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This season, withal, was not successful. It broke the heart of Keen, actor and sharer. In the former capacity, though Savage thought his life worth narrating, he won few laurels, – but his wreath was not entirely leafless. He was loved, too, by his brethren of both houses, whose subscriptions defrayed the expenses of a funeral, at which upwards of two hundred persons walked in deep mourning.¹⁰⁶

At this time, Drury, with its old, strong company, was patronised by court and town. Plays, acted at Hampton Court, before the King, were repeated in the public theatre. Of the former, I shall speak in a future page. Two new comedies proved, indeed, inferior to Mrs. Centlivre's "Bold Stroke," at the other house. Charles Johnson's "Masquerade," borrowed a little from Shirley, and more from Molière, furnished, in Ombre and Lady Frances Ombre, some ideas, probably, to Cibber, when he placed a similar pair on the stage, in Lord and Lady Townley. A worse piece was more successful, – the rambling comedy, "Chit Chat," by a Mr. Thomas Killigrew, a gentleman who, like his namesake, had a place at court, but not his namesake's wit. The courtiers, with the Duke of Argyle at their head, carried the piece through eleven representations, and enriched the treasury by £1000.

The great effort of the season was made in bringing out "Busiris," a tragedy, by the Rev. Dr. Young, author of Night Thoughts. It was played on March 7, 1719, by Booth, Elrington, Wilks, Mills, Walker and Thurmond, Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Thurmond.

"Busiris" was Young's earliest tragedy. It is written in a stilted and inflated style, and bears all the marks of a juvenile production. The plot of the piece is void of all ingenuity; but there is little that is borrowed in it, save the haughty message sent by Busiris to the Persian Ambassador, which is the same as that returned by the Ethiopian prince to Cambyses, in the third book of Herodotus. Of the phrasing, and indeed of the incidents of this tragedy, Fielding made excellent fun, in his mock tragedy of "Tom Thumb." The sovereigns and courtiers of Egypt gave little trouble to be converted into Arthur and Dollalolla, Noodle, Doodle, the great little prince, and Huncamunca. The travestie is rich and facile; not least so in that passage mimicking the various addresses to the sun, who is bid to rise no more, but hide his face and put the world in mourning, On these, Fielding remarks, that "the author of 'Busiris' is extremely anxious to prevent the sun's blushing at any indecent object; and, therefore, on all such occasions, he addresses himself to the sun, and desires him to keep out of the way." It was dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle, the patron of Eusden, the laureat, "because the late instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron." If this favour consisted in rewarding Young for writing for the court, the favour may have been "undeserved," but it was by no means "uncommon."

The concluding incident of this play, – the double suicide of Memnon (Wilks) and Mandane (Mrs. Oldfield), found such favour in the author's own estimation, that he repeated it in his next two tragedies, in each of which a couple of lovers make away with themselves. This tripled circumstance reminds a critic of the remark of Dryden: – "The dagger and the bowl are always at hand to butcher a hero, when a poet wants the brains to save him."

Dr. Young was at this time thirty-eight years of age, but was not yet "famous." Born when Charles II. was king and Dryden laureat, the Hampshire godson of the Princess Anne, was as yet only known as having been the friend of the Duke of Wharton, and of Tickell; as having first come before the public in 1713,¹⁰⁷ with a poem to Granville, in which there is good dramatic criticism; and of having since written poems of promise rather than of merit, the latest of which was a paraphrase on part of the book of Job, which, curiously enough, abounds with phrases which show the author's growing intercourse with the playhouse and theatrical people. "Busiris" was written in the year that "Cato" was played, but its performance was delayed till this year, and its dramatic death occurred long before "Cato" departed from the stage, – to be read, at least, as long as an admirer of Addison survives.

CHAPTER XVII
THE PROGRESS OF JAMES QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BARTON BOOTH

Quin made great advances in the public favour in the season of 1718-19, at Lincoln's Inn, where, however, as yet, he only shared the leading business in tragedy and comedy with Ryan, and the less distinguished Evans. Southwark Fair, a fashionable resort, contributed to the company a new actor, Bohemia or Boheme, with great comic power; and Susan Mountfort replaced for a few weeks Mrs. Rogers, who had held for a time the tragic parts once acted by Mrs. Barry and Bracegirdle, and who died about this time. Of Susan Mountfort's touching end I will speak in a future page. Mrs. Rogers had been on the stage since 1692, and numbered among her original parts: – Imoinda, Oriana, Melinda, and Isabinda, in "Oroonoko," "Inconstant," "Recruiting Officer," and "Busy Body."

