Adds to the satire strength;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly's at full length,"
Poor Nash's brains were half-turned by such brilliant prosperity. He had his levees, where he affected all the airs of a legitimate monarch; his buffoons, his parasites, and even his poet-laureate. But, so far was he from being satisfied with the flatteries constantly lavished on him, that his appetite "grew by what it fed upon." If a beggar in the street called him "Your honour," he always bowed low to the compliment; but if he called him "Your lordship," he would give him every farthing he had about him. He has even been known, when in London, to stand a whole day at the window of the Smyrna Coffee-house, merely in the hope of receiving a passing bow from the Prince of Wales or the Duchess of Marlborough!
The numerous dedications to Nash are not the least curious proofs of his universal celebrity. Some of these are such exquisite samples of the servile, that we cannot resist the temptation of extracting a sentence or two from them. One is from a noted highwayman, who was taken up for attempting to rob and murder a Dr. Handcock. This scamp, whose name was Baxter, published a book, dated from Taunton jail, exposing the tricks of thieves and gamblers, which he dedicated to Nash, as follows: "As your honour's wisdom, humanity, and interest, are the friend of the virtuous, I make bold to lay at your honour's feet the following work," &c. Another dedication is from a professor of cookery, who says, "As much as the oak exceeds the bramble, so do you, honoured sir, exceed the rest of mankind in benevolence, charity, and every other virtue that adorns, ennobles, and refines the human species. I have, therefore, made bold to prefix your name, though without your permission, to the following volume, which stands in need of such a patron." We next find a musical composer essaying the complimentary. "To whom," asks this sycophantic dedicator, "could I presume to offer these, my first attempts at musical composition, but to the great encourager of all polite arts; for your generosity knows no bounds, nor are you more famed for that dignity of mind which ennobles and gives a grace to every part of your conduct, than for that humanity and beneficence, which make you the friend and benefactor of all mankind!" These dedications, and a hundred others of the same calibre, which might have turned the stomach of an ostrich, Nash digested with uncommon facility. But it was with the flatteries of the poets that he used to be most tickled; and many a hungry browser on Parnassus has been rescued by his thirst for praise from the fangs of an unimaginative bailiff.
But the hour was at hand when this Wolsey of the fashionable world was doomed to experience the caprice and neglect of those circles whom he had so long ruled with despotic authority. His sun had attained its meridian, and was already journeying westward. Intoxicated with self-conceit, and firmly persuaded that he was the first man of the age, he began to lay aside those magic arts of address to which he owed all his success; became morose and fidgety; and took a pleasure in speaking unpleasant truths, which he mistook for wit. He was, besides, getting fast on in years; and age, which brings wisdom to some, to men like Nash is apt to bring nothing but petulance and imbecility. But he was not splenetic without reason; for his fortune, which he had never husbanded, diminished rapidly, and he had no earthly means left of recruiting it. His greatest grievance, however, was the gradual dropping off of his old friends the nobility, who, it is said, exerted all their influence with the corporation of Bath to get him superannuated, and Quin, the actor, appointed Master of the Ceremonies in his stead. This unparalleled ingratitude, as he called it, stung Nash to the quick, and he threatened to take his revenge of a degenerate aristocracy by writing his memoirs! His intention, however, was never carried into effect; which is a pity, for, judging by the few scraps of composition he left behind, his book would have been a literary phænomenon of the first water.
