s of velvet, laced with gold, with two pistols on
each side; a cutlass hanging at a belt, suitably trimmed, three fingers
broad and two feet long; a hawking-bag at their girdle, and a powder-flask
hung about their neck with a great silk riband. Some of them carried
firelocks, and others blunderbusses; they had all good shoes, with silk
stockings, and every one a cap of cloth of gold, or cloth of silver, of
different colours, on his head, which was very delightful to the eye."

[49] See also _Foreign Quarterly Review_, vol. iv. p. 398.

_The Beggar's Opera_, in our own country, is another instance of the
admiration that thieves excite upon the stage. Of the extraordinary
success of this piece, when first produced, the following account is given
in the notes to _The Dunciad_, and quoted by Johnson in his _Lives of the
Poets_: "This piece was received with greater applause than was ever
known. Besides being acted in London sixty-three days without
interruption, and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread
into all the great towns of England; was played in many places to the
thirtieth and fortieth time; at Bath and Bristol, &c. fifty. It made its
progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed
twenty-four days successively. The ladies carried about with them the
favourite songs of it in fans, and houses were furnished with it in
screens. The fame of it was not confined to the author only. The person
who acted Polly, till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of
the town;[50] her pictures were engraved and sold in great numbers; her
life written, books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets
made even of her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England,
for that season, the Italian Opera, which had carried all before it for
ten years." Dr. Johnson, in his life of the author, says, that Herring,
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, censured the opera, as giving
encouragement, not only to vice, but to crimes, by making the highwayman
the hero, and dismissing him at last unpunished; and adds, that it was
even said, that after the exhibition the gangs of robbers were evidently
multiplied. The Doctor doubts the assertion, giving as his reason that
highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, and that it
was not possible for any one to imagine that he might rob with safety,
because he saw Macheath reprieved upon the stage. But if Johnson had
wish