During this season a French company acted for some time in the Fields, where the "Tartuffe" was also played against the "Nonjuror." The only novelty worthy of notice was the "Sir Walter Raleigh" of poor Dr. Sewell, in which Quin played the hero with indifferent success. The author was more remarkable than his piece. He was of good family, and a pupil of Boerhaave; but, unsuccessful as a practitioner in London, he, curiously enough, gained fortune and reputation in the smaller sphere of Hampstead, until, as a singular biographical notice informs us, "three other physicians settled at the same place, after which his gains became very inconsiderable." He became a poor poet instead of a rich physician; "kept no house, but was a boarder; was much esteemed, and so frequently invited to the tables of gentlemen in the neighbourhood, that he had seldom occasion to dine at home." Seven years after Quin failed to lift him into dramatic notoriety, this Tory opponent of the Whig Bishop of Salisbury, and one of the minor contributors (it is said) to the Spectator and Tatler, though he is not included in Bissett's lives of the writers in the first-named periodical, died, "and was supposed," says the anonymous biographer already quoted, "at that time to be in very indigent circumstances, as he was interred in the meanest manner, his coffin being little better than those allotted by the parish to their poor who are buried from the workhouses, neither did a single friend or relation attend him to the grave. No memorial was placed over his remains; but they lie just under a holly-tree, which formed part of a hedge-row, that was once the boundary of the churchyard." Such was the end of the poet, through whom Lincoln's Inn Fields hoped, in 1719, to recover its ancient prosperity.

Eventful incidents marked the Drury Lane season of 1719-20. It commenced in the middle of September, between which time, and the last week of the following January, things went on prosperously as between players and public, but not so as between patentees and the government. Within the period mentioned Miss Santlow had made Booth happy – an union which helped to make Susan Mountfort mad,¹⁰⁸ and Dennis's "Invader of His Country," and Southerne's "Spartan Dame," were produced. The former was the second of three adaptations¹⁰⁹ from Shakspeare's "Coriolanus." Forty years before, in 1682, Nahum Tate fancied there was something in the times like that depicted in the days of Coriolanus. To make the parallel more striking, he pulled Shakspeare's play to pieces, and out of the fragments built up his own "Ingratitude of a Commonwealth." Nahum altered all for the worse; and he wrote a new fifth act, which was still worse than the mere verbal or semi-alterations. The impudence of the destroyer was illustrated by his cool assurance in the prologue, that —

 
"He only ventures to make gold from ore,
And turn to money what lay dead before."
 

Tate was now followed by Dennis, who altered "Coriolanus" for political reasons, brought it out at Drury Lane, in the cause of his country and sovereign, and perhaps thought to frighten the Pretender by it. The failure was complete; although Booth played the principal male character, and Mrs. Porter Volumnia.

Southerne's "Spartan Dame" had been interdicted in the reign of William and Mary, as it was supposed that the part of Celonis (Mrs. Oldfield), wavering between her duty to her father, Leonidas, and that owing to her husband, Cleombrotus (Booth), would have painfully reminded some, and joyfully reminded other, of the spectators, of the position of Mary, between her royal sire and her princely consort. But it would have been as reasonable to prohibit "Othello" or "King Lear," because of the presence in them of individuals so related. Southerne's play has no local colour about it, but abounds in anachronisms and incongruities, and it survived but during a brief popularity. The author was now sixty years of age, Dennis seven years his senior.¹¹⁰ The older and unluckier, and less courteous poet, gained nothing by his play to compensate for the annuity he had purchased, but the term of which he had outlived. Southerne gained £500 by his "author's nights" alone; for patronage and presence on which occasions, the plausible poet personally solicited his friends. For the copyright he received an additional £120.

About six weeks after Southerne's play was produced – that is, after the performance of the "Maid's Tragedy," January 23, 1720, an order from the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Chamberlain, suddenly closed the theatre! The alleged cause was "information of misbehaviour on the part of the players." The real cause lay in Sir Richard Steele, the principal man who held the patent!

