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 ■ ''amesdoJitrne, a? tfu ■ ' PernktlL 
 
THE LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 RICHARD CUMBERLAND, Esq, 
 
 EMBRACING 
 
 A CRITICAL EXAMINATION 
 
 OF 
 
 HIS VARIOUS TVRITTNGS. 
 / 
 
 WITH AN 
 
 OCCASIONAL LITERARY INQUIRY INTO THE AGE 
 IN WHICH HE LIVED, 
 
 And the * 
 
 CONTEMPORARIES WITH WHOM HE FLOURISHED. 
 
 BY WILLIAM MUDFORD 
 
 " Man hath no need, no right, no interest to know of man more 
 than I have enabled every one to know of me." 
 
 Cumberland's Memoirs of Himself, 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED BY CHARLES SQUIRi;, 
 
 FurnivaVs-Inn Court, Holborn, 
 
 FOR SHERWOOD, NEELY, AND JONES, 
 
 PATERNOSTER-ROW ; AND J. ASPERNE, CORNH1LL. 
 1812. 
 

DEDICATION 
 
 TO 
 FIELD-MARSHAL HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS 
 
 THE DUKE OF KENT, 
 
 Sfc. Sfc. Sfc. 
 
 SIR, 
 
 THE permission which your Royal 
 Highness has granted me of inscribing to 
 you the following Work, affords me an 
 opportunity of publicly testifying those 
 feelings which I have long cherished in 
 private, and to the expression of which 
 your Royal Highness has been no stranger. 
 Perhaps, however, it is no less my duty than 
 certainly it is my wish, that the world 
 .should know them also ; for virtue is up- 
 held, and the practice of benevolence dif- 
 fused, by the contemplation of their exist- 
 ence in others. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 A dedication is commonly the meanest 
 of all intellectual productions, and, in pro- 
 portion to the elevation of its object, seems 
 to be the determination of the writer to 
 degrade, at once, his patron and himself. 
 It too frequently happens that it is written 
 to win from the great, by adulation, what 
 can seldom be expected from truth ; or it 
 labours with all the tumultuous phrases of 
 exaggerated eulogy, to earn a pittance which 
 rewards either falsehood or servility. 
 
 I stand, however, in neither situation. 
 I will not flatter, for your Royal Highness 
 would receive it, as unwillingly, as I should 
 offer it. I have sought, indeed, the present 
 occasion, merely that I might tell how 
 much and how frequently I have been 
 befriended by your Royal Highness in 
 the course of my life, and how truly I che- 
 rish a just remembrance of your repeated 
 kindness. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 To do this is surely allowable without 
 the imputation of meanness. It is a debt 
 which every man owes to society, to dis- 
 close the virtues of its members, and it is 
 a debt which every man owes to his bene- 
 factor, to make him the offering of his 
 gratitude. 
 
 Accept, as such an offering, this Dedi- 
 cation, and permit me to subscribe my- 
 self, with unfeigned sincerity, 
 
 Sir, 
 Your Royal Highnesses most obliged 
 And obedient Servant, 
 
 WILLIAM MUDFORD. 
 
 November 22, 1811. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 W HEN the Memoirs of Cumberland wer£ 
 published, I was forcibly impressed with 
 their insufficiency in all that regarded the 
 estimation of his literary character; and 
 while I found in them all that could be 
 wished about the man* I was conscious that 
 whenever his death should happen, an am- 
 ple and interesting opportunity would oc- 
 cur for the union of this personal history, 
 with a minute enquiry into the pretensions 
 of the author. In what way, however, I 
 conceived this scheme might be best exe- 
 cuted, may be easily known from the fol- 
 lowing pages, which I have endeavoured to 
 make as interesting as I could. If I have 
 failed, I will not seek to mitigate censure 
 by an appeal to indulgence. 
 
 b . 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 Whether any thing respecting Cumber- 
 land, yet unknown, might have been ob- 
 tained by application to his family, is un- 
 certain. I forbore to try the experiment, 
 because I wished to perform my under- 
 taking with an unbiassed mind. Had I 
 been indebted to them for any communi- 
 cations, or for courtesies of any kind, I 
 should only have increased my own embar- 
 rassment, without, perhaps, increasing the 
 advantage of the reader. No man can dis- 
 regard the influence of those feelings which 
 are generated by friendly intercourse, or by 
 polite attentions ; and he might justly be 
 charged with ingratitude and insincerity, 
 who should obtain from the relatives of a 
 person what information he needed, and 
 then requite the obligation by giving them 
 pain in his opinions. I resolved therefore 
 to place myself in no such equivocal situa- 
 tion, for I wished to think with freedom, 
 and with freedom to speak my thoughts. 
 Nor do I imagine that much could have 
 been given had I asked, and had they, 
 whom I asked, been willing to give; for 
 Cumberland probably told all that need be, 
 if not all that could be, known. 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 In examining the writings of Cumberland 
 I have sometimes done it with a minute- 
 ness which may be thought unnecessary, 
 and perhaps tedious. I did it, however, 
 because I considered it as the fittest means 
 of attaining my end, which was, to discover 
 the full extent of his merits as an author. 
 It enabled me, also, by adducing the grounds 
 of my belief, to avoid the imputation of in- 
 discriminate censure or praise. 
 
 In the note, p. 62, I have spoken of Lord 
 Chatham's Letters to Lord Camelford, and 
 drawn a false inference, from believing that 
 they were addressed to the late nobleman of 
 that name, who fell in a duel. I am indebted 
 to the vigilance of a friend for being able to 
 notice the error in this place. 
 
 I experienced some difficulty in ascertain- 
 ing the dates of Cumberland's various pro- 
 ductions, in which he has been inexcusably 
 negligent. As often as I could I have sup- 
 plied his deficiences ; but sometimes I found 
 it impossible to do so without more loss of 
 time than the acquisition would have cpm- 
 pensated. 
 
 62 
 
Mi PREFACE. 
 
 The extracts which I have Occasion- 
 ally made from his Memoirs, have been 
 of such passages as either tended to illus- 
 trate particular events of his life, and in 
 which I conceived the employment of his 
 own language might confer a character of 
 authenticity ; of such as exhibited his ta- 
 lents as a writer ; or, finally, where I ima- 
 gined the amusement of the reader would 
 be promoted by their introduction. I hope 
 it will not be thought, however, that I have 
 done this too copiously ; a splenetic reader, 
 indeed, might tell me that I have not done 
 it enough, by hinting that these extracts 
 form the only valuable part of my book. I 
 selected them sometimes with the expecta- 
 tion that they would relieve the aridity of 
 continued critical discussion, or the barren 
 commemoration of familiar and unimpor- 
 tant facts. 
 
 For the freedom with which I have ex- 
 pressed my opinions upon the works of liv- 
 ing authors, I have no apology to offer, 
 because I deem none necessary. I would 
 have suppressed them, had I felt any ade- 
 quate motive for it ; but I could not falsify 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 them. I disclaim all influence of malignity 
 or envy ; but I am not very anxious about 
 the reception of my renunciation, because I 
 know that the reverse will be more willingly 
 believed by the majority of mankind. 06- 
 trectatio et livor proms auribus accipiuntur. 
 Tacit.— I have not sought occasions for 
 censure ; but when they presented them- 
 selves I did not shrink from the expression 
 of it. Let those who differ from me disprove 
 my positions by argument, and I shall be 
 ready to listen, and happy to be convinced, 
 but if they answer by the compendious rea- 
 soning of scornful disregard, I shall know 
 where the truth lies, and be sufficiently 
 pleased with that proud silence which is 
 more frequently the refuge of weakness than 
 the conscious dignity of power disdaining to 
 exert itself. It is often more prudent to 
 despise an adversary than to oppose him, 
 for while no evidence of inability is mani- 
 fested, there will always be a credulous part 
 of mankind who will disbelieve its existence. 
 
 When I had just begun the composition 
 of the present volume I was informed, by a 
 friend, that I might expect a competitor in 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 Sir James Bland Burges, who was medi- 
 tating a similar posthumous memorial. As 
 I doubted, however, whether the public cu- 
 riosity about a man like Cumberland, would 
 justify two such undertakings, I deemed it 
 adviseable to communicate with Sir James 
 upon the rumour, and to acquaint him with 
 my own intentions. 
 
 This I did in a letter, where I also apolo- 
 gised for obtruding myself upon his notice, 
 personally a stranger to him as I was. As 
 I am not fond enough of my own writings 
 to make copies of my letters, I have conse- 
 quently no one of this ; but if I remem- 
 ber its purport rightly, it simply stated 
 what I had heard respecting his being en- 
 gaged upon a life of Cumberland, informed 
 him of my own plans, expressed my 
 apprehensions whether a double attempt 
 would be likely to succeed, and made, I 
 believe, some slight proposal of a coali- 
 tion, supposing the report I had heard to 
 be true. To this communication I received 
 the following very polite reply from Sir 
 James : 
 
PREFACE, XV 
 
 € * Beau Port, near Battle, Sussex, 
 " §i Y> 16th September, 1811. 
 
 u I was yesterday favoured with your 
 letter of the 11th instant, respecting your 
 intended publication of Mr. Cumberland's 
 Life. 
 
 " Nothing can be more unfounded than 
 the report which has reached you of my 
 having a similar intent. Mr. Cumber- 
 land, indeed, by his will, left the manage- 
 ment and publication of his MSS. to the care 
 of Mr. Rogers, Mr. Sharpe, and myself; 
 but his daughter, Mrs. Jansen, has declined 
 our interference, and has advertized in her 
 own name, an edition of certain plays, which 
 Mr. Cumberland had, in the last year of his 
 life, advertized for publication. I rather 
 apprehend that Mr. Cumberland has not 
 left any thing of much importance behind 
 him ; but, as he latterly wrote many things 
 for the booksellers, and for various periodi- 
 cal publications, to which he did not affix 
 his name, many of which have considerable 
 merit, it might prove interesting to the pub- 
 lic to notice them. In the most trifling of 
 them, strong marks of his genius appear. I 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 am not aware that he ever wrote any thing 
 in partnership, except the Exodiad, which 
 we wrote together. After all, his great ex- 
 cellence was chiefly shewn in conversation, 
 in which his entertaining powers were un- 
 equalled. Those who liv'd most with him 
 could best appreciate this ; but this, like 
 Garrick^s acting, vanished with him, and no 
 adequate representation of it can be convey'd 
 to posterity. My long intimacy with him, 
 and the regard which I felt for him, make 
 me rejoic'd to think, that so early a justice 
 will be done to his memory, by a gentleman 
 who appears to be so well qualified far the 
 task which he has undertaken ; and J shall 
 he ready to give you every information, on 
 any point relating to him which may fall 
 within my knowledge. 
 
 f With every good wish for the success of 
 your intended publication, 
 
 " I am, Sir, 
 u Your most obedient humble servant, 
 
 " J. B. BURGES/ 5 
 
 ?J To William Mudford, Esq" 
 
PREFACE. XVII 
 
 I was no less pleased with the gentlemanly 
 ^courtesy of this letter, than with the unex- 
 pected opportunity, which it presented, of 
 enriching my work. The grace of a volun- 
 tary kindness has always appeared to me 
 the most interesting quality in any kind- 
 ness ; and when Sir James so politely of- 
 fered to give me every information in his 
 power, I must own that I anticipated a very 
 pleasing accession of novelty and interest to 
 my undertaking. I hastened, therefore, to 
 acknowledge his letter, and besides speci- 
 fying some particular information that I 
 wished relatively to Cumberland's anony- 
 mous writings for the booksellers, I solicited, 
 in general, any other intelligence which he 
 might wish to communicate or have it in his 
 power to do. I expressed how much I was 
 gratified by his unsolicited civility, and how- 
 happy I should be to testify to the public 
 the obligations I was to receive from him. 
 Such, I believe, was the general purport of 
 the letter ; but as I have no copy of it, and 
 did not expect that its contents would ever 
 become a question^ I can speak of it only 
 from a very imperfect recollection. 
 
XY111 PREFACE. 
 
 I now proceeded with my labour, and was 
 hourly awaiting the proffered intelligence 
 from Sir James. Day, however, passed after 
 day, and no communication arrived. Still I 
 was contented, for I could not imagine that 
 a gentleman would thrust himself forward 
 as a benefactor, and after all do nothing ; 
 that he would make a vain parade of an 
 unasked kindness, and let it evaporate in 
 words ; that he would profess his delight at 
 the justice to be done to his friend's me- 
 mory, by one " so well qualified for the 
 task," and yet withhold what might adorn 
 or endear that memory. I could not sup- 
 pose a deliberate intention to deceive, and I 
 therefore candidly conjectured that the de- 
 lay would be compensated by the value of 
 the gift, and that he was only protracting 
 the time that he might not make an offering 
 unworthy of the occasion. 
 
 I love to think well of mankind, and this 
 illusion, therefore, consoled me for many 
 weeks ; but when, at length, I found the 
 volume approaching rapidly to a close, and 
 remembered that I had not only received no 
 answer of any description from Sir James, 
 
PREFACE. XIX 
 
 to my second letter, but that he had also 
 only vapoured and paid compliments, in- 
 stead of performing a voluntary offer, the 
 illusion vanished, and I discovered a dreary 
 void of moral insincerity. 
 
 No man is pleased to find himself the ob- 
 ject of deception, when his own aims are 
 fair and honourable ; and really, on this oc- 
 casion, my surprise was at least as great as 
 my indignation. I immediately considered 
 what ought to be the conduct of a person 
 who makes an unsolicited offer of his assist- 
 ance, and finds that unsolicited offer accepted. 
 No man, indeed, is bound to perform all that 
 may be asked of him, but every man is bound 
 to perform all that he promises ; and there 
 is surely an additional obligation when that 
 promise is the free offspring of his own judg- 
 ment. Sir James thinks otherwise, how- 
 ever ; but I hope I shall never exchange my 
 code of ethics for his. Perhaps he might 
 reply that he altered his opinion afterwards, 
 and that he did not wish to incur any publie 
 responsibility ; if so, I would have candidly- 
 acknowledged the validity of his plea ; but 
 why did he not rescue himself from a disho- 
 
%K PREFACE. 
 
 nourable suspicion, by telling me so ? I was 
 sufficiently confident in my own powers not 
 to sink into despair at the anticipation of 
 losing the assistance of Sir James Bland 
 Surges . 
 
 When I conceive that any person has con- 
 ducted himself towards me with incivility, I 
 cannot suffer him to enjoy the triumph of do- 
 ing it with impunity, but take an immediate 
 opportunity of expressing, with decision,what 
 are my sensations ; and, accordingly, when I 
 thought, beyond the ptfwer of self-delusion, 
 that Sir James had done so, I told him my 
 opinion in the following letter, of which 
 I kept a copy, anticipating its present use : 
 
 ?. c Sir, November 11, 1811. 
 
 " I had the pleasure of answering your 
 obliging letter dated September 16th, a few 
 days after the. receipt of it, and, availing 
 myself of the offer which it contained, re- 
 quested from you some information respect- 
 ing those things which Cumberland had 
 written, anonymously, for the booksellers, 
 and any other topic which you might deem 
 interesting to the public. 
 
PREFACE. XXI 
 
 u When I ventured to make this request, 
 I own I had some pleasing anticipations 
 of success, and imagined I should be able 
 to enrich my work with some curious facts. 
 So long a time has elapsed, however, with- 
 out receiving any communications from you> 
 that I now consider my hopes as having 
 been vainly formed; and I have brought 
 the volume nearly to a conclusion without 
 any of those advantages to it which I was 
 led to expect from your promises. 
 
 " I will not inquire from what motive 
 this change in your intentions has arisen ; 
 but, as I am conscious that I did not obtrude 
 beyond what your politeness amply justi- 
 fied in me, I must freely confess that I feel 
 no pleasure in reflecting upon your silence. 
 As, also, in the expectation of what you 
 promised, I more than hinted to my friends 
 the obligations I was to receive from you, 
 I am afraid it will be necessary for me to 
 advert to the failure in my preface, though I 
 Jiope to do it without acrimony or coarseness 
 " I remain, Sir, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " W. MUDF0RD. V 
 
 " To Sir James Bland Burgas'* 
 
XXil , PREFACE. 
 
