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original Buck and Lucinda; but Foote himself assumed the former part during the season, and it then became a dispute amongst the critics, which of the two did greater justice to the character.

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During the next two years he seems to have reposed a little from his labours; his entertainment for the season of 1754 consisted only of a revision of the Knights,' which he now brought out at Drury-lane; and in 1755 he nothing had to offer. For 1756, however, he prepared the Englishman Returned from Paris,' a comedy in two acts, which was a sequel to the Englishman in Paris.' It was acted at Covent-garden with great advantage, and has received the praise of being more dramatic, varied, and complete than any of the preceding pieces. The Author,' a comedy in two acts, was his novelty in Covent-garden, for 1757. In this piece he returned to personality, and polished a caricature of a Mr. Aprice, under the name of Cadwallader, with such pungent fidelity, that a complaint was made to the Lord Chamberlain, and the performance interdicted. The Author' however claims the distinction of having been occasionally revived.

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Notwithstanding the success of these various performances, and the handsome emoluments derived from them, Foote's improvidence kept him systematically in a disgraceful extreme of debt and persecution. This perplexity of affairs increased so heavily upon him, that in 1760 he was driven into a speculation for retrieving his competence, by opening the Haymarket Theatre during the summer months-a practice so successful that it has never since been once abandoned. Foote began this new system of operations with the Minor,' a comedy in three acts; and, although his company was as indifferent as it was hastily collected together, this play drew him full houses for five-and-thirty successive rehearsals, and remained for many years after a standard piece at the winter houses. His own personifications were the principal attractions in it, and the reader may therefore desire to know that in the characters-of Mr. Smirk, an auctioneer named Langford was ridiculed-of Mrs. Cole, the well-known Mother Douglas was taken off—and of Shift, George Whitfield, the popular methodist, was burlesqued. The coarse humour thus applied to the sect of which Whitfield was an ornament, created violent outcries

and much controversy: his flock, however, could have felt but little of the stigma, as they have never been theatrical visitors; and Foote, profiting by the scandal, cared little for any thing else. There is an anecdote told of this piece which seems worth extracting. When the play was finished for the stage, Foote sent a copy of it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, requesting that if his Grace should see any thing objectionable in it, he would exercise a free use of his pen, either in the way of erasure or correction. The Archbishop, however, returned it untouched, assigning as a reason to a friend, that he was sure the wit had only laid a trap for him, and that if he had put his hand to the manuscript, either for correction or objection, Foote would have advertised the publication as corrected and prepared for the press by his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Foote now resolved to settle himself yearly in the Haymarket Theatre, as soon as the winter establishments closed; and so well did the scheme answer, that he persevered in it uniformly down to the season before his death, and as regularly derived from it a considerable income. Fortune, however, never availed him much; a slave to his passions, the more he got the more he spent ; and therefore the longer he lived, the more deeply he sunk into embarrassments.

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In the summer of 1762, he stood forward prepared with two plays, the Orators' and the Lyar,' both comedies in three acts. The former met with a kind reception, but the representation of the latter was deferred until the following winter, when it was brought out at Covent-garden, and gave but little satisfaction. It is a borrowed plot from several hands, which has since been reduced to a farce, and under that title been frequently revived by John Palmer, who obtained singular praise for his acting in it. Reverting to the 'Orators,' it is to be added that, as he was still under the power of the magistrates, Foote thought it prudent to advertise this entertainment as 'Lectures on English Oratory,' and in truth the first act of the 'Orators' fully justified the announcement. It was little more than a disquisition on styles of elocution, interpersed with personal imitations. The second act contained a humorous trial of the Cock-lane ghost, and the last, a portraiture of the noted Robin Hood Society. The leading personification was one of George Falkner, the Dublin printer

and alderman, who pushed himself into some notoriety, as the proprietor of an Irish newspaper. But though a signal boaster, and intense lover of fame, he was so deeply offended with the liberties thus taken with his favourite airs, that he took advantage of a professional visit which Foote soon after paid at Dublin, to institute an action for libel in the Court of King's Bench. The offender for awhile pretended to resist the proceedings, but finding it probable that the business would run hard with him, he posted quietly back to England, and left his bail to pay the penalties of their bond for his appearance at the trial. This breach of confidence was loudly and deservedly censured; but the stain has been in a great degree wiped away by a prevailing belief that he subsequently returned the money. Here too, it may be observed, that although Foote's vices are by all declared to have been numerous, their enormity has been opposed by the credit he received for the possession of many virtues-like other squanderers, he was not incapable of generosity.

