first sneers, in the early editions of the Dunciad and elsewhere, Cibber took good - humouredly enough. As Pope grew more abusive, the other became aggressive in self-defence, and by his retaliatory pamphlets and scurrilous stories had the satisfaction of making his sensitive foe writhe with vexation. Cibber had the misfortune to have Fielding also for a persistent enemy, for reasons not so easily discovered. Fielding was severe on him for his alterations on Shakespeare's plays, of one of which Cibber had self-complacently said, 'I have endeavoured to make it more like a play than I found it in Shakespeare.' Strange to say, Cibber's modification of Richard III., with the famous line 'Off with his head! so much for Buckingham!' had almost undisputed possession of the stage in London till Mr Irving restored the Shakespearean tradition. The Nonjuror, an adaptation of Molière's Tartuffe, was of course ultra-loyal, and survives in The Hypocrite, still occasionally performed. Towards the close of the nineteenth century Mr Augustus Daly and his American company revived She Would and She Would Not, unquestionably one of Cibber's best comedies. His own Apology for the Life of Mr Colley Cibber, Comedian (1740; new edition by Lowe, 1888), is a greater literary success than any of his plays; it is a really interesting autobiography as well as a lively history of the stage in his own time, though the statements are at times both vague and inaccurate.-His son, Theophilus (1703-58), was also an actor and dramatist. The following extract from She Would and She Would Not deals with two ladies travelling disguised as men, an attendant, and An Innkeeper's Welcome. Host. Did you call, gentlemen? Trappanti. Yes, and bawl too, sir: here, the gentlemen are almost famished, and nobody comes near 'em : what have you in the house now that will be ready presently? Host. You may have what you please, sir. Host. Sir, we have no partridges; but we'll get you what you please in a moment: we have a very good neck of mutton, sir; if you please it shall be clapt down in a moment. Hyp. Have you no pigeons or chickens? Host. Truly, sir, we have no fowl in the house at present; if you please, you may have any thing else in Trap. Pox on thee, hast thou nothing but any-thingelse in the house? Host. Very good mutton, sir. Hyp. Prithee get us a breast then. Host. Breast! Don't you love the neck, sir? Hyp. Ha' ye nothing in the house but the neck? Host. Really, sir, we don't use to be so unprovided, but at present we have nothing else left. Trap. Faith, sir, I don't know but a nothing-else may be very good meat, when any-thing-else is not to be had. Hyp. Then prithee, friend, let's have thy neck of mutton before that is gone too. Trap. Sir, he shall lay it down this minute, I'll see it done: gentlemen, I'll wait upon ye presently; for a minute I must beg your pardon, and leave to lay the cloth myself. Here perhaps I may again seem to be vain; but if all these facts are true (as true they are) how can I help it? Why am I obliged to conceal them? The merit of the best of them is not so extraordinary as to have warned me to be nice upon it; and the praise due to them is so small a fish, it was scarce worth while to throw my line into the water for it. If I confess my vanity while a boy, can it be vanity when a man to remember it? And if I have a tolerable feature, will not that as much belong to my picture as an imperfection? In a word, from what I have mentioned, I would observe only this; that when we are conscious of the least comparative merit in ourselves, we should take as much care to conceal the value we set upon it as if it were a real defect. To be elated or vain upon it, is showing your money before people in want; ten to one but some who may think you have too much may borrow, or pick your pocket, before you get home. He who assumes praise to himself, the world will think overpays himself. Even the suspicion of being vain ought as much to be dreaded as the guilt itself. Cæsar was of the same opinion in regard to his wife's chastity. Praise, though it may be our due, is not like a bankbill, to be paid upon demand; to be valuable it must be voluntary. When we are dunned for it, we have a right and privilege to refuse it. If compulsion insists upon it, it can only be paid, as persecution in points of faith is, in a counterfeit coin; and who ever believed occasional conformity to be sincere? Nero, the most vain coxcomb of a tyrant that ever breathed, could not raise an unfeigned applause of his harp by military execution; even where praise is deserved, ill-nature and self-conceit (passions that poll a majority of