and a white hand on the throat of the deceased.

Captain Goodere would have defended himself by the plea that he had no part in the murder, and that his share in the seizure of his brother was only to withdraw him from improper influences until a settlement of the question whether his eccentricities should not render him incapable of disposing of his property; the friends of the murderer on the other hand would have defended him on the plea, that the act, if he had indeed committed it, was not that of a person in his senses. But as occasional eccentricities are no definition of perfect madness, so neither can any murderer be considered so perfectly sane as to be entitled to escape responsibility on proof that he may sometimes have lost self-command;* and Captain Goodere, therefore, was duly and deservedly hanged; and a portion of the family inheritance came to young Sam Foote; and Mr. Hesiod Cooke took him to his club, as already we have faithfully recorded.

such was the ease of his bearing, and the point and humor of remark with which he at once took part in the conversation, that his presence seemed to disconcert no one; and a sort of pleased buz of “ Who is he?" was still going round the room unanswered, when a handsome carriage stopped at the door, he rose and quitted the room, and the servants announced that his name was Foote, that he was a young gentleman of family and fortune, a student of the Inner Temple, and that the carriage had called for him on its way to the assembly of a lady of fashion.

Any more definite notion of his pursuits within the next two years we fail to get, but he underwent some startling vicissitudes. For some months of the time he appears to have rented Charlton-house, once the family seat in Worcestershire; and here there is a pleasant story told of his having his former schoolmaster Doctor Miles to dine with him amidst his magnificence, when the unworldly old pedagogue, amazed at the splendor, innocently asked his quondam pupil how much

might cost, and got for answer that he did not then know how much it might cost, but certainly soon should know how much it would bring. And doubtless this anticipation came very suddenly true; for an old schoolfellow told Murphy that he remem

Those were great days for clubs and tav-it erns. The Grecian, in Devereux-court, still retained some portion of that fame for Temple wit which made Steele propose to date from it his learned papers in the "Tatler," and here was Foote's morning lounge; while in the evening he sought the Bedford in Covent-bered dining with him in the Fleet within the garden, which had succeeded lately to the same year, in company with a man named theatrical glories of Tom's and Will's, and Waite, confined there for a fraudulent debt where, to be one of the knot of well-dressed to the bank; when, Waite having supplied people that met there and modestly called the turbot, venison, and claret for the feast, themselves the world, was of course a natu- and young Foote the wit, humor, and jollity, ral object of youthful aspiration. For the never did he pass so cheerful a day. Murvicinity of the theatre was still the head-phy adds the surprising fact that his first quarters of wit; and still the ingenious apothegm of Steele's passed current, that what the bank was to the credit of the nation the playhouse was to its politeness and good manners. Here accordingly breaks upon us the first clear glimpse of our hero. A wellknown physician and theatrical critic of the day, Dr. Barrowby, sketches him for us. One evening, he says, he saw a young man extravagantly dressed out in a frock suit of green and silver lace, bag-wig, sword, bouquet, and point-ruffles, enter the room, and immediately join the critical circle at the upper end. Nobody recognized him; but

essay as an author was written at about this time, and that it was "a pamphlet giving an account of one of his uncles who was executed for murdering his other uncle."

We have made unavailing search for this pamphlet, any account of which at second hand it is manifestly dangerous to take. But by those who profess to have seen it, it is represented to have been a quasi-defence of the justly-hanged captain; a sort of "putting the best face" on the family discredit; though in what way this too-partial nephew could possibly prove that the one uncle did not deserve strangling publicly, without at the same time making it clear that the other uncle did deserve strangling privately, we are quite at a loss to comprehend. That he certain, urged to it by hunger and the ten wrote some such pamphlet, however, seems pounds of an Old Bailey bookseller; the subject continuing to occupy all the gossips

