latter hears Argyle exclaim, "It will do, it must do! I see it in the eyes of 'em;" and then the critics breathe freely, and the applauses become incontrollable, and the curtain closes at last amidst thunders of applause; and Gay goes home triumphant, amidst a circle of friends, who do not know whether more to wonder at his success or at their own previous apprehensions. For sixty-three nights continuously the piece is acted in London; then it spreads through England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Ladies sing its favourite songs, or carry them in their fans. Miss Fenton, who acted Polly, becomes a universal favourite, nay, a _furor_. Her pictures are engraved, her life written, and her sayings and jests published, and in fine, the Italian Opera, which the piece was intended to ridicule, is extinguished for a season. Notwithstanding this unparalleled success of the "Beggars' Opera," Gay gained only £400 by it, although by "Polly," the second part, (where Gay transports his characters to the colonies,) which the Lord Chamberlain suppressed, on account of its supposed immoral tendency, and which the author published in self-defence, he cleared nearly £1200. Altogether now worth above £3000, having been admitted by the Duke of Queensberry into his house, who generously undertook the care alike of the helpless being's purse and person, and still in the prime of life, Gay might have looked forward, humanly speaking, to long years of comfort, social happiness, and increased fame. _Dîs aliter visum est_. He had been delicate for some time, and on the 4th December 1732, at the age of 44, and in the course of a three days' attack of inflammation of the bowels, this irresolute but amiable and gifted person breathed his last, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The last work he was occupied on was a second volume of "Fables," which was published after his death. He had become very popular, not merely for his powers, but for his presumed political principles, a "little Sacheverel," as Arbuthnot, his faithful friend and kind physician, calls him, and yet his modesty and simplicity of character remained entire, and he died while planning schemes of self-reformation, economy, and steady literary work. It is curious that Swift, when the letter arrived with the news of Gay's death, was so impressed with a presentiment of some coming evil, that he allowed it to lie five days unopened on his table. And when the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry erected a monument to his memory, Pope supplied an epitaph, familiar to most readers of poetry, and which is creditable to both. Two widow sisters survived Gay, amongst whom the profits of a posthumous opera, entitled "Achilles," as well as the small fortune which he left, were divided.