mankind) will with less reluctance part with their money than their approbation. Men of the greatest merit are forced to stay till they die, before the world will fairly make up their account; then indeed you have a chance for your full due, because it is less grudged when you are incapable of enjoying it: then perhaps even malice shall heap praises upon your memory, though not for your sake, but that your surviving competitors may suffer by a comparison. It is from the same principle that satire shall have a thousand readers where panegyric has one. When I therefore find my name at length in the satirical works of our most celebrated living author, I never look upon those lines as malice meant to me (for he knows I never provoked it) but profit to himself: one of his points must be to have many readers. He considers that my face and name are more known than those of many thousands of more consequence in the kingdom; that therefore, right or wrong, a lick at the laureat will always be a sure bait, ad captandum vulgus, to catch him little readers; and that to gratify the unlearned, by now and then interspersing those merry sacrifices of an old acquaintance to their taste, is a piece of quite right poetical craft. But as a little bad poetry is the greatest crime he lays to my charge, I am willing to subscribe to his opinion of it. That this sort of wit is one of the easiest ways too of pleasing the generality of readers, is evident from the comfortable subsistence which our weekly retailers of politics have been known to pick up, merely by making bold with a government that had unfortunately neglected to find their genius a better employment. Hence too arises all that flat poverty of censure and invective that so often has a run in our public papers, upon the success of a new author; when, God knows, there is seldom above one writer, among hundreds in being at the same time, whose satire a man of common sense ought to be moved at. When a master in the art is angry, then indeed we ought to be alarmed! How terrible a weapon is satire in the hand of a great genius! Yet even there how liable is prejudice to misuse it! How far, when general, it may reform our morals, or what cruelties it may inflict by being angrily particular, is perhaps above my reach to determine. I shall therefore only beg leave to interpose what I feel for others whom it may personally have fallen upon. When I read those mortifying lines of our most eminent author in his character of Atticus-(Atticus, whose genius in verse, and whose morality in prose, has been so justly admired)-though I am charmed with the poetry, my imagination is hurt at the severity of it; and though I allow the satirist to have had personal provocation, yet methinks, for that very reason, he ought not to have troubled the public with it. For, as it is observed in the 242d Tatler, 'in all terms of reproof, where the sentence appears to arise from personal hatred or passion, it is not then made the cause of mankind, but a misunderstanding between two persons.' But if such kind of satire has its incontestable greatness, if its exemplary brightness may not mislead inferior wits into a barbarous imitation of its severity, then I have only admired the verses, and exposed myself by bringing them under so scrupulous a reflection. But the pain which the acrimony of those verses gave me is in some measure allayed, in finding that this inimitable writer, as he advances in years, has since had candour enough to celebrate the same person for his visible merit. Happy genius! whose verse, like the eye of beauty, can heal the deepest wounds with the least glance of favour. Since I am got so far into this subject, you must give me leave to go through all I have a mind to say upon it; because I am not sure that in a more proper place my memory may be so full of it. I cannot find therefore from what reason satire is allowed more license than comedy, or why either of them (to be admired) ought not to be limited by decency and justice. Let Juvenal and Aristophanes have taken what liberties they please, if the learned have nothing more than their antiquity justify their laying about them at that enormous rate, I shall wish they had a better excuse for them. The personal ridicule and scurrility thrown upon Socrates, which Plutarch too condemns, and the boldness of Juvenal in writing real names over guilty characters, I cannot think are to be pleaded in right of our modern liberties of the same kind. Facit indignatio versum may be a very spirited expression, and seems to give a reader hopes of a lively entertainment; but I am afraid reproof is in unequal hands, when anger is