Since we last parted with the knight, he had been ungenerously trying, in pamphlets, to hunt to the scaffold the last Tory ministers of Queen Anne; he had lost his second wife; he had been projecting an union of Church and Kirk; he had invented a means of keeping fish alive while being transported across sea; he had been living extravagantly; but he had also offended his patron, the Duke of Newcastle, and therewith, the King, whose servant the Duke was, and the Government, of which the Duke was a member. Steele, in fact, had vehemently and successfully opposed, by speech and pamphlet, Lord Sunderland's Peerage Bill, which proposed to establish twenty-five hereditary peers of Scotland to sit in the English House of Lords, in place of the usual election of sixteen; and to create six new English peerages, with the understanding that the Crown would never, in future, make a new peer except on the extinction of an old family. Steele denounced, in the Plebeian, the aristocratical tendency of the bill, and to such purpose, that the theatre he governed was closed, and his name struck out of the licence!

Steele appealed to the public, in a pamphlet, the Theatre; and showed, by counsel's opinion, how he had been wronged; he estimated his loss at nearly £10,000, and finally sank into distress, with mingled bitterness and wit. His old ducal patron had loudly proclaimed he would ruin him. "This," said Steele, "from a man in his circumstances, to one in mine, is as great as the humour of Malagene, in the comedy, who valued himself for his activity in 'tripping up cripples.'"

Dennis entered the lists against Sir Richard; but the worst the censor could say against the knight was, that he had a dark complexion, and wore a black peruke. Dennis also attacked actors generally, as rogues and vagabonds in the eye of the law, and liable to be whipped at the King's porter's lodge. Such was the testimony of this coarse Cockney, the son of a saddler, and a fellow who, for his ill-doings, had been expelled from Cambridge University.

Booth, Cibber, and Wilks were permitted to reopen Drury under a licence, after an interval of a few days, and the season thus recommencing on the 28th of January, with the "Careless Husband," Cibber playing Lord Foppington, ran on to August 23rd, when the house closed, with "Bartholomew Fair!" The only novelty was Hughes's "Siege of Damascus," with false quantities in its classical names, and much heaviness of treatment of an apt story. It was Hughes's first play, and he died unconscious of its success. He was then but forty-three years of age. The old school-fellow of Isaac Watts had begun his career by complimenting King William and eulogising Queen Anne. He had published clever translations, composed very gentlemanlike music, contributed to the Spectator, and obtained a place among the wits. He wrote, in 1712, the words of the opera of "Calypso and Telemachus," to prove how gracefully the English language might be wedded to music. Two Lord Chancellors were among his patrons, Cowper and Macclesfield, and that he held the Secretaryship to the Commissioners of the Peace was a pleasant consequence thereof. His "Siege of Damascus" has for moral, that it is wrong to extend religious faith by means of the sword. The angry lover who left the city he had saved, to assault it with the Arabians from whom he had saved it, and to meet the lady of his love full of abhorrence for the traitor, might have produced some emotion; but loving, loved, living, and dying, they all talk, seldom act, and never touch. Nevertheless, Booth, Wilks, Mills, and Mrs. Porter had attentive listeners, if not ecstatic auditors, during a run of ten nights. The long tirades and the ponderous similes gratified the same audiences who took delight in Norris's Barnaby Brittle, Shepherd's Sir Tunbelly Clumsey, and Mrs. Booth's Helena, in the "Rover." Nevertheless, Hughes acquired no fame. When Swift received a copy of his works, he wrote to Pope: – "I never heard of the man in my life, yet I find your name as a subscriber. He is too grave a poet for me; and, I think, among the mediocrists in prose as well as in verse." Pope sanctioned the judgment; adding, that what Hughes wanted in genius, he made up as an honest man. Hitherto, the great tragedy of this century was "Cato."

At Lincoln's Inn, Quin played the King to Ryan's Hamlet, and created Henri Quatre in young Beckingham's second, last, and unsuccessful essay, "Henry IV. of France." What was the course of the Merchant Tailors' pupil, and son of the Fleet Street linen-draper, after this, I am unable to say, further than that he died in obscurity some ten years later. A comedy, by "Handsome Leigh," a moderately fair actor, called "Kensington Gardens, or the Pretenders," showed some power of drawing character, especially an effeminate footman, Bardach, played by Bullock, but it did nothing for a theatre which was now partly relying on subscriptions in aid. At the head of the subscribers was the last Baron Brooke, whose more famous son, the first Earl of Warwick, of the Fulke Greville line, used to subscribe his political vote so singularly – first for ministers, then for the opposition, and thirdly, not at all, in undeviating regularity.

