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' with more Raillery among the Moderns, but more Good Sense among the Ancients.' The note of the preceding generation had been dignitythe dignity of the court of Louis Quatorze, introduced into England at the Restoration, when, ' in ev'ry taste of foreign courts improv'd,' Britain became * to soft refinements less a foe"; the dignity symbolized by the flowing periwig with its luxuriant ringlets, and expressed by Dryden, when in 1700 he spoke of Chaucer as ' a rough diamond,' who ' must first be polished e'er he shines.' But dignity, in the hands of inferior artists, had inflated itself into pomposity and become oppressive. The young wits revolted, and smote the oppressor in the forehead with the smooth stone of ridicule. Gay wrote Trivia primarily as a burlesque on versified ' Arts.' But, in spite of Pope's epitaph, Gay was no satirist. He may have been ' formed to delight,' but he was certainly not formed ' to lash the age.' Pope was living in the past when he wrote the epitaph on Gay in Westminster Abbey. ' The sabbath of his days ' was not yet fully come, but it was already the preparation of the sabbath. Satire was the vogue in his youth, and he had made a reputation as a satirist. Satire, he believed or affected to believe, was the consecrated weapon of moral indignation. His satire, he flattered himself, * heals with morals what it hurts with wit.' ' I am proud; I must be proud,' he cried, ' to see men not afraid of God afraid of me.' But Gay was one of those fat sleek-headed men who sleep o' nights. He had no mission to cleanse the foul body of the infedted world, To him it was no unweeded garden that runs to seed, xiii ' Oh, ponder well ! be not severe ! ' and by the innocent simplicity of Polly. So Trivia, which began as a burlesque of the 'Arts,' developed (as Joseph Andrews developed from its original design of burlesquing Pamela) into an original poem, containing a series of picturesque scenes, the harvest of a quiet eye, XVI TRIVIA and pleasure.' The happiness of London, he said, is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. ' No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London allthat life can afford.' Boswell reports that they were walking one evening in Greenwich Park, when Johnson, to try him, asked, ' Is not this very fine ? ' Boswell, having, as he confesses, ' no exquisite relish of the beauties of nature, and being more delighted with the busy hum of men,' replied, 'Yes, Sir; but not equal to Fleet-street.' 'You are right, Sir,' retorted the sage with enthusiasm. But Gay looked upon London, not with Boswell as 'the great scene of ambition, instruction, and amusement; comparatively speaking, a heaven upon earth '; nor with Wordsworth as ' a sight so touching in its majesty'; but rather with Steele, when, after lying at Richmond, he rose at four in the morning, and took boat for London, with a resolution to rove by boat and coach for the next four and twenty hours. The only moral he could draw for his readers from the description of his day's ramble wa...
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