How could you, Gay, disgrace the Muse's train, To serve a tasteless Court twelve years in vain! Fain would I think our female friend sincere, Till Bob,[20] the poet's foe, possess'd her ear. Did female virtue e'er so high ascend, To lose an inch of favour for a friend? Say, had the Court no better place to choose For thee, than make a dry-nurse of thy Muse? How cheaply had thy liberty been sold, To squire a royal girl of two years old: In leading strings her infant steps to guide, Or with her go-cart amble side by side! It is a little difficult at this time of day to understand Swift's indignation. Gay was already in the enjoyment of a sinecure of £150 a year; he was offered another of £200 a year--for the post of Gentleman-Usher involved no duties save occasional attendance at Court, and to this the poet had shown himself by no means averse. A total gift of £350 a year for nothing really seems rather alluring to a man of letters, and it is difficult to understand why Gay refused the offer, unless it was, as the editors of the standard edition of Pope's Correspondence suggest: "The affluent friends who recommended Gay to reject the provisions were strangers to want, and with unconscious selfishness they thought less of his necessities than of venturing their spleen against the Court." * * * * * Swift, unable effectively to vent his anger on Caroline, chose to regard Mrs. Howard as the cause of the mortification of his friend. Mrs. Howard, however, not only had nothing to do with the offer of the place of Gentleman-Usher to Gay, the patronage being directly in the Queen's hands, but, as has been indicated, was unable to secure for him, or anyone else, a place at Court of any description. Certainly she was in blissful ignorance of having given offence, for as Gay wrote to the Dean so late as February 15th, 1728: "Mrs. Howard frequently asks after you and desires her compliments to you." All the matters affected not a whit the relations between Mrs. Howard and Gay; against her he had no ill-feeling, and their correspondence continued on the same lines of intimacy as before. THE HON. MRS. HOWARD TO JOHN GAY. October, 1727. "I hear you expect, and have a mind to have, a letter from me, and though I have little to say, I find I don't care that you should be either disappointed or displeased. Tell her Grace of Queensberry I don't think she looked kindly upon me when I saw her last; she ought to have looked and thought very kindly, for I am much more her humble servant than those who tell her so every day. Don't let her cheat you in the pencils; she designs to give you nothing but her old ones. I suppose she always uses those worst who love her best, Mrs. Herbert excepted; but I hear she has done handsomely by her. I cannot help doing the woman this justice, that she can now and then distinguish merit.