Green Park must have been then a somewhat less popular promenade than at present; or those two warriors must have made a formidable figure to the nursery-maids and children. After four or five passes, Pulteney gave his lordship two wounds, one in the arm and the other in the neck; they then rushed in upon each other, but were separated by their seconds. The wounds were fortunately slight; but the next thrust might have been murderous; and, after all, Lord Hervey was not the author, even if this kind of vengeance could be justice. The writer was Sir William Young, the secretary-at-war. But the Florentine Minister himself was now to undergo the common lot. His health declined in 1732, and, after removing to Pisa for change of air, he died early in the next year. His son George, father of the more celebrated wit and dramatist of our day, was born at Florence in 1732. On the death of the Minister, his boy was in some degree adopted by Pulteney, who sent him to Westminster school. There he was contemporary with Warren Hastings, Lloyd the poet, and Hinchliffe, Smith, and Vincent, who successively rose to be head-masters. Nicolls was the principal, and Vincent Bourne, the writer of the well-known Latin verses, was one of the ushers. Colman profited by this school. At the election in 1751, he was placed at the head of the list of Westminster scholars for Oxford. The nomination, however, did not take place, as Pulteney, now Earl of Bath, was of opinion that, by remaining a year longer, he would make a more distinguished figure. The Earl's extraordinary care of Colman, coupled with his equally extraordinary love for his purse, gave rise to the indecent rumour that he was the Earl's son. But a comparison of dates proves that this was out of the question, supposing the Earl to have been profligate enough for such an event. Mrs Colman had been living in Italy five years before the birth of her son. On the other hand, Pulteney was a decorous man; and the attentions of his countess to the boy, even if the dates had not been sufficient, would have deservedly discountenanced the charge. Colman, at last, was admitted into the society of Lincoln's Inn, where Lord Bath constantly urged him to diligence in his profession; but he foolishly chose to imagine himself born to another destiny. In 1754 he engaged with the well-known Bonnell Thornton in writing the periodical paper called the Connoisseur. Το those who know the natural fate of periodical writers, such a commencement at such an age was decisive of neglect in his profession. Colman was thenceforth stamped an idler for life, and of all idlers the most incurable, a busy idler. Some years now passed, in which he occasionally went circuit, and wrote poems and parodies. He at last ventured on a farce, named Polly Honeycomb; finally, the Jealous Wife appeared in 1761, which brought the author great reputation, and, unluckily for himself, fixed him as a dramatist for life. The St James's Chronicle was then established by Mr Bald. win, a man of ability and character; aided by Thornton, Garrick, Colman, and Stevens; and by their connexions, activity, and wit, he soon brought the paper into celebrity. Colman contributed essays, entitled "The Genius." However, we may conceive that his natural volatility soon prevailed; for his essays went no farther than the fifteenth number. There were other evidences of the society in which he engaged, more discreditable. His son, the late George Colman, was an illegitimate child, born October 21st, 1762. July, 1763, Colman published another paper, "Terræ filius;" but this son seems soon to have speedily gone to his mother. About this period the Earl made a short continental tour, of which Miss Carter, the authoress, who accompanied the family, gives some light anecdotes. "At Spa, the Prince Bishop of Augsburg kept a table, and invited all the company by turns. We have already been there three times. It is a very illustrious visit, and a very dull one. The dining with a sovereign prince is an affair of more honour than pleasure. One circumstance is very awkward to little folks, that the attendants are all men of quality; and we must all either choke with thirst, or employ a count or a baron to bring us a glass of water. An Excellence,' with an embroidered star comes to us from His Highness when dinner is on table, which is half an hour after twelve. There is a world of English arrived within the week; very few French, but German counts and barons innumerable." She proceeds to tell us-" That the manners of the German princes are unaffected and agreeable; but their dress is so ridiculously stiff, that the first time I saw them altogether, they put me in mind of King Pharaoh's court in a puppet-show. The variety of dress in the company here, makes the first coup-d'œil on the walks of the Geronsterre very amusing; priests and hussars, beaux and hermits, nuns and fine ladies, stars and crosses, cowls and ribbons, all blended together in the most lively and picturesque manner imaginable. The streets are all day long crowded with people, without any bustle or