This piece failing, came Theobald's adaptation of Shakspeare's "Richard II.," very much for the worse, but so far to the profit of the adapter that the Earl of Orrery conferred on him an unusually liberal gift for the dedication, namely, a hundred pound note, enclosed in a box of Egyptian pebble, which was worth a score of pounds more. The original author was less munificently remunerated, except in abiding glory.

Another attempt served the house as poorly namely, the re-appearance of a Mrs. Vandervelt, not because she was a clever, but that she was a very aged actress, eighty-five years old, who had not played since King Charles's time, but who had spirits enough to act the Widow Rich, in the "Half-pay Officers," a vamped-up farce, by Molloy, the political writer, and strength enough to dance a sprightly jig after it. As the hostess of a tavern in Tottenham Court Road, Peg Fryer, as the old dame was called off the stage, kept a merry and prosperous house.

Another adaptation was Griffin's comedy, "Whig and Tory," which had nothing political in it but the name; and by which that excellent low comedian, who ought to have been in the Church, and who would not be a glazier, did not add to his fame.

The "Imperial Captives" was a more ambitious venture, by a new author, Mottley. It was a tragedy, in which Quin played Genseric, King of the Vandals, and in which there is much love and a little murder, in the old thundering style, and all at cross-purposes. Distress made a poet of Mottley. His father was a Jacobite colonel, who followed James to France; his mother, a thorough-bred Whig, who stayed under William in England. Occasionally, they settled their political differences, and met. Mottley was one of those men who depend on patrons. He had lost a post in the Excise Office, and had not gained either of two which had been promised him, one in the Wine Licence Office, by Lord Halifax, and one in the Exchequer to which he had been appointed, but from which he was immediately ousted by Sir Robert Walpole. An estate, in which he had a reversionary interest, was sold by his widowed and extravagant mother to pay her debts, and thus stripped of post and prospects, Mottley made an essay as dramatic author, a career in which he was not destined to be distinguished, although Queen Caroline patronised him during a part of it – but so she did Stephen Duck! "Cato" was not superseded; but Young was putting the finishing stroke to his "Revenge."

That tragedy, which has been acted more frequently and more recently than "Cato," was first played in the Drury Lane season of 1720-21. On the 18th of April, of the latter year, Zanga was played by Mills, while Booth took Alonzo, and Wilks, Carlos. The secondary parts were thus played by the better actors. Mrs. Porter played Leonora, Mrs. Horton, Isabella. This was a fine cast, and the piece was fairly successful. A story in the Guardian, and two plays, by Marlowe and Aphra Behn, are said to have furnished Young with his materials, in handling which, one of his biographers has described him as "superior even to Shakspeare!" The action does not flag, the situations are dramatic, the interest is well sustained, and the language is expressive and abounding in poetical beauty. The story of love, jealousy, and murder is, however, a little marred by the puling lines of the black Iago, – Zanga, at the close. Young obtained but £50 for the copyright of this piece.

Young's "Revenge," if built upon other plays, has served the turn of later authors. In Lord John Russell's "Don Carlos," the reason given for the grovelling Cordoba's hatred of the Spanish prince, reminds the reader of that of Zanga for Alonzo; not less in the fact itself, the blow believed to be forgotten, but in the expression. Any one, moreover, who remembers the avowal which Artabanus makes of his guilt in the "Artaxerxes" of Metastasio, will be inclined to think that the Italian had in his mind the similar speech of the Moor to his master.

Cibber's comedy, the "Refusal," skilfully built up from the "Femmes Savantes" of Molière and the South Sea mania, ran, like the more famous tragedy, but six nights, a riot attending each representation, and finally ending in driving a good play by the author of the "Nonjuror" from the stage. The other incidents of this season are confined to the appearance of Cibber's son, Theophilus, who made his first essay in the Duke of Clarence, in the second part of "Henry IV.," as arranged by Betterton. It was a modest attempt on the part of him whose Pistol was to serve, down to our day, as a tradition to be followed. As this vagabond Theophilus appeared, there, on the other hand, departed the very pearl of chambermaids, Mrs. Saunders, who retired to become the friend and servant of Mrs. Oldfield. This last lady played but rarely this year; but Mrs. Horton profited by the opportunity, and Mrs. Porter, as a tragic actress, drew the town.

