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CHAPTER XIII
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY

The great players, by giving action to the poet's words, illustrated the quaintly expressed idea of the sweet singer who says:

 
"What Thought can think another Thought can mend."
 

Nevertheless, the theatres had not proved profitable. The public greeted acrobats with louder acclaim than any poet. King William cared more to see the feats of Kentish Patagonians than to listen to Shakspeare; and, for a time, Dogget, by creating laughter, reaped more glittering reward than Betterton, by drawing tears. The first season, however, of the eighteenth century was commenced with great spirit. Drury Lane opened with Cibber's "Love Makes a Man," an adaptation from Beaumont and Fletcher. Cibber was the Clodio; Wilks, Carlos; and Mrs. Verbruggen, Louisa. Five other new pieces were produced in this brief season. This was followed by the "Humour of the Age," a dull comedy, by Baker, who generally gave his audience something to laugh at, and showed some originality in more than one of his five pieces. He was an attorney's son, and an Oxford University man; but he took to writing for the stage, had an ephemeral success, and died early, in worse plight than any author, even in the days when authors occasionally died in evil condition. The third novelty was Settle's mad operatic tragedy, the "Siege of Troy,"⁷² with a procession in which figured six white elephants! Griffin returned to the stage from the army, with "Captain" attached to his name, and played Ulysses. The dulness and grandeur of Settle's piece were hardly relieved by Farquhar's sequel to his "Constant Couple," "Sir Harry Wildair." The reputation of the former piece secured for the latter a run of nine nights, so were successes calculated in those early days. Wilks laid down Sir Harry to enact the distresses of Lorraine, in Mrs. Trotter's new play, "The Unhappy Penitent," which gave way in turn for Durfey's intriguing comedy, "The Bath, or the Western Lass," in which Mrs. Verbruggen's "Gillian Homebred," made her the darling of the town. In the same season, the company at Lincoln's Inn Fields produced a like number of new pieces. In the first, the "Double Distress," Booth, Verbruggen, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle wasted their talents. Mrs. Pix, the author, having failed in this mixture of rhyme and blank verse, failed in a greater degree in her next play in prose, the "Czar of Muscovy." Booth and Mrs. Barry could do nothing with such materials. The masters forthwith enacted the "Lady's Visiting Day," by Burnaby. In this comedy, Betterton played the gallant lover, Courtine, to the Lady Lovetoy of Mrs. Barry. The lady here would only marry a prince. Courtine wins her as Prince Alexander of Muscovy; and the audience laughed as they recognised therein the incident of the merry Lord Montagu wooing the mad Duchess-Dowager of Albemarle, as the Empress of China, and marrying her under that very magnificent dignity, to any inferior to which the Duchess had declared she would not stoop.

The hilarity of the public was next challenged by the production of Granville (Lord Lansdowne's) "Jew of Venice," – "improved" from Shakspeare, who was described as having furnished the rude sketches which had been amended and adorned by Granville's new master-strokes!⁷³

Gildon's dull piece of Druidism, "Love's Victim, or the Queen of Wales," appeared and failed,⁷⁴ notwithstanding its wonderful cast; but Corye's "Cure for Jealousy" brought the list of novelties merrily to a close; for though the audience saw no fun in it, they did in the anger of the author – a little man, with a whistle of a voice, who abandoned the law for the stage, and was as weak an actor as he was an author. He attributed his failure to the absurd admiration of the public for Farquhar. He was absurd enough to say so in print, and to speak contemptuously of poor George's "Jubilee Farce." In those wicked days, literary men loved not each other!

In 1702, the Drury Lane Company brought out eight new pieces, and worked indefatigably. They commenced with Dennis's "Comical Gallant," – an "improved" edition of Shakspeare's "Merry Wives," in which Powell made but a sorry Falstaff. This piece gave way to one entirely original, and very much duller, the "Generous Conqueror," of the ex-fugitive Jacobite, Bevil Higgons. In this poor play, Bevil illustrated the right divine and impeccability of his late liege sovereign, King James; denounced the Revolution, by implication; did in his only play what Dr. Sacheverell did in the pulpit, and made even his fellow Jacobites laugh by his bouncing line, "The gods and god-like kings can do no wrong."