noise; all the company is very peaceable and quiet, and there seem to be none of those fashionable pests of society, the bucks and 'choice spirits' among us; and I thought I felt a little foolish at hearing one of my foreign friends observe, most maliciously, that it would not be known that there were any of our country at Spa, if a footman did not now and then run through the streets screaming in English after a stray 'dog.'" The volumes are agreeably diversified with letters from great people and from little ones. Some of them from Garrick, who, perhaps, was to be called both great and little. In 1673, the actor and his wife had set out for a tour of the Continent. We give a fragment of his letter to Colman from Paris. It is gaily clever, and cleverly gay: "You cannot imagine, my dear Colman, what honours I have received from all kinds of people here. The nobles and the literati have made so much of me, that I am quite ashamed of opening my heart even to you. Marmontel has written to me the most flattering letter upon our supping together; I was in spirits, and so was the Clairon,' who supped with us at Mr Neville's. She got up to set me a-going, and spoke something in Racine's Athalie most charmingly; upon which I gave them the dagger scene' in Macbeth, the curse' in Lear, and the falling asleep' in Sir John Brute; the consequence of which is, that I am now stared at in the playhouse, and talked of by gentle and simple as the most wonderful wonder of wonders. The first person I find going to England, shall bring you Marmontel's letter. D'Alembert was one of the company, and sings my praises to all the authors of The Encyclopedie." Garrick had left his brother George to take care of the theatre, as acting manager. George was a character. He was much attached to his celebrated brother, and perhaps a little in awe of him; for David could be imperious where the theatre was concerned. One part of George's occupation was curious enough-it was, to walk behind the scenes while his brother was playing; and, when any of the loungers there began to speak, to silence them by " Hush, hush"- -as David, while performing, was extremely ner. vous about noise of this order. Some one happening to observe that George's salary was considerable, asked for what purpose it was given? Charles Bannister pleasantly replied " It was HUSH money." Nightly, on George's coming to the theatre, his first enquiry was-" Has David wanted me?" On his death, which happened soon after that of the great actor, the players said, "David wanted him." Johnson was remarkable for speaking contemptuously of Garrick, as "little Davy," but for never suffering any one else to speak even carelessly of him. Sir Joshua Reynolds, timid as he was, ventured to write a little dialogue touching on this peculiarity. It stole into print under the auspices of his nicce the Marchioness of Thomond, in 1816, when the Ursa Major was long gone where critics growl no more. The dialogue was supposed to be between Gibbon and the Doctor : "Gibbon. You must allow, Dr Johnson, that Garrick was too much a slave to fame, or rather to the mean ambition of living with the great; and terribly afraid of making himself cheap, even with them, by which he debarred himself of much pleasant society. Employing so much attention, and so much management, upon such little things, implies, I think, a little mind. It was observed by his friend Colman, that he never went into company but with a plot how to get out of it; he was every minute called out, and went off or returned, as there was or was not a probability of his shining. "Johnson.-Sir, in regard to his mean ambition, as you call it, of living with the great, what was the boast of Pope, and is every man's wish, can be no reproach to Garrick. He who says he despises it, knows he lies. That Garrick husbanded his fame, the fame which he had justly acquired, both at the theatre and at the table, is not denied; but where is the blame, either in the one or the other, of leaving as little as he could to chance? Sir, Garrick left nothing to chance." A letter from Garrick describes his arrival at Naples, and a very animated and amusing letter it is: "Dec. 16, 1763. "We got to this place after a most disagreeable journey from Rome, for we were overtaken in the midst of the heavy rains here, and were well soaked with them all the way. At present the weather is inconceivably fine, and we are basking in a warm sun, with the Mediterranean at our feet, and Mount Vesuvius in our view. Though it is Christmas, we have green pease every day, and dine with our windows open. These are our pleasures in part. As for our distresses since we left Rome, which have been as ridiculous as unexpected, and are the common occurrences upon the road, I shall reserve them for our social hours at Hampton. We are all at this moment in the highest spirits, and I am much the better for my expedition. "My Lady Oxford, who is settled here, and has the greatest interest with the first people, has been most uncommonly kind to us. I am to have the honour and satisfaction of seeing the King's