The publication in book form of "Three Hours After Marriage" by Lintott, who paid £16 2s. 6d. for the copyright, a few days after the production, did nothing to arrest the torrent of abuse. "Gay's play, among the rest, has cost much time and long suffering to stem a tide of malice and party, that certain authors have raised against it," Pope wrote to Parnell. Amongst those foremost among the attackers was Addison, who perhaps had not forgotten or forgiven the parody of some of the lines in his play "Cato," which was introduced by Gay in "The What D'ye Call It." Gay, the most easy-going of men, was always stirred by criticism, and in this case he, with unusual energy, sat down to reply to his detractors. "Mr. Addison and his friends had exclaimed so much against Gay's 'Three Hours After Marriage' for obscenities, that it provoked him to write 'A Letter from a Lady in the City to a Lady in the Country' on that subject," so runs a passage in Spence's Anecdotes of Pope. "In it he quoted the passages which had been most exclaimed against, and opposed other passages to them from Addison's and Steele's plays. These were aggravated in the same manner that they served his, and appeared worse. Had it been published it would have made Addison appear ridiculous, which he could bear as little as any man. I therefore prevailed upon Gay not to print it, and have the manuscript now by me."[11] In Spence's Anecdotes there is another passage bearing on the same matter: "A fortnight before Addison's death, [12] Lord Warwick [13] came to Gay and pressed him in a very particular manner 'to go and see Mr. Addison,' which he had not done for a great while. Gay went, and found Addison in a very weak way. He received him in the kindest manner and told him, 'that he had desired this visit to beg his pardon, that he had injured him greatly, but that if he lived he should find that he would make it up to him.' Gay, on his going to Hanover, had great reason to hope for some good preferment; but all his views came to nothing. It is not impossible but that Mr. Addison might prevent them, from his thinking Gay too well with some of the great men of the former Ministry. He did not at all explain himself, in which he had injured him, and Gay could not guess at anything else in which he could have injured him so considerably."[14] It seems, however, more probable that Addison really had in mind the part he had taken in connection with "Three Hours After Marriage." Two critical publications, "A Complete Key to 'Three Hours After Marriage,'" and "A Letter to John Gay, Concerning his late Farce, entitled a Comedy," annoyed Gay; while Pope, too, and, in a minor degree, Arbuthnot, were attacked for their share in the farce. John Durand Breval, writing over the signature of Joseph Gay, published in 1717 "The Confederates: A Farce," in which he introduced a humorous caricature print of Pope, Gay and Arbuthnot, so that, says Professor