[37] Incipit Annus Academicus Die Julii 9^a 1694.
------+---------+----------+-----+-----------+------------+----------+
Die |Georgius | filius | | Natus | ibidem | Eu. Lloyd 17a |Farquhare|
Gulielmi |Annos|Londonderry|educatus sub|(college Julii | Sizator
| Farqhare | 17 | | magistro | tutor) | | Clerici | | | Walker |
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This matriculation entry from the register of Trinity does away
with our sizar’s presumed father, Rev. John Farquhar, prebendary of
Raphoe. We hear nothing more, ever after, of the Farquhar family, who
henceforth leave young George to his own profane devices; nor can any
certainty be attached to additional information, sometimes proffered,
that the father had seven children in all, and held a living of only
one hundred and fifty pounds a year. One other point is fixed by the
entry, to wit: if George Farquhar was seventeen in the July of 1694, he
cannot have been born in 1678.
[38] This was the theatre built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1672.
[39] Peter Anthony Motteux, the wild and clever linguist and dramatist,
who made the best English translation of _Don Quixote_. _The Stage
Coach_, itself an adaptation, has little merit beyond its liveliness.
[40] The register of burial is dated a month later than the received
date of his death. It reads simply: “23 May, George Falkwere, M.” The
initial is the sapient sexton’s indication that this was neither a W
(woman) nor a C (child). The spelling of the name betokens its usual
and original pronunciation. The present famous porticoed church was not
built for nineteen years after Farquhar died.
[41] The not altogether foolish censure has been cast upon the rogue
Teague in _The Twin Rivals_ that he speaks an impossible brogue, which
might as well be Welsh. Farquhar did not succeed in transferring to
paper the weird and unlovely Ulster dialect with which he was familiar
in boyhood, and which had figured already in the third act of _Henry
the Fifth_, in Jonson’s Irish masque, in Shadwell’s _Lancashire
Witches_; which was simultaneously being used in his farce _The
Committee_, by Dryden’s friend Howard, and which was afterwards to have
good corroboration in Aytoun’s _Massacre of the MacPherson_. Farquhar
employs it twice elsewhere, passably well in the case of Torlough
Macahone of the parish of Curroughabegley (the personage who built a
mansion-house for himself and his predecessors after him), and with
lamentable flatness in that of Dugard in his last comedy. Dugard is a
rival of the nursery-maid dear to almanac humorists, who is wont to
exclaim: “Can’t ye tell boi me accint that ’tis Frinch Oi am!” It was
one of Farquhar’s inartistic mistakes that he made no loving study of
this or of anything touching nearly his own people. His Irishmen, with
the exception of Roebuck, are either rascals or characterless nobodies.
The name Teague, or Teig, which Howard had also employed, is old and
pure North Irish; and no less pleasant an authority than George Borrow
reminds us in the _Romano Lavo-Lil_ that it is Danish in origin.
[42] Dear Dick Steele, in 1701, while Captain of Fusileers, had a
duel thrust upon him; and in parrying, his sword pierced his man. To
his remorse may be ascribed his hatred of the custom of duelling,
expressed afterwards on every occasion. Steele owed his start in life
to James Butler, Duke of Ormonde, who entered him among the boys on
the Charterhouse foundation. This peer was grandfather to the man who
failed George Farquhar.
[43] Mrs. Farquhar published in 1711 an octavo volume of the _Plays,
Letters, and Verses_. Among the verses figures a poem of six cantos
dedicated to the victorious Earl of Peterborough, entitled _Barcelona_.
“It was found among my dear deceased husband’s writings,” says the
widow, in her prefatory note. He was not at the siege, and it is
possible that the six cantos were a manuscript copy of the effusion of
some former comrade. Farquhar was the author of several songs, one, of
highly didactic complexion, having emanated from him at the reputed age
of ten. Of these, only two are of fair lyrical quality: the page’s song
in _Love and a Bottle_, and “Tell me, Aurelia, tell me, pray,” which
Robert Southey included in his collection.
[44] _The Vicar of Wakefield_ dates from 1766. Almost twenty years
before that, the immortal Partridge had remarked to Tom Jones, quoting
his schoolmaster: “Polly matete cry town is my daskalon.” Noble
nonsense hath her pedigree. Goldsmith, however, is not so likely to
have taken his cue from Fielding.