get more and do better than himself. And with reason sometimes. Why, I remember at the election some time ago when I took up my freedom, I could get but thirty guineas for a new pair of jack-boots; whilst Tom Romskin over the way had a fifty-pound note for a pair of washleather breeches.

At the end of the season he went over to | jealous and afraid that his neighbour would Dublin. Staying at Bath on the road, he fell in with some card-sharpers, to whom he lost five hundred in ready money, together with twelve hundred he had deposited in the bank, and landed in Ireland almost penniless. But his usual good luck still stood by him. "The Devil on Two Sticks was almost as great a success in the Irish capital as it had been in the English.

Sir Matthew asks their terms. "Why, we could not have afforded you one under three thousand at least; but as your honHis next season brought forth "The our has a mind to deal in the gross, we Maid of Bath," in which, perhaps out of shall charge you but five for the both." revenge for the card-sharping, he severely As they are leaving the house, the speaksatirized the follies and vices of Bath so- er's eyes fall upon one of the black servciety; and under the name of Flint, held ants, whom he offers to make a member up to opprobrium Mr. Walter Long, who of the corporation of Bribe'em. "Why, had behaved so badly to Miss Linley, after-you would not submit to accept of a newards Mrs. Brinsley Sheridan. In "The gro?" cries the nabob. "Our present Lame Lover" he did battle against the members, for aught we know, may be of trickeries of the law, and in the title-rôle the same complexion, your honour," is raised a laugh at his own loss of limb. the reply; "for we have never set eyes There is a capital remark in this comedy, on them yet." "But you could not think which I cannot resist extracting: Mr. Ser- of electing a black?" persists Mite. geant Circuit's wife is asking for money," That makes no difference to us: the which she says she must have, as her honour is in pawn:

How a century will alter the meaning of words [he exclaims]! Formerly chastity was the honour of women, and good faith and integrity the honour of men; but now a lady who ruins her family by punctually paying her losses at play, and a gentleman who kills his best friend in a ridiculous quarrel, are your only tip-top people of honour.

But a far better piece was "The Nabob," in which he made an onslaught on those Anglo-East-Indians, who at this period were making such enormous fortunes by such very doubtful means; on the corruption of elections, and on the Society of Antiquaries. The satire upon the rotten boroughs is particularly excellent.

Some members of the "Christian Club" wait upon Sir Matthew Mite, the nabob, to offer him the nomination of the two members for the borough. Sir Matthew remarks that the title of the club is a whimsical one, but doubtless they had their reasons for adopting it :

The very best in the world, please your honour; from our strict union and brotherly kindness we hang together like the primitive Christians, we have all things in common. When the bargain is struck, and the deposit made as a proof that we love our neighbours as well as ourselves, we submit to an equal partition; no man has a larger share than another. All is unanimity in our borough now; formerly we had nothing but discontents and heartburnings amongst us, each man

Christian Club has ever been persuaded that a good candidate, like a good horse, can't be of a bad colour." Again, these patriots declare that "the Christian Club may have some fears of the gallows, but they don't value damnation a farthing."

Sir Matthew is a collector of antiquities, and the third act is devoted to ridicule upon antiquarians. They have the toe of the slipper with which Cardinal Pandulph kicked King John when he gave him absolution and penance; a corkscrew presented by Sir John Falstaff to Harry the Fifth; an illegible MS. in Latin of the last books of Livy, and many other such valuable curiosities. There is also a discussion upon Whittington and his cat, a burlesque upon one which had actually taken place in the society. Crowds flocked nightly to the Haymarket to roar at these clever satires.

