the very bells of St. Martin’s for the roar of the traffic.  So lonely, and too easily enamoured, George has to betake himself to the tavern, and a passable Burgundy.  There is no idealism about him.  He is very fit for repentance next morning.  “The searching Wine has sprung the Rheumatism in my Right Hand, my Head aches, my Stomach pukes.”  Our poor, good-humoured beau has no constitution for this mode of life, and we know, though happily he dreams not of it, that he is to die before he reaches thirty.

This picture of Farquhar’s life is nowhere given in the form just related, but not one touch in the portrait but is to be found somewhere in the frank and easy pages of Love and Business.  The poems are of their age and kind.  There is a “Pindarick,” of course; it was so easy to write one, and so reputable.  There are compliments in verse to one of the female wits who were writing then for the stage, Mrs. Trotter, author of the Fatal Friendship; there are amatory explanations of all kinds.  When he fails to keep an appointment with a lady on account of the rain—­for there were no umbrellas in those days—­he likens himself to Leander, wistful on the Sestian shore.  He is not always very discreet; Damon’s thoughts when “Night’s black Curtain o’er the World was spread” were very innocent, but such as we have decided nowadays to say nothing about.  It was the fashion of the time to be outspoken.  There is no value, however, in the verse, except that it is graphic now and then.  The letters are much more interesting.  Those sent from Holland in the autumn of 1700 are very good reading.  I make bold to quote one passage from the first, describing the storm he encountered in crossing.  It depicts our hero to the life, with all his inconsistencies.  He says:  “By a kind of Poetical Philosophy I bore up pretty well under my Apprehensions; though never worse prepared for Death, I must confess, for I think I never had so much Money about me at a time.  We had some Ladies aboard, that were so extremely sick, that they often wished for Death, but were damnably afraid of being drown’d.  But, as the Scripture says, ‘Sorrow may last for a Night, but Joy cometh in the Morning,’” and so on.  The poor fellow means no harm by all this, as Hodgson once said of certain remarks of Byron’s.

The love-letters are very curious.  It is believed that the sequel of them was a very unhappy marriage.  Captain Farquhar was of a loving disposition, and as inflammable as a hay-rick.  He cannot have been much more than twenty-one when he described what he desired in a wife.  “O could I find,” he said—­

O could I find (Grant, Heaven, that once I may!) A Nymph fair, kind, poetical and gay Whose Love should blaze, unsullied and divine.  Lighted at first by the bright Lamp of mine.  Free as a Mistress, faithful as a wife.  And one that lov’d a Fiddle as her Life, Free from all sordid Ends, from Interest free, For my own Sake affecting only me, What a blest Union should