66 Injured Love," in a joke which Hook stole, in his turn, from the Commissary," to enliven his "Killing no Murder." Except in ceasing to mimic Whitfield on the stage, after the death of that religious reformer, I can scarcely find a trait of delicacy in Foote's character. He seems to have been as unscrupulous in act, as he was crucl in his wit. One may forgive him, however, for his remark to John Rich, who had been addressing him curtly, as "Mister." Perceiving that Foote was vexed, Rich apologized by saying, "I sometimes forget my own name." "I am astonished you could forget your own name," said Foote, "though I know very well that you are not able to write it!" Foote, who spared nobody, was angry with Dr. Johnson for saying that he was an infidel, as a dog was an infidel; he had never thought of the matter. "I, who have added sixteen new characters to the drama of my country!" said Foote. When he left hospitable General Smith's house, after a longer sojourn than usual, Foote's only comment was: "I can't miss his likeness now, after such a good sitting." When Digges first appeared in Cato, we are told that Foote occupied a place in the pit, and raising his voice above the sound of the welcome given to the new actor, exclaimed, "He looks like a Roman chimney sweeper on May-day." That Foote "deserved to be kicked out of the house for his cruelty," is a suggestion of Peake's, in which all men will concur. But did he deserve it? Chronology tends to disprove this story. Foote played for the last time on the 30th of July, 1777. His name does not appear in the bills after that day. Digges made his first appearance in London, as Cato, on the 14th of the following August, and if Foote went into the pit on that occasion, his envy and malevolence must have supplied him with the energy of which he had been deprived by paralysis and other infirmities. Foote's vanity was as great as his cruelty. To indulging in the former he owed the loss of his leg. Being on a visit to Lord Mexborough, where the Duke of York and other noble guests were present, Foote foolishly boasted of his horsemanship; being invited to join the hunt the next day, he was ashamed to refuse, and at the very first burst the boaster was thrown and his leg broken in two places. Even when his leg was amputated, he was helped, by the incident, to an unworthy thought, namely, that he would now be able to mimic the one-legged George Faulkner, of Dublin, to the life! This, however, may have been said out of courage. He bore, with fortitude, a visitation which gained for him a license to open the Haymarket, from the 15th of May to the 15th of September. It opened his way to fortune; and though what O'Keefe says may be true, that it was pitiable to see him leaning against the wall of his stage dressing-room, while his servant dressed his cork leg, to suit the character in which his master was to appear, I can well believe what O'Keefe adds, that "he looked sorrowful, but instantly resuming all his high comic humor and mirth, he hobbled forward, entered the scene, and gave the audience what they expected, their plenty of laugh and delight.” Among the fairest of Foote's sayings was the reply to Mr. Howard's intimation that he was about to publish a second edition of his Thoughts and Maxims. "Ay! second thoughts are best." Fair, too, was his retort on the person who alluded to his “ game leg." "Make no allusion to my weakest part! Did I ever attack your head?" Then Garrick once took as a compliment, that his bust had been placed by Foote in the private room of the latter. "You are not afraid, I see, to trust me near your gold and bank-notes." "No," retorted the humorist, "you have no hands!" Foote was sometimes beaten with his own weapons. After he had leased the Edinburgh Theatre from Ross, for three years, at five hundred guineas a year, a dispute arose, followed by a lawsuit, in which Foote was defeated. The Scottish agent for the vanquishing side, called on Foote, in London, with his bill of costs, which the actor had to defray. The amari aliquid having been got through, the player remarked that he supposed the agent was about to return to Edinburgh, like most of his countrymen, in the cheapest form possible. "Ay, ay," replied the agent, dryly, tapping the pocket in which he had put the cash, "I shall travel—on foot!" Foote himself is described as looking rueful at the joke. Again, Churchill only said of him that he was in self-conceit an actor, and straightway Foote, who lived by degrading others, was "outrageously offended." Foote wrote a prose lampoon on Churchill and Lloyd, but did not publish it. Churchill, the bruiser, was not a safe man for Foote to attack, and the actor was fain to be satisfied with calling him the "clumsy curate of Clapham." Foote took Wilkinson to Dublin in 1757, where they appeared as instructor and pupil, in one of Foote's entertainments, called a "Tea." Wilkinson imitated Luke Sparks as Old Capulet; convulsed the house, instead of being "stoned," as Mrs. Woffington expected, with his imitation of the two Dublin favorites, Margaret herself and Barry, in "Macbeth," and, emboldened by the applause, he imitated Foote in his own presence. Foote's audacity was tripped up by the suddenness of the action; and he looked foolish, wishing to appear pleased with the audience, but not knowing how to play that difficult part. Subsequently, however, Foote called on Wilkinson, and