Italian actors perform before him in the palace-a most extraordinary favour. They perform extempore, and the nobleman who stands in the place of the Lord Chamberlain has sent me word, that if I will write down any drama with the fable, and give the argument only of the scenes, they shall play it in twenty-four hours before me-the greatest compliment they can pay me. I shall work at it to-morrow. I hear there is one great genius among the performers." He proceeds with that kind of excitement, which animates every one at the first sight of Italy. "The situation and climate of this place are most extraordinary, and the people still more so. They are a new the heart. race of beings, and I have the highest entertainment in going amongst them, and observing their characters from the highest to the lowest. I was last night at their great theatre, San Carlo -a most magnificent one indeed. I was really astonished at first coming into it; it was quite full, and well lighted up, but it is too great, and the The singers were scarcely heard. famous Gabrielli pleased me much; she has a good person, is the best actress I ever saw on an opera stage, but she sings more to the ear than to I cannot quit you till I say something about Rome. I hardly slept the night before I arrived there, with the thoughts of seeing it. My heart beat high, my imagination expanded itself, and my eyes flashed again, as I drew near the Porte del Popolo; but the moment I entered it, I fell at once from my airy vision and Utopian ideas, into a very dirty, illlooking place, as they call it, with three crooked streets in front, terminated, indeed, at this end with two tolerable churches. What a disappointment! My spirits sank, and it was with reluctance I was dragged, in the afternoon, to see the Pantheon; but, Heavens! what was my pleasure and surprise! I never felt so much in my life, as when I entered that glorious structure; I gasped, but could not speak for some minutes. It is so very noble, that it has not been in the power of modern foppery or Popery-for it is a church, you know-to extinguish its grandeur and elegance." Gabrielli, who is mentioned with so much applause in this lively letter, was one of those wonders which Italy produces, from time to time, to astonish the musical world. She was the Catalani of the last century; her voice singularly powerful-yet, as Garrick observes, she sang more to the ear than to the heart. That extraordinary volubility and execution which turns the voice into a violin, was to be the work of a later day; but her execution was the astonishment of her contemporaries. Yet her talents made her insolent, and she constantly destroyed her popularity by her caprice. Of course she had high salaries, but she squandered them as fast as they came. One of her caprices was, always to have some lover in every city where she had an engagement, and unless this lover sat in the stage box, shẹ would either refuse to sing altogether, she declared herself afraid to venture “For,” said she, "were I to take it into my head not to sing, I am told that the people there would mob me, and perhaps break my bones. Now, I like to sleep in a sound skin, even if it were in a prison." But though Garrick, like other travellers, is all enraptured with a few fine days in December, all is not sunshine, even in "Bella Italia" itself. A letter from Rome in the height of the summer, gives an account of the weather, than which, England, open as it is to all the clouds of the Atlantic, could have furnished nothing more disastrous. all, but recovered, with no damage but his fears, and the mortification of beholding some contusions on his cross. The Romans are much chagrined at the circumstance, and say that it affords matter of great satisfaction to the heretics." Among those documents, is a characteristic letter from the celebrated Sterne-characteristic in every sense, of oddity, poverty, and the easy impudence of borrowing from a man whom all his borrowers described as the most niggardly personage in the world. Sterne was then going on his "Sentimental journey," and this was his easy note:— Lord Bath continued his attentions to Colman, not withstanding his truantry in abandoning the law-which the earl had expressly chosen for himand adopting the stage, the very last pursuit which could have satisfied the great senator. Still he had continued his kindness to this precipitate relative, and his last instance of regard was to leave him an annuity, which, according to the newspapers, was nine hundred guineas a-year; a sum, however, extremely inadequate to the expectations of Colman, who seems to have looked to the succession to his estate, the earl having lost his only son some time before, and being on bad terms with his brother, General Pulteney. It yet seems sufficiently natural, that if the heirship had ever been intended for him, his giddy change of profession, and his utter heedlessness of advice, might have altered the disposal of this great property. Pulteney died worth upwards of a million of money. "About three days ago, the Pope, his life-guards, and