Meanwhile graver matters became importunate with him, from which the only immediate relief seemed to lie in the direction at present most familiar to him. He had to replace the means his extravagance had wasted, and the tendency of his habits and tastes pointed to the stage. From telling shrewdly what should be done, to showing as naturally how to do it, the transition seems easy when the necessity is great; and Foote resolved to make the trial. He consulted with his friends, prominent among whom at this time were the celebrated Delavals-Francis, afterwards the baronet, and his brother, Lord Delaval-they were great lovers of the stage, and the help and cooperation of both confirmed his resolution. The time also peculiarly favored it for now occurred the dispute between the leading Drury-lane actors and Fleetwood, which ended in the violent rupture of Garrick and Macklin; when, on the former unexpectedly returning to his allegiance, the latter drew off with the best company he could get together at the moment, went to the little

two short years since, which had squandered | he was a man of influence in the society of Foote's fortunes, had firmly established Gar- the day, before he had written his first farce, rick's as the chief English actor and ornament or even set foot upon the stage. of Drury-lane. But what the public so freely admitted, there were still critics and actors to dispute. There is no end, as Voltaire says, to the secret capacity for factions; and apart altogether from professional jealousy, when the town has nothing better to quarrel about, a success on the stage will set everybody by the ears. Very loud and violent just now, therefore, were the factions at the Bedford; and prominent was the part taken in them by Foote, and by an Irish actor whom some strength of intellect as well as many eccentricities distinguished from his fellows, already by his half-century of years (he was born before the battle of the Boyne) entitled to be called a veteran, and destined to live for more than half a century longer, but never at any time so generally successful as his particular successes might have seemed to warrant, and now not unnaturally impatient of such complete and universal favor as little Garrick had suddenly leaped into. For the truth was, that Garrick's re-introduction of the natural school had already been attempted by this Irish actor, Charles Macklin; who, undaunted by Mr. Rich's dismissal of him from the Lincoln's Inn Theatre twenty years back as far too familiar, and wanting the grand hoity-toity vein, had nevertheless since steadily persisted, and at last, eight months before Garrick appeared, got the town with him in Shylock; but there, unhappily, had been stopped by his hard voice and his harsh face, the tones in the one like the strokes of a hammer, the lines in the other like cordage. But for the time at least, heartily as he afterwards laughed at him, Foote's sympathy went without stint to the disappointed veteran; and together they formed a strong third party among the critics, standing between the foes and friends of Garrick; maintaining that his familiarity was right, but was not familiar enough, and that he wanted the due amount of spirit and courage to take tragedy completely off the stilts. Of this view Foote became a startling and powerful exponent, and his criticism, which took more of the wide range of the world than of the limited one of books, showed one thing undoubtedly, that, reckless as this young spendthrift's career had been, his quick natural talents had protected him against its most degrading influences; his practice of vice had not obscured his discernment of it, nor his experience of folly made his sense of it less keen; and thus early

wooden theatre" in the Haymarket, and threw defiance at the patentees. The licensing-act prevented his taking money at the doors, but the public were "admitted by tickets delivered by Mr. Macklin ;" and by advertising and beginning with a concert, he evaded its other provisions. Foote joined the secession, and selected Othello for his opening part.

It was the part that Farquhar tried, and failed in; it was his friend Arthur Murphy's part, when he failed; it was his friend Delaval's, on the occasion of a grand private play at Lord Mexborough's, his brother-in-law; it was his imitator Tate Wilkinson's part, it was Barry's, it was Mossop's; and whether man was to fail or succeed, to plant himself on the heights of tragedy, to occupy the lesser ground of comedy, or to fall through altogether, Othello seemed still the first object of approach; though less perhaps as a main outwork of the citadel, than as offering, in the colored face, a means of personal disguise often welcome to a debutant ;;-yet with all this it appears surprising that Foote, with his keen common sense and strong feeling for the ridiculous, should have chosen it. But some degree of gravity and enthusiasm is inseparable from youth, and as the part, moreover, was one that Garrick was held to have failed in, it was a bow remaining still to

ful exaggeration in Garrick, in him became bitter sarcasm; the licence Garrick had confined to the theatre, Foote carried with keener aim beyond it; the bad actors on the mimic