Lincoln's Inn was, at least, active in its corresponding season. The progress of Quin is curiously marked. He played Glo'ster to the Lear of Boheme; Hector, in "Troilus and Cressida," Ryan playing Troilus; the Duke in "Measure for Measure;" Coriolanus; Aumerle, in "Richard II.;" Aaron, in "Titus Andronicus;" Leonato to Ryan's Benedick, &c. &c. Moreover, while in the "Merry Wives" he played Falstaff with great effect to the Host of Bullock, in the first part of "Henry IV." Bullock played the Knight, and Quin the King. The season, remarkable for Shakspearian revivals, creditable to Rich, was also distinguished for the failure of the original pieces produced. The "Chimæra" was a satire by Odell, a Buckinghamshire squire, pensioned by Government. It was aimed at the speculators in Change Alley, but it smote them tenderly. The "Fair Captive" was an adaptation by Mrs. Haywood, a lady who began by writing as loosely as Aphra Behn, concluded by writing as decorously as Mrs. Chapone, and left charge to her executors, in 1756, to give no aid to any biography of her that might be attempted, on the ground that the least said was the soonest mended.

This comedy¹¹¹ was only exceeded in dulness by the tragedy which succeeded it, "Antiochus," by Mottley, who could not gain fortune either as poet or placeman. In the play, Antiochus is in love with his father's wife, Stratonice, who, on being surrendered to his son, by her husband, Seleucus, is a little overjoyed, for she loves the younger prince; but she is also much shocked, and escapes from her embarrassment by suicide.

The next novelty was a tragedy in one act and with four characters, "Fatal Extravagance," attributed to Miller,¹¹² the son of a Scottish stone-cutter. Miller was a sort of exaggerated Richard Savage; inferior to him as a poet, and in every respect a more inexcusable vagabond. He had no redeeming traits of character, and he destroyed health and fortune (both restored more than once), as insanely as he did fame and the patience of his friends. In "Fatal Extravagance," Belmour, played by Quin, kills a creditor who holds his bond, of which he also robs the dead man, mixes a "cordial," administers it to his wife and three children (off the stage), drinks and dies. The butchery¹¹³ is soon got through, in one act. Miller subsequently declared that the piece was a gift to him from Aaron Hill. That busy and benevolent person had no money to give to a beggar; so he sat down and wrote a tragedy for him. It was a piece of clever extravagance.

It was far more amusing than Ambrose Philip's tragedy the "Briton," which was the sole novelty of the Drury Lane season 1721-22. The tragedy lacked neither skill, poetical spirit, nor incident; indeed, of love incidents there is something too much. But the amours of Yvor (Wilks) and Gwendolin (Mrs. Booth), the infidelities of Queen Cartismand (Mrs. Porter) to Vanoc (Booth), and the intervention of the Romans in these British domestic matters, interested but for a few nights, if then, an audience ill-read in their own primitive history.

Lincoln's Inn Fields was scarcely more prolific in novelty; this, with the exception of a poor drama, the "Hibernian Friend,"¹¹⁴ being confined to Sturmy's tragedy, "Love and Duty;" Lynceus, one of the half hundred sons of Ægyptus, by Quin. The love is that of Lynceus and his cousin, Hypermnestra; the duty, that of killing her husband, on the bridal night, by command of her father. The "Distressed Bride," which is the second name of this piece, wisely disobeys her sire, who is ultimately slain; after which, the young people, sole survivors of fifty couples married yesterday (the bridegrooms, all brothers; and sisters, all the brides), are made happy by the hope of long life unembittered by feuds with their kinsfolk.

The last two tragedies may be looked upon as a backsliding, after "Cato," "Jane Shore," and the "Revenge;" and in tragedy there was little improvement for several years. Meanwhile, Lincoln's Inn Fields acquired Walker, from Drury Lane, and Tony Aston, an itinerant actor, the first, perhaps, who travelled the country with an entertainment in which he was the sole performer. On the other hand, the house lost pretty Miss Stone, humorous Kit Bullock (Wilks's son-in-law), and busy George Pack; the last, the original Marplot, Lissardo, and many similar characters. Pack turned vintner in Charing Cross. Quin's ability was nightly more appreciated.

