Authors, Irish -- 18th century -- Biography; Goldsmith, Oliver, 1730?-1774
Five hundred pounds! and all at one miraculous draught! It appeared to him
wealth inexhaustible. It at once opened his heart and hand, and led him
into all kinds of extravagance. The first symptom was ten guineas sent to
Shuter for a box ticket for his benefit, when The Good-Natured Man was to
be performed. The next was an entire change in his domicile. The shabby
lodgings with Jeffs the butler, in which he had been worried by Johnson's
scrutiny, were now exchanged for chambers more becoming a man of his ample
fortune. The apartments consisted of three rooms on the second floor of No.
2 Brick Court, Middle Temple, on the right hand ascending the staircase,
and overlooked the umbrageous walks of the Temple garden. The lease he
purchased for four hundred pounds, and then went on to furnish his rooms
with mahogany sofas, card-tables, and book-cases; with curtains, mirrors,
and Wilton carpets. His awkward little person was also furnished out in a
style befitting his apartment; for, in addition to his suit of "Tyrian
bloom, satin grain," we find another charged about this time, in the books
of Mr. Filby, in no less gorgeous terms, being "lined with silk and
furnished with gold buttons." Thus lodged and thus arrayed, he invited the
visits of his most aristocratic acquaintances, and no longer quailed
beneath the courtly eye of Beauclerc. He gave dinners to Johnson, Reynolds,
Percy, Bickerstaff, and other friends of note; and supper parties to young
folks of both sexes. These last were preceded by round games of cards, at
which there was more laughter than skill, and in which the sport was to
cheat each other; or by romping games of forfeits and blind-man's buff, at
which he enacted the lord of misrule. Blackstone, whose chambers were
immediately below, and who was studiously occupied on his Commentaries,
used to complain of the racket made overhead by his reveling neighbor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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