Chapter XX: Prologue: To ‘zobeide.’

_Zobeide_, a play by Joseph Cradock (1742–1826), of Gumley, in
Leicestershire, was produced by Colman at Covent Garden on Dec. 11, 1771.
It was a translation from three acts of _Les Scythes_, an
unfinished tragedy by Voltaire. Goldsmith was applied to, through the
Yates’s, for a prologue, and sent that here printed to the author of the
play with the following note:—‘Mr. Goldsmith presents his best
respects to Mr. Cradock, has sent him the Prologue, such as it is. He
cannot take time to make it better. He begs he will give Mr. Yates the
proper instructions; and so, even so, commits him to fortune and the
publick.’ (Cradock’s _Memoirs_, 1826, i. 224.) Yates, to the
acting of whose wife in the character of the heroine the success of the
piece, which ran for thirteen nights, was mainly attributable, was to have
spoken the prologue, but it ultimately fell to Quick, later the ‘Tony
Lumpkin’ of _She Stoops to Conquer_, who delivered it in the
character of a sailor. Cradock seems
subsequently to have sent a copy of _ Zobeide_ to Voltaire, who
replied in English as follows:—

9e. 8bre. 1773. à ferney.

Sr.

Thanks to yr muse a foreign copper shines
Turn’d in to gold, and coin’d in sterling lines.
You have done to much honour to an old sick man of eighty.

I am with the most sincere esteem and gratitude

Sr.

Yr. obdt. Servt. Voltaire.

A Monsieur Monsieur J. Cradock.

The text of the prologue is here given as printed in Cradock’s _Memoirs_,
1828, iii. 8–9. It is unnecessary to specify the variations between this
and the earlier issue of 1771.

In these bold times, etc. The reference is to Cook,
who, on June 12, 1771, had returned to England in the _Endeavour_,
after three years’ absence, having gone to Otaheite to observe the transit
of Venus (l. 4).

Botanists. Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Banks and Dr.
Solander, of the British Museum, accompanied Cook.

go simpling, i.e. gathering simples, or herbs. Cf.
_Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act iii, Sc. 3:—

‘—These lisping hawthorn buds that ... smell like Bucklersbury in _simple_-time.’

In the caricatures of the day Solander figured as ‘The _simpling_
Macaroni.’ (See note, p. 247, l. 31.)

With Scythian stores. The scene of the play was
laid in Scythia (_v. supra_).

to make palaver, to hold a parley, generally with
the intention of cajoling. Two of Goldsmith’s notes to Garrick in 1773 are
endorsed by the actor—‘Goldsmith’s parlaver.’ (Forster’s _ Life_,
1871, ii. 397.)

mercenary. Cradock gave the profits of _Zobeide_
to Mrs. Yates. ‘I mentioned the disappointment it would be to you’—she
says in a letter to him dated April 26, 1771—‘as you had generously
given the emoluments of the piece to me.’ (_Memoirs_, 1828, iv.
211.)

THRENODIA AUGUSTALIS.

Augusta, widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and mother of George the
Third, died at Carlton House, February 8, 1772. This piece was spoken and
sung in Mrs. Teresa Cornelys’s Great Room in Soho Square, on the Thursday
following (the 20th), being sold at the door as a small quarto pamphlet,
printed by William Woodfall. The author’s name was not given; but it was
prefaced by this ‘advertisement,’ etc.:—

‘The following may more properly be termed a compilation than a poem. It
was prepared for the composer in little more than two days: and may be
considered therefore rather as an industrious effort of gratitude than of
genius. In justice to the composer it may likewise be right to inform the
public, that the music was adapted in a period of time equally short.

SPEAKERS.
_Mr. Lee and Mrs. Bellamy._

SINGERS.

_Mr. Champnes, Mr. Dine, and Miss Jameson;
with twelve chorus singers. The music prepared and adapted by Signor
Vento._

It is—as Cunningham calls it—a ‘hurried and unworthy off-spring of the muse of Goldsmith.’

