FullReads

He is not without his aspirations.

Could I the priviledge of Peer procure,
The rich I’d bully, and oppress the poor.
To give is wrong, but it is wronger still,
On any terms to pay a tradesman’s bill.
I’d make the insolent Mechanicks stay,
And keep my ready-money all for play.
I’d try if any pleasure could be found
In tossing-up for twenty thousand pound.
Had I whole Counties, I to White’s would go,
And set lands, woods, and rivers at a throw.
But should I meet with an unlucky run,
And at a throw be gloriously undone;
My debts of honour I’d discharge the first,
Let all my lawful creditors be curst.

[Notes:

9: As they did those of Goldsmith’s “Beau Tibbs.” “I hate your immense loads of meat … extreme disgusting to those who are in the least acquainted with high life” ( Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 241).

10: The edible or Roman snail ( Helix pomatia ) is still known to continental cuisines–and gipsy camps. It was introduced into England as an epicure’s dish in the seventeenth century.

11: Young chickens.]

Here he perfectly exemplifies that connexion between connoisseurship and play which Fielding discovers in Book xiii. of Tom Jones.[12] An anecdote of C.J. Fox aptly exhibits the final couplet in action, and proves that fifty years later, at least, the same convenient code was in operation. Fox once won about eight thousand pounds at cards. Thereupon an eager creditor promptly presented himself, and pressed for payment. “Impossible, Sir,” replied Fox,” I must first discharge my debts of honour.” The creditor expostulated. “Well, Sir, give me your bond.” The bond was delivered to Fox, who tore it up and flung the pieces into the fire. “Now, Sir,” said he, “my debt to you is a debt of honour,” and immediately paid him.[13]

[Notes:

12: “But the science of gaming is that which above all others employs their thoughts [i.e. the thoughts of the ‘young gentlemen of our times’]. These are the studies of their graver hours, while for their amusements they have the vast circle of connoisseurship, painting, music, statuary, and natural philosophy, or rather unnatural, which deals in the wonderful, and knows nothing of nature, except her monsters and imperfections” (ch. v.).

13: Table Talk of Samuel Rogers [by Dyce], 1856, p. 73.]

But we must abridge our levies on Pope’s imitator. In Dress the Man of Taste’s aim seems to have been to emulate his own footman, and at this point comes in the already quoted reference to velvet “inexpressibles”–(a word which, the reader may be interested to learn, is as old as 1793). His “pleasures,” as might be expected, like those of Goldsmith’s Switzers, “are but low”–

To boon companions I my time would give,
With players, pimps, and parasites I’d live.
I would with Jockeys from Newmarket dine,
And to Rough-riders give my choicest wine …
My ev’nings all I would with sharpers spend,
And make the Thief-catcher my bosom friend.
In Fig, the Prize-fighter, by day delight,
And sup with Colly Cibber ev’ry night.

At which point–and probably in his cups–we leave our misguided fine gentleman of 1733, doubtless a fair sample of many of his class under the second George, and not wholly unknown under that monarch’s successors–even to this hour. Le jour va passer; mais la folie ne passera pas!

A parting quotation may serve to illustrate one of those changes of pronunciation which have taken place in so many English words. Speaking of his villa, or country-box, the Man of Taste says–

Pots o’er the door I’ll place like Cits balconies,
Which Bently calls the Gardens of Adonis.

To make this a peg for a dissertation on the jars of lettuce and fennel grown by the Greeks for the annual Adonis festivals, is needless. But it may be noted that Bramston, with those of his day,–Swift excepted,–scans the “o” in balcony long, a practice which continued far into the nineteenth century. “Contemplate,” said Rogers, “is bad enough; but balcony makes me sick.”[14] And even in 1857, two years after Rogers’s death, the late Frederick Locker, writing of Piccadilly, speaks of “Old Q’s” well-known window in that thoroughfare as “Primrose balcony.”

[Note:

14:
Table Talk
, 1856, p. 248.]