author of it is Dr. Swift. But, above all things, he praises the _Tatlers_ and _Spectators_, and I believe Steele and Addison were privy to the printing of it. Thus is one treated by the impudent dogs." In this unambitious little sketch, as the author puts it, he gives "the histories and characters of all our periodical papers, whether monthly, weekly or diurnal," and it is, therefore, of value to the student of the early days of English journalism. He claimed to write without political bias: "I shall only promise that, as you know, I never cared one farthing either for Whig or Tory, so I shall consider our writers purely as they are such, without any respect to which party they belong." In "The Present State of Wit" most of the better-known periodical writers are introduced. Dr. William King is mentioned, not he who was the Archbishop of Dublin, nor he who was the Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, but he of whom it was said that he "could write verses in a tavern three hours after he could not speak," who was the author of the "Art of Cookery" and the "Art of Love," and who in 1709 had fluttered the scientific dovecotes by parodying the "Philosophical Transactions" in the _Useful Transactions in Philosophy and Other Sorts of Learning_, of which, however, only three numbers were issued. John Ozell was pilloried as the author of the _Monthly Amusement_, which was not, as the title suggests, a periodical, but was merely a title invented to summarise his frequent appearances in print. "It is generally some French novel