A characteristic anecdote of Foote is told in connection with this piece. Two gentlemen recently returned from the East Indies, believing themselves pointed at in the character of Matthew Mite, bought two cudgels, and one night waited upon Foote at his lodgings in Suffolk Street, resolved to inflict condign punishment upon him there and then. He received them in his drawing-room with a politeness so marked, that their hostile intentions melted into remonstrances, which he interrupted with a request that they would take coffee before they opened their business. This they refused; and represented the insults which persons of character and

fortune had sustained from his licentious | abusive letter, in which she called him a pen. Foote assured them, in the most buffoon, a merry-andrew, and a theatrical solemn manner, that he had no particular assassin, drew forth a reply from the comperson in view, and that he intended to edian which may be placed among the satirize only the unworthy part of the most poignant and admirable productions nabob gentry. The end of the business of his wit. Here is an extract: was they remained chatting amicably until four in the morning, and dined there the same day. From that time forth none were louder in their praises of his wit, politeness, and hospitality; they attended the theatre every night during the run of the piece, and applauded it as heartily as any one there.

Sentimental comedy, and romances of the Pamela school, were burlesqued in "Piety in Pattens, or the Handsome Housemaid," played by puppets, because, he stated, with a cruel and most unjust cut at the actors of the period, the players were incapable. The satire was not a success, and created at one time some thing approaching to a riot. When asked by a lady if the puppets were to be as large as life, he replied, "Oh, dear no, madam, not much above the size of Garrick!"

Why, madam, put on your coat of mail I have no hostile intentions. against me?

Folly, not vice, is the game I pursue. In those scenes which you so unaccountably apply to yourself you must observe that there is not the slightest hint at the little incidents of your life which have excited the curiosity of the grand inquest for the county of Middlesex. I am happy, however, madam, to hear that your robe of innocence is in such perfect repair; I was afraid it might be a little the worse for wearing. May it hold out to keep your grace warm has done me the honour to give me, are, I prethe next winter. The progenitors your grace sume, merely metaphorical persons, and to be considered as the authors of my muse, and not of my manhood. A Merry Andrew and a prostitute are not bad poetical parents, especially for a writer of plays; the first to give the humour and mirth, the last to furnish the graces and powers of attraction. Prostitutes and players too must live by pleasing the public, 1772, a year of great commercial fail-not but your grace may have heard of ladies ures, brought forth "The Bankrupt." The who by private practice have accumulated great title explains the aim of the piece, which the name of your female confidential secrewas directed against the rogueries of trade, tary? And is she not generally clothed in and the deficiencies of the law for their black petticoats made out of your weeds? punishment. In the same year he paid a farewell visit to Ireland.

fortunes.

Pray, madam, is not Jackson

The

So mourn'd the dame of Ephesus her love. I fancy your grace took the hint when last you resided at Rome. You heard there of a certain Pope Joan who was once elected a pope, and in humble imitation have converted a pious parson into a chambermaid. scheme is new in this country, and has, doubtless, its particular pleasures. That you may never want the Benefit of the Clergy, in every emergence, is the sincere wish of your grace's most devoted, most obliged, humble servant —

SAMUEL FOOTE.

Upon his return to London he produced "The Cozeners." Fashionable preachers, sinecures, and the sale of government places here came under his lash. In Dr. Simony we have a portrait of the notorious Dr. Dodd; and in the character of Mrs. Fleece'em we have that of a Mrs. Rudd, a smuggler, thief, milliner, match-maker, and procuress, a notorious criminal of the day. Lord Chesterfield's letters are also admirably satirized in the person of Toby. The slanders still went on, and culmiMisfortunes, provoked by his unsparing nated in one too atrocious to be named. pen, and which embittered and shortened Unable to touch his arch-enemy upon the his last days, were close upon him now. stage, Foote resolved to scarify her tool; He had openly stated that in the character he remodelled the “Trip to Calais " into of Lady Kitty Crocodile, in his new com-"The Capuchin," and, as Dr. Viper, gibedy of "A Trip to Calais," he intended to beted him with all the malice he could hold up to public censure the notorious command. The battle created an immense Duchess of Kingston. Upon this threat sensation at the time; and on the first coming to the lady's cars, she used her night of the new comedy the theatre was influence with the lord chamberlain to pre-packed with friends and enemies vent the piece being licensed, and employed one Jackson, a hedge-parson, to libel him in newspapers and pamphlets. The attack was so severe, that he at length offered to suppress the obnoxious scenes of the comedy if the duchess would put an end to the war. A contemptuous and

the latter predominating, but not sufficiently to prevent its success and it was acted throughout the season. Stung to fury by this terrible satire, Jackson carried on the fight with yet greater malignancy. A riot was attempted on the next opening night, but defeated by Foote's clever tact. As a

