[90] Such an accident as is here represented really happened at White's Chocolate House, St. James's Street, on the 3d of May 1733.
[91] A masquerade is not often considered as the school of morality: it frequently leads to vice, but seldom reclaims from error. That it once had a salutary effect, the following story will evince. Lord C----e, with many amiable virtues, and many brilliant accomplishments, had a most unfortunate propensity to gaming; in one night he lost upwards of thirty thousand pounds to the late General Scott. Mortified at his ill-fortune, he paid the money, and wished to keep the circumstance secret: it was, however, whispered in the polite circles, and his lordship, to divert his chagrin, a few nights after slipped on a domino, and went to a masquerade at Carlisle House. He found all the company running after three Irish ladies of the name of G----e, in the characters of _the three weird sisters_. These ladies were so well acquainted with everything that was going on in the great world, that they kept the room in a continued roar by the brilliancy of their _bon-mots_, and the terseness of their applications to some ladies of rank who were present. They knew Lord C----e, and they knew of his loss, though he did not know them. He walked up to them, and in a solemn tone of voice addressed them as follows:--
"Ye black and midnight hags,--what do ye do? Live ye, or are ye aught that man may question? Quickly unclasp to me the book of fate, And tell if good or ill my steps await!"
_First Witch._ "All hail, C----e! all hail to thee! All hail! though poor thou soon shalt be!"
_Hecate._ "C----e, all hail! thy evil star Sheds baleful influence--oh, beware! Beware that Thane! beware that _Scott_! Or poverty shall be thy lot! He'll drain thy youth as dry as hay-- Hither, sisters, haste away!"
At the concluding word, whirling a watchman's rattle which she held in her hand, the dome echoed with the sound; the terrified peer shrunk into himself,--retired,--vowed never to lose more than a hundred pounds at a sitting, abode by the determination, and retrieved his fortune.
[92] There has been almost as much debate about Hogarth's orthography as about Shakspeare's learning. One of these knotty points Dr. Farmer's admirable pamphlet has put out of the reach of doubt, the other is not of much consequence. I am afraid there are too many damning proofs that Mr. William Hogarth was ignorant of spelling, for his warmest admirers to contest the point any longer. His fame is fixed upon a firmer basis. It was not necessary for him to study the language of the schools; he searched into the grammar of nature, and was himself the founder of an university, in which his pencil, usurping the office of a pen, describes the passions as they affect the countenance, and narrates the incidents that mark our little life with the minuteness of a chronologist and the fidelity of an historian. It has been truly said, that our divine poet saw nature "without the spectacles of books." Our great artist could never have delineated the workings of the human mind with that precise accuracy which marks all his works, if he had studied the language of the passions from the books of your philosophy.