[Ye Kenricks.] See note to line 86.
[ye Kellys.] Hugh Kelly (1739–1777), an Irishman, the author of False Delicacy, 1768; A Word to the Wise, 1770; The School for Wives, 1774, and other sentimental dramas, is here referred to. His first play, which is described in Garrick’s prologue as a ‘Sermon,’ ‘preach’d in Acts,’ was produced at Drury Lane just six days before Goldsmith’s comedy of The Good Natur’d Man appeared at Covent Garden, and obtained a success which it ill deserved. False Delicacy—said Johnson truly (Birkbeck Hill’s Boswell, 1887, ii. 48)—‘was totally void of character,’—a crushing accusation to make against a drama. But Garrick, for his private ends, had taken up Kelly as a rival to Goldsmith; and the comédie sérieuse or larmoyante of La Chaussée, Sedaine, and Diderot had already found votaries in England. False Delicacy, weak, washy, and invertebrate as it was, completed the transformation of ‘genteel’ into ‘sentimental’ comedy, and establishing that genre for the next few years, effectually retarded the wholesome reaction towards humour and character which Goldsmith had tried to promote by The Good Natur’d Man. (See note to l. 66.)
[Woodfalls.] ‘William Woodfall’—says Bolton Corney—‘successively editor of The London Packet and The Morning Chronicle, was matchless as a reporter of speeches, and an able theatrical critic. He made lofty pretensions to editorial impartiality—but the actor [i.e. Garrick] was not always satisfied.’ He died in 1803. He must not be confounded with Henry Sampson Woodfall, the editor of Junius’s Letters. (See note to l. 162.)
[To act as an angel.] There is a sub-ironic touch in this phrase which should not be overlooked. Cf. l. 102.
[Here Hickey reclines.] See note to l. 15. In Cumberland’s Poetical Epistle to Dr. Goldsmith; or Supplement to his Retaliation (Gentleman’s Magazine, Aug. 1778, p. 384) Hickey’s genial qualities are thus referred to:—
Give RIDGE and HICKY, generous souls!
Of WHISKEY PUNCH convivial bowls.
A special attorney was merely an attorney who practised in one court only. The species is now said to be extinct.
[burn ye.] The annotator of the second edition, apologizing for this ‘forced’ rhyme to ‘attorney,’ informs the English reader that the phrase of ‘burn ye’ is ‘a familiar method of salutation in Ireland amongst the lower classes of the people.’
[Here Reynolds is laid.] This shares the palm with the admirable epitaphs on Garrick and Burke. But Goldsmith loved Reynolds, and there are no satiric strokes in the picture. If we are to believe Malone (Reynolds’s Works, second edition, 1801, i. xc), ‘these were the last lines the author wrote.’
[bland.] Malone (ut supra, lxxxix) notes this word as ‘eminently happy, and characteristick of his [Reynolds’s] easy and placid manners.’ Boswell (Dedication of Life of Johnson) refers to his ‘equal and placid temper.’ Cf. also Dean Barnard’s verses (Northcote’s Life of Reynolds, 2nd ed., 1819, i. 220), and Mrs. Piozzi’s lines in her Autobiography, 2nd ed., 1861, ii. 175–6.