It is somewhat strange that there should be no biography of a man so well-known and so much beloved. It is true that no sooner was the breath out of his body than Curll published a "Life." "Curll (who is one of the new horrors of death) has been writing letters to everybody for memoirs of his (Gay's) life," Arbuthnot wrote to Swift, January 13th, 1733: "I was for sending him some, which I am sure might have been made entertaining, by which I should have attained two ends at once, published truth and got a rascal whipped for it. I was over-ruled in this."[1] Curll obtained no assistance from Gay's friends, and his book, issued in 1733, is at once inadequate and unreliable. Of Curll, at whose hands so many of Gay's friends had suffered, the poet had written in the "Epistle to the Right Honourable Paul Methuen, Esquire":-- Were Prior, Congreve, Swift, and Pope unknown, Poor slander-selling Curll would be undone. Of some slight biographical value is the "Account of the Life and Writings of the Author," prefixed to the volume of "Plays Written by Mr. Gay," published 1760; but there is little fresh information in the "Brief Memoir" by the Rev. William (afterwards Archdeacon) Coxe, which appeared in 1797. More valuable is the biographical sketch by Gay's nephew, the Rev. Joseph Baller, prefixed to "Gay's Chair" (1820); but the standard authorities on Gay's life are Mr. Austin Dobson ("Dictionary of National Biography," Vol. XXI., 1890) and Mr. John Underwood ("Introductory Memoir" to the "Poems of John Gay" in the "Muses' Library," 1893).