93.
[202] Foote told me that Johnson said of him, 'For loud obstreperous broadfaced mirth, I know not his equal.' BOSWELL.
[203] In Farquhar's Beaux-Stratagem, Scrub thus describes his duties: --'Of a Monday I drive the coach, of a Tuesday I drive the plough, on Wednesday I follow the hounds, a Thursday I dun the tenants, on Friday I go to market, on Saturday I draw warrants, and a Sunday I draw beer.' Act iii. sc. 3.
[204] See ante, i. 393, note 1.
[205] See post, April 10, 1778, and April 24, 1779.
[206] See ante, i. 216, note 2.
[207] See ante, March 20, 1776, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22.
[208] Dryden had been dead but thirty-six years when Johnson came to London.
[209] 'Owen MacSwinny, a buffoon; formerly director of the play-house.' Horace Walpole, Letters, i. 118. Walpole records one of his puns. 'Old Horace' had left the House of Commons to fight a duel, and at once 'returned, and was so little moved as to speak immediately upon the Cambrick Bill, which made Swinny say, "That it was a sign he was not ruffled."' Ib. p. 233. See also, ib. vi. 373 for one of his stories.
[210] A more amusing version of the story, is in Johnsoniana (ed. 1836, p. 413) on the authority of Mr. Fowke. '"So Sir," said Johnson to Cibber, "I find you know [knew?] Mr. Dryden?" "Know him? O Lord! I was as well acquainted with him as if he had been my own brother." "Then you can tell me some anecdotes of him?" "O yes, a thousand! Why we used to meet him continually at a club at Button's. I remember as well as if it were but yesterday, that when he came into the room in winter time, he used to go and sit by the fire in one corner; and in summer time he would always go and sit in the window." "Thus, Sir," said Johnson, "what with the corner of the fire in winter and the window in summer, you see that I got much information from Cibber of the manners and habits of Dryden.'" Johnson gives, in his Life of Dryden (Works, vii. 300), the information that he got from Swinney and Cibber. Dr. Warton, who had written on Pope, found in one of the poet's female-cousins a still more ignorant survivor. 'He had been taught to believe that she could furnish him with valuable information. Incited by all that eagerness which characterised him, he sat close to her, and enquired her consanguinity to Pope. "Pray, Sir," said she, "did not you write a book about my cousin Pope?" "Yes, madam." "They tell me t'was vastly clever. He wrote a great many plays, did not he?" "I have heard of only one attempt, Madam." "Oh no, I beg your pardon; that was Mr. Shakespeare; I always confound them."' Wooll's Warton, p. 394.
[211] Johnson told Malone that 'Cibber was much more ignorant even of matters relating to his own profession than he could well have conceived any man to be who had lived nearly sixty years with players, authors, and the most celebrated characters of the age.' Prior's Malone, p. 95. See ante, ii. 92.
[212] 'There are few,' wrote Goldsmith, 'who do not prefer a page of Montaigne or Colley Cibber, who candidly tell us what they thought of the world, and the world thought of them, to the more stately memoirs and transactions of Europe.' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 43.
[213] Essay on Criticism, i. 66.
[214] 'Cibber wrote as bad Odes (as Garrick), but then Gibber wrote The Careless Husband, and his own Life, which both deserve immortality.' Walpole's Letters, v. 197. Pope (Imitations of Horace, II. i. 90), says:--
'All this may be; the people's voice is odd, It is, and it is not, the voice of God. To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays, And yet deny The Careless Husband praise, Or say our fathers never broke a rule; Why then, I say, the public is a fool.'
See ante, April 6, 1775.
[215] See page 402 of vol. i. BOSWELL.
[216] Milton's L'Allegro, 1. 36.
[217] 'CATESBY. My Liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken. RICHARD. Off with his head. So much for Buckingham.' Colley Gibber's Richard III, iv. I.
[218] Ars Poetica, i. 128.
[219] My very pleasant friend himself, as well as others who remember old stories, will no doubt be surprised, when I observe that John Wilkes here shews himself to be of the WARBURTONIAN SCHOOL. It is nevertheless true, as appears from Dr. Hurd the Bishop of Worcester's very elegant commentary and notes on the 'Epistola ad Pisones.'
It is necessary to a fair consideration of the question, that the whole passage in which the words occur should be kept in view:
'Si quid inexpertum scenae committis, et audes Personam formare novam, servetur ad imum Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet. Difficile est proprie communia dicere: tuque Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus, Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus, Publica materies privati juris erit, si Non circa vilem patulumque moraberis orbem, Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus Interpres; nee desilies imitator in artum Unde pedem proferre pudor vetat aut operis lex.'
The 'Commentary' thus illustrates it: 'But the formation of quite new characters is a work of great difficulty and hazard.