between them which lasted to their separation by death, without any
known abatement on either part. Gay was the general favourite of
the whole association of wits; but they regarded him as a playfellow
rather than a partner, and treated him with more fondness than
respect.

Next year he published "The Shepherd's Week," six English pastorals,
in which the images are drawn from real life, such as it appears
among the rustics in parts of England remote from London. Steele,
in some papers of the Guardian, had praised Ambrose Philips as the
pastoral writer that yielded only to Theocritus, Virgil, and
Spenser. Pope, who had also published pastorals, not pleased to be
overlooked, drew up a comparison of his own compositions with those
of Philips, in which he covertly gave himself the preference, while
he seemed to disown it. Not content with this, he is supposed to
have incited Gay to write "The Shepherd's Week," to show that, if it
be necessary to copy nature with minuteness, rural life must be
exhibited such as grossness and ignorance have made it. So far the
plan was reasonable; but the pastorals are introduced by a Proeme,
written with such imitation as they could attain of obsolete
language, and, by consequence, in a style that was never spoken nor
written in any language or in any place. But the effect of reality
and truth became conspicuous, even when the intention was to show
them grovelling and degraded. These pastorals became popular, and
were read with delight as just representations of rural manners and
occupations by those who had no interest in the rivalry of the
poets, nor knowledge of the critical dispute.

In 1713 he brought a comedy called The Wife of Bath upon the stage,
but it received no applause; he printed it, however, and seventeen