 To this letter I received an answer ; a very 
 brief one ; just eight lines ; in which, how- 
 ever, Sir James, with much condescension, 
 permits me to publish the correspondence 
 that had taken place between us, " provided 
 I published this letter with the rest." I was 
 fully sensible of the value of the permission, 
 and if I did not avail myself of it, it was only 
 because I am more accustomed to act from 
 my own judgment than from the dictates of 
 others. I hope this apology will satisfy Sir 
 James, for my omission of his laconic epistle, 
 without wounding his self-importance. Its 
 contents, indeed, do not deserve publicity ; 
 for the only agreeable sentence in it is where 
 he tells me that he should have held my 
 letter " undeserving of an answer," if I had 
 not threatened " to make free" with him in 
 my preface ; and so he wrote me one in 
 defiance. This is as it should be in a preux 
 et hardi Chevalier ; and in the epic poet, of 
 Richard Cceur de Lion. 
 
 I have certainly made free with him, as 
 he terms it, and if my freedom has the effect 
 of rectifying his notions upon promissory 
 obligations, I shall not repine at the trouble. 
 
PREFACE, XX111 
 
 There is an admirable disquisition in Paley's 
 Moral Philosophy, (B. III. Part I. chap, v.) 
 upon promises, the attentive perusal of which 
 I would earnestly recommend to Sir James ; 
 not so much with regard to the transaction 
 between us, for in that it appears to me that 
 he has made himself merely ridiculous, in 
 having vainly decorated himself with the 
 title of a benefactor, without the ability or 
 intention, I know not which, to support the 
 character ; but in reference to the general 
 concerns of life, for, if he adopts the same 
 laxity of performance in all his promises, he 
 may find, perhaps, more serious consequences 
 result from it, than such a good-humoured 
 retaliation as I have employed. 
 
 W. MUDFORD 
 
 November 20, 1811. 
 
THE LIFE 
 
 OP 
 
 RICHARD CUMBERLAND, Esq, 
 
 CHAP. L 
 
 Cumberland* s descent, a literary one. — His great 
 grandfather, the Bishop of Peterborough, author 
 of the work entitled De Legibus Naturae. — 
 Anecdotes of him. — His primeval simplicity of 
 character. — His works.- — Dr. Bentley, the ma- 
 ternal grandfather of Cumberland. His do- 
 mestic character not deducihle from his writings. 
 Anecdotes of him. — Curious coincidence between 
 a passage in one of his sermons, and some lines 
 in Popes Essay on Man. 
 
 I^UMBERLAND possessed one claim to the 
 notice of his contemporaries and of posterity which 
 is denied to many. He was derived from a literary 
 stock, and some hereditary respect was attached 
 to the descendant of Bentley and of Bishop Cum- 
 berland. Nor did this patrimonial honour languish 
 in his hands ; he improved the possession which 
 
 B 
 
2 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 his ancestors had bequeathed to him, and trans- 
 mitted it to his own posterity with increased 
 value and renown. He was. proud indeed of the 
 literary honours of his family ; but it was the 
 pride of a man who wishes to prove himself worthy 
 of th^m by his zealous emulation ; not of one who 
 indolently reposes beneath the laurels which a 
 preceding generation has earned, and which have 
 devolved to him as the successor. 
 
 Bishop Cumberland was the paternal great 
 grandfather of our author. He was a man of such 
 conscientious feelings, such primeval integrity of 
 manners, and with such acquirements as a scholar, 
 that whatever renown his descendant might ac- 
 quire, it would still be capable of addition, from 
 his consanguinity with a man so eminently en- 
 dowed. He was the son of a citizen of London, 
 and received his education first at St. Paul's 
 school, and afterwards at Cambridge, where he 
 took a degree of B. A. in 1653 (being then in his 
 twenty-first year) and of M. A. in 1656. 
 
 His first intention was to study physic, and he 
 made some progress in those enquiries which 
 would have fitted him to practise with some skill, 
 though perhaps with less eminence than acci- 
 dental causes might have conferred upon a can- 
 didate less worthy of success. It has often been 
 observed that a young physician is generally the 
 plaything of fortune or of fashion: he either toils 
 through life to acquire the reward he deserves; 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 3 
 
 or a lucky concurrence of circumstances gives him 
 at once, the meed without, perhaps, the merit that 
 should earn it. In the country, a physician may 
 secure a respectable practice, because he acquires 
 it commonly without much competition : but in 
 the metropolis, he is confounded with a throng of 
 aspirers, with those who do, and with those who 
 do not, deserve the success they aim at ; and the 
 finest talents, the most consummate skill, are 
 doomed to obscurity for want of one fortuitous 
 occasion to display themselves; while adventurers 
 of humbler capacity start into notice and pursue 
 a resplendent track of fame and fortune, the chil- 
 dren and votaries of fashion and of prejudice. They 
 divide, among themselves, the patronage of the 
 town, and leave to their less successful brethren 
 the fees of those whose confidence in their skill 
 is, perhaps, less than their apprehension of heavy 
 charges from their much employed superiors. I 
 have heard a young physician, possessing talents 
 formed to succeed, if talents alone could suc- 
 ceed, lament with much bitterness this unequal 
 distribution of reward and favour. 
 
 From a profession so little calculated to engage 
 the fancy of an aspiring mind, but pre-eminently 
 adapted to satisfy the longings of a good one, Cum- 
 berland soon turned aside, and directed his views 
 towards the church ; a patroness equally capricious, 
 perhaps, in the disposition of her favours. He 
 diligently applied himself to the requisite studies, 
 
 B 2 
 
4< LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 and soon obtained a living, to the sequestered 
 privacy of which he retired, attentive to his duties, 
 and without a wish to change. The unaffected 
 piety of his manners, and the zealous discharge of 
 his office made him loved and respected : while 
 his talents and erudition acquired him the applause 
 and esteem of those who were best able to ap- 
 preciate their extent and importance. 
 
 During this unambitious retreat from the world 
 and its cares, at Stamford, he published his work 
 entitled* De Legibus Nature Disquisitio Philo- 
 sophica, Sfc. ; which received the testimony of the 
 learned in its favour, while the author lived, and 
 was recommended by Johnson, in his preface to 
 Dodsiey's Preceptor, as one of those books 
 which " teach the obligations of morality without 
 forgetting the sanctions of Christianity," and by 
 which " religion appears to be the voice of reason, 
 and morality the will of God." The author 
 then takes his station with Grotius, Puffendorf, 
 and Addison, as a fellow labourer in a cause so 
 noble. 
 
 When the Revolution took place, and it was 
 thought necessary to secure the protestant esta- 
 blishment, by the induction of such men into the 
 vacant sees, as were known to revere the institution 
 they were paid to support, Cumberland was not 
 forgotten. The blameless purity of his life, the 
 labours of his pen, and the orthodox tenets which 
 he not only possessed but acted upon, distin- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5 
 
 guished him as peculiarly qualified to form one 
 of that band which was now to rally round the 
 church, and secure her from the open or secret 
 attacks of her enemies. He was accordingly 
 nominated Bishop of Peterborough in 1691, in the 
 room of Dr. Thomas White, who refused to sub- 
 scribe to the new oath. 
 
 This preferment, however, he neither sought, 
 nor accepted with avidity when offered. He had 
 learned to moderate his desires, and to find, in the 
 rewards of his living at Stamford, an ample pro- 
 vision for every want that his heart could feel. 
 He had now passed through those years of life 
 when wishes are most likely to be formed, and 
 their gratification most vehemently sought. He 
 was now on the verge of his grand climacteric, and 
 shrunk from, rather than coveted, those episcopal 
 duties, which would irresistibly call upon him for 
 performance, if he accepted the station to which 
 they were annexed. 
 
 The first intelligence of his promotion to the see 
 of Peterborough, was conveyed to him through a 
 paragraph in the public papers ; and when he 
 heard of it by the ordinary channel of com- 
 munication, he hesitated to accept the honour : 
 either from an inherent timidity of character, from 
 a real moderation of happiness, or from the sug- 
 gestions of a scrupulous mind, that he was now too 
 old to undertake its duties. The persuasions of 
 his friends, however, subdued his disinclination 
 
6 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 from whatever cause it arose, and he accepted the 
 dignity of which the government had considered 
 him worthy. 
 
 The see of Peterborough was but moderately 
 endowed ; yet no solicitations could, after- 
 wards, induce him to permit a translation to a 
 wealthier one. He never suffered his attention 
 to be withdrawn from the obligations which it 
 imposed upon him, but sedulously devoted him- 
 self to their discharge, without permitting the 
 sophistry of self-delusion to persuade him that the 
 smallest might be dispensed with. This rigorous 
 enforcement of his own duties he practised to the 
 last month of his life ; and when his friends en- 
 deavoured to dissuade him from labour, which 
 they deemed so far beyond his strength to sustain, 
 his constant reply was, " I will do my duty as 
 long as I can/' Nor was this a new principle that 
 he had adopted with his elevation to the prelacy: 
 for when he was a young man, he habituated him- 
 self to the same inflexible mode of life ; and if he 
 was told, (as sometimes his friends did, from an 
 allowable apprehension of the consequences of 
 such scrupulous exactness) that he would injure 
 his health, he usually answered, " a man had 
 better wear out than rust out." 
 
 From an attention thus assiduous, however, to 
 his ecclesiastical duties, he found leisure to pro- 
 secute his literary researches, and spent many 
 years of his life in examining Sanchoniatho's 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 7 
 
 Phenician History, to which undertaking he was 
 impelled by reasons laudable in themselves and 
 likely to produce benefit to society. They are 
 detailed by Mr. Paj^ne, (who married his daughter 
 and published his posthumous works, among which 
 was the one now mentioned,) and may be here 
 briefly adverted to. 
 
 The errors of popery had been making rapid 
 strides during the short reign of a popish king. 
 Protected by the royal countenance it had assumed 
 an open and undisguised shape, and, from its very 
 nature, threatened the overthrow of the established 
 religion. Of that religion, however, Cumberland 
 was a zealous and a sincere supporter ; and he 
 could not contemplate, without concern, the grow- 
 ing danger that now menaced its prosperity. 
 Revolving in his mind the plan most likely to 
 secure its future stability, he conceived that the 
 enlightened part of its opponents might be most 
 effectually converted from their heretical opinions, 
 by a precise exposition of the fallacies upon which 
 they rested, and an historical detail of their origin 
 and progress among mankind. Idolatry was the 
 capital error of the Romish church, and to exhibit 
 how it became first established, under what pre- 
 tences, and supported by what authority, would be, 
 in his estimations labour not un worthy a protestant 
 divine, and not unlikely to destroy its ascendancy 
 in the minds of the enquiring and rational adherents 
 to the catholic faith. 
 
S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Of idolatry, however, the earliest account was 
 to be found in Sanchoniatho's fragment, and this 
 he studied with deep attention, labouring to ex- 
 tract from it those evidences of the commencement 
 of idolatrous worship which he wanted for his pur- 
 pose. In this object he considered himself to have 
 succeeded ; but his labour was rendered ineffectual 
 by the timidity of his bookseller, who feared to 
 publish any thing against popery, at that critical 
 period when it was a question which the most 
 penetrating observer of human affairs could not 
 decide, whether the see of Rome or the church of 
 England would triumph. But this repulse dis- 
 couraged the Bishop so much that, though he did 
 not abandon the prosecution of his design, he re- 
 linquished all intention of making his labours 
 public. He went on with his investigations be- 
 cause he believed them to lead to important results: 
 but he withheld them from the world, because he 
 shrunk from that controversy which the promul- 
 gation of his opinions would be so likely to 
 generate. If it be asked why a man, so con- 
 scientiously attentive to the performance of what- 
 ever he considered as his duty, should have 
 forborne, in this instance, to perform it from any 
 apprehension of the consequences, the answer 
 must be found in that apparent inconsistency 
 which is discoverable in every character, but which 
 would often cease to be such if we could exactly 
 appreciate the motives of the actor. His labours, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 9 
 
 however, were not lost to posterity, for his son-in- 
 law published them after his death; but as they 
 were abstrusely learned upon topics interesting- 
 only to a few, their success was necessarily 
 limited. 
 
 Bishop Cumberland lived to an advanced age, 
 and his death was gentle. He was found in his 
 chair, in the attitude of one asleep, with a book 
 in his hand, which he had been reading, the vital 
 principle extinct, and the immortal one gone whi- 
 ther the mind of man cannot follow. He was in 
 the 86th year of his age. His character is thus 
 given by his great grandson : 
 
 " To such of his friends as pressed him to ex- 
 change his see for a better, he was accustomed to 
 reply, that Peterborough was his first espoused, 
 and should be his only one ; and, in fact, accord- 
 ing to his principles, no church revenue could 
 enrich him ; for I have heard my father say, that, 
 at the end of every year, whatever overplus he 
 found upon a minute inspection of his accounts 
 was by him distributed to the poor, reserving only 
 one small deposit of 22/. in cash, found at his 
 death in his bureau, with directions to employ 
 it for the discharge of his funeral expences ; a sum, s 
 in his modest calculation, fully sufficient to com- 
 mit his body to the earth. 
 
 " Such was the humility of this truly christian 
 prelate, and such his disinterested sentiments as 
 to the appropriation of his episcopal revenue. The 
 
10 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 wealthiest see could not have tempted him to ac- 
 cumulate, the poorest sufficed for his expences, 
 and of those he had to spare for the poor. Yet he 
 was hospitable in his plain and primitive style of 
 living, and had a table ever open to his clergy and 
 his friends ; he had a sweetness and placidity of 
 temper that nothing ever ruffled or disturbed. I 
 know it cannot be the lot of human creature to 
 attain perfection, yet so wonderfully near did this 
 good man approach to consummate rectitude, that 
 unless benevolence may be carried to excess, no 
 other failing was ever known to have been dis- 
 covered in his character. His chaplain, Arch- 
 deacon Payne, who married one of his daughters 
 and whom I am old enough to remember, makes 
 this observation in the short sketch of the bishop's 
 life, which he has prefixed to his edition of TheSan- 
 choniatho. This, and his other works, are in the 
 hands of the iearned, and cannot need any effort 
 on my part to elucidate what they so clearly dis- 
 play, the vast erudition and patient investigation 
 of their author. 
 
 " He possessed his faculties to the last, verifying 
 the only claim he was ever heard to make as to 
 mental endowments ; for whilst he acknowledged 
 himself to be gifted by nature with good wearing 
 parts, he made no pretensions to quick and bril- 
 liant talents, and in that respect he seems to have 
 estimated himself very truly, as we rarely find such 
 meek and modest qualities as he possessed in men 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 11 
 
 of warmer imaginations, and a brighter glow of 
 genius with less solidity of understanding, and, of 
 course, more liable to the influences of their pas- 
 
 sions." 
 
 Of Bentley, the still more illustrious ancestor 
 of Cumberland, it is sufficient to mention the 
 name, for to no man, however moderate his pre- 
 tensions to literature, can it be unknown. We all 
 remember the vastness of his erudition, the coarse- 
 ness of his arrogance, and the extent of his con- 
 troversial ability. Every reader of Pope recollects 
 the line in which his skill in verbal criticism is 
 consigned to contempt, and the passage in the 
 Dunciad, where he is ridiculed with more aspe- 
 rity than truth ; and every reader must likewise 
 remember the man whose sagacity as a critic, and 
 whose orthodox ardour as a divine, entitle him to 
 the best remembrance of his country. I do not 
 mean to vindicate the polemical harshness of Bent- 
 ley, nor his absurd and preposterous emendations 
 of Milton ; but I reverence the man who made the 
 sublimest discoveries in science subservient to the 
 eternal truths of religion, by applying the deduc- 
 tions of Newton to the establishment of the funda- 
 mental principles of our belief; and I admire that 
 perspicacity of mind which has restored to their 
 native purity some of the finest passages in the 
 heathen writers. These claims to applause must 
 be allowed by those who may be most disposed 
 
12 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 to censure his fierceness, or to ridicule his mis- 
 takes. 
 