its executioner; and though an outrageous invective may carry some truth in it, yet it will never have that natural easy credit with us which we give to the laughing ironies of a cool head. The satire that can smile circum præcordia ludit, and seldom fails to bring the reader quite over to his side, whenever ridicule and folly are at variance. But when a person satirized is used with the extremest rigour, he may sometimes meet with compassion instead of contempt, and throw back the odium that was designed for him upon the author. When I would therefore disarm the satirist of this indignation, I mean little more than that I would take from him all private or personal prejudice, and would still leave him as much general vice to scourge as he pleases, and that with as much fire and spirit as art and nature demand to enliven his work and keep his reader awake. (From the Apology.) Charles Macklin (born between 1690 and 1697; died 1797), actor and playwright, was born in the north of Ireland, the son of William M'Laughlin. After a wild, unsettled youth he went on the stage, and in 1733 was at Drury Lane; and, steadily rising in public favour, in 1741 he appeared as Shylock. From this time till his retirement in 1789 he was accounted one of the best actors whether in tragedy or comedy, in passion or buffoonery. Generous, high-spirited, but irascible, in 1735 he killed a brother-actor in a quarrel over a wig, and was tried for murder; and he died in extreme old age, at least a centenarian, in 1797. He wrote a tragedy and several farces and comedies; the farce Love à-la-Mode (1759) and farcical comedy The Man of the World (1781, only were printed. Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, a burlesque character, has become part of our literary tradition. The dialect he uses belongs also to the realm of burlesque. What are supposed to be Scotch words and Scotch pronunciations of English words are scattered irregularly and arbitrarily through the speeches of the Scottish interlocutors. Most of these are actually Scottish in some sense, but by no means show the peculiarities that then clung to the utterance of well-born Scotsmen and Scotswomen. And many Scotch words are invented (as they still are in England) on false | analogies. Thus because baith in Scotch corre sponds to the English both, and aith to oath, it is assumed (quite erroneously) that traith will be Scotch for troth--hence we have 'gude traith' constantly and absurdly. So because bone in England is bane in Scotland, only is made to become ainly in a Scottish mouth! Nai does duty for a Scotsman's nae, na, and no; a past tense ganged is supplied to gang; and the provincial English thof (for though) is taken as normal Scotch. Sir Pertinax's son Egerton, in love with a penniless girl, has refused to become a party to his father's scheme to secure for him the daughter of a dissolute (Scotch) peer; and in a heated conversation between father and son we have a luminous exposition of Sir Pertinax's Rule of Life. Sir Pertinax. Zounds! sir, I will not hear a word about it: I insist upon it you are wrong; you should have paid your court till my lord, and not have scrupled swallowing a bumper or twa, or twenty till oblige him. Egerton. Sir, I did drink his toast in a bumper. Sir P. Yes, you did; but how, how? just as a bairn takes physic; with aversions and wry faces, which my lord observed: then, to mend the matter, the moment that he and the Colonel got intill a drunken dispute about religion, you slyly slunged away. Eger. I thought, sir, it was time to go, when my lord insisted upon half-pint bumpers. that Sir P. Sir, that was not levelled at you, but at the Colonel, in order to try his bottom; but they aw agreed you and I should drink out of sma' glasses. Eger. But, sir, I beg pardon: I did not choose to drink any more. Sir P. But, zoons! sir, I tell you there was a necessity for your drinking more. Eger. A necessity! in what respect, pray, sir? Sir P. Why, sir, I have a certain point to carry, independent of the lawyers, with my lord, in this agreement of your marriage; about which I am afraid we shall have a warm squabble; and therefore I wanted your assistance in it. Eger. But how, sir, could my drinking contribute to assist you in your squabble? Sir P. Yes, sir, it would have contributed-and greatly have contributed to assist me. Eger. How so, sir? Sir P. Nay, sir, it might have prevented the squabble entirely; for as my lord is proud of you for a son-in-law, and is fond of your little French songs, your stories, and your bon-mots, when you are in the humour; and guin you had but staid, and been a little jolly, and drank