shake it off, even on the stage; for he was very greedy of applause, and often sacrificed his fellow-actors performances to his own ends. 'Fine feathers, however, do not make fine birds;' and Foote must have relied a great deal on the skill of his tailor; for he was in person rather short and stout--exactly like his mother--and his features were plain and coarse. Yet, his arch smile and merry eye, preserved to us in his likeness, when fifty years old, by Colson (engraved by Caroline Watson), redeemed his otherwise commonplace visage, and made him, on the whole, not an unattractive-looking person. Zoffani also painted two admirable portraits of him, in character; but the best is that by Sir Joshua, now at the Garrick Club, painted about the year 1760, when Foote was forty years of age. Two of Foote's 'three fortunes' came chiefly through his mother, who succeeded to the Goodere family property, said to have been worth about £5,000 a year, in a most strange and tragic manner; but he also inherited some property left by his father. Mrs. Foote's elder brother Sir John, a man of weak intellect, was entrapped on board his brother Samuel's ship, the _Ruby_, in Bristol Roads, and was then and there strangled by him--a crime for which the younger Goodere was deservedly hanged.[136] Foote, at that time in terrible pecuniary straits--in fact, literally a stockingless Foote, as he himself would perhaps have said--wrote, for £20, a pamphlet, describing the murder, and endeavouring, but vainly, to exculpate his uncle and namesake. It was published anonymously in April, 1741. With so much wealth and popularity as he had even thus early acquired, it is wonderful that Foote continued his legal studies for so long a period as three years; but, in fact, he can hardly be said to have done this, for he had already begun to earn money by his pen (chiefly by writing a few pamphlets), having contrived in a couple of years, like the prodigal of old, to 'waste all his substance in riotous living,' and to fall into sad straits.