“There is of all the multitude not one man in ten but will own (if he has not been brought up in a slaughter-house) that of all trades he could never have been a _butcher_; and I question whether ever anybody so much as killed a chicken without reluctancy the first time. Some people are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have daily seen and been acquainted with while they were alive; others extend their scruples no further than to their own poultry, and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of themselves; yet all of them feed heartily and without remorse on beef, mutton, and fowls when they are bought in the market. In this behaviour, methinks, there appears something like a _consciousness of guilt_; it looks as if they endeavoured to save themselves from the imputation of a crime (which they know sticks somewhere) by removing the cause of it as far as they can from themselves; and I discover in it some strong marks of primitive pity and innocence, which all the arbitrary power of Custom, and the violence of Luxury, have not yet been able to conquer.”[137] XVIII. GAY. 1688-1732. The intimate friend of Pope and Swift is best known by his charming and instructive _Fables_. He was born at Barnstaple, in Devonshire, and belonged to the old family of the Le Gays of that county. His father, reduced in means, apprenticed him to a silk mercer in the Strand, London, in whose employment he did not long remain. The first of his poems, _Rural Sports_, appeared in 1711. In the following year he became secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth, and he served for a short time as secretary to the English embassy in Hanover. His next work was his _Shepherd’s Week, in Six Pastorals_, in which he ridicules the sentimentality of the “pastorals” of his own and preceding age. It contains much naturalness as well as humour, and it was the precursor of Crabbe’s rural sketches. In 1726 he published the most successful of his works, the _Beggars’ Opera_--the idea of which had been suggested to him by the Dean of St. Patrick’s. It was received with unbounded applause, and it originated the (so-called) English opera, which for a time supplanted the Italian. The _Fables_ first appeared in 1726. They were supplemented afterwards by others, and the volume was dedicated to the young Duke of Cumberland, famous in after years by his suppression of the Highland rising of 1745. Gay’s death, which happened suddenly, called forth the sincere laments of his devoted friends Swift and Pope. The former, in his letters, frequently refers to his loss with deep feeling; and Pope has characterised him as-- “Of manners gentle, of affections mild-- In wit a man, simplicity a child.”