though it be not of the highest kind. We owe to Gay the ballad
opera, a mode of comedy which at first was supposed to delight only
by its novelty, but has now, by the experience of half a century,
been found so well accommodated to the disposition of a popular
audience that it is likely to keep long possession of the stage.
Whether this new drama was the product of judgment or of luck, the
praise of it must be given to the inventor; and there are many
writers read with more reverence to whom such merit or originality
cannot be attributed.

His first performance, the Rural Sports, is such as was easily
planned and executed; it is never contemptible, nor ever excellent.
The Fan is one of those mythological fictions which antiquity
delivers ready to the hand, but which, like other things that lie
open to every one's use, are of little value. The attention
naturally retires from a new tale of Venus, Diana, and Minerva.

His "Fables" seem to have been a favourite work; for, having
published one volume, he left another behind him. Of this kind of
Fables the author does not appear to have formed any distinct or
settled notion. Phaedrus evidently confounds them with Tales, and
Gay both with Tales and Allegorical Prosopopoeias. A Fable or
Apologue, such as is now under consideration, seems to be, in its
genuine state, a narrative in which beings irrational, and sometimes
inanimate, arbores loquuntur, non tantum ferae, are, for the purpose
of moral instruction, feigned to act and speak with human interests
and passions. To this description the compositions of Gay do not
always conform. For a fable he gives now and then a tale, or an
abstracted allegory; and from some, by whatever name they may be
called, it will be difficult to extract any moral principle. They