Note 217 — APPENDIX,

A very eminent physician, whose discernment is as acute and penetrating in judging of the human character as it is in his own profession, remarked once at a club where I was, that a lively young man would hardly resist a solicitation from his mistress to go upon the highway, immediately after being present at the Beggars' Opera. I have been told of an ingenious observation by Mr. Gibbon, that "the Beggars' Opera may perhaps have sometimes increased the number of highwaymen, but that it has had a beneficial effect in refining that class of men, making them less ferocious, more polite, in short, more like gentlemen." Upon this Mr. Courtenay said, that Gay was the Orpheus of highwaymen.—Note upon Boswell's Johnson, vol. i. p. 488.