Greek chorus, to tear their hair, and beat their breasts, and supplicate the despot to spare the City; this being prolonged through four acts, when the hero should agree, a hymn of thanksgiving should be sung, and the curtain fall. This squib upon Macklin's absurdities was so successful that Foote cleared by it 500l. in five nights, while the great Piazza Coffee-room in Covent Garden was shut up, and Macklin in the London Gazette as bankrupt.*

FOOTE IN HIGH COMEDY.

Between 1754 and 1756, Foote did not confine himself to his own pieces, in resuming his place as an actor. He added to his parts, Ben the Sailor, in Congreve's Love for Love; and Captain Brazen, in Farquhar's Recruiting Officer; aud Sir Paul Plyant, in Congreve's Double Dealer, in which latter character, Wilkes, who liked Foote's acting, thought him particularly good. Foote was next advertised for Polonius, in Hamlet, but before the night he was to perform he withdrew his name.

About this time he added to his new parts the Lady Pentweazel, from his own little comedy of Taste, the oddities of which part were first portrayed by Worsdale.

THE COMEDY OF "THE AUTHORS"†

Was produced by Foote, under Garrick's management, at Drury-lane, in the spring of 1757. It was written with the view of urging the claims of authors to better patronage than they were accustomed to receive a century ago, when Grubstreet and the garret were bywords of their condition.

*Macklin, at the great age of 97, or even more, lived in the upper part of the house No. 4, west corner of Tavistock-row, Covent Garden-in which had lived Miss Reay, the mistress of Lord Sandwich, shot in the Piazza, in 1779, by Hackman, in a fit of jealousy. Here the elder Charles Mathews called upon Macklin to give him a taste of his boyish quality for the stage, which the old fellow received with "Bow, wow, wow,' and a vow that he had only found himself and another person to possess the qualifications requisite for an actor. The old house was taken down

in 1861.

For the substance of this and several other anecdotical accounts of Foote's comedies, we are greatly indebted to the masterly analyses given in Mr. Forster's Essay: these are admirable specimens of condensation; but we have been, of necessity, confined to selection and abridgment.

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Foote's author is Old Vamp, who kept a shop at the Turnstile, (then a noted thoroughfare for booksellers' shops,) and who, in bad times, published in the treasonable way, yet never gave up but one author in his life, and he was dying of a consumption, so he never came to a trial. Then we have Master Cape, who furnishes Vamp with titles and Latin mottoes. Peter Hasty, the voyage-writer, was a great loss to the trade; he was hanged for clipping and coining, but Vamp made the most of his death: his execution created noise, and sold the booksellers seven hundred of his translations, besides his last dying speech and confession; and Vamp got that. But Foote's Author is a high-minded gentleman, and refuses to defend corrupt practices: he draws a pitiable picture of the chances of learning in his market, where a guinea subscription at the request of a lady whose chambermaid is acquainted with the author, is the only patronage to be picked up; and there's more money laid out upon Islington turnpike-road in a month than upon all the learned men in Great Britain in seven years.

But the great gun of the piece is Mr. Cadwallader, played by Foote himself. He is a bundle of contrarieties of pride and meanness, folly and cunning. He honours a poet, though Mr. Cape was the first he ever had in his house except the bellman for a Christmas-box. But his great aim is to know notable persons. He claims to take the wall of a prince of the blood, yet is to be seen eating fried sausages at the Mewsgate, [that is in the rear of the King's Mews, on the site of our National Gallery]. Foote dressed Mr. Cadwallader to perfection. The audience on the first night shouted with surprise at the disguise: could it be Foote? He had dressed as a big, pompous, ignorant, staring person, of equal corpulence and conceit; he talked boisterously-his mouth always open, as if he had let out something he had not intended to say. But the fun reached its climax when there was seen a figure looking from the boxes at what seemed a double of itself, and shaking with laughter at Mr. Cadwallader's introduction of his wife to a great poet, Mr. Cape; and "there, go and have a little chat with her, talk any nonsense to her, no matter what; she's a great fool, and wont know the difference." The original of Cadwallader was a Mr. Ap-Rice, a rich Welshman, whom Foote had visited, and who, good soul, had gone to the theatre, and heartily enjoyed the jest and laugh at Foote's skill in portraying him so cleverly.

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The Author became very popular. Horace Walpole said, the stage had never equalled Foote's Cadwallader. Up to this point, Mr. Ap-Rice had enjoyed the joke of his double; but when Foote carried the masterly personation to Dublin, Ap-Rice could never show himself in park, assembly, or coffee-house, without being whispered and pointed at as Cadwallader! This identity off the stage was too much for ApRice's philosophy; and when Foote resumed the performance at Drury-lane, the Welshman consulted Garrick whether he should challenge Foote, when Garrick, as Lord Holland told Mr. Moore, replied: "My dear sir, don't think of doing any such thing; why, he would shoot you through the guts before you had supped two oysters off your wrist." (This supping habit, by the way, was ludicrously given in Foote's impersonation.) However, Ap-Rice prevailed upon the Lord Chamberlain to prohibit the performance, even on the night of Foote's benefit; and it was never again performed.

