of that people among whom it happens to | does it very well. Very well, indeed, Mr. be performed; and he declares its province Smirk, addressing herself to me." Excelto be to punish folly as the state punishes lently worthy of mention, too, is Mr. Shift crime, by making its faithful ridicule of par- the mimic, who was indebted for his rise in ticular offenders an example to the entire life to a greater mimic, a whimsical man who community. This, he continues, he had took him into his service, and with whom he aimed at in the Minor; and believing its remained till, thinking himself nearly equal characters to be not strained above the mo- to his master, he made him one of his own desty of nature, nor the treatment of them bows and set up for himself. Foote designunsuitable or inconsistent, "it is not," he ed this for a laugh at Tate Wilkinson, who adds, "the extent, but the objects of a piece, just before had set up for himself at Covent that must establish its title: a poem of one Garden on an engagement expressly to act may prove an excellent comedy, and a imitate him; and in Shift's querulous complay of five a most execrable farce." plaining of the insufficiency of his rewards, Foote's keen knowledge of character already anticipated by some half-century or so the old man's revelations of himself. "And what shall I get for my pains? The old fellow here talks of making me easy for life. Easy? And what does he mean by easy? He'll make me an exciseman, I suppose, and so, with an ink-horn at my button hole, and a taper switch in my hand, I shall run about gauging of beer barrels. No, that will never do.' Alas that precisely what never would have done for Mr. Shift, had to do, something less than thirty years later, for the greatest poet of that century!

Foote was thoroughly justified in thus manfully speaking of his work. Its three acts are worth almost any five we know. Overflowing with wit and good writing, there is also a serious and pathetic interest in them, as Holcroft found when they supplied him with his plot for the Deserted Daughter; and there is character in such wonderful variety, that Sheridan was able to carry quietly off from it (a liberty he often took with Foote) what was never missed in its abundance. For who, notwithstanding differences of appearance and race, can fail to see hints of Little Moses and his friend Premium in little Transfer the broker, whom To depict the present life of the time, to you may know in a minute by his shamble, catch the living marners as they rose, was his withered face, his bit of purple nose, his the uniform aim in all these various characcautionary stammer, and sleek, silver head? ters, for in what thus might be called local He will dine and sup to any extent with you, or temporary we have seen that Foote held and after all not lend you a stiver. But he the entertainment and uses of Comedy to has a friend that can lend, "a hard man, consist; and though he did not always see Master Loader," an unconscionable dog, quite clearly enough the distinction between wanting so much for interest, and so much a portrait of which you must know the feafor premium, and so much for insuring your tures before you are interested in the likelife, and so much for risk; and when all's doneness, and one of which the features at once you must take part of the money in money's worth. And besides litte Transfer, there is the brisk Mr. Smirk, successor to that truly great man Mr. Prig, introduced into Taste ("I remember they took him off at the playhouse some time ago; pleasant but wrong.* Public characters should not be sported with-they are sacred,") whom the Duchess of Dupe and all the great people so condescendingly encouraged on his praiseworthy attempt to fill the place of his jewel of a predecessor. "Her Grace indeed gave me great encouragement. I overheard her whisper to Lady Dy, Upon my word, Mr. Smirk

Foote, as we have said, played Smirk as well as Mrs. Cole, and Lord Holland used to say that, according to the report of those who heard it, nothing could equal the whimsical humor with which he gave these words. It was as if he were pointing the comment on his own life.

reveal their affinity to what constitutes our interest in the whole family of man, it is yet surprising with what skill he can sketch general characteristics in particular forms, and show you the passing society and manners of a period in seeming simply to fix upon his canvas one or two of its isolated figures. Nothing in this respect can be more admirable or true than the family of the Wealthys in this little comedy. You look at them as you would at a picture by Hogarth.

