Gay's concern in his survey of The Present State of Wit is with the productions of wit which were circulating among the coffee-houses of 1711, specifically the large numbers of periodical essays which were perhaps the most distinctive kind of "wit" produced in the "four last years" of Queen Anne's reign. His little pamphlet makes no pretence at an analysis of true and false wit or a refining of critical distinctions with regard to wit in its relations to fancy and judgment. Addressed to "a friend in the country," it surveys in a rapid and engaging manner the productions of Isaac Bickerstaff and his followers which are engrossing the interest of London. In other words it is an early example of a popular eighteenth-century form, of which Goldsmith's more extended Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning is the best known instance.…

Gay is writing, he tells us, without prejudice "either for Whig or Tory," but the warm praise which he extends to Steele and Addison makes his pamphlet sound like the criticism of one very close to the Whigs. Though Gay is ordinarily associated with the Tory circle of Swift and Pope, he was in 1711 still in the somewhat uncertain position of a youngster willing to be courted by either group. His earliest sympathies were if anything on the side of the Whigs, in spite of the turn of events in the autumn of 1710. Gay's interests in these early years are nowhere so well analysed as in the early pages of W. H. Irving's John Gay: Favorite of the Wits (Durham, N.C., 1940): cf. the title of the second chapter: "Direction Found—the Year 1713." Even as late as 1715 Swift apparently thought of him as a Whig (Swift's Letters, ed. Ball, II, 286, cited by Irving, p. 91).

One need not be surprised, then, to find Gay eulogizing Captain Steele as "the greatest scholar and best casuist of any man in England," an essayist whose writings "have set all our wits and men of letters on a new way of thinking." Swift's reaction is well known." Dr. Freind was with me," he writes to Stella on May 14th, "and pulled out a two-penny pamphlet just published, called, The State of Wit, giving a character of all the papers that have come out of late. The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called the Examiner, and says the supposed author of it is Dr. Swift. But above all things he praises the Tatlers and Spectators; and I believe Steele and Addison were privy to the printing of it. Thus is one treated by these impudent dogs" (Journal to Stella, ed. J. K. Moorhead, Everyman's Library, p. 168).

In addition to the Tatler and Spectator Gay discusses a dozen other periodical publications which are of some interest to-day. Dr. King's "monthly Philosophical Transactions," mentioned in the third paragraph, had begun as a parody of the Royal Society's publications, but they had failed to hold the public interest, in spite of the wit of the author of the Art of Cookery: "though that gentleman has a world of wit …, the town soon grew weary of his writings." King's Useful Transactions in Philosophy had in fact run to only three numbers in the early months of 1709. The Monthly Amusement of John Ozell, mentioned in the following paragraph, which Churton Collins erroneously considered to be not a periodical but "simply his frequent appearances as a translator" (p. xxxii)—a statement repeated by Lewis Melville in his Life and Letters of John Gay (London, 1921, p. 12)—ran for only six numbers, from April to September 1709. Gay's statement that it "is still continued" may refer to the better known Delights for the Ingenious; or a Monthly Entertainment for the Curious of Both Sexes (edited by John Tipper) which was currently appearing in 1711.

As to the political papers Gay's observations are moderate in tone. Defoe's Review (1704-13) and The Observator (1702-12), begun by John Tutchin, are noticed in rather supercilious fashion. The Examiner (1710-14) is damned with faint praise: though "all men, who speak without prejudice, allow it to be well written" and "under the eye of some great persons who sit at the helm of affairs," Gay's admiration is reserved for its two chief opponents, Addison's short-lived Whig Examiner (1710) and The Medley (1710-12).

The real hero of the pamphlet, however, is Richard Steele, with his coadjutor Mr. Addison, "whose works in Latin and English poetry long since convinced the world, that he was the greatest master in Europe of those two language." The high praise which Gay lavishes upon this pair—comparable in their own field, he says, to Lord Somers and the Earl of Halifax—is eloquent testimony to the immense interest aroused by their two papers in the London of 1709-12. There is no need to review here the particulars of Gay's eulogy, but one or two points may be noted. In the first place, Gay's remarks are not extravagant when compared with other contemporary testimony. Many of these tributes were brought together by Aitken in his monumental biography of Steele, and since 1889 other contemporary sources have been published which give corroborating support. Hearne first mentions the Spectator on April 22, 1711, in a comment on No. 43, and even this crusty Tory and Jacobite notes in his diary: "But Men that are indifferent commend it highly, as it deserves" (Remarks and Collections, ed. Doble, III, Oxford, 1895, p. 154). The published reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, too, contain many contemporary references (see, e.g., Manuscripts of the Hon. Frederick Lindley Wood (1913), p. 247; Manuscripts of the Marquess of Downshire, I (1924), 889). It is interesting to observe, further, that Gay makes no reference to the political prejudices of the Spectator though it was not without criticism at the time for its meddling in politics. The Plain Dealer of May 24, 1712, for example, objected to the publication of No. 384 (the reprinting of the Bishop of St. Asaph's Introduction to his Sermons) and hinted at a "Mercenary Consideration" behind this sorry attempt to "propagate ill Principles." Gay's attitude on this point would be another reason for Swift's dislike of the pamphlet.

The "continuations" of the Tatler are given due attention by Gay, as well as three of its imitators: The Grouler (6 numbers, 1711), The Whisperer (one number, 1709), and The Tell Tale, which may be The Tatling Harlot (3 numbers, 1709), or, as Churton Collins conjectured, The Female Tatler (1709-10). Gay's postscript makes an agreeable reference to The British Apollo (1708-11), which has "of late, retreated out of this end of the town into the country," where "it still recommends itself by deciding wagers at cards, and giving good advice to shopkeepers and their apprentices," an interesting comment in view of Gay's own possible connection with this journal (cf. Irving, pp. 40-56). It is these casual remarks, as well as the more extensive critical comments on the present state of "wit," which give Gay's pamphlet a permanent interest.…