 Cumberland might justly be proud of his de- 
 scent from such a man, and the literary world is 
 indebted to him for some particulars respecting 
 him, which, if true, and there seems no reason to 
 question their veracity, shew his domestic charac- 
 ter in a light considerably more amiable than that 
 in which it has hitherto been contemplated. 
 Though there is certainly no necessary connexion 
 between the habits of a man's private life, and 
 those which he may display on public occasions, 
 yet we are so naturally disposed to associate in 
 our ideas these characters, that I question whe- 
 ther it has ever been possible to entertain two 
 completely distinct notions of an individual, even 
 upon the closest inspection of his life, public and 
 private. A political tyrant may be an innoxious 
 companion ; and a literary despot may possess the 
 gentlest of social virtues, but who can completely 
 separate the tyrant from the companion, or the 
 despot from the friend r They will both be ap- 
 proached with cautious timidity, which no exer- 
 cise of benevolence on their part can entirely dissi- 
 pate, because there will still be the consciousness 
 of what they are capable ; as we might be tempted 
 to fondle a tame tyger, yet fearful in our caresses, 
 because knowing the hidden disposition of the ca- 
 pricious animal. Such, indeed, must always be 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND*. 13 
 
 the unenviable fate of men who have made them- 
 selves terrible in . the exercise of their faculties or 
 of their power ; mankind will receive and transmit 
 the stronger features of their character, while the 
 softer and more engaging ones, tinted by the reflec- 
 tion from the more powerful, will be forgotten, or 
 only partially remembered and believed. 
 
 Cumberland has endeavoured, and successfully, to 
 remove some of the prejudices which are still en- 
 tertained by posterity as to the social qualities of 
 Bentley. He considers him as a man much mis- 
 represented, and strives to impress kinder notions 
 of him upon the reader's mind, by the detail of 
 some familiar anecdotes, which certainly justify 
 the belief that he has been aspersed. Pope has 
 represented him, in the following couplet, as ob- 
 sequiously attended by Walker ; 
 
 His hat, which never veil'd to human pride, 
 Walker, with rev'rence, took and laid aside. 
 
 And in a subsequent part, Bentley is made to ex- 
 claim, 
 
 " Walker, our hat." 
 
 Walker was vice-master of Trinity-college, and 
 the intimate friend of Bentley. The hat, says 
 Cumberland, " was of formidable dimensions;" 
 but he denies that it ever strayed from the peg of 
 his arm chair, and intimates that if it had, it is 
 likely he himself would have been dispatched for 
 
14 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 it. This office, therefore, it may be presumed, the 
 poet invented for the object of his satire ; but it 
 does not seem to be disputed that the vice master 
 " took it with reverence/' and we must therefore 
 suppose that, instead of " laying it aside," he 
 hung it on the accustomed peg. And thus this im- 
 portant fact may be considered as satisfactorily as- 
 certained by the joint sagacity of Mr. Cumberland 
 and myself. 
 
 Before I commence the immediate object of this 
 volume, I will endeavour to add something to its 
 interest, by exhibiting to the reader some of those 
 qualities of Bentley's character, which shew him 
 to have been less rigid and repulsive in domestic 
 life than is commonly supposed. Such facts are 
 always gratifying, both as they relate to a justly 
 distinguished man, and as they serve to rectify our 
 ideas, by removing unpleasing errors, and substi- 
 tuting, in their stead, better notions of human 
 nature, and feelings more agreeable to a good 
 mind. They are extracted in the words of Cum- 
 berland himself: 
 
 " I had a sister somewhat elder than myself. 
 Had there been any of that sternness in my grand- 
 father, which is so falsely imputed to him, it may 
 well be supposed we should have been awed into 
 silence in his presence, to which we were admitted 
 every day. Nothing can be further from the 
 truth ; he was the unwearied patron and promoter 
 of all our childish sports and sallies ; at all times 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 15 
 
 ready to detach himself from any topic of conver- 
 sation to take an interest and bear his part in our 
 amusements. The eager curiosity natural to our 
 age, and the questions it gave birth to, so teazing 
 to many parents, he, on the contrary, attended to 
 and encouraged, as the claims of infant reason 
 never to be evaded or abused ; strongly recom- 
 mending, that to all such enquiries answer should 
 be given according to the strictest truth, and infor- 
 mation dealt to us in the clearest terms, as a sa- 
 cred duty never to be departed from. I have 
 broken in upon him many a time in his hours of 
 study, when he would put his book aside, ring his 
 hand bell for his servant, and be led to his shelves 
 to take down a picture-book for my amusement. 
 I do not say that his good nature always gained 
 its object, as the pictures which his books gene- 
 rally supplied me with were anatomical drawings 
 of dissected bodies, very little calculated to com- 
 municate delight; but he had nothing better to 
 produce ; and surely such an effort on his part, 
 however unsuccessful, was no feature of a cynic : 
 a cynic should be made of sterner stuff. 1 have 
 had from him, at times, whilst standing at his 
 elbow, a complete and entertaining narrative of his 
 school-boy days, with the characters of his dif- 
 ferent masters very humorously displayed, and the 
 punishments described, which they at times would 
 wrongfully inflict upon him for seeming to be idle 
 and regardless of his task, ; When the dunces/ 
 
16 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND; 
 
 he would say, c could not discover that I was 
 pondering it in my mind, and fixing it more firmly 
 in my memory, than if I had been bawling it out 
 amongst the rest of my school-fellows.' 
 
 " Once, and only once, I recollect his giving 
 me a gentle rebuke for making a most outrageous 
 noise in the room over his library, and disturbing 
 him in his studies ; I had no apprehension of anger 
 from him,' and confidently answered, that I could 
 not help it, as I had been at battledore and shuttle- 
 cock with Master Gooch, the Bishop of Ely's son. 
 4 And I have been at this sport with his father/ 
 he replied ; c but thine has been the more amusing 
 game ; so there's no harm done/ 
 
 " These are puerile anecdotes, but my history 
 itself is only in its nonage ; and even these will 
 serve in some degree to establish what I affirmed, 
 and present his character in those mild and unim- 
 posing lights, which may prevail with those who 
 know him only as a critic and controversialist — 
 
 As slashing Bentley with his desperate hook, 
 
 to reform and soften their opinions of him. 
 
 " He recommended it as a very essential duty 
 in parents to be particularly attentive to the first 
 dawnings of reason in their children ; and his own 
 practice was the best illustration of his doctrine ; 
 for he was the most patient hearer and most favor- 
 able interpreter of first attempts at argument and 
 meaning: that I ever knew. When I was rallied 
 
£IFE OF CUMBERLAND. 17 
 
 by my aaother, for roundly asserting that I never 
 slept , I remember full well his calling on me to ac- 
 count for it ; and when I explained it by saying I 
 never knew myself to be asleep, and therefore sup- 
 posed I never slept at all, he gave me credit for my 
 defence, and said to my mother, ' Leave your boy 
 in possession of his opinion ; he has as clear a 
 conception of sleep, and at least as comfortable an 
 one, as the philosophers who puzzle their brains 
 about it, and do not rest so well/ 
 
 " Though Bishop Lowth, in the flippancy of 
 controversy, called the author of The Philoleuthe- 
 rus Lipsiensis and detector of Phalaris aut Capri- 
 mulgus autfossor, his genius has produced those 
 living witnesses, that must for ever put that charge 
 to shame and silence. — Against such idle ill-consi- 
 dered words, now dead as the language thev were 
 conveyed in, the appeal is near at hand ; it lies no 
 further off than to his works, and they are upon 
 every reading-man's shelves ; but those, who 
 would have looked into his heart, should have step- 
 ped into his house, and seen him in his private and 
 domestic hours ; therefore it is that I adduce these 
 littleanecdotes and trifling incidents,which describe 
 the man, but leave the author to defend himself. 
 
 c His ordinary style of conversation was natu- 
 rally lofty, and his frequent use of thou and thee, 
 with his familiars, carried with it a kind of dicta- 
 torial tone, that savoured more of the closet than 
 the court ; this is readily admitted, and this on 
 
 C 
 
18 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 first approaches might mislead a stranger; but the 
 native candour and inherent tenderness of his 
 heart could not long be veiled from observation, 
 for his feelings and affections were at once too im- 
 pulsive to be long repressed, and he too careless of 
 concealment to attempt at qualifying them. Such 
 was his sensibility towards human sufferings, that 
 it became a duty with his family to divert the 
 conversation from all topics of that sort ; and if he 
 touched upon them himself he was betrayed into 
 agitations, which if the reader ascribes to paralytic 
 weakness, he will very greatly mistake a man, who 
 to the last hour of his life possessed his faculties 
 firm and in their fullest vigour ; I therefore bar all 
 such misinterpretations as may attempt to set the 
 mark of infirmity upon those emotions, which had 
 no other source and origin but in the natural and 
 pure benevolence of his heart. 
 
 " He was communicative to all without distinc- 
 tion, that sought information, or resorted to him 
 for assistance ; fond of his college almost to enthu- 
 siasm, and ever zealous for the honour of the pur- 
 ple gown of Trinity. When he held examinations 
 for fellowships, and the modest candidate exhi- 
 bited marks of agitation and alarm, he never failed 
 to interpret candidly of such symptoms; and on 
 those occasions he was never known to press the 
 hesitating and embarrassed examinant, but often- 
 times on the contrary would take all the pains of 
 expounding on himself, and credit the exonerated 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 19 
 
 candidate for answers and interpretations of his own 
 suggesting. If this was not rigid justice, it was, 
 at least in my conception of it, something better 
 and more amiable ; and how liable he was to devi- 
 ate from the strict line of justice, by his partiality 
 to the side of mercy, appears from the anecdote of 
 the thief, who robbed him of his plate, and was 
 seized and brought before him with the very arti- 
 cles upon him ; the natural process in this man's 
 case pointed out the road to prison ; my grandfa- 
 ther's process was more summary, but not quite 
 so legal. While Commissary Greaves, who was 
 then present, and of counsel for the college ex 
 officio, was expatiating on the crime, and prescrib- 
 ing the measures obviously to be taken with the 
 offender, Doctor Bentley interposed, saying, ' Why 
 tell the man he is a thief? he knows that well 
 enough, without thy information, Greaves. — 
 Harkye, fellow, thou see'st the trade which thou 
 hast taken up is an unprofitable trade, therefore 
 get thee gone, lay aside an occupation by which 
 thou can'st gain nothing but a halter, and follow 
 that by which thou may'st earn an honest liveli- 
 hood/ Having said this, he ordered him to be set 
 at liberty against the remonstrances of the bye- 
 standers, and insisting upon it that the fellow was 
 duly penitent for his offence, bade him go his way 
 and never steal again. 
 
 " I leave it with those, who consider mercy as 
 one of man's best attributes, to suggest a plea for 
 
 C 2 
 
20 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the informality of this proceeding, and to such I 
 will communicate one other anecdote, which I do 
 not deliver upon my own knowledge, though from 
 unexceptionable authority, and this is, that when 
 Collins had fallen into decay of circumstances, 
 Dr. Bentley, suspecting he had written him out of 
 credit by his Philoleulherus Lipsiensis, secretly 
 contrived to administer to the necessities of his 
 baffled opponent, in a manner that did no less cre- 
 dit to his delicacy than to his liberality. 
 
 " A morose and over-bearing man will find him- 
 self a solitary being in creation ; Doctor Bent- 
 ley, on the contrary, had many intimates ; judici- 
 ous in forming his friendships, he was faithful in 
 adhering to them. With Sir Isaac Newton, Doc- 
 tor Mead, Doctor Wallis of Stamford, Baron Span- 
 heim, the lamented Roger Cotes, and several 
 other distinguished and illustrious contemporaries, 
 he lived on terms of uninterrupted harmony, and I 
 have good authority for saying, that it is to his in- 
 terest and importunity with Sir Isaac Newton, 
 that the inestimable publication of the Principia 
 was ever resolved upon by that truly great and lu- 
 minous philosopher. Newton's portrait by Sir 
 James Thornhill, and those of Baron Spanheim, 
 and my grandfather, by the same hand, now hang- 
 ing in the Master's lodge of Trinity, were the be- 
 quest of Doctor Bentley. I was possessed of 
 letters, in Sir Isaac's own hand, to my grandfather, 
 which, together with the corrected volume of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 21 
 
 Bishop Cumberland's Laws of Nature, I lately 
 gave to the library of that flourishing and illustri- 
 ous college. 
 
 " His domestic habits, when I knew him, were 
 still those of unabated study ; he slept in the room 
 adjoining to his library, and was never with his 
 family till the hour of dinner; at these times he 
 seemed to have detached himself most completely 
 from his studies ; never appearing thoughtful and 
 abstracted, but social, gay, and possessing perfect 
 serenity of mind and equability of temper. He 
 never dictated topics of conversation to the com- 
 pany he was with, but took them up as they came 
 in his way, and was a patient listener to other peo- 
 ple's discourse, however trivial or uninteresting- 
 it might be. When The Spectators were in publi- 
 cation I have heard my mother say, he took great 
 delight in hearing them read to him, and was so 
 particularly amused by the character of Sir Roger 
 de Coverley, that he took his literary decease most 
 seriously at heart. She also told me, that, when 
 in conversation with him on the subject of his 
 works, she found occasion to lament that he had 
 bestowed so great a portion of his time and talents 
 upon criticism, instead of employing them upon 
 original composition, he acknowledged the justice 
 of her regret with extreme sensibility, and re- 
 mained for a considerable time thoughtful, and 
 seemingly embarrassed by the nature of her re- 
 mark ; at last recollecting himself, he said, ' Child, 
 
2# LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 I am sensible I have not always turned my talents 
 to the proper use for which, I should presume, 
 they were given to me ; yet I have done something 
 for the honour of my God, and the edification of 
 my fellow creatures ; but the wit and genius of those 
 old heathens beguiled me, and as I despaired of 
 raising myself up to their standard, upon fair 
 ground, I thought the only chance I had of looking 
 over their heads was to get upon their shoulders/ 
 " Of his pecuniary affairs he took no account ; 
 he had no use for money, and dismissed it entirely 
 from his thoughts ; his establishment in the mean 
 time was respectable, and his table affluently and 
 hospitably served. All these matters were con- 
 ducted and arranged in the best manner possible, 
 by one of the best women living : for such, by the 
 testimony of all who knew her, was Mrs. Bentley, 
 daughter of Sir John Bernard, of Brampton, in 
 Huntingdonshire, a family of great opulence and 
 respectability, allied to the Cromwells and Saint 
 Johns, and by intermarriages connected with other 
 great and noble houses. I have perfect recollec- 
 tion of the person of my grandmother, and a full 
 impression of her manners and habits, which, 
 though in some degree tinctured with hereditary 
 reserve and the primitive cast of character, were 
 entirely free from the hypocritical cant and affected 
 sanctity of the Oliverians. Her whole life was 
 modelled on the purest principles of piety, bene- 
 volence, and christian charity ; and in her dying 
 
LIFE OP CUMBERLAND. 23 
 
 moments, my mother being present and voucher of 
 the fact, she breathed out her soul in a kind of 
 beatific vision, exclaiming in rapture as she ex- 
 pired—// is all bright, it is all glorious/" 
 
 To these anecdotes of Bentley I will add one or 
 two more, not generally known, being scattered 
 through temporary publications. They are too 
 good to be lost, and yet too certain to be lost, unless 
 incorporated with topics of greater weight ; they 
 will repay the trouble of reading, and they may 
 perhaps assist some future biographer of Bentley to 
 render his work amusing, if his materials prevent 
 him from making it instructive. 
 
 Bentley had a long controversy with the Bishop 
 of Ely, respecting some alleged malpractices of his 
 in his government of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 Bentley defended himself vigorously, and finally 
 succeeded in exculpating himself; but, during the 
 inquiry that was instituted on both sides, Atter- 
 bury hinted to him, in conversation, that he would 
 likely lose his cause, in consequence of the dis- 
 covery of an old writing, bearing date in James 
 the First's time, and which bore against the validity 
 of his pretensions. Bentley, who had no great affec- 
 tion for Atterbury, and believed him to be secretly 
 attached to the Pretender's cause, replied, with 
 some seventy, " I know very well what your 
 lordship means ; it bears date, I think, anno tertio 
 Jacobi primi : it would have more weight with your 
 lordship, if it were dated anno primo Jacobi tertii" 
 
24 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Pope, who condescended to borrow whatever 
 he could apply to his wants, and was not very 
 scrupulous from whom he took, whether from 
 friend or foe, from the eminent or from the mean, 
 has engrafted upon the reasonings of Bolingbroke, 
 in the Essay on Man, some very just and phi- 
 losophical notions which Bentley had promulgated 
 in one of his sermons. It is not certain, indeed, 
 that the thoughts are original even in Bentley ; 
 some of them had undoubtedly been expressed by 
 Locke, (Essay on Human Understanding, B. n. 
 Ch. xxn i. Sect. 12.) and they are all such as 
 might naturally suggest themselves to an acute 
 mind employed upon similar topics of reflection. 
 But the plagiarism is here perhaps more decisive, 
 from the remarkable coincidence which will be 
 found between the mode of illustration employed 
 by the divine and afterwards by the poet, and the 
 sequence of the ideas, which is nearly the same 
 in both. It may serve as another proof likewise, 
 that the irritable bard acknowledged the prudence 
 and propriety of the Roman maxim, fas est ab 
 hoste doceri. 
 