It was natural that after the Minor Foote should take higher rank as a writer, as well as a position of greater influence with the public, and by this Murphy did his best to profit in the following year by inducing him to become joint-manager with himself for a summer season at Drury-lane, where the principal incidents were his production of the Liar, and, by way of a civil service to some

of his fashionable friends, his consenting to play for a fine and very fastidious gentleman, son of the great Bentley, a comedy called the Wishes, only noticeable now for the vast fuss that was made about it. There was a sort of private rehearsal of it at Bubb Dodington's grand villa on the Thames, which Foote superintended, and where the Parnassus was composed of Bubb himself, the two Chief Justices, the author, his nephew Richard Cumberland, and Lord Bute; on which occasion, apparently not a little to Foote's amazement, the author produced a most prodigious prologue, wherein the flattery of the young king and his favorite so egregiously transcended all safe bounds, that not even the favorite's presence prevented Foote's quiet remark, This is too strong. Horace Walpole, a great friend of Bentley's, describes the scene. "The prologue concludes with Young Augustus, and how much he excels the ancient one by the choice of his friends. Foote refused to act this prologue, and said it was too strong. Indeed, said Augustus's friend, I think it is."

| he effects to consider wholly his. The pub-
lic are blockheads; a tasteless, stupid, igno-
rant tribe; a man of genius deserves to be
damned who writes any thing for them; but
courage, dear Dick, the principals will give you
what the people refuse; the closet, the critics,
the real judges, will do you that justice the
stage has denied. Print your play "My play!
Zounds, Sir, 'tis your own!" "Speak lower,
dear Dick; be moderate, my good, dear lad!"

All the details of this comedy are equally
rich and effective. In the entire acting
drama we do not know a succession of more
telling points for a true actor than the three
scenes that deal with the failure of the play:
the first, in which Sir Thomas receives, act by
act, the account of its cold reception and
gradual damnation, from his footman, his
coachman, and his tailor, whom he had sta-
tioned in the theatre to witness it; the second,
in which a chorus of egregious flatterers who
had most fulsomely praised his trashy epi-
grams as extravagantly to his face abuse his
luckless comedy in the same hope of currying
favor with him; and the third, in which his
agony of fear under the threat of exposure
compels him at last to purchase silence from
Dick by the bribe of his niece's hand. Com-
pared with these, even Sheridan's Sir Fretful
is weak; and Foote himself not only acted
the part every night, but also a characteristic
little sketch of an irascible West Indian, Sir
Peter Pepperpot, which he had brought in
for the mere sake of an individual portraiture
it enabled him to give.

Another description of what passed we have from Richard Cumberland, who, after a laughable detail of Bubb's lace, fatness, grandeur, and absurdity, says he saw Foote's wicked wit indulging itself at the expense of his entertainers all the evening, as he afterwards indulged the public in the Patron. In this excellent comedy he had indeed turned to admirable use the experience thus acquired of what he called the ignorance of pretenders to learning and the parade and vanity of their affected protectors. He thought it the We cannot stop to do justice to the bitter best he had written up to the time of its pro- sarcasm with which the underling bards and duction, and undoubtedly it belongs, with the broken booksellers spawned from such patMinor, to the higher order of his pieces. ronage as Lofty's are also handled, but the Its leading notion, that to patronize bad extraordinary frequency with which Foote poets is to the full as pernicious as to neglect introduces matter of this kind into his comegood ones, is happily expressed in its hero, dies leaves us at least not doubtful of the Sir Thomas Lofty, who, also the hero of fifty view he took in regard to the relations of lidedications, is yet a tedious, insipid, insuffer- terature and publishing in his day; and, we able coxcomb, and, without genius, judg-may add, the distinction he is careful to mark ment, or generosity, has been set up for his wealth alone, by underling bards that he feeds and broken booksellers that he bribes, as a sharp-judging Adriel, the muse's friend, himself a muse. The plot chiefly turns on Sir Thomas's having secretly written a play, the entire credit of the authorship whereof, with all its chances of success or damnation, he presents to an enthusiastic young friend. As the young gentleman's the play is accordingly produced, and damned; whereupon Sir Thomas, with more than the unruffled temper and equability of a Sir Fretful, encourages his friend under the disaster which

between the hack and the gentleman in
authorship, he more rarely recognizes in the
bookselling branch of the trade. Only a
couple of summers before the Patron was
acted he had introduced into his Orators,
from which the threat of an oak-stick was
alone thought to have saved Johnson, a pub-
lisher and printer of much consideration and
dignity; an alderman in Ireland, and though
with but one leg a pompous person every-
where; who had corresponded with Swift,
who still corresponded with Chesterfield,
who was understood to have advised privately
sundry Lords Lieutenant, and who had a