Laughter more genuine might have been expected from the next novelty, Farquhar's "Inconstant;" but that clever adaptation of Fletcher's "Wild-Goose Chase," with Wilks for Young Mirabel, did not affect the town so hilariously as I have seen it do when Charles Kemble, gracefully, but somewhat too demonstratively, enacted the part of that gay, silly, but lucky gentleman. Still less pleased were the public with the next play, tossed up for them in a month, and condemned in a night, Burnaby's "Modish Husband." Of course, this husband, Lord Promise, is a man who loves his neighbour's wife, and cares not who loves his own. An honest man in this comedy, Sir Lively Cringe, does not think ill of married women, and he is made a buffoon and more, accordingly. When Lady Cringe, in the dark, holds her lover Lionel with one hand, her husband with the other, and declares that her fingers are locked with those of the man she loves best in the world, Sir Lively believes her. In this wise did the stage hold the mirror up to nature at the beginning of the last century.

Not more edifying nor much more successful was Vanbrugh's "False Friend," a comedy in which there is a murder enacted before the audience! What the house lost by it was fully made up by the unequivocal success of the next new piece, the "Funeral, or Grief à la Mode." The author was then six and twenty years of age; this was his first piece, and his name was Steele. All that was known of him then was, that he was a native of Dublin, had been fellow-pupil at the Charter House with Addison, had left the University without a degree, and was said to have lost the succession to an estate in Wexford by enlisting as "a private gentleman in the Horse Guards;" a phrase significant enough, as the proper designation of that body, at this day, is "Gentlemen of her Majesty's Royal Horse Guards." He was the wildest and wittiest young dog about town, when in 1701, he published, with a dedication to Lord Cutts, to whom he had been private secretary, and through whom he had been appointed to a company in Lord Lucas's Fusiliers, his Christian Hero, a treatise in which he showed what he was not, by showing what a man ought to be. It brought the poor fellow into incessant perplexity, and even peril. Some thought him a hypocrite, others provoked him as a coward, all measured his sayings and doings by his maxims in his Christian Hero, and Dick Steele was suffering in the regard of the town, when he resolved to redeem the character which he could not keep up to the level of his religious hero, by composing a comedy! He thoroughly succeeded, and there were troopers enough in the house to have beat the rest of the audience into shouting approbation, had they not been well inclined to do so spontaneously. The "Funeral" is the merriest and the most perfect of Steele's comedies. The characters are strongly marked, the wit genial, and not indecent. Steele was among the first who set about reforming the licentiousness of the old comedy. His satire in the "Funeral" is not against virtue, but vice and silliness. When the two lively ladies in widow's weeds meet, Steele's classical memory served him with a good illustration. "I protest, I wonder," says Lady Brumpton (Mrs. Verbruggen), "how two of us thus clad can meet with a grave face." The most genuine humour in the piece was that applied against lawyers; but more especially in the satire against undertakers, and all their mockery of woe. Take the scene in which Sable (Johnson) is giving instructions to his men, and reviewing them the while: – "Ha, you're a little more upon the dismal. This fellow has a good mortal look – place him near the corpse. That wainscot-face must be a-top o' the stairs. That fellow's almost in a fright, that looks as if he were full of some strange misery, at the end o' the hall! So! – But I'll fix you all myself. Let's have no laughing now, on any provocation. Look yonder at that hale, well-looking puppy! You ungrateful scoundrel, didn't I pity you, take you out of a great man's service, and show you the pleasure of receiving wages? Didn't I give you ten, then fifteen, then twenty shillings a-week, to be sorrowful? And the more I give you the gladder you are!" This sort of humour was new, no wonder it made a sensation. Steele became the spoiled child of the town. "Nothing," said he, "ever makes the town so fond of a man as a successful play." Old Sunderland and younger Halifax patronised Steele for his own and for Addison's sake; and the author of the new comedy received the appointment of Writer of the Gazette.

After a closing of the houses during Bartholomew Fair, the Drury Lane Company met again, and again won the town by Cibber's "She Would and She Would Not." This excellent comedy contrasts well with the same author's also admirable comedy, the "Careless Husband." In the latter there is much talk of action; in the former there is much action during very good talk. There is much fun, little vulgarity, sharp epigrams on the manners and morals of the times, good-humoured satire against popery, and a succession of incidents which never flags from the rise to the fall of the curtain. The plot may be not altogether original, and there is an occasional incorrectness in the local colour; but taken as a whole, it is a very amusing comedy, and it kept the stage even longer than Steele's "Funeral."

