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plot of his Deserted Daughter; and Sheridan's Little Moses and his friend Premium in the School for Scandal are transcripts from Transfer and Loader in Foote's comedy; one of the hits was the unctuous humour with which the author as Smirk tripped off to "words pleasant but wrong."

THE COMEDY OF "THE LIAR."

Next year, 1761, Foote joined Murphy for the summerseason at Drury-lane, when was produced the little comedy of the Liar, in which there is a sketch of a Monthly Reviewer and the method of reviewing books a century since; he had qualified himself for the office by his previous service as an usher in a Yorkshire school. "So early," says Mr. Forster, "had the foul Dotheboys system planted itself, which, in its full growth and most abominable luxuriance, the genius of Dickens, among other delights and services bestowed upon this generation, uprooted and swept away."

The Liar kept possession of the stage until our time: the principal character, Young Wilding, was a favourite part with Elliston, who played it with much gusto.

FAULKNER DEFEATS FOOTE.

In 1762, Foote introduced into his Orators a publisher and printer, and an Alderman of Dublin, who, though with but one leg, was a pompous person everywhere, and had a Journal of his own. Foote had laughed at Faulkner's foibles in Dublin; and he had recently shown them in such exuberance in London, that Samuel could no longer resist the temptation to putting him in a farce. Accordingly, he bodily transferred to the Haymarket, wooden leg and all, Alderman George Faulkner, by the title of Mr. Peter Paragraph. This caricature of a caricature drew crowds to laugh at him. Among the jests introduced, Mr. Paragraph was to marry Vamp's daughter, with a fortune of copyrights and quack medicines. "They were to go halves in the Cock-lane ghost. But here the hitch occurred. While Mr. Paragraph, and two authors whom he had hired to ask questions of the ghost at nine shillings a night, were taking notes of the rappings and scratchings, at the house of Mr. Parsons himself, positively that old rascal Vamp had privately printed off a thousand eighteenpenny scratchings, entirely unauthorized revelations

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of the spirit, purchased of two Methodist preachers at the public-house over the way!"

;

Besides this ridicule of the Cock-lane ghost, the piece was meant to laugh at the prevailing passion for oratory; at old Sheridan's lectures, then professing to teach it to the million and at the Robin Hood Society, in which the million, presided over by a baker, practised it for themselves. Foote himself took the chair at the debates so introduced upon the stage. and uproarious was the laughter at his references to his honourable friend in the flannel night-cap, to the honourable gentleman in the straps, and to the worthy member with the pewter pot at his mouth. And often would he recur to the skeleton of an actor in the fat man's coat, the arms enormously wide, and the cuffs covering his hands—as "the much respected gentleman in the sleeves.'

But Faulkner was wofully annoyed at Foote's personation of him; and Lord Chesterfield, a correspondent of the Alderman's, hastened to tell him how he was being "taken off" by Foote in his new farce, and hadn't he better bring an action against him? His Lordship, with the humour he always passed off upon Faulkner for gravity, advised him to bring an action against Foote, which he did, and got a verdict, though but nominal damages. But he got himself compared to the Greek philosopher whom the Greek wit ridiculed, which was a feather in his cap; and he made money by printing and selling large numbers of the libel, and speeches; and Lord Chesterfield hoaxingly congratulated him on his victory.

"THE MAYOR OF GARRETT."

Foote was emboldened, not subdued by Faulkner; within two months he put jury, counsel, judge, and all into a comic scene, which he played at the Haymarket. He also put the Duke of Newcastle by the side of Justice Lamb, fish-salesman, and ex-militia major of Acton, in Matthew Mug and Major Sturgeon of the Mayor of Garrett, produced in 1763. Our wit and comedian, with his usual tact in hitting the follies of the day, seized upon burlesque personage, whose election to represent the hamlet "the Mayor of Garrett," a of Garrett, between Wandsworth and Tooting, is by some said to have originated just previously to the appearance of Foote's comedy. At this time, a sort of club was formed at Garrett, to prevent encroachments upon the common rights.

The members made up a purse, and employed an attorney in the neighbourhood to bring actions egainst the encroachers in the name of the President, or as they called him, the Mayor of the club and of Garrett. They gained their suit, with costs; and this event happening at the time of a general election, the ceremony upon every new parliament, of choosing a new Mayor was kept up, to the great emolument of the publicans of Wandsworth and adjacent places, who contributed to the incidental expenses. The candidates were generally eccentric persons, dressed in gaudy clothes, and provided with gay equipages; when returned, they were mock knights, as well as mock mayors. The most celebrated were Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, a hawker of old wigs; and Sir Harry Dimsdale, a muffin-crier; of both of whom there are engraved portraits. The last Garrett election was in 1796.

Foote, Garrick, and Wilkes are said to have written some of the candidates' addresses.

Dr. Ducarel received from Mr. W. Massey, of Wandsworth, June 25, 1754, an account of the origin of the custom, differing, as follows, from that just narrated:

"I have been informed that about sixty or seventy years ago, some watermen, belonging to this town, went to the Leather Bottle, a publichouse at Garrett, to spend a merry day, which, being the time of a general election for members of Parliament, in the midst of their frolic they took it into their heads to chose one of their companions a representative for that place; and, having gone through the usual ceremony of an election as well as the occasion would permit, he was declared duly elected. Whether the whimsical custom of swearing the electors upon a brickbat was then first established, or that it was a waggish afterthought, I cannot determine, but it has been regarded as the due qualification of the electors for many elections last past."

