"Love's Last Shift," which, quoting Congreve, he confesses had in it many things "that were like wit, that in reality were not wit, and has a great deal of puerility and frothy stage-language in it." "The Careless Husband" would not be acceptable to a modern audience, in spite of its witty and frequently brilliant dialogue; it is all talk, with scarcely any situation; the serious scenes —as is the case in all his plays-are strained and pedantic; Sir Charles, Lady Easy, and Morelove, all tedious; the famous fop and libertine, Lord Foppington, admirably as he pictured the fine gentleman of the day, is now obsolete, for coxcombry changes its form with every change of fashion and manners, and the exquisite of today is quite a different animal even to that of our youth. The gem of the play, however, and one of the finest comic conceptions of the last century, is Lady Betty Modish, the vain, frivolous, tormenting coquette, yet, at the bottom, good-hearted woman of fashion. Such a character, stripped of the coloring and conventionalities of the age, is as true to Nature now as it was then. It is also remarkable as having brought into fame the celebrated Mrs. Oldfield.

Cibber had commenced the comedy some months before its production, and put it aside, as among the actresses of the theatre he could not find one who realized his conception of its principal character, until his astuteness discovered the very woman he wanted in a young actress, who had hitherto been thought but little of.

Only a few years previously the Drury Lane company could scarcely hold their own against their rivals; but the tables were beginning to turn. Betterton's company was entirely made up of veterans, whose powers

were fast decaying; "and though," says Cibber, we were too young to be excellent, we were not too old to be better." "But," he adds, "what will not society depreciate? For though I must own and avow in our highest prosperity I always thought we were greatly their inferiors, yet, by our good-fortune of being seen in quite new lights, which several new-written plays had shown us in, we now began to make a considerable stand against them." Cibber is too modest. In 1705 Betterton and his actors went to the new theatre, built by Sir John Vanbrugh, in the Haymarket. Several of the Drury Lane people deserted to the new house. But it was a failure. Vanbrugh resigned the management, which fell into the hands of one Swiney; to whom, weary at length of being fleeced by their roguish manager, Christopher Rich, Dogget, Mrs. Oldfield, and Cibber went over.

Then followed many changes in the theatrical state, which it will be more convenient to describe in a future paper, and which ended in the rival companies, minus some of the veterans-particularly Betterton, who died two years before-uniting in 1711 under a license granted in the joint names of Collier, Cibber, Wilks, and Dogget. Yes, behold Master Colley, after more than twenty years of struggles, snubs, and waiting, one of the kings of the stage. Collier soon retired, and the management became a triumvirate, which so ably acquitted itself of its duties that it opened a period of uninterrupted theatrical prosperity, extending over twenty years.

Cibber was a rake, a man of fashion, a member of White's, and was always to be seen in the company of lords. But if he was a toady, he was not an obsequious He had a prejudice against Elrington-afterward a very fine actor-when a young man, and would not

one.

advance him. A nobleman undertook to plead his cause and solicit for him a certain part he had a great desire to play. "My lord," answered Cibber, "it is not with us as with you; your lordship is sensible that there is no difficulty in filling places at court; you cannot be at a loss for persons to act their part there. But I assure you it is quite otherwise in our theatrical world. If we should invest people with characters who are incapable to support them we should be undone." Cibber had a great passion for the gaming-table, and frequently lost heavily; and this, and his gay style of living, interfered with his professional duties, and at times he would go on the stage imperfect in some of his oldest parts. Davies had seen him lose himself in Sir Courtly Nice, supply the deficiencies of memory by an elaborate bow, a long, drawled-out “Your servant, madam." Then deliberately inhaling a pinch of snuff, he would strut across the stage and whisper to the prompter, "What is next?"

In "The Laureat," published during a quarrel between him and Wilks, he is accused of envy, idleness, neglect, and tyrannical behavior to inferiors. "Did you not," says the writer, "hurt the theatrical affairs by your avarice and ill-conduct? Did you not by your general misbehavior toward authors and actors bring an odium on your brother managers as well as yourself? I have been assured no person who ever had any power on the stage was ever so universally odious to the actors as yourself." He was particularly merciless to young authors. He called it "the choking of singing birds." There is a story told of one bringing a play for Cibber to read. He knocked at the manager's door, and scarcely venturing to step beyond the threshold, placed a roll of manuscript in his hand, asking him to read it and give

his opinion. Colley turned over the first leaf, read two lines, and gave it back to him with an "It won't do, sir; " and then went away to a coffee-house to tell the anecdote and laugh over the unfortunate man's discomfiture.

Upon all sides we hear of his envious disposition. Gildon says: "He is always repining at the success of others, and upon the stage is always making his fellowactors uneasy." Such a disposition, in that pugnacious age, it might be supposed, would get him into serious scrapes, but with Colley discretion was the better part of valor. "Of all the comedians who have appeared upon the stage in my memory," writes Chesterfield in "Common Sense," "no one has taken a kicking with such humor as our excellent Laureate."

It was in 1730 that the office of Poet-Laureate was bestowed upon him-why, must ever remain an impenetrable mystery. "As an actor," says a contemporary, "he had undoubted merits; as a dramatic writer his character was both good and bad; as Laureate, he was unquestionably the worst that ever was."

He still went on diligently producing plays, good, bad, and indifferent; of some, only the names survive: "The Double Gallant" and "The Lady's Last Stake" (1707-'8) were the best that appeared before the celebrated "Nonjuror" (1718), upon which Bickerstaff afterward founded "The Hypocrite." It was a clever adaptation of Molière's "Tartuffe," applied as a satire to the Jacobite faction. It put the Whigs into ecstasies; the king sent the author two hundred pounds, and Lintot, the bookseller, gave him one hundred for the copyright. If it made him friends among the Whigs, it created him enemies among the Tories, and confirmed that

virulence which Pope manifested against him during so many years. But the hatred of the great satirist began with a more personal cause. A few months before the appearance of "The Nonjuror," he had conjointly with Gay written a farce entitled "Three Hours after Marriage." The piece was damned in consequence of an extravagant situation in the last act, in which the lovers insert themselves, one into a mummy's, the other into a crocodile's, skin. A short time afterward Cibber, while playing Bayes in "The Rehearsal," made a satirical allusion to these incidents, probably because he saw Pope in front. Trembling with passion the poet came behind the scenes and with a torrent of abuse demanded that the allusion should not be repeated. So far from yielding, Cibber vowed he would repeat the jest every time he played the part. This was the beginning of the famous quarrel, which culminated in the actor being made the hero of "The Dunciad." Pope did not come best out of the affray; the moderation and dignity of Cibber's first "Letter to Mr. Pope" are admirable. He made no attempts to depreciate the genius of his foe; on the contrary, he sincerely praised it. His second, in which he promulgated a ludicrous and indecent story against him, although less commendable, yet fought him with his own foul weapons, and made him writhe with agony. "Cibber did not obtrude himself upon the contest," says D'Israeli ("Quarrels of Authors "). "Had he been merely a poor vain creature, he had not preserved so long a silence. . . . He triumphed by that singular felicity of character, that inimitable gaieté de cœur, that honest simplicity of truth, from which flowed so warm an admiration of the genius of his adversary, and that exquisite tact in the characters of men which carried