Whilst preparing for the publication of Freedom he lost his mother and wife, and this delayed its issue.
Brice took advantage of every Sunday, a day on which debtors could not be arrested, to walk abroad. Many attempts were made to seize him, but all failed. He kept himself too close, and was too much on his guard. On one occasion a bailiff named Spry disguised himself as a clergyman and entered his office under pretence that he had got a book he desired to have published by Brice; but that worthy did not allow himself to be seen.
The profits from the sale of his poem on “Freedom” were said to have been sufficiently large to enable him to compound with his creditors and regain his liberty. After this he opened a printing press at Truro, the first in Cornwall. But the venture did not succeed, and he soon gave it up.
From the outset of his career Brice had exhibited a strong partiality for the drama, and when players came to Exeter they were hospitably received at his table.
In 1743, John Wesley visited Exeter for the second time, and preached in the open air. He probably produced considerable effect, for some time after this visit the local comedians were prosecuted as vagrants and forced to give up their theatre in Waterbeer Street. Thereupon the Methodists purchased it and converted it into a meeting-house. Brice at once took up the cause of the players, and in 1745 published a poem entitled “The Play-house Church, or new Actors of Devotion.” In consequence of this, says the early biographer of Brice, “the mob were so spirited up that the Methodists were soon obliged to abandon the place to its former possessors, whom Mr. Brice now protected by engaging them as his covenant-servants to perform gratis.”
All the playing fraternity who visited Exeter became acquainted with Brice, and while valuing his hospitality and support, could not fail to notice and be amused at his eccentricities. When Garrick produced Colman’s play, The Clandestine Marriage, in 1766, Dr. Oliver says: “There was some hesitation what tone would be most suitable to Lord Ogleby—it was decided at last that Mr. King should assume Mr. A. Brice’s.” The part, an important one, was originally intended for Garrick: but on his declining it, Mr. King was requested to undertake it. He at first hesitated, but finally consented, and made a great hit with it. “Mr. King—as Lord Ogleby—seemed to give a relief and glow to the character which was not intended by the author.”[31]
The character does not accord with what we know of Brice. Lord Ogleby is a hypochondriac, a fop, an aged flirt, who leers at the ladies and makes up his complexion. “I have rather too much of the lily this morning in my complexion,” he says to his valet; “a faint tincture of the rose will give a delicate spirit to my eyes for the day.” He converses in French, he chirps out stanzas, whilst twinged with rheumatism. “Love is the idol of my heart,” says the old fop, “and the demon, interest, sinks before him.” But that there is a strong vein of sarcasm in Lord Ogleby, there seems to be no element in the character that agrees with that of Brice.
We now arrive at the production of the Grand Gazetteer, the work upon which rests principally Brice’s claim to literary celebrity. Upon it he expended much labour and money. “The very Books by us us’d in the composition ... cost far above £100,” he says. It was issued in forty-four shilling numbers, each consisting of thirty-two pages, and was begun in 1751, and the last number appeared in 1755. This was one of the earliest gazetteers published in England, and certainly the most important. Writing fifty years after its completion, Dyer, the Exeter bookseller, in 1805, termed it, at that date, “the best, the most comprehensive, and even the most learned Gazetteer in the English language”; but if we may trust Brice in the matter, he lost money on the publication.
His last published work was an heroic-comic poem entitled The Mobiad, being a description of an Exeter election “by Democritus Juvenal, Moral Professor of Ridicule and plaguy-pleasant Fellow of Stingtickle College; vulgarly Andrew Brice.” London, 1770.
Dr. Brushfield has shown good reasons for attributing to Andrew Brice, assisted by Benjamin Bowring, of Chumleigh, the composition of The Exmoor Scolding and Courtship that first appeared in Brice’s Journal.[32]