“I have very little estate, but what is under the circumference of
     my hat, and should I by perchance come to lose my head, I should
     not be worth a groat.”

He thus sketches his mental peculiarities:—­

“As to my mind, which in most men wears as many changes as their body, so in me ’tis generally drest like my person, in black.  Melancholy is its every-day apparel; and it has hitherto found few holidays to make it change its clothes.  In short, my constitution is very splenetic and yet very amorous, both which I endeavour to hide lest the former should offend others, and that the latter might incommode myself; and my reason is so vigilant in restraining these two failings, that I am taken for an easy-natured man with my own sex, and an ill-natured clown by yours.”

Farquhar was very fond of jesting about his own misfortunes, and perhaps the following from “Love in a Bottle,” exhibits a scene in which he had been himself an actor in real life.

Widow Bullfinch. Mr. Lyric, what do you mean by all this?  Here you have lodged two years in my house, promised me eighteen-pence a week for your lodging, and I have never received eighteen farthings, not the value of that, Mr. Lyric, (snaps her fingers.) You always put me off with telling me of your play, your play!  Sir, you shall play no more with me:  I’m in earnest.

     Lyric. There’s more trouble in a play than you imagine, Madam.

     Bull. There’s more trouble with a lodger than you think, Mr.
     Lyric.

     Lyric. First there’s the decorum of time.

     Bull. Which you never observe, for you keep the worst hours of
     any lodger in town.

     Lyric. Then there’s the exactness of characters.

     Bull. And you have the most scandalous one I ever heard....

     Lyric. (Aside) Was ever poor rogue so ridden.  If ever the Muses
     had a horse, I am he. (Aloud) Faith!  Madam, poor Pegasus is
     jaded.

     Bull. Come, come, Sir; he shan’t slip his neck out of collar for
     all that.  Money I will have, and money I must have.

The above is taken from Farquhar’s first play, and we generally find richer humour in the first attempts of genius than in their later and more elaborate productions.  Widow Bullfinch says that “Champagne is a fine liquor, which all your beaux drink to make em’ witty.”

Mockmode. Witty! oh by the universe I must be witty!  I’ll drink nothing else.  I never was witty in all my life.  I love jokes dearly.  Here, Club, bring us a bottle of what d’ye call it—­the witty liquor.

     Bull. But I thought that all you that were bred at the University
     would be wits naturally?