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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In his literary reputation, John Gay has been less fortunate than his neo-classic contemporaries; for, added to nineteenth century neglect, he received little support from Johnson himself, whose “Life of Gay” is harsh and unsympathetic. Today, except for the lyrics in “The Beggar's Opera” and the Fables, Gay's poetry is more talked about than read; and more has been written about his life and times than about any of his work. Even when he is occasionally judged as a poet, there is little genuinely critical agreement. At one extreme, for instance, Mr. F. R. Leavis brackets Gay with Parnell, and remarks that they “are representative period figures, of very minor interest.” This is the more common view. But at the other extreme, Mr. Yvor Winters places Gay among “the chief masters of the heroic couplet.” Since these are but passing estimates, a detailed examination of Gay's heroic couplet poems should perform for his reputation a service long over-due.
1 In, for example, Lewis Melville, The Life and Letters of John Gay (London, 1921); Oscar Sherwin, Mr. Gay, Being a Picture of the Life and Times of the Author of “The Beggar's Opera” (New York, 1929); Phoebe F. Gaye, John Gay: His Place in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1938); and William H. Irving, John Gay, Favorite of the Wits (Durham, N. C., 1940).
2 F. R. Leavis, Revaluation (London, 1936), p. 110.
3 Yvor Winters, Primitivism and Decadence (New York, 1937), p. 126.
4 Lines 9-17.—All references to Gay's writings are to The Poetical Works of John Gay, ed. G. C. Faber (London, 1926).
5 R. K. Root, The Poetical Career of Alexander Pope (Princeton, 1938), pp. 32-50.
6 W. K. Wimsatt, “One Relation of Rhyme to Reason: Alexander Pope,” MLQ, v (Sept., 1944), 323-339.
7 See Wimsatt, pp. 333-335.
8 Geoffrey Tillotson, On the Poetry of Pope (Oxford, 1938), p. 124.
9 The Spectator, ed. Henry Morley (London, 1883), i, 371.
10 Ibid., i, 173-174.
11 “Though Pope was quite regardless of the sonnet form as such, his artistic instinct seems to have led him to flights of song which have a similar extent and a similar unity of movement”: Root, op. cit., p. 49.