H

Journal of his own through which he contin- | my Lord Chief Justice Hales in his Pleas of ued to give advice publicly to Lords and the Crown, my Lord Vaughan, Salkeld, and Commoners in both kingdoms; whose nume- in short all the greatest men of the law, do, rous foibles had mightily amused Foote in with their usual perspicuity and precision, all his visits to Dublin, and who on a recent lay it down for law that agere est agere; and visit to London had shown them off in such this being exactly Mr. Foote's case, he shall flourishing exuberance, that the temptation hold himself in readiness to receive any orders to put him in a farce was no longer resistible. in the affair, for retaining counsel, filing a Yet opinions differ still as to George Faulk- bill of Faulkner versus Foote, or bringing a ner, and one cannot quite make out whether common action upon the case Nothing can or not his self-satisfied and sleek exterior be greater fun than the letter, all through; covered anything that fairly provoked and and the mischievous old wit must have been justified satire. Cooke says that his pecu- amazed indeed when his advice was taken liarities were but trifling, and his manners un- seriously, when the case of Faulkner v. Foote offending; on the other hand, Cumberland did actually appear in the Dublin law-courts, says that so extravagant were they, and such and Faulkner absolutely triumphed in a verhis solemn intrepidity of egotism and daring dict, though he obtained but nominal damacontempt of absurdity, that they fairly out-ges. However, he got himself compared to faced even Foote's imitation, and set caricature at defiance. This also is borne out by what Isaac Reed remarks of his ludicrous affectation of wit and fine society, and his perpetual boastings, in the teeth of every disadvantage, of age, person, address, and his deficient leg, of lavish favors from the fair sex; nor can there be a doubt, we think, especially since Lord Mahon's publication of suppressed passages in the letters, that what in Lord Chesterfield had been taken for an honest admiration of his sense, was after all but a humorous liking for his absurdity. He makes him his pleasant butt, and is always laughing in his face, for the enjoyment of his grave reception of it.

But granting so much, the mere corporal infirmity should have restrained the mimicry of Foote, who now bodily transferred to the Haymarket, wooden leg and all, Alderman George Faulkner by the title of Mr. Peter Paragraph. That he had thus selected for derision a man with such defect, the satirist too soon had cause to lament; but for the rest we fear we must even say with Mr. Smirk that it is pleasant if wrong, and certainly we cannot wonder that Foote's Peter, a caricature of a caricature, should largely have attracted crowds to laugh at him. Hardly had the Orators exhibited Mr. Paragraph, however, when Lord Chesterfield hastened to tell George Faulkner that Mr. Foote, who he believed had been one of George's symposion in London, was "taking him off" in his new farce, and hadn't he better bring an action against him? for, says his Lordship, with the humor he always passed off upon Faulkner for gravity, though scribere! est agere was looked upon as too hard in the case of Algernon Sydney, yet my Lord Coke in his incomparable Notes upon Littleton,

the Greek philosopher whom the Greek wit ridiculed, which was a feather in his cap; and he made a great deal of money, first to last, by printing and selling large numbers not only of the original libel, but of the counsel's speeches at the trial, and he received congratulations from Lord Chesterfield for a victory which the divine Socrates had not influence enough to obtain at Athens over Aristophanes, nor the Great Pompey at Rome over the actor who had the insolence to abuse him: though, to be sure, the post of the very next day took a letter, only recently published, from the old peer to the Bishop of Waterford, rejoicing at George having made his enemy his footstool, but professing amazement that their philosophical friend should not have practised a noble contempt, instead of being so irascible as to go to law!

SO

"Fear of Foote" had suppressed this passage when the letters to the Bishop were published, and it was a feeling, prevalent through society, not even temporarily abated by Faulkner's unexpected legal success. Opportunity and leisure for reflection, doubtless for unavoidable reproach, were soon perforce to visit him; but his position was never strong, his influence never so much dreaded, as after the verdict of the Dublin jury against him. A couple of months later, he put jury, counsel, judge, and all into a comic scene, and played it at the Haymarket; and in the same summer he gibbeted the Duke of Newcastle, ex-premier of England, by the side of Justice Lamb, fish salesman and ex-militiamajor of Acton, in Matthew Mug and Major Sturgeon of the glorious Mayor of Garrett. Who has not enjoyed this farce more than half the comedies he has seen?

