ttle estate, but what is under the circumference of
my hat, and should I by perchance come to lose my head, I should
not be worth a groat."

He thus sketches his mental peculiarities:--

"As to my mind, which in most men wears as many changes as their
body, so in me 'tis generally drest like my person, in black.
Melancholy is its every-day apparel; and it has hitherto found few
holidays to make it change its clothes. In short, my constitution
is very splenetic and yet very amorous, both which I endeavour to
hide lest the former should offend others, and that the latter
might incommode myself; and my reason is so vigilant in restraining
these two failings, that I am taken for an easy-natured man with my
own sex, and an ill-natured clown by yours."

Farquhar was very fond of jesting about his own misfortunes, and perhaps
the following from "Love in a Bottle," exhibits a scene in which he had
been himself an actor in real life.

_Widow Bullfinch._ Mr. Lyric, what do you mean by all this? Here
you have lodged two years in my house, promised me eighteen-pence a
week for your lodging, and I have never received eighteen
farthings, not the value of _that_, Mr. Lyric, (_snaps her
fingers._) You always put me off with telling me of your play, your
play! Sir, you shall play no more with me: I'm in earnest.

_Lyric._ There's more trouble in a play than you imagine, Madam.

_Bull._ There's more trouble with a lodger than you think, Mr.
Lyric.

_Lyric._ First there's the decorum of time.

_Bull._ Which you never observe, for you keep the worst hours of
any lodger in town.

_Lyric._ Then there's the exactness of characters.

_Bull._ And you have the most scandalous one I ever heard....

_Lyric._ (_Aside_) Was ever poor rogue so ridden. If ever the Muses
had a horse, I am he. (_Aloud_) Faith! Madam, poor Pegasus is
jaded.

_Bull._ Come, come, Sir; he shan't slip his neck out of collar for
all that. Money I will have, and money I must have.

The above is taken from Farquhar's first play, and we generally find
richer humour in the first attempts of genius than in their later and
more elaborate productions. Widow Bullfinch says that "Champagne is a
fine liquor, which all your beaux drink to make em' witty."

_Mockmode._ Witty! oh by the universe I must be witty! I'll dri