Footnote 16:
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r. Richard Burke. This gentleman having fractured an arm and a legat different times, the Doctor has rallied him on these accidents, asa kind of retributive justice for breaking his jests upon otherpeople. [Illustration: _Dr. Goldsmith and some of his friends at theSt. James's Coffee-house._—_p._ 219.] His gallants are all faultless, his women divine,And Comedy wonders at being so fine;Like a tragedy queen he has dizen'd her out,Or rather like Tragedy giving a rout.His fools have their follies so lost in a crowdOf virtues and feelings, that Folly grows proud;And coxcombs, alike in their failings alone,Adopting his portraits, are pleased with their own.Say, where has our poet this malady caught,Or wherefore his characters thus without fault?Say was it, that vainly directing his viewTo find out men's virtues, and finding them few,Quite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf,He grew lazy at last, and drew from himself?Here Douglas retires from his toils to relax,The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks:Come all ye quack bards, and ye quacking divines,Come, and dance on the spot where your tyrant reclines:When satire and censure encircled his throne,I fear'd for your safety, I fear'd for my own:But now he is gone, and we want a detector,Our Dodds[17] shall be pious, our Kenricks[18] shall lecture;Macpherson[19] write bombast, and call it a style;Our Townshend make speeches, and I shall compile:New Lauders and Bowers the Tweed shall cross over,No countryman living their tricks to discover;Detection her taper shall quench to a spark,And Scotchman meet Scotchman, and cheat in the dark.Here lies David Garrick, describe him who can,—An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man;As an actor confess'd without rival to shine;As a wit, if not first, in the very first line:Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart,The man had his failings,—a dupe to his art.Like an ill-judging beauty, his colours he spread,And beplaster'd with rouge his own natural red.On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting;'Twas only that when he was off he was acting:With no reason on earth to go out of his way,He turn'd and he varied full ten times a day:Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sickIf they were not his own by finessing and trick:He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack,For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back.Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came,And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame;
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