Imatges de pàgina
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found in The Public Advertiser for February 3.

Two days

later the play was published, with the version here followed.

1. 1. As puffing quacks. Goldsmith had devoted a Chinese letter to this subject. See Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 10 (Letter lxv).

1. 17. No, no; I've other contests, &c. This couplet is not in the first version. The old building of the College of Physicians was in Warwick Lane; and the reference is to the long-pending dispute, occasionally enlivened by personal collision, between the Fellows and Licentiates respecting the exclusion of certain of the latter from Fellowships. On this theme Bonnell Thornton, himself an M.B. like Goldsmith, wrote a satiric additional canto to Garth's Dispensary, entitled The Battle of the Wigs, long extracts from which are printed in The Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1768, p. 132. The same number also reviews The Siege of the Castle of Esculapius, an heroic Comedy, as it is acted in Warwick-Lane. Goldsmith's couplet is, however, best illustrated by the title of one of Sayer's caricatures, The March of the Medical Militants to the Siege of Warwick-Lane-Castle in the Year 1767. The quarrel was finally settled in favour of the college in June, 1771.

1. 19. Go, ask your manager. Colman, the manager of Covent Garden, was not a prolific, although he was a happy writer of prologues and epilogues.

1. 32. The quotation is from King Lear, Act iii, Sc. 4.

1. 34. In the first version the last line runs :

And view with favour, the 'Good-natur'd Man.'

EPILOGUE TO THE SISTER.'

The Sister, produced at Covent Garden February 18, 1769, was a comedy by Mrs. Charlotte Lenox or Lennox, ' an ingenious lady,' says The Gentleman's Magazine for April in the same year, 'well known in the literary world by her excellent writings, particularly the Female Quixote, and Shakespeare illustrated.... The audience expressed their disapprobation of it with so much clamour and appearance of prejudice, that she would not suffer an attempt to exhibit it a second time (p. 199).' According to the

same authority it was based upon one of the writer's own novels, Henrietta, published in 1758. Though tainted with the prevailing sentimentalism, The Sister is described by Forster as both amusing and interesting'; and it is probable that it was not fairly treated when it was acted. Mrs. Lenox (1720-1804), daughter of Colonel Ramsay, Lieut.-Governor of New York, was a favourite with the literary magnates of her day. Johnson was half suspected of having helped her in her book on Shakespeare; Richardson admitted her to his readings at Parson's Green; Fielding, who knew her, calls her, in the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, 1755, p. 35 (first version), 'the inimitable author of the Female Quixote'; and Goldsmith, though he had no kindness for genteel comedy (see post, p. 228), wrote her this lively epilogue, which was spoken by Mrs. Bulkley, who personated the 'Miss Autumn' of the piece. Mrs. Lenox died in extremely reduced circumstances, and was buried by the Right Hon. George Ross, who had befriended her later years. There are several references to her in Boswell's Life of Johnson. (See also Hawkins' Life, 2nd ed. 1787, pp. 285-7.)

PROLOGUE TO ZOBEIDE.'

Zobeide, a play by Joseph Cradock (1742-1826), of Gumley, in Leicestershire, was produced by Colman at Covent Garden on Dec. 11, 1771. It was a translation from three acts of Les Scythes, an unfinished tragedy by Voltaire. Goldsmith was applied to, through the Yates's, for a prologue, and sent that here printed to the author of the play with the following note :— 'Mr. Goldsmith presents his best respects to Mr. Cradock, has sent him the Prologue, such as it is. He cannot take time to make it better. He begs he will give Mr. Yates the proper instructions; and so, even so, commits him to fortune and the publick.' (Cradock's Memoirs, 1826, i. 224.) Yates, to the acting of whose wife in the character of the heroine the success of the piece, which ran for thirteen nights, was mainly attributable, was to have spoken the prologue, but it ultimately fell to Quick, later the 'Tony Lumpkin' of She Stoops to Conquer, who delivered it in the character of a sailor. Cradock seems sub

sequently to have sent a copy of Zobeide to Voltaire, who replied in English as follows:

Sr.

ge. 8bre, 1773. à ferney.

Thanks to y' muse a foreign copper shines
Turn'd in to gold, and coin'd in sterling lines.
You have done to much honour to an old
sick man of eighty.

I am vith the most sincere esteem and

gratitude

Sr.

Yr. obdt. Servt. Voltaire.

A Monsieur Monsieur J. Cradock.

