When Cooke's goose ceased to lay golden eggs--when no other was to be found, and managers cruelly refused to have anything to do with his dramas, the reverend gentleman let his beard grow, turned street preacher, and, as the Bearded Priest, railed against sin generally, and those connected with plays and players, in particular. That drama having been played out, Cooke became a peripatetic, traversing the three kingdoms on foot, and meeting more examples and incidents for the _History of a Vagabond_ than ever entered into the experience or the imagination of Goldsmith. He contrived to fall into the way of scholars and universities,--and from these, whether they were in Oxford, Dublin, or Edinburgh, he never turned hungry. It is hardly necessary to say that his eccentricities brought him, by the way, to "Bedlam," that hell upon earth, where men were driven fiendishly mad, who were only harmlessly so before. Cooke, recovering his liberty, never recovered method with his madness. The latter was intensified by an aggravation in its old mystic element, and this poor fellow, who is said to have realised more money in fees for dedications, which he never wrote, to plays which were never acted, died, characteristically enough, according to report, of the consequences of following an example set in heathen days, by Atys, and in a Christian period by Origen,--without, however, having had the cause pleaded by the one, or the reason alleged by the other. To conclude this chapter with a word on Benefits. These are of royal invention, and the first, already recorded, was awarded by King James to Elizabeth Barry,--a tribute to her genius.[86] The fashion has not died out, but that of announcing them, as of yore, _has_. For example, the _Spectator_ often put in a good word for George Powell. Sometimes there was an intimation that George, well qualified, but ever and anon careless, would distinguish himself, if the public would only patronise the "Conquest of Mexico," to be acted, for his benefit. When, in April 1712, he was, on a like occasion, to play Falstaff, in the first part of "Henry IV.," it was after this fashion that the _Spectator_ did a good turn for its particular friend. "The haughty George Powell hopes all the good-natured part of the town will favour him whom they applauded in Alexander, Timon, Lear, and Orestes, with their company this night, when he hazards all his heroic glory in the humbler condition of honest Jack Falstaff."