 Pope, in the first Epistle of his Essay on 
 Man, asks, 
 
 Why has not man a microscopic eye ? 
 
 For this plain reason, man is not a fly. 
 
 Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, 
 
 T" inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n ? 
 
 Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, 
 
 To smart and agonize at every pore ? 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 25 
 
 t)r quick effluvia darting through the brain, 
 
 Die of a rose in aromatic pain j 
 
 If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears, 
 
 And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, 
 
 How would he wish that heav'n had left him still 
 
 The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill ; 
 
 Who finds not Providence all good and wise, 
 
 Alike in what it gives, and what denies ? 
 
 The reader will be struck with the similarity 
 between this passage and the following extract 
 from Bentley's Sermon on Acts xvn. 27. Part I. 
 delivered at Boyle's Lecture. 
 
 " If the eye were so acute, as to rival the finest 
 microscopes, and to discern the smallest hair upon 
 the leg of a gnat, it would be a curse and not a 
 blessing to us : it would make all things appear 
 rugged and deformed : the sight of our own selves 
 would affright us : the smoothest skin would be 
 set over with rugged scales and bristly hairs. 
 And beside, we could not see, at one view, above 
 what is now the space of an inch, and it would 
 take a considerable time to survey the then moun- 
 tainous bulk of our own bodies. So, likewise, if our 
 sense of hearing were exalted proportionably to 
 the former, what a miserable condition would man- 
 kind be in ? Whither could we retire from per- 
 petual humming and buzzing? Every breath of 
 wind would incommode and disturb us : we should 
 have no quiet or sleep in the silentest nights and 
 most solitary places ; and we must inevitably be 
 stricken deaf or dead with the noise of a clap of 
 thunder. And the like inconvenience would 
 
26 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 follow if the sense of feeling were advanced, as the 
 Atheist requires. How could we sustain the 
 pressure of our cloathes in such a condition : much 
 less carry burdens and provide for conveniences of 
 life ? We could not bear the assault of an insect, 
 or a feather, or a puff of air, without pain. There 
 are examples now of wounded persons, that have 
 roared for anguish and torment at a discharge of 
 ordnance, though at a very great distance : what 
 insupportable torture then should we be under, 
 when all the whole body would have the tender- 
 ness of a wound ?" 
 
 If, from the probability that the same images 
 might occur to two persons enforcing the same 
 truths, Pope be acquitted of the charge of plagia- 
 rism, (an acquittal which I should not easily 
 acquiesce in, because of his known literary thefts), 
 there will still remain the circumstance of a 
 curious coincidence : and, upon comparison, it 
 will be found that the illustrations of Bentley are 
 sometimes superior to those of Pope : for when 
 the latter talks of the " music of the spheres/' 
 we are amused with words that have no intelligible 
 meaning annexed to them ; but when the former 
 tells us that an increased sensibility in our powers 
 of hearing would make those sounds dreadful 
 which are now either pleasing or hardly per- 
 ceptible, the mind at once acquiesces in the just- 
 ness of the deduction. If, therefore, Pope did 
 borrow from Bentley, he altered his original only 
 to corrupt it. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 27 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 Some considerations upon self-written memoirs. — 
 Rousseau. — Holberg. — Gibbon. — How far 
 the memoirs of Cumberland will be used in the 
 present work.- — His birth. — His mother s cha- 
 racter. — His father s. — The danger of receiving 
 posthumous praises. — Cumberland *s backwardness 
 as a child. — Educated at Bury St. Edmund's. — 
 Anecdotes of Bent leu. — Cumberland' s first pro- 
 duction. — Removed to Westminster School. — ■ 
 Reflections upon public education. 
 
 Having devoted one Chapter to the ancestors of 
 Cumberland, I shall now turn to himself, and 
 digest into a coherent narrative the principal 
 circumstances of his life. And here it may be 
 necessary to state, that what is advanced in the 
 following pages, as events that occurred to him, I 
 must be understood to deliver upon his testimony, 
 unless any other source of information be indicated : 
 and for these events I shall, of course, recur to 
 that authentic document, his own Memoirs, 
 published in his life time, and, as far as I have 
 heard, uncontradicted at the period of his death. 
 Beyond this, however, he is no further responsible. 
 For the opinions that may be delivered, the in- 
 ferences that may be deduced, the criticisms that 
 
53 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 may be hazarded, or the literary disquisitions 
 which the contemplation of the period embraced 
 by my subject may suggest, the reader is to blame 
 or praise me as he happens to be pleased or dis- 
 pleased. 
 
 In writing this life it will be my aim to give it 
 a character of novelty, and I hope of value, by 
 telling what I think myself, rather than repeating 
 what has been thought by others. Cumberland's 
 Memoirs will always be read as a pleasing accumu- 
 lation of literary anecdote, and as a correct register 
 of events that befel himself: I mean correct as far 
 as he thought it proper to disclose them. What 
 he has told, no one has yet disputed : that \ie has 
 told all no one supposes : and whether he should 
 have told all may be a question with many. It is 
 obvious, indeed, that he who sits down to record 
 all that he has done, and all that has been done to 
 him, assumes to himself a task beyond human 
 integrity to perform. Rousseau attempted it, and 
 went further than any but an enthusiast like himself 
 could have gone : but though he disclosed vices 
 and follies, which others might tell of themselves 
 if they were weak or mad enough to do it, it may 
 be doubted whether even he, in the very fury of 
 his candor and adoration of truth, unfolded all. 
 Homeland Gibbon have likewise been their own 
 biographers : the former has produced a lively 
 narrative, and the latter a dignified one ; Holberg, 
 perhaps, has communicated as much as posterity 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 29 
 
 will desire to know of him : but every one must 
 surely wish to see an adequate life of Gibbon. 
 
 The character of no man can be justly estimated 
 either by himself, his friend, or his enemy. The 
 office belongs to him who is neither. It belongs 
 to the man who has a judgment unbiassed by the 
 remembrance of past endearments or enmities : 
 who has sagacity to develope the intricate motives 
 of human conduct, and who has knowledge enough 
 of life to ascertain the moral qualities of every 
 action. The writer of his own life, if he attempt 
 to do this, will only incur ridicule for failure, or 
 contempt for vanity, that believes in its own suc- 
 cess : but if he merely shew what has taken place, 
 suggest what he believes to have been the cause, 
 and tell, with candor, what has been the result, 
 he will obtain the commendation he deserves, and 
 will transmit to posterity materials of permanent 
 utility. This has been done by Cumberland. 
 Every reader will allow the decorous circumspec- 
 tion with which he commonly alludes to his own 
 conduct on particular occasions : and though the 
 garrulity of an old man, and too often the vanity of 
 a weak one, are suffered to appear, there is an 
 evident intention of sincerity throughout the whole 
 work, which has a strong claim upon the reader's 
 kindness. 
 
 Still, however, it is evident that such a man as 
 Cumberland (who was not a Rousseau, and I do 
 not speak it invidiously), could not write his own 
 
30 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 life in such a manner, as should preclude an at- 
 tempt like the present. Of his literary produc- 
 tions he could say nothing beyond the commemo- 
 ration of the several periods of their appearance : 
 and as his whole life was little else than a constant 
 exertion of his pen, it follows that the chief point 
 of view in which his character requires to be con- 
 templated, is that very one which he was inevitably 
 compelled to leave unfinished. Hence the chief 
 motive to my present undertaking ; and hence, 
 also, the reader may anticipate what will be its 
 prevailing quality. I would not, were it in my 
 power, wish to supersede a single line of what he 
 has written about himself: but I would write 
 something about him, his works, his associates, 
 and his friends, which he could not have written 
 if he had wished, and which, perhaps, he would 
 not have wished to have written if he could. Such 
 is my object : and to its performance I now address 
 myself. 
 
 Richard Cumberland was born on the 19th of 
 February, 1732, in the Master's Lodge of Trinity 
 College. He might justly therefore boast of 
 having been produced inter silvas Academi. This 
 was the residence of Bentley, whose youngest 
 daughter, Joanna, the grandson of Bishop Cum- 
 berland, married. She was the Phoebe of Byron's 
 well known pastoral, published in the eighth 
 volume of the Spectator ; but we are not told 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 31 
 
 whether the poet celebrated her as the object of 
 real affection, or as the mistress of his muse only, 
 for every writer of amatory verses may be sus- 
 pected of sacrificing truth to fiction. She was a 
 woman of valuable qualities according to her son's 
 testimony. She seems to have inherited many of 
 her father's endowments of mind ; quick in appre- 
 hension, correct in her application of what she 
 knew, and of strong memory. She delighted also 
 in the ridiculous, and was fond, too fond, of cm- 
 ploying that unsafe test of truth; a partiality for 
 which, indeed, is nearly allied to disingenuousness, 
 and too apt to corrupt our social qualities, by 
 making them subservient to the single purpose of 
 raising a laugh at the expense of our own humanity 
 and the rights of friendship. Yet, with this strong 
 propensity to the easiest of all conversation, she 
 was often taciturn, where her discourse was 
 eagerly expected, and would sometimes display 
 her powers in company that had little relish for 
 intellectual exhibitions. She was religious, and 
 rarely, says Cumberland, " passed a day in which 
 she failed to devote a portion of her time to the 
 reading of the bible ; and her comments and expo- 
 sitions might have merited the attention of the 
 wise and learned." In this piety, however, there 
 was no gloom ; a convincing proof of the solidity 
 of her judgment ; for religion, operating upon a 
 weak mind, commonly produces either hypocrisy 
 or despondency. Cumberland concludes his ac- 
 
32 tIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 count of her with this emphatic declaration : " All 
 that son can owe to parent, or disciple to his 
 teacher, I owe to her/' 
 
 Of his father he speaks with equal, if not greater 
 praise. I do not wish to imply the smallest doubt 
 of his sincerity, or of the sincerity of any man 
 who is employed in the pleasing and solemn task 
 of decking a parent's grave with honours. It is 
 an office so consonant to the simplest and most 
 amiable feelings of the human heart, and one 
 which so certainly bespeaks the good-will of man- 
 kind, that he would be hated as cynical or unna- 
 tural, who should offer to degrade it from its sanc- 
 tity. Yet, the encomiums which are bestowed 
 upon the dead are always to be suspected ; and 
 especially when, in the dead, we record the virtues 
 of a father or a mother. The tomb is a veil which 
 nature draws over the frailties of its inhabitants, 
 and they who survive remember only their good 
 qualities. It should be so, I acknowledge. For 
 their errors, whatever they may have been, they 
 are accountable to a tribunal that is not an earthly 
 one ; but their virtues, their kindnesses to us, 
 while living, should find an inviolable sanctuary 
 in our bosoms. Nay, there is in death something 
 so solemn, so final as to this world, so powerful in 
 disarming us of our resentments, and in magnify- 
 ing our love and veneration, that we usually forget 
 not only what was bad in those who are no more, 
 but, in remembering their merits we remember 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 33 
 
 more than they had. Hence the infidelity of mo- 
 numental inscriptions ; and hence, too, the pious 
 exaggeration with which we recount the virtues 
 of a deceased parent or friend. The well known 
 maxim of the ancients (de mortuis nihil nisi bonumj 
 may seem superfluous, for of the dead we rarely 
 speak but with tenderness and veneration ; I ex- 
 cept public characters, which are always public 
 property in all generations ; and I except the ran- 
 cour of disappointed hopes, or the malignity of a 
 revengeful heart ; for to the former death is no se- 
 curity from malice, and to the latter nothing is 
 sacred. A modern writer (I forget who) pro- 
 posed to read vermn, instead of bonum, in the 
 above adage ; but the folly of the emendation was 
 at least equal to its cruelty. 
 
 With this disposition in our hearts, and planted 
 there by the hand of nature herself, thus to exalt 
 the characters of deceased relatives, it will always 
 behove us to receive with caution testimonials of 
 their excellence, coming from those to whom such 
 prejudices may be imputed. Were we indeed to 
 believe all that the enthusiastic fondness and ve- 
 neration of survivors would have us, I know not 
 where we should find space to deposit the records 
 of such countless claimants upon the notice and 
 regard of mankind, as would arise. But the delu- 
 sion, amiable as it is> is known ; and we are in no 
 danger of exhausting folios to register the names 
 of the grea^, the good, and the wise. 
 
 D 
 
34 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 From this charge of unintentional deception, 
 however, I am perfectly willing to exonerate Cum- 
 berland in what he says of his own father. The 
 descendant of such a man as the Bishop of Peter- 
 borough, has an hereditary claim to our belief of his 
 virtues, if he have not flagrantly destroyed it by 
 the turpitude of his life. 
 
 " He was educated/' says he, " at Westminster 
 school, and from that admitted fellow commoner 
 of Trinity College, in Cambridge. He married at 
 the age of twenty-two, and though in possession of 
 an independent fortune, was readily prevailed upon 
 by his father-in-law, Doctor Bentley, to take the 
 rectory of Stanwick, in the county of Northamp- 
 ton, given to him by Lord Chancellor King, as 
 soon as he was of age to hold it. From this pe- 
 riod he fixed his constant residence in that retired 
 and tranquil spot, and sedulously devoted himself 
 to the duties of his function. When I contemplate 
 the character of this amiable man, I declare to 
 truth I never yet knew one so happily endowed 
 with those engaging qualities, which are formed 
 to attract and fix the love and esteem of mankind. 
 It seemed as if the whole spirit of his grandfather's 
 benevolence had been transfused into his heart, 
 and that he bore as perfect a resemblance of him 
 in goodness, as he did in person; in moral purity 
 he was truly a Christian, in generosity and honour 
 he was perfectly a gentleman." 
 
 Cumberland was not the elder child. He had a 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 35 
 
 sister, Joanna, who outstripped him both in years 
 and knowledge; for he represents himself as unto- 
 ward in his infancy, and profiting little from the 
 assiduous attentions of his mother. This reproach, 
 however, he soon wiped off; and when he once 
 began to move, it was with rapidity. He de- 
 scribes himself as being involved in a confusion of 
 ideas, natural to a young mind, when he first read 
 the 115th psalm, which records the destruction of 
 heathen idols, and is considered by Delany, and, I 
 believe, by Home, (fori write from memory) as a 
 triumphal song for David's victory over the Jebu- 
 sites. The contradiction of terms in the 5th, 6th, 
 and 7th verses, was, to Cumberland, a contradic- 
 tion of ideas which his infant and unassisted rea- 
 son could not disentangle ; but it might surely 
 have been rendered intelligible to him by his mo- 
 ther, had he proposed to her his difficulties, for it 
 may be made so to the youngest mind ; though 
 Cumberland seems to think otherwise, by the hint 
 which he insinuates as to the " moral" of the 
 Y incident/' 
 
 When he was in his sixth year he was sent to 
 the school of Bury St. Edmunds, at that time kept 
 by Arthur Kinsman. It was then in high reputa- 
 tion, and educated a hundred and fifty boys. His 
 progress, here, was very inauspicious at first, for he 
 soon descended to the lowest seat in the lowest 
 class, save one, of the school. How long he 
 might have remained in this state of degradation is 
 
 1)2 
 
36 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 uncertain, but his master, who probably disco- 
 vered the latent talents of the boy beneath the 
 natural indolence of his character, (for he had ven- 
 tured to prophecy to Bentley, that he would make 
 his grandson as good a scholar as himself; to which 
 the haughty pedant replied, " Pshaw, Arthur, 
 how can that be, when I have forgot more than 
 thou ever knew'st?"*) effectually roused him 
 from the torpor which seemed to possess his facul- 
 ties. He did this in a manner well calculated to 
 fire a generous mind with emulation. 
 
