the more noted for that
his own considerable riches were proof that it was true and single. He
himself warned her, in some verses written for him by Euphemia Boswell,
against the crew of penniless admirers who surrounded her:

'Lady, ah! too bewitching lady! now beware Of artful men that fain would
thee ensnare Not for thy merit, but thy fortunes sake. Give me your
hand--your cash let venals take.'

Miss Emma was his first love. To understand his subsequent behaviour,
let us remember that Cupid's shaft pierces most poignantly the breast
of middle-age. Not that Mr. Coates was laughed at in Bath for a
love-a-lack-a-daisy. On the contrary, his mien, his manner, were as yet
so studiously correct, his speech so reticent, that laughter had been
unusually inept. The only strange taste evinced by him was his devotion
to theatricals. He would hold forth, by the hour, upon the fine
conception of such parts as Macbeth, Othello and, especially, Romeo.
Many ladies and gentlemen were privileged to hear him recite, in this
or that drawing-room, after supper. All testified to the real fire with
which he inflamed the lines of love or hatred. His voice, his gesture,
his scholarship, were all approved. A fine symphony of praise assured
Mr. Coates that no suitor worthier than he had ever courted Thespis.
The lust for the footlights' glare grew lurid in his mothish eye. What,
after all, were these poor triumphs of the parlour? It might be that
contemptuous Emma, hearing the loud salvos of the gallery and boxes,
would call him at length her lord.

At this time there arrived at the York House Mr. Pryse Gordon, whose
memoirs we know. Mr. Coates himself was staying at number ** Gay Street,
but was in the habit of breakfasting daily at the York House, where
he attracted Mr. Gordon's attention by 'rehearsing passages from
Shakespeare, with a tone and gesture extremely striking both to the eye
and the ear.' Mr. Gordon warmly complimented him and suggested that he
should give a public exposition of his art. The cheeks of the amateur
flushed with pleasure. 'I am ready and willing,' he replied, 'to play
Romeoe to a Bath audience, if the manager will get up the play and give
me a good "Juliet"; my costume is superb and adorned with diamonds, but
I have not the advantage of knowing the manager, Dimonds.' Pleased by
the stranger's ready wit, Mr. Gordon scribbled a note of introduction to
Dimonds there and then. So soon as he had 'discussed a brace of