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last stake, Jackson bribed a discharged | retain actors upon his establishment out of coachman of Foote's to bring a hideous friendship long after they ceased to be charge against him. Numbers who had useful to him. During one of his visits to been tortured by his cruel wit became par- Dublin he was taken so ill at the rehearsal tisans of his detractor. But, on the other that he announced himself unable to play hand, he had many firm and powerful that night. "Ah! sir," said one of the friends; his theatre was nightly filled with actors, if you do not play we shall have all that was noble in rank and intellect, no Christmas dinner." "If my playing and the king, to testify his sympathy, com- gives you a Christmas dinner, play I will." manded a performance. And, although very ill, he kept his word. It has been already recorded how he gave the profits of "Taste" to the poor painter Worsdale, who had been badly treated by Sir Godfrey Kneller. He was always ready to honour talent in preference to rank. During the run of "The Minor, ' when seats could not be found for noblemen, he contrived to secure a box for Gray and Mason. Players and authors were always to be found at his table, and not even the comfort of royalty was preferred to theirs.

There was a trial; but the infamous charges completely broke down, and the jury, without a moment's hesitation, returned a verdict of "not guilty." As soon as the acquittal was pronounced, Murphy rushed away to Suffolk Street with the glad tidings, and seeing Foote at the window, waved his hat in sign of victory. When he entered the room he found him stretched upon the floor in violent hysterics.

He never recovered the blow. He let the Haymarket to Colman for an annuity of sixteen hundred pounds and certain other considerations. He reappeared in the following May in "The Devil on Two Sticks;" but how changed! His cheeks were lank and withered, his eyes had lost all their old intelligence, and his whole person appeared sunk and emaciated. A few hissed, but his friends and the impartial part of the audience cheered him with unbounded applause. He rallied a little in the course of the play; but the public accepted him rather for what he had been than what he was. He appeared in three or four other characters; but towards the end of the season, while performing in "The Devil on Two Sticks," he was seized with a paralytic stroke. A few weeks at Brighton slightly recovered him, and in the autumn his physicians ordered him to the south of France. But he never got further than Dover, where he died on the 21st of October, 1777.

He was buried in the cloisters of Westminster by torchlight, where he lies undistinguished by a memorial of any kind.

6

"Did you think he would be so soon gone?" writes Johnson to Mrs. Thrale. Life,' says Falstaff, 'is a shuttle.' He was a fine fellow in his way, and the world is really impoverished by his sinking glories. I would have his life written with diligence." Such a valediction from the lips of this great and good man is sufficient to prove that Foote was not altogether the irredeemable scoundrel that he is generally painted.

With all his faults he possessed much generosity of disposition. He was an excellent master to his servants, and would

No man was ever more free from toadyism: rank was no shield against his wit, which would strike as hard at a duke as a menial. "Well, Foote, here I am, ready as usual to swallow all your good things," said the Duke of Cumberland, one night, in the green-room of the Haymarket. "Really, your Royal Highness must have an excellent digestion," replied the wit, "for you never bring any up again." A Scotch peer, notoriously thrifty, served his wine in very small glasses, and descanted eloquently upon its age and excellence. "It is very little of its age," observed Foote. Sometimes this humour amounted to insolence; as, for instance, after dining at a nobleman's house, not to his satisfaction, and finding the servants ranged in the hall when he was departing, he inquired for the cook and butler, and upon their stepping forward, said to the first," Here's half-a-crown for my eating;' and to the other, "here's five shillings for my wine; but, by, I never had so bad a dinner for the money in my life." Dining with Lord Townsend after a duel, he suggested that his lordship might have got rid of his antagonist in a more deadly way. "How?" inquired his host. "By inviting him to a dinner like this, and poisoning him," was the sharp reply. The Duke of Norfolk, who was rather too fond of the bottle, asked him in what new character he should go to a masquerade. "Go sober," answered Foote. Being taken into White's one day, a nobleman remarked to him that his handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket. "Thank you, my lord," he replied, "thank you; you know the company better than I do.” A