Far less successful was Drury with the last and eighth new play of this season, Farquhar's "Twin Rivals," for the copyright of which the author received £15, 6s. from Tonson. Farquhar, perhaps, took more pains with this than with any of his plays, and has received praise in return; but after Steele and Cibber's comedies, the "Twin Rivals" had only what the French call a succès d'estime.

To the eight pieces of Drury, Lincoln's Inn opposed half a dozen, only one of which has come down to our times, namely, Rowe's "Tamerlane," with which the company opened the season: – Tamerlane, Betterton; Bajazet, Verbruggen; Axalla, Booth; Arpasia, Mrs. Barry. In this piece, Rowe left sacred for profane history, and made his tragedy so politically allusive to Louis XIV. in the character of Bajazet, and to William III. in Tamerlane, that it was for many years represented at each theatre on every recurring 4th and 5th of November, the anniversary of the birth and of the landing of King William. In Dublin, the anniversary of the great delivery from "Popery and wooden shoes," was marked by a piece of gallantry on the part of the Lord Lieutenant, or, in his absence, the Lords Justices – namely, by arrangement with the manager, admission to the boxes was free to every lady disposed to honour the theatre with her presence!

Rowe has made a virtuous hero of Tamerlane, without at all causing him to resemble William of Orange; but, irrespective of this, there is life in this tragedy, which, with some of the bluster of the old, had some of the sentiment of a new school. In 1746, when the Scottish Rebellion had been entirely suppressed, it was acted on the above anniversaries with much attendant enthusiasm, Mrs. Pritchard speaking an epilogue written for the occasion by Horace Walpole, and licensed by the Chamberlain, the Duke of Grafton, notwithstanding a compliment to his Grace, which Walpole thought might induce the Duke, out of sheer modesty, to withhold his official sanction. Tamerlane has been a favourite part with many actors. Lady Morgan's father, Mr. Owenson, made his first appearance in it, under Garrick's rule; but a Tamerlane with a strong Irish brogue and comic redundant action created different sensations from those intended by the author, and though the audience did not hiss, they laughed abundantly.

To "Tamerlane" succeeded "Antiochus the Great," a tragedy, full of the old love, bombast, and murder. The author was a Mrs. Jane Wiseman, who was a servant in the family of Mr. Wright, of Oxford, where, having filled her mind with plays and romances, she wrote this hyper-romantic play, and having married a well-to-do Westminster vintner, named Holt, she succeeded in seeing it fail, as it well deserved to do.⁷⁵

It seemed as if the king-killing in the plebeian lady's tragedy required some counter-action, and accordingly, Lord Orrery's posthumous play of "Altemira" was next brought forward. There is a true king and also an usurper in this roaring yet sentimental tragedy, in whom Whigs and Tories might recognise the sovereigns whom they respectively adored. One monarch himself complacently remarks: —

 
"Whatever crimes are acted for a crown,
The gods forgive, when once that crown's put on."
 

To touch the Lord's anointed is an unpardonable sin; but if the Whigs were rendered uneasy by this sentiment, they probably found comfort in the speech wherein Clerimont⁷⁶ (Betterton), while owning respect for the deprived monarch, confesses the fitness of being loyal to the one who displaced him.

To these three tragedies succeeded three now-forgotten comedies, "The Gentleman Cully," in which Booth fooled it to the top of his bent, in the only English comedy which ends without a marriage. The "Beaux' Duel," and the "Stolen Heiress," two of Mrs. Carroll's (she had not yet become Mrs. Centlivre) bolder plagiarisms from old dramatists, brought the Lincoln's Inn season to a close.

In the season of 1703, Drury Lane produced seven, and Lincoln's Inn Fields six, pieces. The first, at Drury, was Baker's "Tunbridge Walks," the manners of which smack of the old loose times. Then came Durfey's "Old Mode and the New," a long, dull, satirical comedy, on the fashions of Elizabeth's days and those of Anne. Durfey was then at his twenty-eighth comedy, and in the decline of his powers. Little flourished about him save that terrific beak which served for a nose, and also for an excuse for his dislike to have his likeness taken. In other respects, the wit, on whose shoulder Charles had leaned, to whose songs William had listened, and at them Anne even then laughed, was in vogue, but not with the theatrical public.

