Even Newgate seemed a pleasing place, for in this fantasy the author was careful to omit anything of the horrors of a prison in the early eighteenth century.

Gay, in fact, did for the stage with "The Beggar's Opera" what, a century later Bulwer Lytton and Harrison Ainsworth did for the reading public with "Ernest Maltravers," "Jack Sheppard," and the rest.
The morality of the opera was much discussed.

Swift took the field, and wrote in its favour in the _Intelligencer_ (No.

3):-- "It is true, indeed, that Mr.Gay, the author of this piece, has been somewhat singular in the course of his fortune, for it has happened that after fourteen years attending the Court, with a large stock of real merit, a modest and agreeable conversation, a hundred promises, and five hundred friends, he has failed of preferment, and upon a very weighty reason.

He lay under the suspicion of having written a libel, or lampoon, against a great minister.