other attendants, made a grand procession to St Peter's, but unfortunately on their return, such a storm of wind, rain, thunder and lightning arose, that it put the Pope's guards in a fright. They who were on horseback, rode away as fast as they could, and they who had no horses, ran for it as fast as their legs could carry them. The Pope had six horses to his carriage, the postilions cut the harness of the first four, and joined the rest of the party; leaving, like most undutiful children, their most holy father with no other attendants than the coachman, and two "I am really sorry for the death of horses to draw the carriage, which poor Lord Bath, who, though of a was larger than our king's coach. A great age, might have lived much rider on horseback, who supported the longer. He had his understanding as fine golden cross before the Pupe, en- much as ever, enjoying company, and deavouring to make a precipitate re- partly contributing to its enjoyment. treat, was thrown down, horse and He threw away his life by a needless Lady Harvey, the widow of John Lord Harvey, thus speaks of Pulteney's decease : : piece of complaisance, in drinking tea out of doors, after being heated by a great deal of meat, a great deal of company, and a good deal of mirth at dinner. His was not an age, nor is ours a climate, for those al frescos. It was thoughtless in those who proposed it, and weakly complaisant in him who complied with it. From various circumstances, I have seen him but seldom for many years past; but whenever we did meet he was always the same, and ever cheerful and good company. He was to me like a sum in a bank, of which, though I made but little immediate use, I could always be sure of having my draft answered." In a subsequent letter, this shrewd and evidently rather sarcastic lady, thus finishes the sketch:"Lord Bath's leaving me no little bauble, in token of remembrance, did not surprise, and consequently did not vex me. He was a most agreeable companion, and a very good-humoured man; but I, who have known him above forty years, knew that he never thought of any one when he did not see them, nor ever cared a great deal for those he did see. He has left an immense fortune to a brother he never cared for, and always with reason despised, and a great deal to a man he once liked, but lately had great reason to think ill of, (perhaps Colman.) I am sorry he is dead; he was very agreeable and entertaining, and, whenever I was well enough to go down stairs and give him a good dinner, he was always ready to come and give me his good company in return. I was satisfied with that. One must take people as they are; perhaps hardly any are, in every respect, what they ought to be." We have given those fragments relative to Pulteney, from the interest which belongs to one of the most celebrated senatorial names of England. He was confessedly the first speaker in a parliament which numbered Walpole, Windham, Bolingbroke, Harley, and a crowd of able men. His public career was in Opposition; but his antagonist, Walpole, with all the power of office, always writhed at the bold and haughty scourge of the "great Commoner," a title afterwards given to Chatham. Garrick's Italian trip may have amused him, but it seems to have done him but little good. He thus Every man who lives long must expect to be surrounded by deaths, but Garrick's best-known contemporaries seem to have perished nearly all together. In this year, Hogarth died suddenly, after a cheerful supper at his house in Leicester Square.-A man of singular talent: the first, and indeed the only example of a style combining the highest humour with the severest satire; at once sportive and grave, and playing with the lightest follies of fashion, while he was fathoming the depths of the human heart. Hogarth was next followed by his antagonist and libeller, Churchhill, a man of undoubted ability, but a ruffian; first disgracing his gown, then insulting society; a vigorous poet, though frequently lapsing into feebleness; and by nature a highspirited and generous being, though ultimately scandalized by habits which brought him to a premature grave. The next who sank was Lloyd, an accomplished scholar, a considerable poet, and a man of keen and wellfurnished faculties. A course of giddiness and self-will had brought him to deserved beggary. lived on the public; when that resource failed, he lived on the bounty of his friends; at last he was thrown into the Fleet prison, where Churchhill (and it ought to be remembered to his honour) allowed him a guinea a week, and the expenses of a servant. When Churchhill's death was nounced to him, he gave up all hope, took to his bed, and never left it again. Churchhill died in November 1764; Lloyd in the December following. For a while he an Colman had now become a dramatist of name, and he combined with Garrick in producing a new comedy, perhaps his best-the "Clandestine Marriage." Its success, however, produced a species of quarrel between the authors, by dividing the fame. quarrel was sharpened by the interference of "friends ;" and all the The |