[39]. Dr. Johnson has observed, that ‘strong passion deprives the lover of that easiness of address, which is so great a recommendation to most women.’ Is then indifference or coldness the surest passport to the female heart? A man who is much in love has not his wits properly about him: he can think only of her whose image is engraven on his heart; he can talk only of her; he can only repeat the same vows, and protestations, and expressions of rapture or despair. He may, by this means, become importunate and troublesome—but does he deserve to lose his mistress for the only cause that gives him a title to her—the sincerity of his passion? We may perhaps answer this question by another—Is a woman to accept of a madman, merely because he happens to fall in love with her? ‘The lunatic, the lover and the poet,’ as Shakspeare has said, ‘are of imagination all compact,’ and must, in most cases, be contented with imagination as their reward. Realities are out of their reach, as well as beneath their notice.
[40]. Zoffani, a foreign artist, but who, by long residence in England, had got our habits of indolence and dilatoriness, was employed by the late King, who was fond of low comedy, to paint a scene for Reynolds’s Speculation; in which Quick, Munden, and Miss Wallis were introduced. The King called to see it in its progress; and at last it was done—‘all but the coat.’ The picture, however, was not sent and the King repeated his visit to the artist. Zoffani with some embarrassment said, ‘It was done all but the goat‘—‘Don’t tell me,’ said the impatient monarch; ‘this is always the way: you said it was done all but the coat the last time I was here.’—‘I said the goat, and please your Majesty.’—‘Aye’ replied the King, ‘the goat or the coat, I care not which you call it; I say I will not have the picture,’—and was going to leave the room, when Zoffani, in an agony, repeated, ‘It is the goat that is not finished,’—pointing to a picture of a goat that was hung up in a frame as an ornament to the scene at the theatre. The King laughed heartily at the blunder, and waited patiently till the goat was finished. Zoffani, like other idle people, was careless and extravagant. He made a fortune when he first came over here, which he soon spent: he then went out to India, where he made another, with which he returned to England, and spent also. He was an excellent theatrical portrait-painter, and has left delineations of celebrated actors and interesting situations, which revive the dead, and bring the scene before us.
[41]. When Lord Byron was cut by the great, on account of his quarrel with his wife, he stood leaning on a marble slab at the entrance of a room, while troops of duchesses and countesses passed out. One little, pert, red-haired girl staid a few paces behind the rest; and, as she passed him, said with a nod, ‘Aye, you should have married me, and then all this wouldn’t have happened to you!’
[42]. If it were a show of wild beasts, or a boxing-match, the reasoning might be somewhat different; though I do not know that it would. No people behave better than the gods after the play once begins.
[43].
‘Of whatsoe’er descent his Godhead be,
Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,
In his defence his servants are as bold
As if he had been made of beaten gold.’—Dryden.
[44]. They would have a king in spite of the devil. The image-worship of the Papists is a batch of the same leaven. The apishness of man’s nature would not let even the Christian Religion escape.