A new author tempted that public, in April, with a comedy, entitled "Fair Example, or the Modish Citizens," by Estcourt, a strolling player, but soon afterwards a clever actor in this company, a man whom Addison praised, and a good fellow, whom Steele admired. His career had, hitherto, been a strange one. He ran away from a respectable home at Tewkesbury, when fifteen, to play Roxalana with some itinerants, and fled from the company, on being pursued thither by his friends, in the dress lent him by a kind-hearted girl of the troop. In this dress, Estcourt made his way on foot to Chipping Norton, at the inn of which place the weary supposed damsel was invited to share the room of the landlord's daughter. Then ensued a scene as comic as any ever invented by dramatist, but from which the parties came off with some perplexity, and no loss of honour. The young runaway was caught and sent home, and thence he was despatched to Hatton Garden, and bound by articles to learn there the apothecary's mystery. It is not known when he broke from these bonds; but it is certain that he again – some say after he had himself failed in the practice of the mystery he had painfully learned, took to the joys and sorrows, trials, triumphs, and temptations of a wandering player's life till 1698, or about that period, when he appeared in Dublin, with success. He was between thirty and forty years of age, when he came to London with the "Fair Example," an adaptation, like the "Confederacy," of Dancour's "Modish Citizens," but not destined to an equal success, despite the acting of Cibber and Norris, and that brilliant triad of ladies, Verbruggen, Oldfield, and Powell. In June, Mrs. Carroll served up Molière's "Médecin malgré lui," in the cold dish called "Love's Contrivance;" and, in the same month, Wilkinson and his sole comedy, "Vice Reclaimed," appeared; and are now forgotten.

Next, Manning tried the judgment of the town with his "All for the Better," a comedy, of triple plots – stolen from old writers. Manning resembled Steele only in leaving the University without a degree. If Steele obtained a Government appointment after his dramatic success, Manning acquired a better after his failure. He was, first, Secretary to our Legation in Switzerland; and, secondly, Envoy to the Cantons; and was about as respectable in diplomacy as in the drama.

Gildon's play of the "Patriot, or the Italian Conspiracy," the last produced this year,⁷⁷ with Mills as Cosmo de Medici, and Wilks as his son, Julio, merits notice only as an instance of the mania for reconstructing accepted stories. Gildon, towards the close of his wayward and silly career, transmuted Lee's ancient Roman "Lucius Junius Brutus," into the modern Italian "Patriot." The public consigned it to oblivion.

During this season, when "Macbeth" was the only one of Shakspeare's plays performed,⁷⁸ the theatre in Dorset Gardens was prepared for opera; and in the summer the company followed Queen Anne to Bath, by command; but there went not with them the most brilliant actress of light comedy that the two centuries had hitherto seen, Mrs. Verbruggen, that sparkling Mrs. Mountfort whose father, Mr. Perceval, was condemned to death for treason against King William, on the day her husband was murdered by Lord Mohun! The Jacobite father was, however, pardoned. Mrs. Mountfort, or Verbruggen, left a successor equal, perhaps superior, to herself, in Mrs. Oldfield.

The season of 1703, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, was distinguished by the success of Rowe's "Fair Penitent," – the one great triumph of the year.⁷⁹ The other novelties require only to be recorded. That most virulent and unscrupulous of Whig partizan-writers, Oldmixon, opened the season with his third and last dramatic essay, "The Governor of Cyprus," supported by Betterton, Booth, Powell, and Mrs. Barry. Oldmixon was a poor dramatist, but he made a tolerable excise officer, – a post which he acquired by his party-writings. He would not, however, be remembered now, but for the pre-eminence for dirt and dulness which Pope has awarded him in the Dunciad. The entire strength of the company, Betterton excepted, was wasted on the comedies, – "Different Widows," by a judicious, anonymous author; "Love Betrayed," Burnaby's last of a poor four, and that a marring of Shakspeare's "Twelfth Night;" and "As you find It" (for Mrs. Porter's benefit, in April). This was the only play written by Charles Boyle, grandson of the dramatist Earl of Orrery, to which title he succeeded, four months after his comedy (the dullest in the English language) had failed. Boyle may have been a worthy antagonist of Bentley, touching the genuineness of the "Epistles of Phalaris;" but he could not vie with such writers of comedy as Cibber, Farquhar, and Steele. The production of the "Fickle Shepherdess," – a ruthless handling of Randolph's fine pastoral, "Amyntas," – pleased but for a few nights, though every woman of note in the company, and all beautiful, played in it, – making love to, or prettily sighing at, or as prettily sulking with, each other. The great event of the season was, undoubtedly, the "Fair Penitent: " Lothario, Powell; Horatio, Betterton; Altamont, Verbruggen; Calista, Mrs. Barry; Lavinia, Mrs. Bracegirdle.