half a score bumpers with him, till he had got a little tipsy, I am sure, when we had him in that mood, we might have settled the point as I could wish it among ourselves, before the lawyers came: but now, sir, I do not ken what will be the consequence. Eger. But when a man is intoxicated, would that have been a seasonable time to settle business, sir? Sir P. The most seasonable, sir; for sir, when my lord is in his cups, his suspicion is asleep, and his heart is aw jollity, fun, and guid fellowship; and sir, can there be a happier moment than that for a bargain, or to settle a dispute with a friend? What is it you shrug up your shoulders at, sir? Eger. At my own ignorance, sir: for I understand neither the philosophy nor the morality of your doctrine. Sir P. I know you do not, sir: and, what is worse, you never wull understand it, as you proceed in one word, Charles, I have often told you, and now again I tell you, once for aw, that the manoeuvres of pliability are as necessary to rise in the world, as wrangling and logical subtlety are to rise at the bar: why you see, sir, I have acquired a noble fortune, a princely fortune: and how do you think I raised it? Eger. Doubtless, sir, by your abilities. Sir P. Doubtless, sir, you are a blockhead': nae, sir, I'll tell you how I raised it: sir, I raised it-by booing, [hows ridiculously low] by booing: sir, I never could stand straight in the presence of a great mon, but always booed, and booed, and booed-as it were by instinct. Eger. How do you mean by instinct, sir? Sir P. How do I mean by instinct! Why, sir, I mean by-by-by the instinct of interest, sir, which is the universal instinct of mankind. Sir, it is wonderful to think what a cordial, what an amicable-nay, what an infallible influence booing has upon the pride and vanity of human nature. Charles, answer me sincerely, have you a mind to be convinced of the force of my doctrine by example and demonstration? Eger. Certainly, sir. Sir P. Then, sir, as the greatest favour I can confer upon you, I'll give you a short sketch of the stages of my booing, as an excitement, and a landmark for you to boo by, and as an infallible nostrum for a man of the world to rise in the world. Eger. Sir, I shall be proud to profit by your experi ence. Sir P. Vary weel, sir; sit ye down then, sit you down here. [They sit down.] And now, sir, you must recall to your thoughts, that your grandfather was a mon whose penurious income of captain's half-pay was the sum-total of his fortune; and, sir, aw my provision fra him was a modicum of Latin, an expertness in arithmetic, and a short system of worldly counsel; the principal ingredients of which were, a persevering industry, a rigid economy, a smooth tongue, a pliability of temper, and a constant attention to make every mon well pleased with himself. Eger. Very prudent advice, sir. Sir P. Therefore, sir, I lay it before you. Now, sir, with these materials, I set out a raw-boned stripling fra the North, to try my fortune with them here in the south; and my first step in the world was a beggarly clerkship in Sawny Gordon's counting-house, here, in the city of London: which you'll say afforded but a barren sort of a prospect. Eger. It was not a very fertile one, indeed, sir. Sir P. The reverse, the reverse: weel, sir, seeing myself in this unprofitable situation, I reflected deeply; I cast about my thoughts morning, noon, and night, and marked every mon, and every mode of prosperity; at last, I concluded that a matrimonial adventure, prudently conducted, would be the readiest gait I could gang for the bettering of my condition; and accordingly I set about it. Now, sir, in this pursuit, beauty! beauty! ah! beauty often struck my een, and played about my heart and fluttered, and beat, and knocked, and knocked but the devil an entrance I ever let it get: for I observed, sir, that beauty is, generally,-a proud, vain, saucy, expensive, impertinent sort of a commodity. Eger. Very justly observed. Sir P. And therefore, sir, I left it to prodigals and coxcombs, that could afford to pay for it; and, in its stead, sir, mark !