soul, than Cibber his little foibles and minikin weaknesses. The philosopher dwelt not more intensely on the lone enthusiasm of his spirit, on the alleviations of his throbbing soul, on the long draughts of rapture which he eagerly drank in from the loveliness of the universe, than the player on his early aspirings for scenic applause, and all the petty triumphs and mortifications of his passion for the favour of the town." SIR THOMAS NOON TALFOURD, "Cibber's Apology for His Life," Critical and Miscellaneous Writings, p. 72.]

It often makes me smile to think how contentedly I have set myself down to write my own Life; nay, and with less Concern for what may be said of it than I should feel were I to do the same for a deceased Acquaintance. This you will easily account for when you consider that nothing gives a Coxcomb more delight than when you suffer him to talk of himself; which sweet Liberty I here enjoy for a whole Volume together! A Privilege which neither cou'd be allow'd me, nor wou'd become me to take, in the Company I am generally admitted to; but here, when I have all the Talk to myself, and have no body to interrupt or contradict me, sure, to say whatever I have a mind other People shou'd know of me is a Pleasure which none but Authors as vain as myself can conceive. -But to my History.

However little worth notice the Life of a Schoolboy may be supposed to contain, yet, as the Passions of Men and Children have much the same Motives and differ very little in their Effects, unless where the elder Experience may be able to conceal them: As therefore what arises from the Boy may possibly be a Lesson to the Man, I shall venture to relate a Fact or two that happen'd while I was still at School.

In February, 1684-5, died King Charles II. who being the only King I had ever seen, I remember (young as I was) his Death made a strong Impression upon me, as it drew Tears from the Eyes of Multitudes, who looked no further into him than I did: But it was, then, a sort of School-Doctrine to regard our Monarch as a Deity; as in the former Reign it was to insist that he was accountable to this World as well as to that above him. But what, perhaps, gave King Charles II. this peculiar Possession of so many Hearts, was his affable and easy manner in conversing; which is a Quality that goes farther with the greater Part of Mankind than many higher Virtues, which, in a Prince, might more immediately regard the publick Prosperity. Even his indolent Amusement

of playing with his Dogs and feeding his Ducks in St. James's Park, (which I have seen him do) made the common People adore him, and consequently overlook in him what, in a Prince of a different Temper, they might have been out of humour at.

averse.

I cannot help remembering one more Particular in those Times, tho' it be quite foreign to what will follow. I was carry'd by my Father to the Chapel in Whitehall; where I saw the King and his royal Brother the then Duke of York, with him in the Closet, and present during the whole Divine Service. Such Dispensation, it seems, for his Interest, had that unhappy Prince from his real Religion, to assist at another to which his Heart was so utterly I now proceed to the Facts I promis'd to speak of. King Charles his Death was judg'd by our Schoolmaster a proper Subject to lead the Form I was in into a higher kind of Exercise; he therefore enjoin'd us severally to make his Funeral Oration: This sort of Task, so entirely new to us all, the Boys receiv'd with Astonishment as a Work above their Capacity; and tho' the Master persisted in his Command, they one and all, except myself, resolved to decline it. But I, Sir, who was ever giddily forward and thoughtless of Consequences, set myself roundly to work, and got through it as well as I could. I remember to this Hour that single Topick of his Affability (which made me mention it before) was the chief Motive that warm'd me into the Undertaking; and to shew how very foolish a Notion I had of Character at that time, I raised his Humanity, and Love of those who serv'd him, to such Height, that I imputed his Death to the Shock he receiv'd from the Lord Arlington's being at the point of Death about a Week before him. This Oration, such as it was, I produc'd the next Morning: All the other Boys pleaded their Inability, which the Master taking rather as a mark of their Modesty than their Idleness, only seem'd to punish by setting me at the Head of the Form: A Preferment dearly bought! Much happier had I been to have sunk my Performance in the general Modesty of declining it. A most uncomfortable Life I led among them for many a Day after! I was so jeer'd, laugh'd at, and hated as a pragmatical Bastard (School-boys Language) who had betray'd the whole Form, that scarce any of 'em wou'd keep me company; and tho' it so far advanc'd me into the Master's

Favour that he wou'd often take me from the School to give me an Airing with him on Horseback, while they were left to their Lessons; you may be sure such envy'd Happiness did not encrease their Good-will to me: Notwithstanding which my Stupidity cou'd take no warning from their Treatment. An Accident of the same nature happen'd soon after, that might have frighten'd a Boy of a meek Spirit from attempting any thing above the lowest Capacity. On the 23rd of April following, being the CoronationDay of the new King, the School petition'd the Master for leave to play; to which he agreed, provided any of the Boys would produce an English Ode upon that Occasion. The very Word, Ode, I know makes you smile already; and so it does me; not only because it still makes so many poor Devils turn Wits upon it, but from a more agreeable Motive; from a Reflection of how little I then thought that, half a Century afterwards, I shou'd be call'd upon twice a year, by my Post, to make the same kind of Oblations to an unexceptionable Prince, the serene Happiness of whose Reign my halting Rhimes are still so unequal to This, I own, is Vanity without Disguise; but Haec olim meminisse juvat: The remembrance of the miserable prospect we had then before us, and have since escaped by a Revolution, is now a Pleasure which, without that Remembrance, I could not so heartily have enjoy'd. The Ode I was speaking of fell to my Lot, which in about half an Hour I produc'd. I cannot say it was much above the merry Style of Sing Sing the Day, and Sing the Song, in the Farce: Yet bad as it was, it serv'd to get the School a Play-day, and to make me not a little vain upon it; which last Effect so disgusted my Play-fellows that they left me out of the Party I had most a mind to be of in that Day's Recreation. But their Ingratitude serv'd only to increase my Vanity; for I consider'd them as so many beaten Tits that had just had the Mortification of seeing my Hack of a Pegasus come in before them. This low Passion is so rooted in our Nature that sometimes riper Heads cannot govern it. I have met with much the same silly sort of Coldness, even from my Contemporaries of the Theatre, from having the superfluous Capacity of writing myself the Characters I have acted.

