He lost his usual gayety and
good-humor, and became, at times, peevish and irritable. Too proud of
spirit to seek sympathy or relief from his friends, for the pecuniary
difficulties he had brought upon himself by his errors and extravagance;
and unwilling, perhaps, to make known their amount, he buried his cares and
anxieties in his own bosom, and endeavored in company to keep up his usual
air of gayety and unconcern. This gave his conduct an appearance of
fitfulness and caprice, varying suddenly from moodiness to mirth, and from
silent gravity to shallow laughter; causing surprise and ridicule in those
who were not aware of the sickness of heart which lay beneath.
His poetical reputation, too, was sometimes a disadvantage to him; it drew
upon him a notoriety which he was not always in the mood or the vein to act
up to. "Good heavens, Mr. Foote," exclaimed an actress at the Haymarket
Theater, "what a humdrum kind of man Dr. Goldsmith appears in our
green-room compared with the figure he makes in his poetry!" "The reason of
that, madam," replied Foote, "is because the muses are better company than
the players."
Beauclerc's letters to his friend, Lord Charlemont, who was absent in
Ireland, give us now and then an indication of the whereabout of the poet
during the present year.
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