This is gay and very amusing; but, after all, it was an unwarrantable freedom. Doctor Dodd was fair game; but it was unmanly, gibbeting the poor foolish lady, whom even the law of that day would have assumed to have acted under her husband's influence. She was no more than a mechanical agent. But Foote only cared to find grist for his satirical mill, no matter where he had to look for it. It was a profitable and successful game, thus introducing notorious persons to excite the laughter of the pit, and he carried on his trade even at the sacrifice of the common feelings of gratitude and delicacy. A long list might be made of the persons whom this clever but cowardly mimic tried to hold up in his Shows, to earn money and popularity. A more odious calling cannot be conceived, or a more dangerous public nuisance. He was treated hospitably in Dublin, and received an uproarious welcome; but when he got back to London, sneered at the lieges who had welcomed him. The pleasant but eccentric Doctor Kennedy, friend of Sterne and Garrick, and of Foote's also, had a narrow escape of this pillory.* So, too, had a friend of Governor Thicknesse, whom he saved from this sort of exposure on a public stage. But the Welsh Mr. Ap-Rice, and Prince Boothby, and George Faulkner and his lameness, these were the men, some of whom were "friends," whom he ventured thus to turn to purposes of the vilest profit. Johnson he was burning to "take off" also, but that sturdy moralist asked his bookseller to send out for a thick cudgel-a sort of remonstrance * Angelo's Memoirs. which soon drifted to the professional satirist's ears, and changed his purpose. Women were not likely to send out for cudgels. But it is curious to think that another such coarse attack upon another woman, who had been similarly unfortunate, was his ruin. His onslaught on the Duchess of Kingston destroyed him. Long after, when Dodd was lying in his prison, this exposure came back to his mind. How deeply it affected him may be seen in these bitter lines, which form part of the retrospect of his entire life: Yes, yes, thou coward mimic, pampered vice, High praise be sure is thine. Thou hast obtained A conjugal heart most faithful, most attached; Yet can I pardon thee; for, poor buffoon, Thy vices must be fed; and thou must live, It is in this transaction that the Doctor's conduct stands out most unworthily. There was something singularly shabby and unmanly-and even foolish, for the device was transparent-in thrusting forward his poor wife to public odium as the author of the act. So much so, indeed, that the indignant lines he made on Foote might apply with excellent force and appropriateness to himself. Doctor Dodd, going abroad went straight to Geneva, where his old pupil and constant patron was staying. The new earl's patronage was not disturbed by the late escapade. He either disbelieved it, or, what is more probable, was careless whether it was true or no. He must have been almost attached to him, or have had that sort of tendency to his company which men of pleasure have for each other's society, and which stands in the room of affection; for we have it on good Walpolean authority that the noble pupil actually rode out several miles to meet the arriving Doctor in some severe icy weather—so severe that the pupil was frostbitten, and was laid up for a long time after. In those times Geneva was very far away, and we cannot tell how the story got twisted, in travelling home to the clubs and coffeehouses, and from them to Arlington-street. noble pupil treated him with great distinction, gave a round of dinners in his honour, introduced him to English and French, resident as well as vagabond, and made much of him in a fashion that should have been a warranty against the character in which he was later to appear. Nay, he even presented him to the living of Winge, in Buckinghamshire, so that really he was almost encumbered with preferment. The Parting from this useful patron, he set off home by way of Paris. There it was likely, that with his weak, foolish, unballasted disposition, he should be shipwrecked. What a place Paris was then, what a vortex of pleasure, Mercier tells us in his wonderful" Tableau de Paris"-on the tone and details of which marvellous phantasmagoria it has not been noticed how much Mr. Carlyle has modelled his French Revolution. So strange and vivid a bird's-eye view of a city has never yet been taken. Our Doctor was drawn into the gay some one, whirl. He left his gown and bands at his hotel, and who had gone out to the Plains of Sablons to see the racing, one of the newest shapes of Anglomania, brought back word to London how, to his amazement, he had recognised the Magdalen preacher in a carriage at the show, dressed in a mousquetaire uniform-in very doubtful company—and gambling away his money among the most eager of the French roués. CHAPTER THE FOURTH. DOWNWARDS. WHEN the scandal had blown over, and Dr. Simony was a little forgotten, he came home to England again. The state of London society at this date has been dwelt on before-its shameful toleration, and utter absence of moral purpose; so that it is no surprise to find our Doctor gradually gliding back again into his old pious groove. To show how little his disgrace had affected his position, a Mr. Hicks, about this time, sent in to the institution a full-length portrait of the Doctor, which was placed in the Board-room. But the following month, by a strange neglect, he absented himself for five Sundays, which was most probably the season he was exhibiting on the Plains of Sablons, and was "desired" in future to give "proper notice" if he could not come, and also not to absent himself, except on account of ill health." 66 With some, he was an impostor; but with the far * MS. Registers. |