"'You amaze me," cries the Count; 'Impossible, Madam! How can it be,
Ladies? I had Letters from Lord _Monkeyman_ and Lady _Betty Scornful_
assuring me that, except yourselves, there were not three human
Creatures in the Place. Let me see, I have Lady _Betty's_ Letter in my
Pocket, I believe, at this Moment. Oh no, upon Recollection, I put
it this morning into my Cabinet, where I preserve all my Letters of
Quality.' _Aurora_, smothering a Laugh as well as she could, said
she was extremely obliged to Lord _Monkeyman_ and Lady _Betty_, for
vouchsafing to rank her and her Sister in the Catalogue of human
Beings. 'But, surely,' added she, 'they must have been asleep, both
of them, when they wrote their Letters; for the _Bath_ was extremely
full,' 'Full!' cries the Count, interrupting her; "Oh, Madam, that is
very possible, and yet there might be no Company--that is, none of us;
Nobody that one knows. For as to all the Tramontanes that come by the
cross Post, we never reckon them as anything but Monsters in human
Shape, that serve to fill up the Stage of Life, like Cyphers in a
play. For Instance, you often see an awkward Girl, who has sewed a
Tail to a Gown, and pinned two Lappits to a Night-cap, come running
headlong into the Rooms with a wild, frosty Face, as if she was just
come from feeding Poultry in her Father's Chicken-Yard. Or you see a
Booby Squire, with a Head resembling a Stone ball over a Gate-post.
Now, it would be the most ridiculous Thing in Life to call such People
Company. 'Tis the Want of Titles, and not the Want of Faces, that
makes a Place empty.'"
There are indications, which I think have escaped the notice of
Goldsmith's editors, that the author of the _Citizen of the World_
condescended to take some of his ideas from _Pompey the Little_. In
Count Tag, the impoverished little fop who fancies himself a man
of quality, and who begs pardon of people who accost him in the
Park--"but really, Lady Betty or Lady Mary is just entering the
Mall,"--we have the direct prototype of Beau Tibbs; while Mr. Rhymer,
the starving poet, whose furniture consists of "the first Act of a
Comedy, a Pair of yellow Stays, two political Pamphlets, a plate of
Bread-and-butter, three dirty Night-caps, and a Volume of Miscellany
Poems," is a figure wonderfully like that of Goldsmith himself, as Dr.
Percy found him eight years later, in that "wretched, dirty room," at
the top of Breakneck Steps, Green Arbour Court. The whole conception
of that Dickens-like scene, in which it is described how Lady Frippery
had a drum in spite of all local difficulties, is much more in the
humour of Goldsmith than in that of any of Coventry's immediate
contemporaries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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