There was more "study" for the Drury Lane actors in 1722-23. Mrs. Centlivre's muse died calmly out with the comedy of the "Artifice." In the good scenes there was an approach to sentimental comedy, more fully reached, in November, by Steele, in his "Conscious Lovers," in which Booth played Young Bevil, and Mrs. Oldfield, Indiana. There was not an inferior performer in any of the other parts of this comedy, which Fielding sneers at, by making Parson Adams declare that there were things in it that would do very well in a sermon. Modern critics have called this comedy dull, but decent; perhaps because Steele affected to claim it as at least moral in its tendency. The truth, however, is, that it is excessively indecent. There is nothing worse in Aphra Behn than the remarks made by Cimberton, the "coxcomb with reflection," on Lucinda. This fop, played by Griffin, is for winning a beauty by the rules of metaphysics. There is more pathos than humour in this comedy; the author of which had now recovered his share in the patent, by favour of Sir Robert Walpole; and it is by directing attention only to such scenes as those between Bevil and Indiana, or between the former and his friend Myrtle (Wilks), that critics have not correctly declared that the sentiments are those of the most refined morality! For the very attempt to render them so, even partially, Sir Richard has been sneered at, very recently, by a writer who looks upon Steele as a fool for preferring to make Bevil the portrait of what a man ought to be rather than what man really was. The story of the piece is admirably manipulated and reformed from the "Andria," of Terence, though Tom (Cibber) is but a sorry Davus.

On one night of the performance of this play, a general officer was observed in the boxes, weeping at the distresses of Indiana. The circumstance was noted to Wilks, who, with kindly feeling ever ready, remarked, "I am certain the officer will fight none the worse for it!" Steele must have had more than ordinary power, if he could draw tears from martial eyes in those days.

It is not to be supposed that Pope set the author, as a writer, below Crowne; and yet, in the following lines, where the two are mentioned, there is no very complimentary allusion to Sir Richard: —

 
"When simple Macer, now of high renown,
First sought a poet's fortune in the town,
'Twas all th' ambition his high soul could feel,
To wear red stockings and to dine with Steele.
Some ends of verse his betters might afford,
And gave the harmless fellow a good word.
Set up with these, he ventured on the town,
And with a borrow'd play outdid poor Crowne.
There he stopt short, nor since has writ a tittle,
But has the wit to make the most of little."
 

Crowne, at least, found something of an imitator in Ambrose Philips, whose tragedy, "Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester" (Duke, Booth; Beaufort, Cibber; Margaret, Mrs. Oldfield; Duchess of Gloucester, Mrs. Porter), was produced in this season. It was the last and worst of Philips' three dramatic essays. The insipid additions in the scene of Beaufort's death are justly described by Genest as being in Crowne's vapid and senseless fashion; and the public would not accept this cold, declamatory, conversational play as a substitute for the varied incidents which go to the making up of the second part of Shakspeare's "Henry VI."

Even in Dr. Johnson's time, "it was only remembered by its title;" we may, therefore, here take leave of the old secretary of the Hanover Club, who found more fortune in place and pension in Ireland, than he could derive from poetry and play writing in England. To the latter country he returned in 1748, to "enjoy himself," in pursuit of which end he died the following year. Addison once thought him well enough provided for, by being made a Westminster justice. "Nay," said Ambrose, like a virtuous man in comedy, "though poetry be a trade I cannot live by, yet I scorn to owe subsistence to another which I ought not to live by;" and he nobly gave up the justiceship – as soon as he was otherwise provided for!

Philips was followed by an inferior author, but a greater man, Sir Hildebrand Jacob, with a classical tragedy, "Fatal Constancy," in which all the unities are preserved; but that did not bring it the nearer to "Cato."

Then followed, in the summer and less fashionable portion of the season, Savage's tragedy, "Sir Thomas Overbury," in which the author played, very indifferently, the hero. At this time, the hapless young man was not widely known, except to those friends on whose charity he lived while he abused it. Favoured by Wilks and patronised by Theophilus Cibber, the ragged, rakish fellow, slunk at nights into the theatre, and by day lounged where he could, composing his tragedy on scraps of paper. In producing it, ever ready Aaron Hill assisted him; and his profits, amounting to about £200, gave him a temporary appearance of respectability. Savage is said to have been deeply ashamed of having turned actor; but it seems to me that he was only ashamed of having failed. He had neither voice, figure, nor any other qualification for such a profession. The tragedy lived but three days. There is something adroit in the conduct of the plot, and evidence of correctness of conjecture as to the truth of the relations between Overbury and Lady Somerset, – but there was no vitality therewith; and the poet gained no lasting fame by the effort.