This piece would be much too esoteric for representation in the present day: in Foote's time, and almost till our own, the mention of Grub-street and the garret was suggestive of the author: now, he is much less marked in society, but is more respected: the technicalities of his profession, upon which Foote built the humour of his comedy, have grown too faint to be recognised; and were they recognised, they would not be relished.

FOOTE A FORTUNE-TELLER.

When Foote was in Dublin, in 1758, he hit upon a scheme of money-making, which he is supposed to have taken from Sir Francis Delaval, who, inany years before, had done the same thing in London, when hiding from his creditors. Nevertheless, Foote may have suggested the thing to Delaval; certainly, the humourist was of far more fertile invention than the dissipated baronet.

It appears that Foote took a private lodging in a remote part of the city of Dublin, and there set up the lucrative business of fortune-telling. He had his room hung with black, and a dark lantern; he then sent out persons who knew the people of fashion in Dublin, with handbills, announcing that there was a man to be met with in such a place, who wrote down people's fortunes, without asking them any questions. As his room was quite dark (the light

from his lantern excepted) he was in less danger of being discovered; so that he carried on the deception with great success for many days, clearing, it is said, 307. a-day, at 2s. 6d. a-head. This adventure is related in a letter from Dublin, printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1758.

TATE WILKINSON AND FOOTE.

A few of the playgoers of the present century may remember the elder Charles Mathews's imitation of Tate Wilkinson, the York manager, "the Wandering Patentee," who first appeared publicly at Dublin with Foote. Tate was turned out early upon the world, and when a lad was taken by Shuter to Garrick, when he imitated Foote so cleverly that he was engaged for small business at Drury-lane; but not long after he imitated Garrick to Foote, who thereupon engaged him to accompany him to Dublin. Wilkinson, in his Memoirs, written many years after, has well pictured this Dublin journey: therein he tells us how he waited on Mr. Foote at the Bedford; how they set off in a postchaise with Mr. Foote's servant on horseback; and how that night they reached Foote's little cottage at Elstree in Hertfordshire; and thence travelled post to Holyhead, where they embarked; and in the great storm which followed young Tate was very ill, while Foote was well, and walking most of the night from place to place. At Dublin, Foote played his Tea, with Wilkinson for his pupil, when the latter threw in a very striking imitation of Foote, which the audience insisted on being repeated; but it was merely an imitation of Foote's sharplypitched voice, the quick look, ready laugh, and twitching chin; it had none of the higher qualities of Foote's humour, though Churchill thus struck at him through his shadow:

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Strange to relate, but wonderfully true,

That even shadows have their shadows too!

With not a single comic power endued,

This man a mere mere mimic's mimic stood."

Wilkinson now saw how Foote was recognised by great people wherever he went; how he was received at the Castle, by the Duke of Bedford, then Lord-Lieutenant; and his old friend, the jovial Mr. Rigby, whom Wilkes, in the North Briton, No. 31, calls an excellent bon-vivant, amiable and engaging, who has all the gibes and gambols, and flashes of merriment which set the table in a roar-but the day after, a cruel headache at least frequently succeeds.

FOOTE AND WHITFIELD.

Foote's comedy of The Minor was produced in Dublin, but failed: this so annoyed the author that he resolved to reproduce it in London, and so strike Methodism in its stronghold. Whitfield now drew audiences greater than any that either Foote or Garrick brought together. He had preached to 12,000 people on Hampton Common, assembled to see a man hung in chains. At the great fair in Moorfields he had harangued 30,000 souls; and he and cartloads of his followers paid visits to country fairs; and scared the country people from their amusements by his awful denunciations. The passport to salvation he assured his hearers was only to be had at his Tabernacle, ("the Soul's Trap,") in Tottenhamcourt-road; where his frequent hearers were Foote and Garrick, who brought away the very characteristic remark, that the preacher's oratory was never at its full height till he had repeated a discourse forty times. Foote now opened upon Whitfield the powerful battery of his satire upon those infamous characters whom the preacher had rejoiced in sending in ecstacies to heaven. Mr. Squintum in the comedy had his congregation, and Mrs. Cole, still of the Piazza in Covent Garden, was the abominable hypocrite who became an edified member.

Foote not only played Mrs. Cole and Mr. Smirk, but spoke an Epilogue dressed as Whitfield, whom he imitated to the life. This was an audacious thing to do, and on the first night it provoked violent opposition; but this was quelled, and the piece was played continuously forty nights at the Haymarket. It was then taken to Drury-lane; the Archbishop of Canterbury interfered to intercept it by authority; but all the Lord Chamberlain did was to propose that the Archbishop should correct and alter some passages, which he declined to do; and when asked why he had not acted upon the Chamberlain's suggestion, his Grace replied with some point, he had no wish to see an edition of the Minor announced by the author as "corrected and prepared for the press by his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury." Foote not only defended himself upon the stage, but in print; and his Letter to the Reverend Author of Remarks, Critical and Christian, on the Minor, has the best side of the controversy, and is remarkable for its wit, scholarship, and good sense. It had abundance of incident; for Holcroft borrowed from it the