OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.

1759. ship was dissolved; but this I can now show to be a
JBUi. mistake. They were partners to the close of that year,
though Peter even then had heard painful rumours of the
younger member of the firm being frequently seen in com-
pany with an actor and playhouse manager, Mr. Giffard
of Goodman's Fields. They were in partnership in the
summer of the following year, when Peter, on corning to
London, found his brother subject to unaccountable fits of
depression, abstraction, and lowness of spirits ; warned
him against play-actors and play-managers (notwithstanding
advantages gained to the firm, by Mr. Giffard having re-
commended it to supply the Bedford coffee-house, "one
" of the best in London"); and, happily for himself, did
not know that his associate in a respectable business had
already, impelled by a secret passion he dared not openly
divulge, gone privately to Ipswich with that very manager
Giffard, and under the name of Lyddal had played in
Oronoko and the Orphan, and had performed Sir Harry
Wildair, and our old friend Captain Brazen. They were
partners still, as that year went on, though the business had
fallen very low, and Foote afterwards remembered Davy, as
he said in his malicious way, living in Durham-yard with
three quarts of vinegar in the cellar, calling himself a wine
merchant. They continued even to be partners, when at
last, on the evening of the 19th October 1741, the curtain
rose on the performance of Richard the Third in the theatre
at Goodman's Fields.

The tragic stage was then sunk very low. Betterton had
been dead more than thirty years, Booth had quitted the pro-
fession fourteen years before, Wilks was no longer one of its
ornaments, and even the traditions of that brilliant time now
chiefly lived with Gibber. When that veteran tried hisof mutual friends, their partner-