The text of the prologue is here given as printed in Cradock's Memoirs, 1828, iii. 8-9. It is unnecessary to specify the variations between this and the earlier issue of 1771.

1. 1. In these bold times, &c. The reference is to Cook, who, on June 12, 1771, had returned to England in the Endeavour, after three years' absence, having gone to Otaheite to observe the transit of Venus (1. 4).

1. 5. Botanists. Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Banks and Dr. Solander, of the British Museum, accompanied Cook.

1. 6. go simpling, i. e. gathering simples, or herbs. Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii, Sc. 3 ::

-These lisping hawthorn buds that... smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time.'

In the caricatures of the day Solander figured as 'The simpling Macaroni.' (See note, p. 247, 1. 31.)

1. 11. With Scythian stores. The scene of the play was laid in Scythia (v. supra).

1. 28. to make palaver, to hold a parley, generally with the intention of cajoling. Two of Goldsmith's notes to Garrick in 1773 are endorsed by the actor-'Goldsmith's parlaver.' (Forster's Life, 1871, ii. 397.)

1. 32. mercenary. Cradock gave the profits of Zobeide to Mrs. Yates. 'I mentioned the disappointment it would be to you'—she says in a letter to him dated April 26, 1771—ʻas you had generously given the emoluments of the piece to me.' (Memoirs, 1828, iv. 211.)

THRENODIA AUGUSTALIS.

Augusta, widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and mother of George the Third, died at Carlton House, February 8, 1772. This piece was spoken and sung in Mrs. Teresa Cornelys's Great Room in Soho Square, on the Thursday following (the 20th), being sold at the door as a small quarto pamphlet, printed by William Woodfall. The author's name was not given; but it was prefaced by this 'advertisement,' &c. :

:

'The following may more properly be termed a compilation than a poem. It was prepared for the composer in little more than two days: and may be considered therefore rather as an industrious effort of gratitude than of genius. In justice to the composer it may likewise be right to inform the public, that the music was adapted in a period of time equally short.

SPEAKERS.

Mr. Lee and Mrs. Bellamy.

SINGERS.

Mr. Champnes, Mr. Dine, and Miss Jameson; with twelve chorus singers. The music prepared and adapted by Signor Vento.'

It is as Cunningham calls it—a 'hurried and unworthy offspring of the muse of Goldsmith.'

1. 122 (Part I). Celestial-like her bounty fell. The Princess's benefactions are not exaggerated. 'She had paid off the whole of her husband's debts, and she had given munificent sums in charity. More than 10,000l. a year were given away by her in pensions to individuals whom she judged deserving, very few of whom were aware, until her death, whence the bounty came. The whole of her income she spent in England, and very little on herself' (Augusta: Princess of Wales, by W. H. Wilkins, Nineteenth Century, October, 1903, p. 675).

1. 132. There faith shall come. This, and the three lines that follow, are borrowed from Collins's Ode written in the beginning of the year 1746.

1. 22 (Part II). The towers of Kew. 'The embellishments of Kew palace and gardens, under the direction of [Sir William]

Chambers, and others, was the favourite object of her [Royal Highness's] widowhood' (Bolton Corney).

1. 77. Along the billow'd main. Cf. The Captivity, Act ii, 1. 18.

1. 83. Oswego's dreary shores. Cf. The Traveller, 1. 411.

1. 91. And with the avenging fight. Varied from Collins's Ode

on the Death of Colonel Charles Ross at Fontenoy.

1. 117. Its earliest bloom. Cf. Collins's Dirge in Cymbeline.

SONG

·
FROM SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.'

This thoroughly characteristic song, for a parallel to which one must go to Congreve, or to the 'Here's to the maiden of bashful fifteen' of The School for Scandal, has one grave defect, -it is too good to have been composed by Tony Lumpkin, who, despite his inability to read anything but 'print-hand,' declares, in Act i. Sc. 2 of She Stoops to Conquer, 1773, that he himself made upon the ale-house ('The Three Pigeons') in which he sings it, and where it is followed by the annexed comments, directed by the author against the sentimentalists, who, in The Good Natur'd Man of five years before, had insisted upon the omission of the Bailiff scene:

it

'OMNES.

Bravo, bravo!

First FELLOW.

The 'Squire has got spunk in him.

Second FELLOW.

I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that's low

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Fourth FELLOW.

The genteel thing is the genteel thing at any time. If so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.

Third FELLOW.

I like the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What, tho' I am obligated to dance a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this be my poison if my bear ever dances but to

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