Martha, in fact, became by degrees almost a member of his household.

His correspondents take for granted that she is his regular companion.

He writes of her to Gay, in 1730, as "a friend--a woman friend, God help me!--with whom I have spent three or four hours a day these fifteen years." In his last years, when he was most dependent upon kindness, he seems to have expected that she should be invited to any house which he was himself to visit.

Such a close connexion naturally caused some scandal.

In 1725, he defends himself against "villanous lying tales" of this kind to his old friend Caryll, with whom the Blounts were connected.