Rowe had, in his "Tamerlane," thundered, after the manner of Dryden: had tried to be as pathetic as Otway, and had employed some of the bombast of Lee. But he lacked strength to make either of the heroes of that resonant tragedy vigorous. In devoting himself, henceforth, to illustrate the woes and weaknesses of heroines, he discovered where his real powers lay; and Calista is one of the most successful of his portraitures. There is gross and unavowed plagiarism from Massinger's "Fatal Dowry," but there is a greater purity of sentiment in Rowe, who leaves, however, much room for improvement in that respect, by his successors. Richardson saw this, when he made of his Lovelace a somewhat purified Lothario. Rowe, however, notwithstanding the weak point in his Fair Penitent, who is more angry at being found out, than sorry for what has happened, has been eminently successful; for all the sympathy of the audience is freely rendered to Calista. The tragedy may still be called an acting play, though it has lost something of the popularity it retained during the last century, when even Edward, Duke of York, and Lady Stanhope, enacted Lothario and Calista, in the once famous "private theatre" in Downing Street. Johnson's criticism is all praise, as regards both fable and treatment. The style is purely English, as might be expected of a writer who said of Dryden, that —

 
"Backed by his friends, th' invader brought along
A crew of foreign words into our tongue,
To ruin and enslave our free-born English song.
Still, the prevailing faction propped his throne,
And to four volumes let his plays run on."
 

Shakspeare, in name, at least, re-appears more frequently on the stage during the Drury Lane season of 1703-4, when "Hamlet," "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Timon of Athens," "Richard III.," the "Tempest," and "Titus Andronicus," were performed.⁸⁰ These, however, were the "improved" editions of the poets. The novelties were, the "Lying Lover," by Steele; "Love, the Leveller;" and the "Albion Queens." It was the season in which great Anne fruitlessly forbade the presence of vizard-masks in the pit, and of gallants on the stage; recommended cleanliness of speech, and denounced the shabby people who occasionally tried to evade the money-takers.⁸¹ Steele, in his play, attempted to support one of the good objects which the Queen had in view; but in striving to be pure, after his idea of purity, and to be moral, after a loose idea of morality, he failed altogether in wit, humour, and invention. He thought to prove himself a good churchman, he said, even in so small a matter as a comedy; and in his character of comic poet, "I have been," he says, "a martyr and confessor for the church, for this play was damned for its piety." This is as broad an untruth as anything uttered by the "Lying Lover" himself, who, when he does express a mawkish sentiment after he has killed a man in his liquor, can only be held to be "a liar," as before. Steele was condemned for stupidity in a piece, the only ray of humour in which pierces through the dirty, noisy, drunken throng of gallows birds in Newgate. That Steele seriously intended his play to be the beginning of an era of "new comedy," is, however, certain. In the prologue, it was said of the author —

 
"He aims to make the coming action move
On the tried laws of Friendship and of Love.
He offers no gross vices to your sight, —
Those too much horror raise, for just delight."
 

Steele's comedy was a step in a right direction; and his great fault was pretending to be half-ashamed of having made it. That it had a "clear stage and no favour," is literally true. It was one of the first pieces played without a mingling of the public with the players; – an evil fashion, which was not entirely suppressed for threescore years after Queen Anne's decree, when Garrick proved more absolute than her majesty. It was a practice which so annoyed Baron, that proudest of French actors, that to suggest to the audience in the house the absurdity of it, he would turn his back on them for a whole act, and play to the audience on the stage. Sometimes the noise was so loud, that an actor's voice could be scarcely heard. "You speak too low!" cried a pit-critic to Defresne. "And you too high!" retorted the actor. The offended pit screamed its indignation, and demanded an abject apology. "Gentlemen," said Defresne, "I never felt the degradation of my position till now;" … and the pit interrupted the bold exordium by rounds of applause, under which he resumed his part.

Of the other pieces produced this season at Drury Lane, it will suffice to say, that "Love the Leveller" was by "G. B., gent.," who ascribes its failure to his having adopted the counsel of friends, and who consoles himself by the thought, that "it found so favourable a reception that the best plays hardly ever met with a fuller audience." Happy man! his piece was at least damned by a full house. The "Albion Queens" was an old play, by Banks, which, dealing with the affairs of England and Scotland, was held to be politically dangerous; but good Queen Anne now licensed it, on the report of its inoffensiveness made by "a nobleman;" and its dulness, relieved by good acting, delighted our easy forefathers for half a century.