 One day he called the loitering school-boy to 
 his chair; there was an unbroken, and to the de- 
 linquent, an awful silence in the room ; every eye 
 was fixed upon him, every ear was attentive ; all 
 was solemn expectation in the youthful assembly. 
 Kinsman reproved him in a tone of voice loud 
 enough to render every syllable of what he said 
 audible ; and, among other topics of reprehension,, 
 he asked him in what manner he was to report his 
 progress to his grandfather Bentley ? At that name 
 the young offender trembled, for even then he had 
 learned to venerate it : he was abashed and con- 
 founded ; he felt all the force of the question, and 
 a fervent resolution awoke within him to redeem 
 the hours he had trifled away, and justify the 
 
 * Pointed and sarcastic replies are successively related, with little ad- 
 herence to truth. I have seen this answer of Bentley's applied to Doctor 
 Gooch, as the person who provoked it. " I have forgotten," said the awful 
 dristarch, " more learning than he possesses." It is likely, however, 
 that Cumberland would be right. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 37 
 
 hopes of his master and his illustrious grandfather. 
 This resolution was not a momentary blaze, emit- 
 ting a transitory heat and lustre, and then sinking 
 into smoke and darkness ; it was a fire kindled in 
 his bosom which kept his purpose warm, and the 
 good effect of the admonition, thus judiciously 
 applied, operated probably for many years upon 
 the progress of his studies. 
 
 Shortly after this occurrence, however, he fell 
 ill, and was removed home, where he languished 
 in sickness for some time. When he returned to 
 school he soon recovered the good opinion of Kins- 
 man, by his diligence and regularity. 
 
 About this time Bentley died, and Cumberland, 
 who was old enough to know something of the loss 
 of such a man, lamented it with as much sorrow 
 as can belong, without hypocrisy, to boyhood. 
 Of this great man, before we take a final leave, (if 
 indeed this can be called such, as I shall have occa- 
 sion to mention him again, in noticing the contro- 
 versy between Cumberland and Mr. Hayley) the 
 reader may not be displeased to read the following 
 anecdotes ; or if he be, his displeasure cannot hold 
 him long, for they are very brief. 
 
 In a conversation between Kinsman and Bent- 
 ley, upon the merits of Homer, Kinsman quoted 
 Joshua Barnes as a man well versed in Greek, and 
 speaking it almost like his mother tongue. "Yes,'* 
 replied Bentley, " I do believe that Barnes had as 
 
38 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 much Greek, and understood it about as well, as 
 an Athenian blacksmith.* 
 
 Of Wai burton, then just rising into fame, he 
 said, " there seemed to be in him a voracious ap- 
 petite for knowledge ; he doubted if there was a 
 good digestion/' 
 
 His opinion of Pope's Homer is awkwardly re- 
 lated by Cumberland. A better account is the 
 following, which was communicated to the " Gen- 
 tleman's Magazine," by a correspondent, in the 
 year 1778, and which contains an anecdote of the 
 poet likewise, not very generally known, I be- 
 lieve. 
 
 Atterbury, having Pope and Bentley both at his 
 table one day, insisted upon knowing the latter's 
 opinion of the English Homer. He evaded the 
 question thus put, for some time; but being 
 pressed by Atterbury, heat last said, " The verses 
 are good verses, but the work is not Homer, it is 
 
 * This anecdote I have seen differently related, and in a manner more 
 like Bentley. " Barnes," said he, " had some knowledge in the Greek 
 language ; almost as much as an Athenian cobbler, but was, in all other 
 respects, a very poor creature indeed : felicis memorice, as the burlesque 
 epitaph upon him, says : expectans judicium. See a paper of verses upon 
 him in the Muss Anglicanae, entitled ' Sub Professor Linguas Graecse,' 
 which shews what a contempt even the boys at Cambridge had for him." 
 
 It may be doubted, however, whether there be not more praise than cen- 
 sure in ascribing to Barnes as much Greek as an Athenian cobbler pos- 
 sessed ; especially if there be any truth in the opinion which Addison has 
 somewhere expressed, that a Roman ploughman probably spoke purer 
 Latin than the most accomplished modern scholar. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. S[) 
 
 Spondamus." To this provocation, which Atter- 
 bury probably anticipated, and secretly wished, 
 perhaps, for he bore Bentley no good will, may be 
 ascribed Pope's known hostility to the modern 
 Aristarchus ; but when he appeared in the Dun- 
 ciad, his son, Dr. Richard Bentley, was so in- 
 censed, that he sent the poet a challenge. Pope 
 communicated this to some of his friends who 
 were officers in the army, and who, deeming it 
 preposterous that a man of his personal deformity 
 should accept a challenge, w T aited upon the chal- 
 lenger, told him their reasons for Pope's declining 
 the business, and offered him the choice of either 
 of themselves as a proxy on the occasion. But 
 this did not suit the doctor's courage, and thus 
 the business dropped. 
 
 Kinsman communicated the death of Bentley to 
 his grandson with much tenderness, and kindly 
 strove to soothe the little sorrows which he ex- 
 pected the intelligence might create. The sor- 
 rows were transient, and the pupil resumed his 
 vigorous determination of earning the approbation 
 of his master. Success followed : he soon reached 
 the highest place in the school, and kept it, though 
 he mentions, among his competitors, the late Dr. 
 Warren, and his brother the bishop. 
 
 Cumberland has not been very exact in his 
 dates, and what he has omitted it cannot be ex- 
 pected that I should supply. This deficiency oc- 
 casions much perplexity in reading his Memoirs, 
 
40 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 and must have been the effect either of intention or 
 of negligence, for it cannot have been that he who 
 remembered every thing which happened, should 
 have forgotten when it happened. 
 
 During the time that he was with Kinsman, he 
 produced his first attempt in English verse ; but 
 the subject was as ill chosen as the performance 
 was wretched, if the whole may be judged from 
 the little that is preserved. He made an excur- 
 sion with his family into Hampshire, and he 
 thought a description of his journey, of the Docks 
 at Portsmouth, and of the races at Winchester, 
 would harmonise well with English heroics. The 
 following was one of the couplets : 
 
 Here they weave cables, there they mainmasts form, 
 Here they forge anchors— useful in a stortn. 
 
 These lines his mother very justly ridiculed ; 
 but his father, from what motive it is not easy to 
 conjecture, strenuously defended and approved 
 them. Literary puerilities should be sparingly 
 commended ; for the surest way to make a matured 
 coxcomb is to praise infant follies. 
 
 After the death of Bentley his father resided 
 wholly at the parsonage-house of Stanwick, near 
 High am Ferrars. in Northamptonshire ; a rural 
 retreat, of which Cumberland speaks with tender 
 emotion, associated, as it must have been, in his 
 mind, with the recollections of those blessed hours 
 Qf life which no man looks back upon but with 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 41 
 
 regret. Here it was that he partook, during the 
 school vacations, of the dangerous, unmanly, and 
 cruel diversion of hunting with his father ; and 
 here it was too, that his excellent mother, with 
 anxious solicitude, began to form his mind to just 
 principles of taste, piety, and knowledge. The 
 defective system of modern female education too 
 seldom qualifies a woman for that pleasing office, 
 the first education of her children, which, as Rous- 
 seau justly observes, seems to have been intended 
 for her by nature herself. Household cares and 
 domestic management are made the chief business 
 of a woman's life, to the utter exclusion of all 
 ornamental, of all elegant, and of all useful acquire- 
 ments. She is degraded from her station, as the 
 companion of man, to be his servant and his 
 drudge: the meanest employments of home de- 
 volve to her management ; the kitchen is consi- 
 dered as her hereditary and peculiar place of ac- 
 tion ; and, if to her skill in culinary matters, and 
 certain other familiar branches of knowledge, there 
 be added a handsome person, something to excite 
 desire as well as gratify it, her character is deemed 
 complete, and she takes her station in society ac- 
 cordingly. When married, her husband, if his 
 mind be not as earthly as his body, is the first to 
 discover that a wife may be very respectable, and 
 very useful, who is thus endowed ; but that she 
 wants the qualifications of a companion, of a being 
 who can share his intellectual as well as his mate- 
 
42 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 rial pleasures ; and that as he cannot be contented 
 always with endearments, however sincere, nor 
 dalliances however pleasing ; as he cannot always 
 find the pleasure he wants in the narrow resources 
 of his wife's mind, and yet cannot make life toler- 
 able without them, he seeks from home those de- 
 lights, the presence of which can alone make home 
 the chosen spot of comfort to the married man. 
 His children too, if he have any, possess in their 
 mother, a nurse, an affectionate one, while they 
 need it; a watchful attendant in their earliest 
 years ; a patient comforter in all their little 
 troubles, illnesses, and misfortunes ; but when 
 they ask an instructress, when their infant minds 
 begin to feel the wants of reason, when that active 
 and restless faculty is awakening within them, and 
 clamorous for sustenance, then, even then, at the 
 tenderest period of intercourse between them, the 
 mother is removed to make way for hired tutors, 
 and that gentle sympathy and affection which the 
 process of instruction so certainly generates be- 
 tween the parent and the child, between the sup- 
 plicator for knowledge and the dispenser of it, is 
 lost for ever. 
 
 Is not this a mournful consideration ? and is 
 it not deeply to be lamented, that an evil, so 
 closely affecting our private happiness, should re- 
 main, to a certain degree, unredressed ? 1 rejoice, 
 indeed, to add, that the prejudices which exist 
 with regard to what are contemptuously denomi- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. . 43 
 
 nated learned ladies, are disappearing fast before 
 the steady light of science and reason ; and the 
 time may not be far distant when we shall cease to 
 choose our wives as we would our servants, for 
 kitchen excellence, or as the voluptuary does his 
 mistress, for personal charms alone ; when, in 
 short, we shall select, in our partners for life, com- 
 panions for ourselves, and instructors for our 
 children. 
 
 The incalculable advantages of a rational and 
 enlightened mother were powerfully felt both by 
 Sir William Jones and by Cumberland, both of 
 whom ascribe to their early maternal tuition that 
 ardor for knowledge by which they were afterwards 
 distinguished, though in very different degrees, 
 and which led to very different degrees of emi- 
 nence. From this pleasing source of instruction 
 Cumberland drew copious draughts. Their even- 
 ings were spent in literary acquisition. His ear 
 was formed to poetical harmony, by reading to his 
 mother, " of which art," says he, " she was a 
 very able mistress/' These exercises were, with 
 few exceptions, confined to the works of Shaks- 
 peare, and she directed his mind to a just appre- 
 ciation of that writer's merits. Her taste was re- 
 fined, and her judgment extremely accurate ; and 
 she diligently pointed out to her son the blemishes, 
 the incongruities, and the affectation, as well as 
 the sublime beauties and exquisite delineations of 
 
44 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 life by which the English bard is almost equally 
 distinguished. In these evening lectures his fa- 
 ther joined, also, occasionally ; but " his voice 
 was never heard but in the tone of approbation ; 
 his countenance never marked, but with the natu- 
 ral traces of his indelible and hereditary benevo- 
 lence/' 
 
 Where there is a natural or an acquired disposi- 
 tion to literary effort, that disposition will be in- 
 creased by familiarity with the best authors ; and 
 hence Cumberland, from reading Shakspeare, 
 formed the bold design of writing from him. At 
 this time he was only twelve years of age, and I 
 consider the performance so creditable to his early 
 genius, that I shall transcribe that part of it here, 
 which the author has chosen to preserve. It was 
 a kind of cento, entitled Shakspeare in the Shades, 
 and formed into one act, selecting the characters 
 of Hamlet and Ophelia, Romeo and Juliet, Lear 
 and Cordelia, as the persons of the drama. To 
 Shakspeare, who is continually in the scene, Ariel 
 is given as an attendant spirit, and the following 
 motto was selected for the title page : 
 
 Ast alii sex, 
 Et plures, uno conclamant ore. 
 
 " The scene/' says Cumberland, " is laid in 
 Elysium, where the poet is discovered, and opens 
 the drama with the following address : 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 43 
 
 " ' Most fair and equal hearers, know, that 
 whilst this soul inhabited its fleshly tabernacle, 
 I was called Shakspeare ; a greater name and more 
 exalted honours have dignified its dissolution. 
 Blest with a liberal portion of the divine spirit, as 
 a tribute due to the bounty of the Gods, I left be-^ 
 hind me an immortal monument of my fame. 
 Think not that I boast ; the actions of departed 
 beings may not be censured by any mortal wit, 
 nor are accountable to any earthly tribunal. Let 
 it suffice, that in the grave — 
 
 When we have shuffled off this mortal coyle—~ 
 
 All envy and detraction, all pride and vain-glory 
 are no more ; still a grateful remembrance of hu^ 
 manity, and a tender regard for our posterity on 
 earth, follow us to this happy seat ; and it is in 
 this regard I deign once more to salute you with 
 my favoured presence, and am content to be again an 
 actor for your sakes. I have been attentive to your 
 sufferings at my mournful scenes ; guardian of that 
 virtue, which I left in distress, I come now, the 
 instrument of Providence, to compose your sor- 
 rows, and restore to it the proportioned reward. 
 Those bleeding characters, those martyred wor- 
 thies, whom I have sent untimely to the shades, 
 shall now, at length, and in your sight, be crowned 
 with their beloved retribution, and the justice, 
 which* as their poet, I withheld from them, as the 
 
 / 
 
46 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 arbiter and disposer of their fate, I will award to 
 them ; but for the villain and the adulterer — 
 
 The perjured and the simular man of virtue — 
 
 the proud, the ambitious, and the murderer I 
 shall— 
 
 " Leave such to heaven 
 And to those thorns, that in their bosoms lodge 
 To prick and sting' them . — 
 
 But soft ! I see one corning, that often hath be- 
 guiled you of your tears— the fair Ophelia — \ 
 
 " The several parties now make their respective 
 appeals, and Shakspeare finally summons them all 
 before him by his agent Ariel, for whose intro- 
 duction he prepares the audience by the following 
 soliloquy : — 
 
 " ( Now comes the period of my high commission : 
 
 All have been heard, and all shall be restor'd, 
 
 All errors blotted out and all obstructions, 
 
 Mortality entails, shall be remov'd, 
 
 And from the mental eye the film withdrawn. 
 
 Which in its corporal union had obscur'd 
 
 And clouded the pure virtue of its sight. 
 
 But to these purposes I must employ 
 
 My ready spirit Ariel, some time minister 
 
 To Prospero, and the obsequious slave 
 
 Of his enchantments, from whose place preferred 
 
 He here attends to do me services, 
 
 And qualify these beings for Elysium — 
 
 Hoa ! Ariel, approach my dainty spirit ! 
 
 " (Ariel Enters.) 
 " All hail, great master, grave Sir, hail! I come 
 To answer thy best pleasure ; be it to fly. 
 To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 47 
 
 On tlie curled clouds — to thy strong lidding task 
 Ariel and all Ms qualities— 
 
 " Shahspeare. 
 
 " ' Know then, spirit. 
 Into tnis grove six shades consign'd to bliss 
 I've separately rernov'd, of each sex three ; 
 Unheard of one another and unseen 
 There they abide, yet each to each endear'd 
 By ties of strong affection : not the same 
 Their several objects, though the effects alike, 
 But husband, father, lover make the change. 
 Now though the body's perished, yet are they 
 Fresh from their sins and bleeding with their wrongs ; 
 Therefore all sense of injury remove, 
 fleal up their wounded faculties anew, 
 And pluck affliction's arrow from their hearts ; 
 Refine their passions, for gross sensual love 
 Let it become a pure and faultless friendship, 
 Raise and confirm their joys, let them exchange 
 Their fleeting pleasures for immortal peace : 
 This done, with speed conduct them each to other 
 So chang'd, and set the happy choir before me.' 
 
 " I have the whole of this puerile production, 
 written in a schoolboy's hand, which by some 
 chance has escaped the general wreck, in which I 
 have lost some records, that I should now be glad 
 to resort to. I am not quite sure that I act fairly 
 by my readers when I give any part of it a place 
 in these memoirs, yet as an instance of the im- 
 pression, which my mother's lectures had made 
 upon my youthful fancy, and perhaps as a sample 
 of composition indicative of more thought and 
 contrivance, than are commonly to be found in 
 boys at so very early an age, I shall proceed to 
 
4$ LltfE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 transcribe the concluding part of the scene, in 
 which Romeo has his audience, and can truly 
 affirm that the copy is faithful without the altera- 
 tion or addition of a single word : — 
 
 " Romeo i 
 
 " ' — Oh thou, the great disposer of my fate, 1 
 Judge of my actions, patron of my cause, 
 Tear not asunder such united hearts, 
 But give me up to love and to my Juliet. 
 
