M.—And their masters and mistresses too. Did you never read the Newgate Calendar?
G.—Yes.
M.—Well, that is not genteel. This is what renders the Beggar’s Opera so delightful; you despise the actors in the scene, and yet the wit galls and brings down their betters from their airy flight with all their borrowed plumage, so that we are put absolutely at our ease for the time with respect to our own darling pretensions. G—— was here the other evening; he said he thought the Beggar’s Opera came after Shakspeare. I wonder who put that in his head; it was hardly his own discovery.
G.—It seems neither Lord Byron nor Burke liked the Beggar’s Opera.
M.—They were the losers by that opinion: but how do you account for it?
G.—Lord Byron was a radical peer, Burke an upstart plebeian; neither of them felt quite secure in the niche where they had stationed themselves from the random-shots that were flying on the stage. They could not say with Hamlet, ‘Our withers are unwrung.’ As to Lord Byron, he might not relish the point of Mrs. Peachum’s speech, ‘Married a highwayman! Why, hussey, you will be as ill-treated and as much neglected as if you had married a lord!’ Did you ever hear the story of Miss ——, when she was quite a girl, going to see Mrs. Siddons in the Fatal Marriage, and being taken out fainting into the lobby, and calling out, ‘Oh Biron, Biron!’—‘Egad!’ said the cool narrator of the story, ‘she has had enough of Byron since!’ With regard to Burke, there was a rotten core, a Serbonian bog in his understanding, in which not only Gay’s masterpiece but the whole of what modern literature, wit, and reason had done for the world, sunk and was swallowed up in a fetid abyss for ever! But I am sorry you think no better of the Court Journal. I was in hopes it might succeed, as a very old friend of mine has something to do with it.
M.—Oh! but mischief must be put a stop to. This is the most nauseous toad-eating, and it is as awkwardly done as it is ill-meant. There is a fulsome pretence set up in one paper that rank consists in birth and blood. It is at once to neutralise all the present race of fashion. The civil wars of York and Lancaster put an end to almost all the old nobility—there are none of the Plantagenets left now. Those who go to court think themselves lucky if they can trace as far back as the Nell Gwynns and Duchess of Clevelands in Charles the Second’s days. Besides, all this prejudice about nobility and ancestry should be understood and worshipped in silence and at a distance, not thrown in the teeth of such people, as if they had nothing else to boast of. They should be told of perfections which they have not, as you praise a wit for her beauty and a fool for her wit. Your friend should read Count Grammont to learn how to flatter and cajole. Does not Mr. C—— know enough from experience of the desire of lords and ladies to turn authors, and shine, not in a ballroom, but on his counter?
G.—He expects the K—— to write; nay, it was with difficulty he was dissuaded from offering a round sum.
M.—How much, pray?
G.—Five thousand guineas for half a page.