on the real one; he laughed alike at the grave public transactions, and the flying absurdities, of the day; at the debates in par liament, the failures of the rebels, the follies of the quidnuncs; of politicians, play-writers, players; and as, flash upon flash, the merriment arose, Foote must at last have felt where in all respects his real strength lay, and that there was a vacant place in theatres he might of right take possession of, a ground to be occupied without rival or competitor. Davies says, no doubt truly, that what he improvised and added to Bayes was as good as the original, indeed, not distinguishable from it but by greater novelty of allusion. Why not strike out, then, another Bayes more strictly suited to himself, equip himself with character and wit provided solely from his own brain, and, with the high claim and double strength of author as well as actor, carry the town by storm?

it was Foote's disadvantage that his appear- | ance told against him. In person he was short, with a tendency to stoutness; his face even in youth was round fleshy, and flat, and his nose had breadth without strength or del-stage he kept in countenance by worse actors icacy; though he bad a pleasing expression of mouth, more refined than in a man of his temperament might perhaps have been looked for; and he had an eye in whose sparkling depths lay a spring of humor, unfailing and perpetual, which would have raised from repulsiveness features fifty times as coarse or inelegant. In that dramatic gallery of the Garrick Club which may hereafter, to Horace Walpole's traveller from New York, or Mr. Macaulay's from New Zealand, be as the the Nineveh of a delightful art even now lost and past away, there hangs a copy of the portrait by Reynolds in possession of the Duke of Newcastle, in which all this is visible yet; for though years of indulgence have done their work and you look on the hardened clumsy features, the settled look, the painful stoop and infirmity of his later life, you see through them still what as a young man Foote must have been-a shrewd, keen, observant, mirthful, thoroughly intellectual man, but not exactly Sir Harry Wildair, Dick Amlet, or my Lord Foppington. And so the matter seems to have struck himself, notwithstanding the amount of favor he received in such parts; for the expression is attributed to him, "If they won't have me in tragedy, and I am not fit for comedy, what the deuce am I fit for ?" A question which it was possible to answer more satisfactorily when he had once played the character of Bayes. It is not unlikely that this perform ance shaped entirely his subsequent career.

Garrick introduced imitations into Bayes. The tradition of the part had connected it with Dryden even to the great old poet's full suit of black velvet; but Garrick took off the black velvet, put on a shabby old-fashioned black coat, and presented a mere quizzable, conceited, solemn ass of a poet, going about reciting his own verses. Cibber condemned innovation; and Lord Chesterfield said that Bayes had lost dignity by it, and, no longer the burlesque of a great poet was become no better than a garretteer; but besides that the character is really no higher than this, the hearty enjoyment of his audiences justified Garrick; and when, in the delivery of the verses, he gave a succession of comical pictures of the actors most familiar to them, they laughed and cheered him to the echo. Garrick's idea Foote now seized, and worked out after his own fashion. What was mirth

The last night of his performance at Drurylane was at the close of April, 1746; the interval he employed in drawing out his scheme, and getting together a small band of actors devoted to him who would help in in its accomplishment; and in the General Advertizer of the 22d of April, 1747, appeared the following advertisement:

At the Theatre in the Haymarket, this day, will be performed a Concert of Music, with which will Diversions of the Morning, to which will be added be given gratis a new entertainment called the

a farce taken from the Old Batchelor called the Credulous Husband. Fondlewife by Mr. Foote; with an Epilogue to be spoken by the B-d-d Coffee House. To begin at 7.

The little theatre was crowded; but the Diversions, as then given, were never printed, and its character can only be inferred from such casual recollections as have survived, and from the general effect produced. It was such an entertainment as till then had not been attempted. Perhaps the closest resemblance to it was Sir William Davenant's, of nearly a century earlier, when he evaded the general closure of the theatres, and baffled the stern watch of the puritans, by his entertainment at Rutland House "after the manner of the ancients." After the manner of the ancients, too, were Foote's diversions, yet such as no Englishman had attempted before him. In introducing himself upon