'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand, The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown; Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land; And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down. Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand, For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known; Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain? Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!' Gay's love of good living was known to all his friends. 'As the French philosopher,' Congreve wrote, 'used to prove his existence by _cogito ergo sum_, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is _edit ergo est_.' For a long time his health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells Swift that he had also left off verse-making, 'for I really think that man must be a bold writer who trusts to wit without it.' He was dispirited, he told Swift not long before his death, for want of a pursuit, and found 'indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in the world.' Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry's house, and Pope grieved that one of his nearest and longest ties was broken. He was interred, to quote Arbuthnot's words, 'as a peer of the realm,' in Westminster Abbey. The superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet transcribed upon the monument: 'Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, and now I know it.' [Sidenote: Edward Young (1684-1765).] Gay's moderate gift of song was withheld from the famous author of the _Night Thoughts_. Yet Young was vain enough to think that he possessed it, and wrote a patriotic ode called _Ocean_, preceded by an elaborate essay on lyric poetry. He also produced _Imperium Pelagi_ (1729), _A Naval Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar's spirit_. The lyric, which was travestied by Fielding in his _Tom Thumb_,[28] reads like a burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by the versemen of the last century, there is perhaps not one of them who mocks him more outrageously than Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no critic is likely to dispute the assertion.