_Love and a Bottle_ inaugurated the vogue of the Farquhar comedy; and Wilkes, whose name in London carried favor and precedence, was the Roebuck of the cast. Its successors, _The Constant Couple_ (with a framework transferred and adapted from its author’s earlier _Adventures of Covent Garden_), and its sequel, _Sir Harry Wildair_, again championed by the “friendly and indefatigable” Wilkes, who impersonated the engaging rakish heroes, had long runs, and firmly established their author’s fame. In 1702 Farquhar produced _The Inconstant_ (which he had perverted from Fletcher’s _Wild Goose Chase_, as if a fit setting were sought for the wonderfully effective last act of his own devising); and after _The Inconstant_, _The Twin Rivals_. _The Stage Coach_, a one-act farce in which he had a collaborator,[39] dates from 1704, and _The Recruiting Officer_ from 1706; _The Beaux’ Stratagem_ was written in the spring of 1707. This is a working record of barely nine years; it represents a secure and continuous artistic advance; and it should have brought its patient originator something better than the privilege of dying young, “broken-hearted,” as he confessed to Wilkes, “and without a shilling.” Farquhar had but the trifling income of an officer’s pay on which to support his wife and his two little daughters. He seems to have sought no political preferment, nor did his numerous patrons put themselves out to advance him, although these were the very days when men of letters were crowded into the public service. Ever and anon he received fifteen guineas, then a very handsome sum, for a play. Perhaps, like his rash gallants, he had “a head to get money, and a heart to spend it.” He greatly wished success, for the sake of those never absent from his thought; and he complained bitterly when the French acrobats and rope-dancers took from _The Twin Rivals_ the attention of pleasure-seeking Londoners, much as poor Haydon complained afterwards of the crowds who surged down Piccadilly, to behold not his “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem” at all, but General Tom Thumb, holding court under the same roof.