 11 Shahspeare. 
 
 l( ' Unthinking youth, thou dost forget thyself; 
 
 Rash inconsiderate boy, must I again 
 
 Remind thee of thy fate ? What ! know'st thou not 
 
 The man, whose desperate hand foredoes himself, 
 
 Is dooin'd to wander on the Stygian shore 
 
 A restless shade, forlorn and comfortless, 
 
 For a whole age ? Nor shall he hope to sooth 
 
 The callous ear of Charon, till he win 
 
 His passion by repentance and submission 
 
 At this my fixt tribunal, else be sure 
 
 The wretch shall hourly pace the lazy wharf 
 
 To view the beating of the Stygian wave, 
 
 And waste his irksome leisure.' 
 
 " Romeo. 
 
 Gracious powers, 
 
 Is this my doom, my torment — •? Heaven is here 
 
 Where Juliet lives, ana each unworthy thing 
 
 Lives here in heaven and may look on her, 
 
 But Romeo may not : more validity, 
 
 More honourable state, more worship lives 
 
 In carrion fiies than Romeo ; they may seize 
 
 On the white wonder of my love's dear hand, 
 
 And steal immortal blessings from her lips, 
 
 But Romeo may not ; t He is doom'd to bear 
 
 An age's pain and sigh in banishment, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 49 
 
 To drag a restless being on the shore 
 Of gloomy Styx, and weep into the flood, 
 Till, with his tears made full, the briny stream.' 
 Shall kiss the most exalted sho? es of all. 
 
 " Shakspeare. 
 
 " ' Now then dost thou repent thy follies past ? 
 
 " Romeo. 
 
 li ' Oh, ask me if I feel my torments present, 
 
 Then judge if I repent my follies past. 
 
 Had I but powers to tell you what I feel, 
 
 A tongue to speak my heart's unfeign'd contrition, 
 
 Then might I lay the bleeding part before you : 
 
 But 'twill not be — something I yet would say 
 
 To extenuate my crime ; I fain would plead 
 
 The merit of my love — but I have done — 
 
 However hard my sentence, I submit. 
 
 My faithless tongue turns traitor to my heart, 
 
 And will not utter what it fondly prompts ; 
 
 A rising gust of passion drowns my voice, 
 
 And I'm most dumb when I've most need to sue. 
 
 " (Kneels.) 
 " Shakspeare. 
 
 " l Arise, young Sir ! before my mercy-seat 
 
 None kneel in vain ; repentance never lost 
 The cause she pleaded. Mercy is the proof, 
 The test that marks a character divine ; 
 Were ye like merciful to one another, 
 The earth would be a heaven and men the gods. 
 Withdraw awhile ; I see thy heart is full ; 
 Grief at a crime committed merits more 
 Than exultation for a duty done. 
 
 " (Romeo withdraws) , 
 
 " Shakspeare remains and speaks — 
 
 " ' What rage is this, O man, that thou should'st dare 
 To turn unnatural butcher on thyself, 
 And thy presumptuous violent hand uplift 
 Against that fabrick which the Gods have rais'd ? 
 
 E 
 
50 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Insolent wretch, did that presumptuous hand 
 
 Temper thy wond'rous frame ? Did that bold spirit 
 
 Inspire the quicken'd clay with living breath ? 
 
 Do not deceive thyself. Have the kind Gods 
 
 Lent their own goodly image to thy use 
 
 For thee to break at pleasure ? — 
 
 What are thy merits ? Where is thy dominion ? 
 
 If thou aspir'st to rule, rule thy desires. 
 
 Thou poorly turn'st upon thy helpless body, 
 
 And hast no heart to check thy growing sins : 
 
 Thou gain'st a mighty victory o'er thy life, 
 
 But art enslaved to thy basest passions, 
 
 And bowest to the anarchy within thee. 
 
 Oh ! have a care 
 
 Lest at thy great account thou should'st be found 
 
 A thriftless steward of thy master's substance. 
 
 'Tis his to take away, or sink at will, 
 
 Thou but the tenant to a greater lord, 
 
 Nor maker, nor the monarch of thyself.' " 
 
 There are some good lines in this juvenile 
 effusion ; and though it cannot rank with Pope's 
 ** Ode to Solitude/' nor with some of the early 
 compositions of Milton and Cowley, it at least 
 deserves praise for harmony of versification and 
 correctness of ideas. 
 
 Shortly after this, he was removed to West- 
 minster School, as his old master Kinsman in- 
 timated his intention of retiring from a station the 
 duties of which became too laborious for his in- 
 creasing age and infirmities. He passed his ex- 
 amination before the master, (Dr. Nichols) in a 
 manner highly reputable to himself, and to his 
 late instructor ; and he was admitted accordingly. 
 Here, among his associates, were the Earl of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 51 
 
 Huntingdon, the late Earl of Bristol, the late Earl 
 of Buckinghamshire, the late Duke of Richmond, 
 Colman, and Lloyd. The opportunities thus pre- 
 sented of laying the foundation of intimacies with 
 men capable and likely to advance our fortunes 
 in after life, are among the strongest arguments 
 which the supporters of a public system of edu- 
 cation have to advance. They are indeed argu- 
 ments of great weight and importance ; but I fear 
 the instances are fewer than might be hoped where 
 school-connexions have ripened into those of 
 manhood ; or where the noble play-mate has re- 
 membered his fellow when the lapse of years has 
 led him to the possession of honours, wealth, and 
 influence. Some cases, no doubt, may be adduced 
 in opposition to this, proving the ultimate benefit 
 of friendships formed at so early a period of life 
 between boys of elevated and inferior conditions: 
 and I wish, indeed, that they may be numerous, 
 for I am afraid they are the only advantages which 
 can be plausibly urged against the many evils 
 attendant upon public -education. The almost 
 certain ruin of the moral character, the contagion 
 of vice, the destruction of that simplicity of man- 
 ners which is at once the offspring and the defence 
 of virtue, the assumption of rude and boisterous 
 habits which deform the outward man and corrupt 
 his general demeanor, and the gradual relaxation 
 of those ties of kindred by which social life is sup- 
 ported and adorned, are some of the evils to be 
 
 E 2 
 
5% LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 expected from public education ; while they may 
 all be avoided, and every certain benefit secured, (for 
 that which may arise from serviceable connexions 
 is but contingent) by private instruction. I know 
 that " much may be said on both sides," to use 
 the prudent maxim of Sir Roger de Coverley : nor 
 is this exactly the place to say much on either : 
 but my own opinion is unquestionably in favour 
 of private tuition where the condition of the 
 parents enables them to retain a sufficient number 
 of able masters. 
 
 It is certain that Cumberland did not experience 
 that single advantage of public education, for I do 
 not remember that any of his patrician school- 
 fellows were afterwards either his friends or patrons. 
 But he secured to himself that which neither the 
 smiles nor frowns of nobility could give or take 
 away : he laboured with unremitting assiduity at 
 his studies, gained the confidence and approbation 
 of his master, and established the basis of any 
 superstructure which he might afterwards wish to 
 rear. In prosecuting these advances in knowledge 
 he was powerfully stimulated by the gentle and 
 flattering encouragements of Dr. Nichols, whose 
 kindness of manner was directly distinguished 
 from the austere dominion of Kinsman. " Arthur 
 Kinsman,," Cumberland observes, " certainly 
 knew how to make his boys scholars ; Dr. Nichols 
 had the art of making his scholars gentlemen : for 
 there was a court of honour in that school, to 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 53 
 
 whose unwritten laws every member of our com- 
 munity was amenable, and which, to transgress by 
 any act of meanness that exposed the offender to 
 public contempt, was a degree of punishment, 
 compared to which the being sentenced to the rod 
 would have been considered as an acquittal or 
 reprieve :" and in another place he observes, " it 
 was evidently his principle to cherish every spark 
 of genius, which he could discover in his scholars, 
 and seemed determined so to exercise his authority 
 that our best motives for obeying him should 
 spring from the affection that we had for him." 
 
 To study under such auspices must have been 
 at once a work of pleasure and of profit : the plea- 
 sure was in deserving the applause of such a man : 
 the profit in being competent to obtain it ; and 
 when our duty is sweetened to us by the blandish- 
 ments of praise, we perform it with an alacrity 
 which teaches the value of that stimulus w T hen 
 not abused by indiscriminate application. 
 
34 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 The fleeting qualities of histrionic fame. — Cumber- 
 land's first poetical attempt. — The requisites and 
 difficulties of blank verse. — Death of his sister. — 
 His assiduity at College. — His success. — His sen- 
 timents regarding an academical education. — 
 His want of an adequate director in his studies. — 
 Mason s Elfrida and Caractacus. — On the ap- 
 plicability of the Greek chorus to the English 
 stage. 
 
 During the period that he was at Westminster 
 school, he was received as a boarder into the house 
 of Edmund Ashby, Esq. a distant relation of his 
 father's. This gentleman resided in Peter-street, 
 and partly from the angustce res domi, and partly, 
 perhaps, from a sullen apathy of heart and mind, 
 his house was distinguished by all the gloomy se- 
 clusion of an ascetic's cell. " I might as well," 
 says Cumberland, " have boarded in the convent 
 of La Trappe." 
 
 But though all merriment was driven away from 
 the doors of this inhospitable mansion, its tenants 
 were sometimes allowed to seek the haunts of 
 pleasure in her own dominion, for Cumberland first 
 beheld while here, what no pen has ever been able 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5$ 
 
 to describe — the acting of Garrick*. What he felt 
 on this occasion, he has vividly described. The 
 character which he performed was Lothario in the 
 Fair Penitent, and Quin played Horatio. Quin 
 was at the head of the old school of acting, and 
 Garrick was proudly zealous in founding the new. 
 The town was yet divided where to bestow the 
 meed of conquest, upon nature or on art; but the 
 issue of the contest was not long dubious ; nature 
 and Garrick triumphed, and from his day to the 
 present, the stage has been gradually emancipat- 
 ing itself from the shackles of absurd custom, and 
 
 * Nor can any pen describe what must be seen, felt, and heard, to be 
 understood. So perishable is the glory of those who delight us most when 
 living, but of whom we can deliver no remembrance to posterity that will 
 justify our admiration. This brevity of an actor's fame, has been feel- 
 ingly enforced by Schiller, in the following lines : 
 
 Den schnell und spurlos geht des Mimen Kunst, 
 
 Die wunderbare, an dem sinn voriiber, 
 
 Wenn das gebild des Meisels, der gesang 
 
 Des dichter's nach jahrtausenden noch leben. 
 
 Hier stirbt der zauber mit dem kiinstler ab, 
 
 Und wie der klang verhallet in dem ohr, 
 
 Verrauscht des augenblicks geschwinde schopfung, 
 
 Und ihren ruhm bewahrt kein daurend werk. 
 
 Schwer ist die kunst, verganglich ist ihr preis, 
 
 Dem Mimen flicht die nachwelt keine kranze, 
 
 Drum muss er geitzen mit der gegenwart, 
 
 Den Augenblick, der sein ist, ganz erfullen, 
 
 Muss seiner mitwelt machtig sich versichern, 
 
 Und im gefiihl der wiirdigesten und besten 
 
 Ein lebend denkmal sich erbaun. — So nimmt er 
 
 Sich seines namens Ewigkeit voraus, 
 
 Denn wer den besten seiner zeit genug 
 
 Gethan, der hat gelebt fur alle zeiten. Wajilensteix, 
 
66 LIFE OP CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the authoritative follies of long prescription. Gar- 
 rick rescued it from the pompous tones of unnatu- 
 ral declamation ; and a living actor has success- 
 fully exerted himself to rescue it from the pedan- 
 tries of dress and decoration ; for it must be re- 
 membered that even Garrick used to perform 
 Macbeth and Cato in a bag wig, sword, and 
 ruffles. 
 
 While. Cumberland was at the house of Mr. 
 Ashby, he had solitude and leisure enough to pur- 
 sue his studies ; and among other efforts of his 
 pen he attempted a translation of a passage in 
 Virgil's Georgics. It was that fine description of 
 the plague among the cattle. He adopted blank 
 verse as the vehicle of his attempt ; but his ear was 
 not yet tuned to the various melody of which that 
 mode of writing is susceptible, and which indeed it 
 requires to render it tolerable ; neither does he 
 seem to have possessed a reach of language suffi- 
 cient to diversify its cadences, or to express, with 
 vigour, the images of his original. Blank verse, 
 more than any other species of poetic measure, 
 demands an exuberant variety of structure to ren- 
 der it melodious, a skilful intermixture of pauses, 
 and a suitable dignity of words* to maintain the 
 elevation of the whole. In proportion as it is 
 without the extraneous aid of rime, it needs that 
 of pomp and splendour; nor do I know any thing- 
 more irksome than to peruse pages of imbecility, 
 divided into lines of ten syllables each, without 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 57 
 
 even the ear-deep charm of the final correspon- 
 dence in the sound of each line. Of writers in 
 blank verse I know only three in our language 
 who have succeeded : Milton, Thomson, and 
 Akenside ; and they have succeeded by employ- 
 ing a mode of versification essentially distinct 
 from each other. Many have tried it, and 
 have acquired a certain portion of applause ; but, 
 if we except Armstrong (who, however, cannot be 
 ranked with the three I have named,) it is perhaps 
 easier to praise than to read their performances. 
 A turgid phraseology is often mistaken for the 
 easy dignity which blank verse should have : and 
 sometimes, in attempting to be graceful without 
 ostentation, the writer sinks into meanness 
 and imbecility. Yet, when in the hands of a mas« 
 ter, how lofty and sonorous is its march, how ani- 
 mating are its periods, and how sublime are its 
 elevations, while its occasional descents serve only 
 to heighten the contrast and to delight by opposi- 
 tion. The difficulties which beset it, however, seem 
 calculated to secure its rarity, and to shield it 
 from the profanation of every daring hand. 
 
 That Cumberland, at the period we are now 
 speaking of, was but feebly endowed with powers 
 to strike so lofty a strain, the following extract, 
 from the long fragment w r hich he has chosen to 
 preserve, will shew ; but it will also shew a preco- 
 city of classical attainment, and a general power 
 of composition, which were highly meritorious at 
 
58 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 such an age. Few could have exceeded him* 
 while many would have wholly failed in the com- 
 parison : — 
 
 " * The lab'ring ox, while o'er the furrow'd land 
 He trails the tardy plough, down drops at once, 
 Forth issues bloody foam, till the last groan 
 Gives a long close to his labours : The sad hind 
 Unyokes his widow'd and complainful mate, 
 Leaving the blasted and imperfect work 
 Where the fix'd ploughshare points the luckless spot. 
 The shady covert, where the lofty trees 
 Form cool retreat, the lawns, whose springing herb 
 Yields food ambrosial, the transparent stream, 
 Which o'er the jutting stones to th' neighb'ring mead 
 Takes its fantastic course, these now no more 
 Delight, as they were wont, rather afflict, 
 With him they cheer'd, with him their joys expir'd, 
 Joys only in participation dear : 
 Famine instead stares in his hollow sides, 
 His leaden eye-balls, motionless and fix'd, 
 Sleep in their sockets, his unnerved neck 
 Hangs drooping down, death lays his load upon him^ 
 And bows him to the ground — what now avail 
 His useful toils, his life of service past ? 
 What though* full oft he turn'd the stubborn glebe, 
 It boots not now — yet have these never felt 
 The ills of riot and intemperate draughts, 
 Where the full goblet crowns the luscious feast,: 
 Their only feast to graze the springing herb 
 O'er the fresh lawn, or from the pendant bough 
 To crop the savoury leaf, from the clear spring, 
 Or active stream refined in its course, 
 They slake their sober thirst, their sweet repose 
 Nor cares forbid, nor soothing arts invite, 
 But pure digestion breeds and light repast.' " 
 
 His knowledge of the English language was yet 
 unsettled, or he would not have used an epithet 
 (complainful) not to be found in any other writer. 
 

