He threw
off every restraint. He donned, instead of his clerical costume, a blue
coat and gold-laced waistcoat. He separated from his wife, giving her,
indeed, a handsome allowance. His midnight potations became deeper and
more habitual. Dean Zachary Pearce, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, in
vain remonstrated. At last, on his parishioners taking the matter up, and
raising an outcry as to his neglect of duty, and the unbecoming character
of his dress, he resigned his curacy and lectureship, and became for the
rest of his life a literary and dissipated "man about town."
In October 1761 he published a poem entitled "Night," addressed to Lloyd,
in which, while seeking to vindicate himself from the charges against his
_morale_, he in reality glories in his shame. His sudden celebrity had
perhaps acted as a glare of light, revealing faults that might have been
overlooked in an obscure person. With his dissipation, too, there mingled
some elements of generosity and compassion, as in the story told of him
by Charles Johnson in his "Chrysal" of the poet succouring a poor
starving girl of the town, whom he met in the midnight streets,--an
incident reminding one of the similar stories told of Dr Johnson, and
Burke, and realising the parable of the good Samaritan.
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