thee there," dragged so heavily in contrast with Garrick's passionate tones that while he was delivering it one of the gallery gods cried out,

Why don't you tell the gentleman whether you will meet him or not?" which set the audience in a roar. The play was repeated a number of times, but Garrick maintained his supremacy over his older rival.

Rowe was a man of many accomplishments, a master of polite learning, with a thorough knowledge of classical, French, Italian and Spanish literatures. That he was well versed in the Elizabethan literature, which most of his contemporaries were not, is evident from his plagiary of Massinger and his edition of Shakespeare. This of itself was a liberal education.

He was a very fine reader and Mrs. Oldfield used to say that the best instruction for an actress was to hear Rowe read her part in a new play.

In 1704 Rowe undertook a comedy which he called "The Biter "—that is, one given to hoaxing. It is, perhaps, the dreariest of comic plays ever presented on the stage and was most effectually and effectively damned on its first presentation. Of this piece Johnson says: "He ventured on a comedy and produced 'The Biter,' with which, though it was unfavorably treated by

the audience, he was himself delighted, for he is said to have sat in the house laughing with great vehemence whenever he had in his own opinion produced a jest; but finding that he and the public had no sympathy of mirth, he tried at lighter scenes no more.” His next attempt was a classical tragedy, "Ulysses," in which Betterton played the title rôle and Mrs. Barry the heroine, Penelope, and they insured the success of the play, but after the first run the performance was never repeated. "The Royal Convert," founded upon an ancient British legend, was his next production, and this, like its predecessor, owed its only success to the actors, who were Booth, Wilks and Mrs. Oldfield. The final lines spoken by Mrs. Oldfield in the character of Ethelreda, panegyrized Queen Anne, after the fashion of the panegyric of Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare's Henry

VIII."

'

Rowe's next play," Jane Shore," was, after "The Fair Penitent," the most successful of his plays, and continued to be given on the English stage for nearly one hundred and fifty years. One of the last great English actors to produce it was Samuel Phelps, who died in 1878. In this play and in his next, Lady Jane Grey," Rowe declared that he had taken Shakespeare for his model. Of course, he

nowhere reaches Shakespearean heights, but there is great dignity in the presentation, and in "Jane Shore" particularly much pathos.

Rowe was a politician as well as poet, and ambitious of advancement in office. It seems that he applied to Lord Oxford, lord treasurer under Queen Anne, for public employment. Oxford advised him to study Spanish; and when, sometime afterward, he came again and said he had mastered it, the lord treasurer dismissed him with this congratulation: “Then, sir, I envy you the pleasure of reading Don Quixote' in the original." The story is well authenticated and is related in Spencer's "Anecdotes," as coming from Pope.

When George I. succeeded Anne in 1714 and Oxford, Swift and the Tories generally were sent to the right about, Rowe was appointed poetlaureate, and thenceforth his literary work consisted mainly of annual odes in commemoration of a fat king, who could not read them. And no one has much cared to read them since. He died December, 1718, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

COLLEY CIBBER.

(1671-1757.)

THERE are so-called poets more or less famed for their dulness that one should know as well as those who are renowned for their verse. Some of them have been the poet-laureates of England, for let it not be imagined that the present laureate is the only dull poet who has sung the glory of British royalty in the three hundred years of the laureateship. Ben Jonson was the first to wear the official bays and be entitled to one hundred pounds a year and a pipe of Canary wine, and Alfred Austin is the last, while in between stretches a long line of names the most of which are forgotten. Tennyson, Wordsworth, Southey, and Dryden, of course, will never be forgotten, but there are not many of us that readily recall such dwellers on Parnassus as Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Colley Cibber, Laurence Eusden, and Henry James Pye.

The laureateship was taken from Dryden and

bestowed upon Shadwell, while Colley Cibber was appointed over Pope, just as Alfred Austin was appointed, when there were such poets in England as Algernon Charles Swinburne and William Watson.

Colley Cibber received the appointment from George II. in 1730, and was punctured with many an epigram. The following will serve as a speci

men :

Well, said Apollo, still 'tis mine

To give the real laurel ;
For that, my Pope, my son divine,
Of rival ends the quarrel.

But guessing who should have the luck
To be the birthday fibber,

I thought of Dennis, Tibbald, Duck,
But never dreamed of Cibber.

Cibber was made of metal that could not be penetrated by such shafts.

As may be remembered, Pope made him the hero of the Dunciad when he revised that poem. Louis Theobald was the hero in the poem as first written.

Cibber, however, was a very remarkable man. Actor, playwright, manager, hero of the Dunciad and poet-laureate, but not a poet, Colley Cibber was one of the most noted, as he will always re