 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 59 
 
 His family now sustained a heavy affliction in 
 the death of his sister Joanna, whose early supe- 
 riority over her brother has been mentioned, and 
 who fell a victim to the small pox, that peculiar 
 curse and scourge of human nature, whose wide- 
 wasting empire has been destroyed, in recent times, 
 by a discovery accidental in itself, simple in its 
 operation, and most beneficial in its effects. A 
 few persons, actuated by ignorance, artifice, or 
 weakness, have disputed the efficacy of this pre- 
 servation, and have endeavoured to excite alarm 
 by the array of cases in which it has failed ; but 
 the mass of testimony which has been given in 
 every quarter of the world, as to its successful ap- 
 plication, the rapidity with which it has been dif- 
 fused over the four quarters of the globe, and the 
 eagerness with which mankind have received a 
 blessing of such magnitude, are proofs of its value 
 and importance, which neither the selfish incredu- 
 lity of professional men, nor the weak delusions of 
 the vulgar, can invalidate or overthrow. 
 
 Cumberland felt the loss of his sister so severely 
 that it was thought necessary to dissipate his grief 
 by change of place and the consolations of tender- 
 ness, and he was accordingly removed from Lon- 
 don. He returned to his parents; and after a 
 short time was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 He was then in his fourteenth vear, and the few 
 months that remained unexpired of the vacation. 
 
60 LIFE OP CUMBERLAND. 
 
 he carefully employed in prosecuting his studies 
 under the superintendance of a Mr. Strong, a gen- 
 tleman of much piety, though he was but slenderly 
 qualified for the office he had undertaken. 
 
 At Cambridge he was put under the care of the 
 Rev. Dr. Morgan, who was an old friend of the 
 family, but no friend to his pupil, for he paid little 
 attention to his studies, and I suppose less to his 
 morals. Morgan, some time after, left the College, 
 and his place was supplied by the Rev. Dr. Phil- 
 lip Young, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, who 
 improved upon the indolence and negligence of 
 his predecessor, and did nothing for his disciple. 
 " Though he gave me free leave to be idle," says 
 Cumberland, " I did not make idleness my 
 choice." 
 
 Idleness, I believe, never formed a part of Cum- 
 berland's character. Few men have written more; 
 few men have written with more uniformity of ex- 
 cellence, comparing his own productions with 
 each other ; and I have been told by a friend who 
 was often in his society, that, when at home, no 
 hour was excluded from its application to literary 
 labour ; he would rise from his dinner, after a spare 
 and temperate repast, and sit down to his desk, un- 
 mindful of those who were present, and undis- 
 turbed by their conversation. Such systematic 
 diligence must have had a remote foundation ; for 
 no man acquires new habits of industry at a late 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 6l 
 
 period of life. After a certain age, (thirty in some 
 men, and in most men forty,) the general system 
 of life is established beyond the power of radical 
 or permanent alteration ; slight deviations and 
 temporary changes are all that can be expected, 
 and all that commonly happen. 
 
 Cumberland was, by his own account, without 
 one vice which is formidably opposed to every 
 desire or effort after improvement, — the vice of dis- 
 sipation. He neither frequented taverns nor bro- 
 thels ; he did not waste his hours, impoverish his 
 health, nor corrupt his morals, by a criminal indul- 
 gence in those excesses which dearly procure for 
 a man the appellation of a good friend and compa- 
 nion^ because he is too friendly to deny his partici- 
 pation in any scene of guilt, and too companion- 
 able to court wholesome solitude when his asso- 
 ciates are reeling with drunkenness. From such 
 commodious pliancy of social feeling, Cumberland 
 was happily free, and being free, he had one secu- 
 rity for diligence which they must always want 
 who attempt to share their hours between study 
 and licentiousness, between excesses which debi- 
 litate the body and degrade the mind, and honour- 
 able toils, which though they may sometimes do 
 the one, are certain, at the same time, to ennoble 
 the other. To him, therefore, it had been need- 
 less to address the monitory sentence, (Vitanda 
 est improha Siren desidia,J which the great 
 Earl of Chatham desired his nephew " to affix to 
 
62 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the curtains of his bed, and to the walls of his 
 chambers*/' 
 
 It is pleasing to observe by what steps a man of 
 genius rises to eminence ; it is pleasing to note the 
 progress of his acquirements, the laborious appli- 
 cation of his mind, the gradual acquisitions of per- 
 manent knowledge, and the successive advances 
 in various branches of erudition, by which he 
 finally establishes his reputation, and becomes an 
 object of enquiry and esteem. These are insights 
 into man no less instructive than gratifying: for 
 while they shew us how others have become great, 
 they teach us the road by which we may attain to 
 greatness ourselves. 
 
 During the time that he was at Cambridge, he 
 was no very assiduous suitor of the muses. It is 
 remarkable, indeed, that at an age when we usu- 
 allv write more than we think, and believe our- 
 selves capable of all that we wish, he should have 
 been so sparing of his labours. It must be allowed, 
 however, that his abstinence was commendable : 
 for while others waste their hours in fruitless com- 
 positions of which they are, in after life, the first tobe 
 ashamed, and would be the first to destroy, he was 
 patiently storing up materials for future labours, 
 more desirous perhaps of solid fame than eager to 
 
 * See Letter III. of those addressed to his nephew, the late Lord Camel- 
 ford, and which LordGrenville published a few years since. An invaluable 
 bequest from one of the greatest men this country has produced. How lit- 
 tle his instructions availed, however, is within the recollection of every 
 ©ne. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 63 
 
 win the brief laurels which kindness or affectation 
 bestows upon immaturity. The only effusion 
 which he remembers, or mentions, to have written 
 at this period, was some elegiac verses upon the 
 death of the Prince of Wales ; and, according to 
 his own testimony, " very indifferent ones they 
 
 were/' 
 
 He bestowed great attention upon his Latin de- 
 clamations, and accustomed himself so familiarly 
 to the use of that language, that when he was ap- 
 pointed to keep an act^ he derived an obvious su- 
 periority from his proficiency. To effect this pro- 
 ficiency, he restricted himself to certain immuta- 
 ble hours of study, reserving only six for sleep, 
 living chiefly upon a milk diet, and frequently using 
 the cold bath. The result of such ardour was 
 what may easily be anticipated. In his college 
 exercises he was always successful ; and though 
 he has narrated the particulars of his triumphs 
 with somewhat more egotism than might be 
 wished, magnifying the solemnity of the contests, 
 the dignity and skill of his antagonists, and the 
 anticipated certainty of his defeat, only to exhibit 
 his own prowess and superior skill in subduing 
 such opponents, yet the reader feels pleased to 
 find success the reward of labour, and pardons the 
 old man's garrulity with a good-natured smile, 
 which more approves than condemns it. 
 
 Another consequence of such severe application 
 to his studies, also, was a partial injury to his 
 
64 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 health, and he was forced to repair to his home, 
 there to retrieve a constitution not radically good, 
 and now debilitated by an undue employment of 
 the mental faculties. He was six months " hover- 
 ing between life and death/' suffering beneath the 
 attack of a rheumatic fever, and rescued from it 
 only by the skilful attentions of his physician, and 
 the tender ones of his family. While he was in 
 this state he was gratified by hearing, from Cam- 
 bridge, of the high station that had been adjudged 
 to him, among the wranglers of his year ; and if he 
 had any generous emulation of a scholar's renown 
 within him, I can believe that this would quicken 
 his recovery. 
 
 He now found himself in a station of respectability 
 at College, which must have been highly gratify- 
 ing to him, earned as it was by a laborious exer- 
 cise of his talents ; and the recollection of his suc- 
 cess has led him into some reflections upon the 
 utility of that kind of academical education, which 
 appear to me so just in themselves, and so happily 
 expressed, that I cannot prevail upon myself to 
 pass them by. 
 
 " I had changed my under-graduate's gown, and 
 obtained my degree of bachelor of arts, with ho- 
 nours hardly earned by pains the more severe, be- 
 cause so long postponed ; and now if I have been 
 seemingly too elaborate in tracing my own parti- 
 cular progress through these exercises, to which 
 the candidate for a decree at Cambridge, must of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 66 
 
 necessity conform, it is not merely because I can 
 quote my privilege for my excuse, but because I 
 would most earnestly impress upon the attention 
 of my reader the extreme usefulness of these aca r 
 demical exercises, and the studies appertaining to 
 them, by which I consider all the purposes of an 
 university education are completed ; and so con- 
 vinced am I of this, that I can hardly allow my- 
 self to call that an education of which they do not 
 make a part; if therefore I am to speak for the dis- 
 cipline of the schools, ought I not first to show 
 that I am speaking from experience, without 
 which opinions pass for nothing? Having there- 
 fore first demonstrated what my experience of that 
 discipline has been, I have the authority of that, 
 as far as it goes, for an opinion in its favour, 
 which every observation cf my life has since con- 
 tributed to establish and confirm. What more can 
 any system of education hold out to those, wh© 
 are the objects of it, than public honours to distin- 
 guish merit, public exercises to awaken emula- 
 tion, and public examinations, which cannot be 
 passed without extorting some exertion even from 
 the indolent, nor can be avoided without a marked 
 disgrace to the compounder/ Now if I have any 
 knowledge of the world, any insight into the minds 
 and characters of those, whom I have had oppor- 
 tunities of knowing, (and few have lived more and 
 longer amongst mankind) all my observations tend 
 to convince me that there is no profession, no art, 
 
 F 
 
66 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 no station or condition in life, to which the studies 
 I have been speaking of will not apply and come 
 in aid with profit and advantage. That mode of 
 investigation step by step, which crowns the 
 process of the student by the demonstration and 
 discovery of positive and mathematical truth, must 
 of necessity so exercise and train him in the 
 habits of following up his subject, be it what it 
 may, and working out his proofs, as cannot fail to 
 find their uses, whether he, who has them, dictates 
 from the pulpit, argues at the bar, or declaims in 
 the senate ; nay, there is no lot, no station, (I 
 repeat it with confidence) be it either social or 
 sequestered, conspicuous or obscure, professional 
 or idly independent, in which the man, once ex- 
 ercised in these studies, though he shall afterwards 
 neglect them, will not to his comfort experience 
 some mental powers and resources, in which their 
 influence shall be felt, though the channels, that 
 conducted it, may from disuse have become ob- 
 scure, and no longer to be traced. 
 
 " Here the crude opinions, that are let loose 
 upon society in our table conversations ; mark the 
 wild and wandering arguments, that are launched 
 at random without ever hitting the mark they 
 should be levelled at ; what does all this noise and 
 nonsense prove, but that the talker has indeed 
 acquired the fluency of words, but never known 
 the exercise of thought, or attended to the de- 
 velopernentof a single proposition ? Tell him that 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 67 
 
 he ought to hear what may be said on the other 
 side of the question — he agrees to it, and either 
 begs leave to wind up with a few words more, 
 which he winds and wire-draws without end ; or 
 having paused to hear, hears with impatience a 
 very little, foreknows every thing you had further 
 to say, cuts short your argument and bolts in 
 upon you« — with an answer to that argument — ? 
 No ; with a continuation of his gabble, and, having 
 stifled you with the torrent of his trash, places 
 your contempt to the credit of his own capacity, 
 and foolishly conceives he talks with reason be- 
 cause he has not patience to attend to any reason- 
 ing but his own. 
 
 " What are all the quirks and quibbles, that 
 skirmishers in controversy catch hold of to escape 
 the point of any argument, when pressed upon 
 them ? If a laugh, a jeer, a hit of mimickry, or 
 buffoonery cannot parry the attack, they find 
 themselves disarmed of the only weapons they can 
 wield, and then, though truth should stare them 
 in the face, they will affect not to see it : instead 
 of receiving conviction as the acquirement of 
 something, which they had not themselves and 
 have gained from you 5 they regard it as an insult to 
 their understandings, and grow sullen and resentful ; 
 they will then tell you they shall leave you to 
 your own opinions, they shall say no more, and 
 with an air of importance wrap themselves up in a 
 kind of contemptuous indifference, when their 
 
 F<? 
 
6$ LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 reason for saying nothing is only because they 
 have nothing more to say. How many of this cast 
 of character are to be met with in the world every 
 man of the world can witness. 
 
 " There are also others, whose vivacity of ima- 
 gination having never felt the trammels of a 
 syllogism is for ever flying off into digression 
 and display — 
 
 " Quo teneam nodo mutantem Proteaformas .?— 
 
 " To attempt at hedging in these cuckows is 
 but lost labour. These gentlemen are very enter- 
 taining as long as novelties with no meaning can 
 entertain you ; they have a great variety of opi- 
 nions, which, if you oppose, they do not de- 
 fend, and if you agree with, they desert. Their 
 talk is like the wild notes of birds, amongst which 
 you shall distinguish some of pleasant tone, but 
 out of which you compose no tune or harmony 
 of song. These men would have set down 
 Archimedes for a fool when he danced for joy at 
 the solution of a proposition, and mistaken New- 
 ton for a madman, when in the surplice, which he 
 put on for chapel over night, he was found the 
 next morning in the same place and posture fixed 
 in profound meditation on his theory of the pris- 
 matic colours. So great is their distaste for demon- 
 stration, they think no truth is worth the waiting 
 for; the mountain must come to them, they are not 
 by half so complaisant as Mahomet. They are not 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 69 
 
 easily reconciled to truisms, but have no particular 
 objection to impossibilities. For argument they 
 have no ear; it does not touch them ; it fetters 
 fancy, and dulls the edge of repartee ; if by chance 
 they find themselves in an untenable position, and 
 wit is not at hand to help them out of it, they 
 will take up with a pun, and ride home upon a 
 horse laugh : if they can't keep their ground, they 
 won't wait to be attacked and driven out of it. 
 Whilst a reasoning man will be picking his way 
 out of a dilemma, they, who never reason at all, 
 jump over it, and land themselves at once upon 
 new ground, where they take an imposing 
 attitude, and escape pursuit. Whatever these 
 men do, whether they talk, or write, or act, it is 
 without deliberation, without consistency, without 
 plan. Having no expanse of mind, they can com- 
 prehend only in part ; they will promise an epic 
 poem, and produce an epigram : in short, they 
 glitter, pass away and are forgotten ; their outset 
 makes a show of mighty things, they stray out of 
 their course into bye-ways and obliquities, and 
 when out of sight of their contemporaries, are for 
 ever lost to posterity. 
 
 " When characters of this sort come under our 
 observation it is easy to discover that their levities 
 and frivolities have their source in the errors and 
 defects of education, for it is evident they have 
 not been trained in any principles of right- 
 reasoning. Therefore it is that I hold in such 
 
70 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 esteem the academical studies pursued at Cam- 
 bridge, and regard their exercises in the mathe- 
 matical schools, and their examinations in the 
 theatre, as forming the best system, which this 
 country offers, for the education of its youth. 
 Persuaded as I am of this, I must confess I have 
 ever considered the election of scholars from the 
 college of Eton to that of King's in Cambridge, 
 as a bar greatly in their disfavour, forasmuch as by 
 the constitution of that college they are not sub- 
 jected to the same process for attaining their 
 degrees, and of course the study of the mathe- 
 matics makes no part of their system, but is 
 merely optional. I leave this remark to those, 
 who may think it worthy of their consideration. 
 Under-graduates of Trinity College, whether 
 elected from Westminster or not, have no such 
 exemptions." 
 
 Cumberland says, that he was intended for the 
 church 4 " the profession of his ancestors/' as he 
 terms it, and accordingly his studies chiefly tended 
 to such acquirements as the church demands. 
 
 But the misfortune of this period, which he 
 chiefly laments, and which every man has cause to 
 lament who experiences it, was the want of a 
 sagacious director, of one whose own knowledge 
 might anticipate the wants of a youthful enquirer, 
 and direct his steps into the readiest paths of ac- 
 quisition. Without such a guide the student 
 wanders in a maze of endless errors and contra- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 71 
 
 dictions ; his labours are often supererogatory, and 
 often fruitless : he encumbers his mind with stores 
 that have no currency, while he might have accu- 
 mulated those which the business of every day 
 would call for. There are few situations more 
 lamentable than that of an eager mind, ambitious of 
 distinction, impatient to attain it, toiling after suc- 
 cess, and toiling through unnecessary difficulties. 
 Yet such was Cumberland's condition : and though , 
 at a late period of his life, he derived some advan- 
 tage from the manuscript collections of his college 
 years, yet it may be supposed that he would have 
 benefited more by a more skilful and judicious 
 application of his time and talents at that period. 
 