(Part I).
Celestial-like her bounty fell. The
Princess’s benefactions are not exaggerated. ‘She had paid off the whole
of her husband’s debts, and she had given munificent sums in charity. More
than 10,000 pounds a year were given away by her in pensions to
individuals whom she judged deserving, very few of whom were aware, until
her death, whence the bounty came. The whole of her income she spent in
England, and very little on herself’ (_Augusta: Princess of Wales_,
by W. H. Wilkins, _ Nineteenth Century_, October, 1903, p.
675).

There faith shall come. This, and the three lines
that follow, are borrowed from Collins’s _Ode written in the
beginning of the year_ 1746.

(Part II).
The towers of Kew. ‘The
embellishments of Kew palace and gardens, under the direction of [Sir
William] Chambers, and others, was the favourite object of her [Royal Highness’s]
widowhood’ (Bolton Corney).

Along the billow’d main. Cf. _The Captivity_,
Act ii, l. 18.

Oswego’s dreary shores. Cf. _The Traveller_,
l. 411.

And with the avenging fight. Varied from Collins’s
_Ode on the Death of Colonel Charles Ross at Fontenoy_.

Its earliest bloom. Cf. Collins’s _Dirge in
Cymbeline_.

SONG

FROM ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.’

This thoroughly characteristic song, for a parallel to which one must go
to Congreve, or to the ‘Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen’ of _The
School for Scandal_, has one grave defect,—it is too good to
have been composed by Tony Lumpkin, who, despite his inability to read
anything but ‘print-hand,’ declares, in Act i. Sc. 2 of _She Stoops
to Conquer_, 1773, that he himself made it upon the ale-house (‘The
Three Pigeons’) in which he sings it, and where it is followed by the
annexed comments, directed by the author against the sentimentalists, who,
in _The Good Natur’d Man_ of five years before, had insisted
upon the omission of the Bailiff scene:—

‘OMNES.

Bravo, bravo!

_First_ FELLOW.

The ’Squire has got spunk in him.

_Second_ FELLOW.

I loves to hear him sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that’s _low_
. . .

_Fourth_ FELLOW.

The genteel thing is the genteel thing at any time. If so be that a
gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.

_Third_ FELLOW.

I like the maxum of it, Master Muggins. What, tho’ I am obligated to dance
a bear, a man may be a gentleman for all that. May this be my poison if my
bear ever dances but to
the very genteelest of tunes. _Water Parted_,* or the minuet in
_Ariadne_.’

* i.e. Arne’s _Water Parted from the Sea_,—the song
of Arbaces in the opera of _ Artaxerxes_ 1762. The minuet in
_Ariadne_ was by Handel. It came at the end of the overture,
and is said to have been the best thing in the opera.

When Methodist preachers, etc. Tony Lumpkin’s
utterance accurately represents the view of this sect taken by some of his
contemporaries. While moderate and just spectators of the Johnson type
could recognize the sincerity of men, who, like Wesley, travelled ‘nine
hundred miles in a month, and preached twelve times a week’ for no
ostensibly adequate reward, there were others who saw in Methodism, and
especially in the extravagancies of its camp followers, nothing but cant
and duplicity. It was this which prompted on the stage Foote’s _Minor_
(1760) and Bickerstaffe’s _ Hypocrite_ (1768); in art the _Credulity,
Superstition, and Fanaticism_ of Hogarth (1762); and in literature
the _New Bath Guide_ of Anstey (1766), the _Spiritual
Quixote_ of Graves, 1772, and the sarcasms of Sterne, Smollett and
Walpole.

It is notable that the most generous contemporary portrait of these much
satirised sectaries came from one of the originals of the _Retaliation_
gallery. Scott highly praises the character of Ezekiel Daw in Cumberland’s
_ Henry_, 1795, adding, in his large impartial fashion, with
reference to the general practice of representing Methodists either as
idiots or hypocrites, ‘A very different feeling is due to many, perhaps to
most, of this enthusiastic sect; nor is it rashly to be inferred, that he
who makes religion the general object of his life, is for that sole reason
to be held either a fool or an impostor.’ (Scott’s _Miscellaneous
Prose Works_, 1834, iii. 222.)

But of all the birds in the air. Hypercriticism may
object that ‘the hare’ is not a bird. But exigence of rhyme has to answer
for many things. Some editors needlessly read ‘the _gay_ birds’ to
lengthen the line. There is no sanction for this in the earlier editions.