Nash was now become a confirmed old dotard; nevertheless, he still aped the character of a young beau,—still continued to haunt like a spectre the scenes of his departed glory. Though the snows of eighty-six winters were whitening on his head, it was still his proudest ambition to "settle the fashion of a lady's cap," and assign her her proper station in a country-dance. This, which, to say the worst of it, was but harmless drivelling, roused against him the pious wrath of the more straight-laced among the Somersetshire clergy, who pelted him with the most minaceous pamphlets; exhorted him to quit the assembly-room for the church, and to repent of those colossal enormities of which they charitably took for granted he had been guilty. One of these clerical pamphleteers addressed him in the following indulgent terms: "Repent! repent! or wretched will you be, silly, vain old man, to eternity! The blood of souls will be laid to your charge; God's jealousy, like a consuming flame, will smoke against you, as you yourself will see in that day when the mountains shall quake, and the hills melt, and the earth be burned up at his presence." Another says, "God will bring you to judgment. He sees me now I write; he will observe you while you read. He notes down my words; he will also note down your consequent procedure. Not then upon me, not upon me, but upon your own soul will the neglecting or despising my sayings turn." How different these fanatical fulminations from the honied flatteries, in the shape of poems and dedications, on which Nash's vanity had been so long fed!
The poor old man was now hourly decaying; but this quite as much from grief as age. The season of snuff-boxes was over; the great had altogether forgotten him; and he was preserved from utter penury solely by the munificence of the Bath corporation, who granted him ten guineas the first Monday of every month. For some weeks previous to his decease it was evident that his last hour was at hand; but he himself would never admit it. He clung to life with all the tenacity of a Johnson; and roundly asserted that he was in robust health at the very moment when he was treading, with palsied head and tottering limbs, on the threshold of the grave. At length his exhausted powers wholly gave way, and he expired in the eighty-seventh year of his age, at his house in St. John's Court, Bath, in the spring of 1761.
No sooner was his death known than the press teemed with tributes to his memory. The Muses were called on to lament the eclipse of the brightest luminary of the age; and epitaphs were written on him,—one in Latin, and another in English,—by two of the most accomplished scholars in the kingdom. That in Latin, by Dr. King, is a fine sample of mock-solemnity, comparing Nash, as a legislator, with Solon and Lycurgus, and giving him the preference to both. But, in his own capital, the sensation occasioned by our Beau's decease was unexampled. The very day after, the corporation, with the mayor at their head, met in full and solemn conclave, and voted nem. con. fifty pounds towards defraying their monarch's funeral expenses. The corpse lay four days in state; after which it was conveyed to the Abbey Church, in the midst of one of the greatest crowds that had ever assembled in Bath. The following week, the principal local journal commented on the mournful event as follows: "Sorrow sate on every face, and even children lisped that their sovereign was no more. The peasant discontinued his toil; the ox rested from the plough; all nature seemed to sympathise with our loss; and—the muffled bells rung a peal of bob-major!" It must be confessed, to our shame, that we have no such newspaper writing as this now-a-days. We have become as unimaginative as steam-engines, and no longer indulge in those astounding bursts of eloquence and sensibility which used to electrify our grandfathers and grandmothers.
In person Nash was large and awkward, with harsh, strong, and irregular features. Nevertheless, he was popular with women, and not unsuccessful as a gallant; for he dressed showily, had some wit, abundance of small talk, and was by no means encumbered with modesty. He used frequently to say of himself, that he was, "like Nestor, a man of three generations." The Beau of his youth, he would observe, was stiff, solemn, and formal to a degree; visiting his mistress, as Jupiter visited Semele, in state; toasting her on bended knees; and languishing, a timid suppliant, at her feet, by the hour together. The Beau of his manhood was just the reverse; being a pert, grinning, lively chatterbox,—such as we meet with in Congreve's comedies; ready for any absurd, outré display of sentiment; and deeming it an exalted proof of gallantry to eat "a pair of his idol's shoes tossed up in a fricassee." The Beau of his old age was a still more extraordinary character, for his whole secret in intrigue consisted in perfect indifference. If his mistress honoured him with her approbation, well; if not, she might let it alone. He had no notion of breaking his heart for love. Women were as plentiful as mushrooms, and always to be had for the asking. Nash was a great theorist on all matters of sentiment. It was a favourite maxim with him that good-humour and fine clothes were enough to ruin a nunnery; but that "flummery," or the art of saying nothings, was worth them both put together. Women, he used to say, dote upon lively nonsense; always talk to them, therefore, in the language they best understand. The instant you begin to converse rationally with them the game is up, which is the reason why learned men make such indifferent lovers.