rich contractor was holding forth upon the | and elegance, Foote provoked much more instability of the world. "Can you ac- laughter. A gentleman who had concount for it, sir?" he asked, turning to ceived a prejudice against him, related to Foote. "Well, not very clearly," he re- Boswell his first meeting with him at a sponded, "unless we suppose it was dinner. "Having no good opinion of the built by contract." "Why are you for fellow," he said, "I was resolved not to ever humming that air?" he asked of a be pleased. I went on eating my dinner gentleman who had no idea of time. "Be- pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him. cause it haunts me." "No wonder, for But the dog was so very comical, that I you are forever murdering it." was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back in my chair, and laugh it out. No, sir, he was irresistible." This most unscrupulous of mimics and satirists was himself exceedingly thin

that the fellow is an infidel,” replied Johnson; "but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject." Boswell adds that he never saw Foote look so disconcerted. "What, sir!" he exclaimed, indignantly, "to talk thus of a man of liberal education; a man who for. years was at the University of Oxford; a man who has added sixteen new charac ters to the literature of his country!"

Garrick, of whose great fame he was undoubtedly envious, was a constant butt for his sarcasms; and yet Garrick, whether from fear or friendship it would be difficult to determine, did him many kind-skinned. When at one time Woodward, nesses, and was always ready to oblige and at another Wilkinson, threatened him him with money, and stood firmly by him with a retort in kind, he ran away to Garthroughout the Jackson prosecution; rick and Rich, their managers, foaming which last act of friendship touched Foote with passion, and threatened the most at last with gratitude, for in one of his violent retaliations. Boswell relates that, letters, addressed to Garrick, he writes: after hearing him at a dinner-table indulge "God forever bless you! May nothing in all kinds of coarse jocularity against but halcyon days and nights crown the Johnson, he observed that he had heard rest of your life, is the sincere prayer of the great lexicographer say a very good Samuel Foote." Garrick's notorious thing of Mr. Foote himself. He (Boswell) meanness, however, furnished him with had asked him one day if he did not think many a witticism.. At one of Foote's din-Foote an infidel. "I do not know, sir, ner-parties an announcement was made of the arrival of Mr. Garrick's servants. "Oh, let them wait," he replied to his footman, "but be sure you lock up the pantry!" One day a gentleman, while conversing with Foote, was speaking of Garrick's having reflected upon some person's parsimony, and ended by observing, "Why did he not take the beam out of his own eye before attacking the mote in other people's?" "Because," retorted Foote, "he is not sure of selling the timber." "Where on earth can it be gone?" said Foote, when Garrick dropped a guinea at the Bedford one night, and was searching for it in vain. "To the devil, I think," answered the actor, irritably. "Let you alone, David, for making a guinea go farther than any one else," was the reply. He could never forego his jest, however solemn the occasion. He had been to the funeral of Holland, the actor, whose father was a baker. "Poor fellow!" he said in the Bedford that evening, the tears scarcely dry upon his cheeks, "I have been to see him shoved into the family oven." He once said of an actress, who was remarkably awkward with her arms, that she kept the Graces at arms' length.

But Johnson considered that Foote surpassed every one he had ever heard in humorous narrative; and that although Garrick, the great conversationalist of the age, surpassed him in gaiety, delicacy,

From The Queen.

GOOD-WILL TOWARDS MEN.

