Opera in the Eighteenth Century

Extract

Perhaps the story had better begin with a letter which Swift received one morning at his Deanery in Dublin, in the spring of the year 1729. It was from his old friend Dr. Arbuthnot, formerly physician to Queen Anne. He writes that he has just been attending poor John Gay, and has pulled him through a very severe attack of fever, from which “a physician who had not been passionately his friend could not have saved him. I had beside my personal concern for him” the doctor goes on, “other motives of my care. He is now become a public person, a little Sacheverell;. … one of the obstructions to the peace of Europe, the terror of ministers. He has got several turned out of their places, the greatest ornament of the court banished from it for his sake, another great lady in danger of being chassée likewise, about seven or eight duchesses pushing forward who shall suffer martyrdom upon his account first. He is the darling of the city. If he should travel about the country he would have hecatombs of roasted oxen sacrificed to him … and I can assure you this is the very identical John Gay—the inoffensive John Gay—whom you formerly knew and lodged with in Whitehall two years ago.”