Here, perhaps, I may again seem to be vain; but if all these Facts are true (as true they are) how can I help it? Why am I

oblig'd to conceal them? The Merit of the best of them is not so extraordinary as to have warn'd me to be nice upon it; and the Praise due to them is so small a Fish, it was scarce worth while to throw my Line into the Water for it. If I confess my Vanity while a Boy, can it be Vanity, when a Man, to remember it? And if I have a tolerable Feature, will not that as much belong to my Picture as an Imperfection? In a word, from what I have mentioned, I wou'd observe only this: That when we are conscious of the least comparative Merit in ourselves, we shou'd take as much care to conceal the value we set upon it, as if it were a real Defect: To be elated or vain upon it is shewing your Money before People in want; ten to one but some who may think you to have too much may borrow, or pick your Pocket before you get home. He who assumes Praise to himself, the World will think overpays himself. Even the Suspicion of being vain ought as much to be dreaded as the Guilt itself. Cæsar was of the same Opinion in regard to his Wife's Chastity. Praise, tho' it may be our due, is not like a Bank-Bill, to be paid upon Demand; to be valuable it must be voluntary. When we are dun'd for it, we have a Right and Privilege to refuse it. If Compulsion insists upon it, it can only be paid as Persecution in Points of Faith is, in a counterfeit Coin: And whoever believ'd Occasional Conformity to be sincere? Nero, the most vain Coxcomb of a Tyrant that ever breath'd, cou'd not raise an unfeigned Applause of his Harp by military Execution; even where Praise is deserv'd, Ill-nature and Self-conceit (Passions that poll a majority of Mankind) will with less reluctance part with their Mony than their Approbation. Men of the greatest Merit are forced to stay 'till they die before the World will fairly make up their Account: Then indeed you have a Chance for your full Due, because it is less grudg'd when you are incapable of enjoying it: Then perhaps even Malice shall heap Praises upon your Memory: tho' not for your sake, but that your surviving Competitors may suffer by a Comparison. 'Tis from the same Principle that Satyr shall have a thousand Readers where Panegyric has one. When I therefore find my Name at length in the Satyrical Works of our most celebrated living Author,1 I never look upon those Lines as Malice meant to me, (for he knows I never pro

1 Pope satirized Cibber in the Dunciad. See post, pp. 240-242.

vok'd it) but Profit to himself: One of his Points must be, to have many Readers: He considers that my Face and Name are more known than those of many thousands of more consequence in the Kingdom: That therefore, right or wrong, a Lick at the Laureat will always be a sure Bait, ad captandum vulgus, to catch him little Readers: And that to gratify the Unlearned, by now and then interspersing those merry Sacrifices of an old Acquaintance to their Taste, is a piece of quite right Poetical Craft.

But as a little bad Poetry is the greatest Crime he lays to my charge, I am willing to subscribe to his opinion of it. That this sort of Wit is one of the easiest ways too of pleasing the generality of Readers, is evident from the comfortable subsistence which our weekly Retailers of Politicks have been known to pick up, merely by making bold with a Government that had unfortunately neglected to find their Genius a better Employment.

Hence too arises all that flat Poverty of Censure and Invective that so often has a run in our Publick Papers upon the Success of a new Author; when, God knows, there is seldom above one Writer among hundreds in Being at the same time whose Satyr a man of common Sense ought to be mov'd at. When a Master in the Art is angry, then indeed we ought to be alarm'd! How terrible a Weapon is Satyr in the Hand of a great Genius? Yet even there, how liable is Prejudice to misuse it? How far, when general, it may reform our Morals, or what Cruelties it may inflict by being angrily particular, is perhaps above my reach to determine. I shall therefore only beg leave to interpose what I feel for others whom it may personally have fallen upon. When I read those mortifying Lines of our most eminent Author, in his Character of Atticus1 (Atticus, whose Genius in Verse and whose Morality in Prose has been so justly admir'd) though I am charm'd with the Poetry, my Imagination is hurt at the Severity of it; and tho' I allow the Satyrist to have had personal Provocation, yet, methinks, for that very Reason, he ought not to have troubled the Publick with it: For, as it is observed in the 242nd Tatler, "In all Terms of Reproof, when the Sentence appears to arise from Personal Hatred or Passion, it is not then made the Cause of Mankind, but a Misunderstanding between two Persons." But

1 For an account of Pope's satire on Addison, see post, pp. 211-214, 237.