OF real charity as a habit of judgment, of sincere good-will towards men not connected with us by ties of nature, love, or self-interest, how few of us know anything, or care to learn what we do not know! Christianity is the religion, of all that ever came upon the earth, which is founded most expressly on this virtue of good-will. If it is not charity, it is nothing; and there is scarcely a chapter in the New Testament which cannot be made to yield an injunction to culti vate brotherly love, either openly enjoined or conveyed by implication. But of all religions-not even excepting the Mohammedan with its fierce sectaries and fanatic Wahabees—there is none where intolerance, that is, want of charity, has

been so widely practised; none where man has been made cruel, more full of ill will to man—always, be it remembered, on the plea of honour to him who was the Prince of Peace and the God of love; none where orthodoxy has been more tyrannical, dissent more aggressive, doctrine more fanatical; none where the precepts of the loving, gentle founder have been more entirely set aside in favour of the self-created absolutes of men calling themselves and their churches his followers and disciples. This, so far as relates to the uncharity reigning over religious and speculative opinion; the tale of the infamies and persecutions which have taken place in these two domains of human thought being greater than we

care to enumerate.

ble even of turning. Why, then, should we be taxed to supply out of our hard earnings the deficiencies which have been wantonly created by folly or something worse? What business had Edward to speculate in mines? - had John to marry on love and nothing a year?— had Jane to listen to hope that had no root, and to believe in prospects that could never be consolidated into realities? They made their own beds of thorns and briars; why should we, who had no hand in that disastrous process, and who have kept ourselves soft and warm without their help, have to spend our strength in blunting the one, removing the other? The good-will towards men of which we hear and read so much at this sweet season of the year does not include gentle judgment of those whose But more than this: in our social lives, want and misery - nay, say whose folly our private judgments, and not only in our and misfortune- we are called on to retheological opinions, how little charity we lieve; and for the most part our help, find among men! how little sincere good- when we give it, is made bitter by rewill one to the other! Bearing the bur-proaches, and all the grace is taken out of dens of those who are heavy-laden and re- our charity by its want of the true essence joicing with those who are glad, are beau- of good-will. tiful things to listen to on a Sunday morn- The same thing is true of the gifts ing in church, or to read in the Bible by which it is the custom of the country to the evening light. They create a fine make at this time of the year. Either we sentimental glow that does duty with are churlish and candid, and refuse altothe majority for the real thing, the liv-gether what we are pleased to call "black ing light; but in practical life we have mail" to every one alike; or we are churlas little to do with the one as with ish and not candid, combining want of the other, and think ourselves justi-good-will and hypocrisy in no uncommon fied in this divergence between faith and union with the less courageous sort. We practice. We avoid as much as possible give what we think ourselves obliged by the presence of those who require help, the tyranny of custom to give, but we give and the success of our friends and neigh-it with displeasure and reluctance. We bours is more apt to produce envy than are compelled, we say; but we hate the rejoicing. The poor relations who are al- system; and only wish that we had ways wanting to be bolstered up with enough spirit to stand out against it from loans that mean substantively gifts, do not first to last. Few of us give our Christfind our street-doors standing hospitably mas boxes with hearty good-will, a little open for the reception of their sorrows over than under the average, thinking only and the relief of their needs; and when we of the advantage of the recipients, not of ourselves are limping, footsore, weary, and our own obliged loss by so much drafted threadbare, it is not often that we are hon-off to them. Yet real good-will towards estly glad to note the purple and fine linen, the dainty food and the luxurious carriage, with which our former comrade, or it may be subordinate, has blessed his prosperous life. We take a harsh view of that poor relation's part by which he has come to want. We grimly profess ourselves disbelievers in the doctrine of unmerited misfortune, incredulous of the superstition of persistent ill-luck; we say that a man's own conduct alone commands success or ensures failure, and we say it with unction, we who have been successful, and have put failure as a worm beneath our feet, incapa

men-real, not a sham would make it pleasant to us to give pleasure, would make it a gain to be the cause of gain. There is nothing Utopian or impossible in this; unless, indeed, practical Christianity be Utopian all through. It would be only carrying out the precepts and example of Him whose birth into the world we commemorate at this time, by whose name we are called, and whose followers we profess ourselves to be. For religion is not a thing for Sundays only, like the best bonnet and the extra sweet; if anything at all, it is a vitalizing influence for every day