CHAP. XIV. Cumberland's literary enterprises suspended for a time by the death of his parents.-Observations on the bigotry of Catholicism.-Produces the CHOLERIC MAN.-Examination of this play. Does not discriminate between accidental anger and general passion.-Dedicates the play to DETRACTION. Observation of MURPHY'S.-Cumberland thinks it the best of his dramas.—Examples of its deficiency in point and spirit.-Writes and publishes two ODES.-Alters and spoils SHAKSPEARE'S TIMON OF ATHENS. - The opinions of MURPHY and DAVIES upon this alteration. 2 THE literary enterprises of Cumberland now suffered some interruption from the death of his father and mother, which happened so immediately together, that his mind must have keenly felt the stroke. Where there has existed a cordial and reciprocal affection between a child and his parents, where that affection has ripened into rational veneration, founded upon a real appreciation of the virtues of its object, and where it springs both from the recollection of past services and endearments, and from the consciousness of a pious duty, there are few events in this world more dreadful, more severely proportioned to our powers of endurance, than the death of such parents. We feel the eternal separation with more than filial *U7 VOL. II. 292972 302. LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. sorrow, and mingle with our tears the bitterness of remembering that we have lost the friend, and the companion, as well as the father and the benefactor. It is, then, indeed, that the quaint but emphatic line of Young becomes a moral truth : "When such friends part-'tis the survivor dies." Cumberland's father had been translated to the see of Kilmore, and gained, by the exchange, a better house to live in, and a race of beings, somewhat more civilized, to control. The annual visits of his son had never been intermitted, and thus, perhaps, he found the wish nearest his heart amply gratified. But the decay of his bodily health became more and more visible to Cumberland, as each returning summer conveyed him to the paternal roof: and he saw this decay with foreboding thoughts, that were too soon verified. The uniform temperance of his father's life, left indeed every ground for hope which can be derived from the advantages of a constitution not debilitated by excesses but the phenomena of life are reducible to no immutable laws; we sometimes see the man whose days have been but a round of debauch flourishing in a vigorous old age, while he whose temperate wishes never hurried him beyond the wholesome bounds of moderation, drops into the grave in comparative youth. The Bishop of Kilmore was one of nature's most abstemious children. He had subdued all his passions, or rather he had regulated them, by the strict line of christian precept and example. A noble triumph! and displaying a nature so amiable that even they who cannot hope to imitate the original, find themselves instinctively filled with love and veneration as they contemplate it. Our wonder and applause are easily excited by the conspicuous deeds of the great, in that estimation of greatness, which the world inculcates; but did we know and fully appreciate how much easier it is to subdue others than to subdue ourselves, how much less of moral energy it demands to conquer innumerable hosts than to overcome any of the corrupt propensities of our own nature, we should sometimes be tempted to moderate our admiration of the one, and tear the chaplet of renown from the brow of him whom we now call great, to bind it round his whose greatness is superior in its origin, its progress, and its aim. Nor need we peevishly deny the wreath of glory to the illustrious beings who have adorned the world, who have blessed it as statesmen, philosophers, and sometimes as heroes; but we may be allowed to wish that the modest, the silent, the retiring, and the unobtrusive virtues of the selfconqueror, of him who employs the knife and the caustic upon his own frame, were sometimes rewarded by the grateful homage of applauding virtue, seeking to imitate what it approves. But the grave of the good man lies level with the earth, and the eye cannot distinguish it from the common dust with which it mingles; while the tomb of the distinguished, pre-eminent in vice, perhaps, as well as in greatness, rises before us in our path, and points out the road that led its possessor too often to the grandeur of guilt, rather than to the exaltation of virtue. Let the pen of truth, however, record those qualities which are sometimes delusively engraven upon the marble of the sepulchre, that it may serve at once as the reward of goodness and its incentive. To this character Cumberland's father seems well entitled, and his death must have been very sensibly felt by his son. It was gradual and gentle; but at what period it took place, Cumberland, with his accustomed and absurd negligence with regard to dates, leaves in uncertainty, It was somewhere, however, near the period when his. comedy of the Fashionable Lover was produced, and that was in the year 1772. To add to his sorrows, his mother soon followed her husband to the grave, and it must have been an additional aggravation of these multiplied sorrows that he was prevented attending them in their last moments, by the unsettled state of his own health, which compelled him to remain at Bath for the benefit of the waters. One surviving sister, however, "the best and most benevolent of human beings," was present to discharge the duties of that melancholy office, the inevitable neglect of which |