Lincoln's Inn failed to distinguish itself this season. Eton had no reason to be proud of the comedy of its alumnus, Walker, "Marry, or Do Worse;" and in the tragedy of "Abra Mulé," with its similes, which continually run away with their rider, the young Master of Arts, Trapp, shows that he was as poor a poet,⁸² in his early days, as that translation of Virgil, which so broke the rest of Mrs. Trapp, proved him to be in his later years, when he was D.D., and Professor of Poetry. Dennis's "Liberty Asserted" only demonstrated how heartily he hated the French; and as there was no dramatist who did so, in the same degree, when the French and the Pretender were very obnoxious, some years later, this thunder of Dennis was revived to stimulate antipathies. Queen Anne's Scottish historiographer did nothing for the English stage, by his comedy of "Love at First Sight," and farces like the "Stage Coach," the "Wits of Woman," and "Squire Trelooby," are only remarkable because Betterton and the leading actors played in them as readily as in "first pieces."

During May Fair, the theatre was closed, some of the actors playing there, at Pinkethman's booth. In the same season they played before the Queen at St. James's, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," with Betterton as Falstaff, which he subsequently acted for his own benefit. This piece, and also "Julius Cæsar," "Othello," and "Timon of Athens," were the plays by or from Shakspeare, which were played this season.

The season of 1704-5, at Drury Lane, now prospering, to the considerable vexation of Kit Rich, chief proprietor, who felt himself unable to avoid paying his company their salaries, is notable for the production of Cibber's "Careless Husband." He who now reads it for the first time may be surprised to hear that in this comedy a really serious and eminently successful attempt to reform the licentiousness of the drama was made by one who had been himself a great offender.⁸³ Nevertheless the fact remains. In Lord Morelove we have the first lover in English comedy, since licentiousness possessed it, who is at once a gentleman and an honest man. In Lady Easy, we have, what was hitherto unknown, or laughed at, – a virtuous, married woman. It is a conversational piece, not one of much action. The dialogue is admirably sustained, not only in repartee, but in descriptive parts. There is some refinement manifested in treating and talking of things unrefined, and incidents are pictured with a master's art. Cibber's greatest claim to respect seems to me to rest on this elegant and elaborate, though far from faultless comedy. So carefully did he construct the character of the beautiful and brilliant coquette, Lady Betty Modish, whose waywardness and selfishness are finally subdued by a worthy lover, that he despaired finding an actress with power enough to realise his conception. It was written for Mrs. Verbruggen (Mountfort), but she was now dead; Mrs. Bracegirdle might have played it; but "Bracy" was not a member of the Drury Lane company. There was, indeed, Mrs. Oldfield, but Colley could scarcely see more in her than an actress of promise. Reluctantly, however, he entrusted the part to her, forboding discomfort;⁸⁴ but there ensued a triumph for the actress and the play, for which Colley was admiringly grateful to the end of his life. To her, he confessed, was chiefly owing the success, though every character was adequately cast. He eulogised her excellence of action, and her "personal manner of conversing." He adds, "There are many sentiments in the character of Lady Betty Modish that I may almost say, were originally her own, or only dressed with a little more care than when they negligently fell from her lively humour; had her birth placed her in a higher rank of life, she had certainly appeared in reality what in this play she only excellently acted, an agreeably gay woman of quality, a little too conscious of her natural attractions."

Neither Cibber's friends nor foes seem to have at all enjoyed his success. They would not compromise their own reputation by questioning the merit of this rare piece of dramatic excellence, but they insinuated or asserted that he was not the author. It was written by Defoe, by the Duke of Argyll, by Mrs. Oldfield's particular friend, Maynwaring! Congreve, who had revelled in impurity, and stoutly asserted his cleanliness, ungenerously declared, "Cibber has produced a play consisting of fine gentlemen and fine conversation, all together, which the ridiculous town, for the most part, likes." Congreve had not then forgiven the ridiculous world for receiving so coldly his own last comedy, "The Way of the World." Dr. Armstrong has more honestly analysed the play, and pointed out its defects, without noticing its merits; but Walpole, no bad judge of a comedy of such character, has enthusiastically declared that it "deserves to be immortal." It has failed in that respect, because its theme, manners, follies, and allusions are obsolete, to say nothing of a company to follow even decently the original cast, which included Sir Charles Easy, Wilks; Lord Foppington, Cibber; and Lady Betty Modish, Mrs. Oldfield.