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For the seasons of 1763, 1764, and 1765, The Mayor of Garratt,' the 'Patron,' and the Commissary,' were successively produced with the happiest effect. Of the first, which was called a comedy, but like all the series, is really a farce in two acts, it will be enough to mention, that it is genuine in its drollery, and has remained a constant favourite with the public down to the present day. We are told that Foote's Major Sturgeon was inimitable, and every reader might also tell that Jerry Sneak has been the master-piece of many subsequent actors. The Patron' was borrowed from Marmontel's Tales, and applied to Lord Melcombe, that strange compound of wit and frivolity, fashion and talents. This trifle, Foote, in the dedication to Lord Gower, declares to be the best of all he had written down to the date of its appearance. The Commissary' abounds with veins of the same personal and general ridicule which made the preceding pieces so popular, and is chiefly remarkable for the introduction of the celebrated Arne, under the name of Dr. Catgutt. Could any merit prove a shield from satire, the talents of the most perfect musician the English nation could boast of, would certainly have stood reverenced and untouched; but wit is ever heartless, and mimicry without taste. Thus it is that the satirist so seldom fails to mar his own moral, by seizing traits which, though weaknesses in the great and good,

are nevertheless purely harmless, and exhibiting them with the same glaring colours and coarse effect which apply to the worst habits and most pernicious examples. As the indistinct must always remain confused, so the indiscriminate must ever continue graceless. Foote seems to have never possessed a feeling of delicacy, or a sense of principle.

The year 1766 was to Foote an era of great revolutions. Being on a visit at the Earl of Mexborough's country-seat, he fell from a horse and fractured his leg so severely that amputation was required to save his life. This accident at first appeared to augur fatally for his professional fortune, and enemies were not wanting who exclaimed upon the fitness of that retribution which had maimed the mimic of cripples-the reader should know that Falkner, the Dublin alderman, wanted a leg, and that Foote's imitation of the old man's lameness was considered about the best feature of the personification. Mocking, therefore, was here shown to be catching-but there is nothing like suffering in good company. Foote recovered his health and spirits, and the Duke of York, who happened to be at the Earl of Mexborough's at this conjuncture, took such an interest in his case as to patronise an application he made for a patent. A suit thus favoured soon found grace: Foote's fall took place in the month of February, and in the month of July a patent was made out, by the terms of which he was authorised to build a theatre in the city and liberties of Westminster, and therein exhibit performances from the 14th day of May to the 14th day of September, during each year of his life. Emboldened by this grant, he bought and pulled down the old house, and quickly built a new theatre, which was thrown open to the public in May 1767.

The new establishment flourished rapidly, but it was not until the summer of 1770 that the proprietor came forward with a novelty of his own composition, and that gained no popularity. It was entitled 'The Lame Lover,' and had an appropriate character for the author, in the person of Sir Luke Limp. Piety in Pattens,' however, his next production, which, was first acted in 1773, but never printed, so fully compensated for this failure, that the reader is presented with an account of it from the Biographia Dramatica. The extract is somewhat long, but an idea of the manner in which these original pieces were managed

cannot be tiresome. It was styled a sentimental comedy, and was introduced to the stage in an entertainment called 'The Primitive Puppet-show.' The novelty of a design which undertook to put down the prevailing rage for such sentimental comedies "as "False Delicacy,' &c., brought a crowd around the house, who rendered the Haymarket impassable for more than an hour. The doors were broken open, and great numbers entered the theatre without paying any thing for their admission. Hats, swords, canes, cloaks, shoes, &c. were lost among the mob; ladies fainted, &c. &c., and sharpers triumphed. The entertainment was divided into three parts, viz.-an Oration, a Comedy, and a Scene with Punch; at seven o'clock the curtain drew up, and Foote addressed himself to the audience as follows::

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

"As I have taken the liberty to solicit your presence this evening at the representation of a new kind of entertainment, it becomes necessary for me to explain to you what is its nature, and what is its inten tion. I have the honour, gentlemen, to produce to you that species of the drama, which, from the corruption of its original principles, and the inability of its latter professors, has sunk into such disrepute, and appeared of so little importance to the public, that it escaped the jealous and prying eyes of that minister, who, under the pretence of reformation, had laid every other theatrical representation under the severest restraint.

"It is an exhibition at which few of you have been present since your emancipation from the nursery; and to so low a state has it been reduced, that, like the Thespian comedy, it has been carried about in carts to harvest-homes, wakes, and country fairs; or if it has approached our capital cities, it has appeared in no nobler place than a neglected garret, or a dilapidated suburbian stable. Such, gentlemen, has been the fate of that purer part of the drama, which gave employment to the wit and invention, and mirth and manners to the minds, of the first ages of the world: with Rome it flourished, and with Rome it fell. When the Goths compelled the wives and children of the Patricians to solicit alms at the doors of their own palaces, genius, science, elegance, arts, and puppet-shows, sunk in one universal ruin.

"You will perceive, gentlemen, by this exordium, that my intention this evening is to produce, or rather restore to the present age, the pure, the primitive Puppet-show.

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