-I looked out for an ancient, weeljointured, superannuated dowager; a consumptive, toothless, phthisicky, wealthy widow; or a shrivelled, cadaverous piece of deformity, in the shape of an izzard, or an appersi-and-or, in short, ainything, ainything that had the siller-the siller-for that, sir, was the north star of my affections. Do you take me, sir? was nae that right? Eger. O! doubtless, doubtless, sir. Sir P. Now, sir, where do you think I ganged to look for this woman with the siller? nae till court, nae till playhouses or assemblies; nae, sir, I ganged till the kirk, till the anabaptist, independent, Bradlonian, and Muggletonian meetings; till the morning and evening service of churches and chapels of ease, and till the midnight, melting, conciliating love feasts of the methodists; and there, sir, at last, I fell upon an old, slighted, antiquated, musty maiden, that looked-ha, ha, ha! she looked just like a skeleton in a surgeon's glass case. Now, sir, this miserable object was religiously angry with herself and aw the world; had nae comfort but in metaphysical visions and supernatural deliriums-ha, ha, ha! Sir, she was as madas mad as a Bedlamite. Eger. Not improbable, sir: there are numbers of poor creatures in the same condition. Sir P. O! numbers-numbers. Now, sir, this cracked creature used to pray, and sing, and sigh, and groan, and weep, and wail, and gnash her teeth constantly, morning and evening, at the tabernacle in Moorfields. And as soon as I found she had the siller, aha! good traith, I plumped me down upon my knees, close by her cheek by jowl-and prayed, and sighed, and sung, and groaned, and gnashed my teeth as vehemently as she could do for the life of her; ay, and turned up the whites of mine een, till the strings awmost cracked again. I watched her motions, handed her till her chair, waited on her home, got most religiously intimate with her in a week; married her in a fortnight, buried her in a month; touched the siller; and with a deep suit of mourning, a melancholy port, a sorrowful visage, and a joyful heart, I began the world again; (rises) and this, sir, was the first boo, that is the first effectual boo I ever made till the vanity of human nature. you understand this doctrine? Eger. Perfectly well, sir. Now, sir, do Sir P. Ay, but was it not right? was it not ingenious, and weel hit off? Eger. Certainly, sir: extremely well. Sir P. My next boo, sir, was till your ain mother, whom I ran away with fra the boarding-school; by the interest of whose family I got a guid smart place in the treasury; and, sir, my vary next step was in till parliament; the which I entered with as ardent and as determined an ambition as ever agitated the heart of Cæsar himself. Sir, I booed, and watched, and hearkened, and ran about, backwards and forwards, and attended, and dangled upon the then great mon, till I got into the vary bowels of his confidence; and then sir, I wriggled, and wrought, and wriggled, till I wriggled myself among the very thick of them. Ha! I got my snack of the clothing, the foraging, the contracts, the lottery tickets, and all the political bonuses, till at length, sir, I became a much wealthier man than one half of the golden calves I had been so long a booing to: and was nae that booing to some purpose? Eger. It was indeed, sir. Sir P. But are you convinced of the guid effects and of the utility of booing? Eger. Thoroughly, sir. Sir P. Sir, it is infallible. But, Charles, ah! while I was thus booing, and wriggling, and raising this princely fortune, ah! I met with many heartsores and disappointments fra the want of literature, eloquence, and other popular abeelities. Sir, guin I could but have spoken in the house, I should have done the deed in half the time; but the instant I opened my mouth there they aw fell a laughing at me; aw which deficiencies, sir, I determined, at any expense, to have supplied by the polished education of a son, who I hoped would one day raise the house of Macsycophant till the highest pitch of ministerial ambition. This, sir, is my plan; I have done my part of it; Nature has done hers; you are popular, you are eloquent; aw parties like and respect you; and now, sir, it only remains for you to be directed-completion follows. Eger. Your liberality, sir, in my education, is an obligation I shall ever remember with the deepest filial gratitude. Sir P. Vary weel, sir: but, Charles, have you had any conversation yet with Lady Rodolpha, about the day of your marriage; your liveries, your equipage; or your domestic establishment? Eger. Not yet, sir. Sir P. Poh! why there again, now, you are wrong; vary wrong. Eger. Sir, we have not had an opportunity. Sir P. Why, Charles, you are very tardy in this business. Lord Lumbercourt. [Sings without, flushed with wine.] 'What have we with day to do?' Sir P. O! here comes my lord. Lord L. 'Sons of care, 'twas made for you.' [Enters, drinking a dish of coffee.] 