threatened him with a duel, or chastisement, if he ever dared take further liberties with him on the stage. Wilkinson laughed at the impotently-angry ruffian, and all his brother actors laughed with him. The malignity of Foote found satisfaction in his writing the part of Shift, in the "Minor" (as it was first represented, in Dublin), as a satire on Wilkinson; and he knowingly misrepresented Wilkinson's origin, in order to bring him into contempt. "Why does he "He is not There is no doubt that Foote loved some of those he jested at. He heard of Six Francis Delaval's death, with tears; but he smiled through them, when he was told that the surgeons intended to examine the baronet's head. He remarked that it was useless; he had known the head for nearly a quarter of a century, and had never been able to find any thing in it! But the wit's testimony to character is never to be taken without reserve. come among us," he said of Lord Loughborough. only dull himself but the cause of dulness in others!" This is certainly not true, for this Scottish lawyer was remarkable in society for his hilarity, critical powers, and his store of epigrams and anecdotes. Lord Loughborough, moreover, merited the respect of Foote, as an old champion of the stage. When he was Mr. Wedderburn, and represented Dunfermline, in the General Assembly of Scotland, he resisted the motion for an act to prohibit the presence of either lay or clerical members of the church, at dramatic representations. The Assembly had just before been shaken by the fact that the clergy had been to witness Home's "Douglas," and it had smiled grimly at the palliative plea of one offender, "that he had ensconced himself in a corner, and had hid his face in a handkerchief to avoid scandal." Wedderburn opposed the motion in one of the best speeches which he ever delivered in Scotland, and which ended with these words: "Be contented with the laws which your wise and pious ancestors have handed down to you for the conservation of discipline and morals. Already have you driven from your body its brightest ornament, who might have continued to inculcate the precepts of the Gospel from the pulpit, as well as embodying them in character and action. Is it, indeed, forbidden to show us the kingdom of heaven by a parable? In all the sermons produced by the united genius of the Church of Scotland, I challenge you to produce any thing more pure in morality, or more touching in eloquence, than the exclamation of Lady Randolph : Sincerity ! Thou first of virtues, let no mortal leave Thy onward path, although the earth should gape, To take dissimulation's winding way.'" Johnson rightly pooh-poohed this passage. Foote was admirable in impromptu. When he once saw a sweep on a blood-horse, he remarked: "There goes Warburton on Shakspeare!" When he heard that the Rockinghan Cabinet was fatigued to death and at its wit's end, he exclaimed, that it could not have been the length of the journey which had tired it! Again, when Lord Caermarthen, at a party, told him his handkerchief was hanging from his pocket, Foote replaced it, with a "Thank you, my lord; you know the company better than I." How much better docs Foote appear thus, than when we find him coarsely joking on Lord Kelly's nose, while that lord was hospitably entertaining him; or sneering at Garrick for showing respect to Shakspeare, by a "jubilec." After all, the enemies he had provoked killed him. His fire and his physical powers were decaying when some of those enemies combined to accuse him of an enormous crime. He diu not fly, like guilty Isaac Bickerstaffe, under similar circumstances, but manfully met the charge, and proved his innocence. The anxiety, however, finished him. He had an attack of paralysis, played for the last time, on the 30th of July, 1777, in his "Maid of Bath," and after shifting restlessly from place to place, died on the 21st of October, at Dover. A few months previously, he had made over the Haymarket Theatre to Colman, for a life annuity of £1,600, of which Foote lived but to receive one half-year's dividend. After the age of fifty-six, he thus passed away,-an emaciated old man,—and on Monday, the 27th of October, he was carried, by torchlight, to the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, whither Betterton, Barry, Mrs. Cibber, and others of the brotherhood of players, had been carried before him. The Haymarket season of that year indicated a new era, for in 1777, Edwin, as Hardcastle, Miss Farren, as Miss Hardcastle; Henderson, as Shylock, and Digges, in Cato, made their first appearance in London. The old Garrick period,-save in some noble relics (Macklin, the noblest of them all),-was clearly passing away. What the dramatic poets produced from the period of Garrick's withdrawal to the end of the century will be best seen by a reference to the Supplement, which I append to this part of my volume. LIST OF SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER XI. THE PRINCIPAL DRAMATIC PIECES PRODUCED AT THE PATENT THEATRES, FROM THE RETIREMENT OF GARRICK TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: 1776-1777.-Drury Lane. "Trip to Scarborough" (altered by Sheridan from Vanbrugh). Miss Hoyden, Mrs. Abington. "School for Scandal" (Sheridan). Sir Peter Teazle, King; Charles Surface, Smith; Lady Teazle, Mrs. Abington. 1776-1777.-Covent Garden. "Caractacus" (Mason). Caractacus, Clarke; Evelina, Mrs. Hartley. |