This account, it will be seen, traces the custom to about 1690, or 73 years before the date of Foote's comedy.

In breadth of humour this is one of the best entertainments ever produced upon our stage. Who can think of the heroic Major without the peals of laughter ringing in his ears, his marches from Brentford to Ealing, from Ealing to

* William Whitehead, on reading the Mayor of Garrett, could see nothing in it but "a simple vulgar thing;" Whitehead had long been one of Foote's butts for laughter, and he did not speak what he felt, for when Mr. Forster was writing his admirable Essay on Foote, Mr. Peter Cunningham showed him a MS. letter to Lord Nuneham, 2nd August, 1763, in which Whitehead admits to his noble friends at Nuneham, that the house (the theatre) was full, that there was a great deal of laughing, and that he laughed loudly with the rest.

Acton, and from Acton to Uxbridge; or the campaigns in Bunhill-fields and the field of Hounslow? Foote played Major Sturgeon gloriously; and Zoffany painted him in the character. Then, what a bevy of drolleries are the parts of poor henpecked Jerry Sneak, played by Weston; Mrs. Sneak (Mrs. Clive) intriguing with the Major; that prince of humbugs, Matthew Mug, also played by Foote; and Peter Primer, the schoolmaster, and his great admirer, Heel-tap.

The Mayor of Garrett has scarcely left our stage: Fawcett and Dowton played Major Sturgeon in our time; and John Reeve, at Covent Garden Theatre. Russell (long a Brighton manager) was identified with Jerry Sneak; and Mrs. Gibbs an inimitable Mrs. Sneak.

"THE PATRON."

This comedy was another satire upon authors and publishers, and their supporters. Foote delighted to introduce into his pieces sketches of the underling bards and broken booksellers of his own time. Thus, in the Patron, produced in 1764, we find spawned from the patronage of Sir Thomas Lofty a precious pair-Mr. Dactyl and Mr. Puff. Puff was a fellow, according to Mr. Dactyl's account, that to him owed every shilling, whose shop was a shed in Moorfields, whose kitchen was a broken pipkin of charcoal, whose bedchamber was under the counter, and whose stock in trade was two odd volumes of Swift, the Life of Moll Flanders with cuts, the Five Scenes printed and coloured by Overton, a few Classics thumbed and blotted by the boys of the Charter-house, and the Trial of Dr. Sacheverel: until Mr. Dactyl set him afloat with his Elizabeth Canning and his quack medicines, his lotions, potions, and paste, all of which he invented. On the other hand, according to Mr. Puff, when he first knew Dactyl, that rascal was a mere garreteer in Wineoffice-court,* furnishing paragraphs to the Farthing Post, at twelve pence a dozen; from this Mr. Puff promoted him to be collector of casualties to the Whitehall and the St. James's, which he soon lost by his laziness, for he never brought them a robbery till the highwayman was going to be hanged, a birth till the christening was over, or a death till the hatchment was up. In spite whereof Mr. Puff had continued to give the fellow odd jobs at translations, which got

* Where, by the way, Goldsmith at this moment lived.-Forster.

him boiled beef and carrots at mornings, and cold pudding and porter at night: only, for this winter, forsooth, Dactyl had got a little in flesh by being puff to a playhouse. But the hungry days of vacation will soon be back, and he'll be fawning and cringing again, like a lean dog in a butcher's shop, before the counter of his publisher, begging a bit of translation that Mr. Puff wont buy; no, not if he could have it for twopence a sheet.

"THE COMMISSARY."

Next year but one, 1765, Foote produced this comedy, (in which he had borrowed much from Molière,) in order to show up the money-making commissaries and army contractors of the Seven Years' War. It was an unsparing exposure of wealth ill gotten and worse laid out in aping the fine gentleman and the airs of fashion by those who had not a single qualification, save money, for the position. What a satire would Foote have produced upon the railway mania of our times, and its forced results!

In the Commissary were two portraits, which were very successful: one was Dr. Arne, the celebrated musical composer, who with his finery of manners and extraordinary person was almost himself a caricature. The second character was a Mrs. Mechlin, whose business was matchmaking and dealing in foreign manufactures home-made, and thus cheated her customers in both directions. She was visited by persons of quality, lived in good credit, kept good hours, went to church regularly, and was, to all appearances, a very respectable householder of Westminster. She kept shop at the sign of the Star, in the parish of St. Paul's. Covent Garden was then a region of fashionable shopkeepers. "An enemy says that she carries about a greater cargo of contraband goods, under her petticoats, than a Calais cutter; that she trades against the virtues of her sex; that she cants, cozens, lends money, takes pawns, and makes up matches not very creditable.” But she had her mishaps, as when she unmeaningly introduced her own son to the rich old dowager of Devonshire-square, as a young man willing to wed her forty thousand in the four per cents. and her two houses at Hackney accidents will happen, &c. Sometimes she is rivalled by women of fashion setting up for themselves in her particular line; and Spitalfields artists who manufacture for her smuggled silks, are treacherous and ungrateful, and

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