'Sons of care, 'twas made for you.' Very good coffee indeed, Mr Tomlins. "Sons of care, 'twas made for you.' Here, Mr Tomlins. Tom. Will your lordship please to have another dish? Lord L. No more, Mr Tomlins. Ha, ha, ha! my host of the Scotch pints, we have had warm work. Sir P. Yes, you pushed the bottle about, my lord, with the joy and vigour of a bacchanal. Lord L. That I did, my dear Mac; no loss of time with me: I have but three motions, old boy-charge, toast, fire-and off we go. Ha, ha, ha, that's my exercise. Sir P. And fine warm exercise it is, my lord; especially with the half-pint glasses. Another characteristic speech by Sir Pertinax, addressed also to his son, is: Conscience! why you are mad! Did you ever hear any man talk of conscience in political matters? Conscience, quotha! I have been in parliament these three and thraty years, and never heard the term made use of before. Sir, it is an unparliamentary word, and you will be laughed at for it. There are careful Lives of Macklin by F. A. Congreve (1798) and Parry (1891). Those by Kirkman (1799) and Cooke (1804) must be used with caution. George Lillo (1693-1739), born in London of mixed Dutch and English Dissenting parentage, succeeded his father as a jeweller, carried on the business successfully, and left a modest fortune. Devoting his leisure hours to writing tragedies founded on the sorrows of real life in the lower and middling ranks, he wrote in all seven dramas, among them George Barnwell, Fatal Curiosity, and Arden of Feversham. The last is a weak version of an anonymous tragedy written in 1592, where, and in the Yorkshire Tragedy and one or two other plays founded on domestic occur. rences, the style of Lillo may be said to have been foreshadowed. These realistic plays, however (see Vol. I. p. 334), were rude and irregular, and were driven off the stage by the romantic drama of Shakespeare and his successors. At all events such domestic tragedies,' which had disappeared during the Commonwealth and Restoration, were revived by Lillo and his school, who had great influence on French dramatists. Lillo had a competent knowledge of dramatic art, and his style was generally smooth and easy. His George Barnwell (1731) describes the career of a London apprentice hurried on to ruin and murder by an infamous woman, who at last delivers him up to justice and to an ignominious death. The characters are natural; and George Barnwell drew more tears than the rants of Alexander the Great! Lillo's Fatal Curiosity (1736) is a far higher work. Driven by destitution, an old man and his wife murder a rich stranger who takes shelter in their house, and discover too late that they have murdered their son returned after a long absence abroad. The harrowing details of this tragedy are powerfully depicted; the agonies of old Wilmot, the father, make an appalling picture. The other plays were Marina, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Pericles; Scanderbeg, or the Christian Hero; Elmerick, based on a passage of Hungarian history; and a feeble masque, Britannia and Batavia. Fielding's friendship helped Lillo's popularity; and after the dramatist's death Fielding said of him that 'he had the spirit of an old Roman, joined to the innocence of a primitive Christian.' A parallel to Lillo's realism has been sought, not merely in a succession of imitations on the stage, but in Fielding's novels and in Lessing's rebellion against French taste in the German theatre. The execution of Lillo's plays is unequal, and some of his characters are dull and commonplace; but he was a forcible painter of the darker shades of humble life. His plays kept the stage till the close of the century; since then the taste for murders and public executions has declined. Base poverty and all its abject train; At our approach, and once more bend before us. [little pains Old Wilmot [entering]. The mind contented, with how The wandering senses yield to soft repose, And die to gain new life! He's fallen asleep Already-happy man! What dost thou think, My Agnes, of our unexpected guest? Dost thou hear me? He seems to me a youth of great humanity : Should this be known, And who shall know it? Wil. There is a kind of pride, a decent dignity Due to ourselves, which, spite of our misfortunes, May be maintained and cherished to the last. To live without reproach, and without leave To quit the world, shews sovereign contempt And noble scorn of its relentless malice. Agnes. Shews sovereign madness, and a scorn of sense! Pursue no further this detested theme: I will not die. I will not leave the world For all that you can urge, until compelled. Wil. To chase a shadow when the setting sun Is darting his last rays, were just as wise As your anxiety for fleeting life, Now the last means for its support are failing: Were famine not as mortal as the sword This warmth might be excused. But take thy choice: Die how you will, you shall not die alone. |