Its writer now stood at the highest point of his worldly fortune. It seemed impossible

himself less for the comfort of a poor player
than for the entertainment of a royal high-
ness. Gilly Williams describes at this very
time the return of the King's brother from
the continent. "The Duke of York on his
arrival went first to his mother, then to his
Majesty, and directly from them to Mr.
Foote.'

that in the career he had chosen there could
open to him anything beyond it. Never had
such splendid seasons rewarded him at the
Haymarket as those in which the Patron and
the Mayor of Garrett were produced, and
never did his personal position appear more
enviable. In Paris the preceding year he
had been not the least prominent figure in
the group of celebrated Englishmen who Better for Mr. Foote that he had not gone
thronged there at the declaration of peace; to him, for together they afterwards went on
on his return his popularity with various clas- a visit to Lord Mexborough's, and here, in
ses of his countrymen could hardly be ex-hunting, he rode a too spirited horse, was
ceeded; and in the company of men of high thrown, and received so severe a hurt that
rank and superior fortune, says the elder Col- his left leg had to be amputated. The story
man, he preserved always an easy and noble went that he had his jest nevertheless, even
independence. He had now enlarged both under the knife of the surgeon; but his let-
his town and his country house, he drove as ters to Garrick tell a different tale. He feels
good horses as any in the Mall, his dinners in all its bitterness the calamity that has fal-
and wines were famous, and he had lately len upon him, the blow which has struck him
spent fifteen hundred pounds on a service of in that height of his prosperity. It is several
plate, which he justified by remarking truly weeks after the accident, yet he is still at
enough that the money was more likely to Cannon-park, and, nothwith standing some
continue with him in that form than in one flattery of appearances, looking upon his
he could more conveniently melt down. Per- hold in life to depend on a very slender te-
haps no man's celebrity took so familiar as nure. Yet he can rejoice to hear of his friends
well as wide a range. The very boys at Eton success in the Clandestine Marriage, which
had him down to show him about the col- Lady Stanhope had told him of the night be-
lege, and their Captain asked him by way of fore, and one can see that his heart is touch-
reward to repeat to them the best of his say-ed with a gratitude to Garrick which he finds
ings.*
It is to his credit to add that he al- it difficult to give adequate expression to.
ways remembered literature as his calling, He falls to praising his wife, and says from
and that its place should be first in his re-
what he has seen, and all he has heard, Gar-
gard. One night of the run of the Minor, rick will have more to regret when either of
when peers had been sent away from the them dies than any man in the kingdom.
overcrowded theatre, he put himself to grave And then poor fellow, he fears he has ex-
inconvenience that he might get Gray and plained himself imperfectly. "I do not know
Mason into a side-box; when a flippant fine whether the expression be clear in the last
lady of his theatre complained of the hum- period but one, but I mean your separation,
drum man Doctor Goldsmith was in the whichever occasions it but in truth," he
green-room compared with the figure he adds, "I am very weak, in pain, and can
made in his poetry, he explained to her with procure no sleep but by the aid of opiates.
delicate wit that the reason of it was that the Oh! it is incredible all that I have suffered."
Muses were better companions than the Play- Yet he hopes he may still be spared to ex-
ers; yet at the same time, at his dinners, press in person some part of his thankfulness
Cooke tells us, where his guests of rank and to dear Mr. Garrick for all his attention and
fashion were sure always to find themselves goodness.
among writers and actors, he never busied

Mr. Selwyn mentioned that Foote, having received much attention from the Eton boys, in showing him about the College, collected them round him in the quadrangle, and said, "Now, young gentlemen, what can I do for you to show you how much I am obliged to you?" "Tell us, Mr. Foote," said the leader, "the best thing you ever said." "Why," says Foote, "I once saw a little blackguard imp of a chimney sweeper mounted on a noble steed, prancing and curv.tting in all the pride and magnificence of nature,-There, said I, goes Warburton on Shakespeare."---Diary of a Lover of Literature, by Thomas Green.

While these letters thus display the real
kindness of heart that existed between these
celebrated men, old Lord Chesterfield was
telling Faulkner with eager satisfaction that
Heaven had avenged his cause by punishing
his adversary in the part offending. The
same thought had of course occurred to the
satirist himself. "Now I shall take off old
Faulkner indeed to the life!" was the first
remark he made when what he had to suffer
was announced to him.

Such compensation for the suffering as the
Duke of York's influence with his brother