 Among his wild and impracticable projects, he 
 meditated upon a plan of Universal History, and 
 after having waded through volumes of abstruse 
 and questionable learning, digesting into a common 
 place book, numberless facts and reasonings, and 
 having discussed topics beyond his strength and 
 general system of study, he found, at last, the whole 
 undertaking to be useless, because though he knew 
 much, he knew not enough to complete what he 
 had begun, and was at a loss how to supply his 
 deficiencies. The mass of materials which he had 
 collected was thrown aside, and the vagrant ex- 
 cursions of his mind were directed into other 
 channels of study, eventually more profitable to 
 him. 
 
72 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 The Greek tragedians he read with avidity and 
 admiration, and from admiring the originals, the 
 transition was natural and obvious to correct and 
 classical imitations of them. Hence, when 
 Mason's Elfrida appeared, he was among those 
 who vehemently praised that work. Nor was it 
 undeserving of praise. It has not indeed so much 
 energy in particular parts as Caractacus, nor is 
 there, perhaps, any one of its odes that can be 
 compared to that which begins, 
 
 " Hark ! heard ye not yon footsteps dread, 
 That shook the earth with thundering tread ? 
 'Twas Death I" 
 
 But there is a pleasing vein of poetry which 
 pervades the whole drama: the lines are har- 
 monious, the thoughts often elevated, and the lan- 
 guage select and classical. The action, indeed, 
 is barren, nor do any of the characters take great 
 hold of the attention, except Elfrida s. Or gar 
 is proud, fierce and resentful ; and Edgar merely 
 amorous; while Athelwold, of whom the poet 
 might have made much, is exhibited as meanly 
 subservient, first to his own desires, and then to 
 his monarch's licentiousness. These deficiencies 
 of character, however, are forgotten when we read 
 the poem attentive only to its poetry, which 
 always delights. I remember that the late Eliza 
 Carter, (whose opinion however upon a question 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 73 
 
 of taste I should hold very lightly, for she pro- 
 fessed to judge of a man's capability to write well, 
 by the extent of his moral purity), quotes the 
 following happy lines from the first ode in Eifrida, 
 with great applause : — 
 
 Away, ye Elves away ; 
 Shrink at ambrosial morning's living rayj 
 That living ray whose pow'r benign, 
 Unfolds the scene of glory to our eye 
 Where, thron'd in artless majesty, 
 The cherub beauty sits on nature's rustic shrine. 
 
 It was the concluding couplet that she par- 
 ticularly distinguished, and justly so, for the beauty 
 of its thought and the peculiar fecility of its 
 expression. 
 
 The introduction of the chorus, however, had 
 its plot been formed with the utmost skill and 
 nicety, would have effectually precluded it from 
 success on the stage. It seems to me the very 
 bigotry of learning that would infer, as a necessary 
 consequence, that what delighted the Greeks and 
 Romans should therefore delight us. The choruses 
 to the ancient Greek tragedy, may have a very 
 fine effect in perusal, and they may have produced 
 certain very powerful sensations of pleasure in the 
 audiences for whom they were written : it cannot 
 be denied also, that they were instrumental in 
 delivering some beautiful effusions, of what their 
 modern supporters denominate pure poetry. Yet, 
 they certainly destroyed the probability of the 
 
74? LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 drama, for no man could believe that to be a re- 
 presentation of life which exhibited what real life 
 never did. 
 
 With respect to an English audience, however, 
 the matter has been finally decided. The attempt 
 has been made and it has failed : and the question of 
 its utility, therefore, and of the propriety of its in- 
 troduction is settled for ever. If we write to please, 
 we must please by such methods as those who are 
 to be pleased will admit: and if a British public have 
 pronounced the sentence that discriminates them 
 from an Athenian one, it is in vain to inquire why 
 they have not Grecian feelings, or how they can 
 be taught to admire and approve that which seems 
 to have no other claim to practice than its an- 
 tiquity. As well might we wonder that a spectacle 
 of gladiators has never been produced, or the wild 
 licentiousness of a Roman Saturnalia endured. 
 National amusements are the produce of accidental 
 causes, operating through a long series of ages, 
 and assimilated to our feelings by early practice 
 and familiarity ; reason has little to do either with 
 their production, their continuance, or their decay: 
 and he who should attempt to abolish an esta- 
 blished and approved mode of pleasure, to be sup- 
 plied by one more obviously elegant and more 
 agreeable to the faculties of a rational being, would 
 soon be convinced of the folly of his undertaking. 
 
 The rules of every art are derived from him who 
 first brought it to perfection : but the rules of any 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 75 
 
 art that has been modified from its original plan, 
 to suit a different object, must be learned not from 
 its inventor, but from those who have successfully 
 applied it to a new purpose. It is not by a recurrence 
 to first principles that we can then employ it to most 
 advanti ge : but by a diligent consideration of its 
 present applicability to a specific purpose. Thus it 
 is with regard to the drama, which has varied, in 
 some particulars, in every country where it has 
 been introduced, to adapt it to the manners and 
 habits of the people for whom it is providee. 
 
 Till it can be shewn that our own drama may be 
 improved by adopting the riming couplets of the 
 French, the puerile conceits of the Italian, the ex- 
 travagance of the German, or the bombast of the 
 Spanish theatre*, I shall still continue to doubt 
 whether our taste be deplorably barbarous because 
 we do not approve of the chorus of the Greek 
 tragedy. 
 
 I am aware that, in delivering these opi Dions* J 
 am opposing myself to the practice of Milton, ancl 
 Mason, and to the sentiments of many eminent 
 men, among whom Dry den himself may be men- 
 tioned, who, anticipating the alterations that *such 
 an innovation would require in our dramatic eco- 
 
 * I would not be understood to pass a general censure upon the drama 
 in either of those countries. He, indeed, who can remember without de- 
 light the names of Moliere, Racine, Corneille, Gresset, and Voltaire ; of 
 Metastasio and Alfieri ; and of Schiller, Lessing, Goethe, and Iffland, 
 must be pitied rather than condemned. In what I have said I have alluded 
 rather to peculiar characteristics, than to general ones. 
 
76 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 nomy, says, " A new theatre, much more ample 
 and much deeper, must be made for that purpose ; 
 besides the cost of sometimes forty or fifty habits ; 
 which is an expense too large to be supplied by a 
 company of actors. It is true I should not be 
 sorry to see a chorus on a theatre more than as 
 large and as deep again as ours, built and adorned 
 at a king's charges ; and on that condition, and 
 another., which is, that my hands were not bound 
 behind me, as they now are, I should not despair 
 of making such a tragedy as might be both instruc- 
 tive and delightful, according to the mariner of the 
 Grecians/' These are authorities, in behalf of a 
 practice which no man can despise ; but if his rea- 
 son be not convinced, he may be allowed to be in- 
 credulous : unless he have the docility of a Catho- 
 lic, by which even the superior mind of a Fenelon 
 was so hoodwinked, as to deny its own operations, 
 when he promised to believe, without conviction, 
 certain articles which he was to sign, declaratory 
 of his denial of dogmas that had been imputed to 
 him. 
 
 Colman, in his capacity as manager of Covent 
 Garden theatre, tried how far the aid of scenic 
 effect might contribute to the adoption of Elfrida. 
 He slightly altered the chorusses, and accommo- 
 dated them to stage effect as well as he could ; but 
 the piece was coldly received, and soon disconti- 
 nued. Mason, who thought that the dignity of 
 his muse had been violated by Colman, was very 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 77 
 
 angry, and threatened some exposure to the town. 
 But the manager answered his petulant letter, by 
 promising to introduce a chorus of Grecian washer- 
 women on the stage, and as he had wit, humour, 
 and influence enough to perform what he pro- 
 mised, the irritated bard was quiet, contenting 
 himself w T ith preparing Caractacus for the press, 
 some time after, and which had rather a better 
 success. 
 
 The piece w T hich Cumberland had admired so 
 warmly, he was eager to imitate ; and it is a curi- 
 ous coincidence that he adopted the very same 
 subject which afterwards occupied the pen of Ma- 
 son. This was Caractacus ; but Cumberland's 
 disposition of the incidents, man}^ of which were 
 fictitious, differed totally from Mason's, with 
 whom, as he had no communication at the time, 
 there could rest no charge of plagiarism. This 
 drama Cumberland never published, though he 
 tells us it contained " a good deal of fancy, and 
 some strong writing." This is his own testimony, 
 and I suppose it may be received with that hesita- 
 tion which accompanies our belief of every thins 
 an author says in praise of his own works. 
 
78 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 A political Clergyman not a consistent Character. 
 — Cumberland appointed Private Secretary to 
 Lord Halifax, — Imitates Spenser and Ham- 
 mond. — A brief Defence of Hammond from 
 the Aspersions of Johnson. — Strange Perversion 
 of Taste in Burleigh, Locke, and Gray. — Cum- 
 berland enters into Lord Halifax's Family. 
 
 A new scene was now to open upon the views of 
 Cumberland. Hitherto, he had passed his life in 
 the retirement of a college, and knew little of the 
 great world, but as it was reported by books, or as 
 it reached his ears, distorted by the prejudices and 
 passions of those who moved in it. In the calm 
 and placid privacy of academical bowers, his days 
 had glided on with imperceptible progress; and the 
 stealth of time upon his steps was noticed only by 
 the accumulations of knowledge which every hour 
 provided. 
 
 A strongly contested election for the county of 
 Nottingham took place, between the rival families of 
 Knightly and Hanbury, in whose persons the whig 
 and tory factions were represented. Cumberland's 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 79 
 
 father had embraced the principles of the former, 
 and I hope he was, at least, what is called a consti- 
 tutional whig, and not one of those who assume 
 the name to cover the darkest purposes. This is 
 especially true in the present day, when every des- 
 perate knave, who aims at rebellion and subver- 
 sion, calls himself a whig, a name which now 
 sounds almost synonimous with a rebel and a 
 traitor. 
 
 I confess, indeed, it does not correspond with 
 my notions of a churchman's duty to find him the 
 abetter of political intrigues, or the champion of any 
 party. His office is a different one, and if he dis- 
 charge it faithfully and conscientiously, he will 
 find its duties sufficient for his powers of perform- 
 ance, without perverting his faculties to a use no 
 longer consistent with his station. I would not 
 wish to see a demagogue in the pulpit; nor 
 do I contemplate with pleasure an ecclesiastic 
 busy in the turbulence of civil factions. To allay 
 animosities, not to foment them ; to dissuade from 
 strife and contention, not to sanction them by his 
 co-operation ; to promote good will, peace, and 
 piety, not to witness their opposites as an instiga- 
 tor, are his peculiar duty ; and the reverence and 
 sanctity which should belong to the office he holds, 
 .will surely be despised by others when he shews 
 that he despises them himself. It is most un- 
 seemly to behold a clergyman, forsaking the peace- 
 ful functions of his ministry, to join in the feuds- 
 
80 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 excesses, and resentments, which ever accompany 
 the proceedings of a contested election. 
 
 That the father of Cumberland, however, 
 thought differently, we know from his practice, 
 and I am not sorry to add, that as his party was 
 unsuccessful, his exertions were without the re- 
 ward which the consciousness of prosperity would 
 have bestowed. But they were not forgotten by 
 those for whom they were intended. The Earl of 
 Halifax, then high in office, and lord lieutenant of 
 the county, was mindful of his support, and made 
 him offers, which, as far as they related personally 
 to himself, he constantly rejected, but when they 
 pointed to the destiny of his son, he lent an ear of 
 willing attention, and the future destination of 
 Cumberland was connected with the political ser- 
 vices of the father. To these arrangements, how- 
 ever, the son was less disposed to consent. He 
 lamented the separation from peaceful study, to 
 endure the toils of a secretary's office, and found 
 no compensation in exchanging the charms of 
 literature for the dull forms of state affairs. 
 
 When the progress of my labour brings me to the 
 mention of Arundel, I shall advert to an opinion 
 Strongly fixed in my mind that many of its incidents 
 have a connexion with the early life of Cumber- 
 land himself. 
 
 While these stipulations for patronage between 
 the noble Earl and his reverend supporter were 
 carrying on, Cumberland was permitted to visit a 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. SI 
 
 relation in Yorkshire, both for the purpose of 
 amending his own health, and that his sister's 
 accomplishments in music and dancing might be 
 more advantageously pursued. Here he entered 
 into some sort of dissipation. He hunted in the 
 mornings, danced in the evenings, and having no 
 books with him trifled away, I suppose, the inter- 
 mediate hours. Among the few volumes which 
 he found at his relative's, happened to be Spenser's 
 Fairy Queen ; this he sometimes read, and soon 
 strove to imitate. He squandered some time in 
 unprofitable attempts to adapt the language and 
 stanza of Spenser to ideas of his own ; but his 
 mother's good sense soon reminded him that he 
 was idly wasting hours upon a species of composi- 
 tion which, when best done, is seldom read with 
 pleasure, and when ill done, is certain to be 
 treated with contempt. 
 
 His mind, however, could not remain totally 
 inactive. When his taste was rescued from the 
 influence of Spenser's verse, he turned to more 
 legitimate modes of writing, and being favoured 
 w T ith the perusal of a copy of elegiac verses, writ- 
 ten by the Lady Susan, daughter of the Earl of 
 Galloway, who was then residing at York, with 
 his family, he wrote a reply to them, in quatrains. 
 The subject of the lady's pen seemed to be taken 
 from Hamlet's meditations on the scull of Yorick. 
 What they were I cannot tell, for Cumberland did 
 not feel himself at liberty to publish them ; but 
 
 G 
 
82 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 bis own he has, and as they have merit, I will 
 transcribe them here. 
 
 " ' True ! We must all be changed by death, 
 Such is the form the dead must wear, 
 And so, when Beauty yields its breath, 
 So shall the fairest face appear. 
 
 But let thy soul survey the grace, 
 That yet adorns its frail abode, 
 And through the wond'rous fabric trace 
 The hand of an unerring God. 
 
 Why does the blood in stated round 
 Its vital warmth throughout dispense ? 
 Who tun'd the ear to every sound, 
 And lent the hand its ready sense ? 
 
 Whence had the eyes that subtle force, 
 That languor, they by turns display ? 
 Who hung the lips with prompt discourse, 
 And tun'd the soft melodious lay ? 
 
 What but thy Maker's image there 
 In each external part is seen ? 
 But 'tis thy better part to wear 
 His image pictur'd best within. 
 
 Else what avail'd the raptur'd strain, 
 Did not the mind her aid impart, 
 The melting eye would speak in vain, 
 Flow'd not its language from the heart. 
 
 The blood, with stated pace, had crept 
 Along the dull and sluggish veins, 
 The ear insensibly had slept, 
 Though angels sung in choicest strains. 
 
 It is that spark of quickning fire, 
 To every child of nature giv'n, 
 That either kindles wild desire, 
 Or lights us on the road to heav'n. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND* S3 
 
 That spark, if Virtue keeps it bright, 
 And Genius fans it into flame, 
 Aspiring mounts, and in its flight, 
 Soars far above this earthly frame. 
 
 Strong and expansive in its view, 
 It tow'rs amidst the boundless sky, 
 Sees planets other orbs pursue, 
 Whose systems other suns supply. 
 
 Such Newton was, diffusing far 
 His radiant beams ; such Cotes had been. 
 This a bright comet ; that a star, 
 Which glitter'd, and no more was seen. 
 
 Blush then, if thou hast sense of shame, 
 Inglorious, ign'rant, impious slave ! 
 Who think'st this heav'n-created frame 
 Shall basely perish in the grave, 
 
 False as thou art, dar'st thou suggest 
 That thy Creator is unjust ? 
 Wilt thou the truth with Him contest, 
 Whose wisdom form'd thee of the dust ? 
 
 Say, dotard, hath He idly wrought, 
 Or are his works to be believ'd ? 
 Speak, is the whole creation nought ? 
 Mortal, is God or thou deceiv'd ? 
 
 Thy harden'd spirit, convict at last, 
 Its damning error shall perceive, 
 Speechless shall hear its sentence past, 
 Condemn'd to tremble and believe. 
 
 But thou in reason's sober light 
 Death clad with terror can'st survey, 
 And from the foul and ghastly sight 
 Derive the pure and moral lay. 
 
 G? 
 
84- LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 Go on, sweet Nymph, and when thy Muse 
 Visits the dark and dreary tomh, 
 Bright-rob'd Religion shall diffuse 
 Her radiance, and dispel the gloom. 
 
 And when the necessary day 
 
 Shall call thee to thy saving God, 
 
 Secure thou'lt chuse that better way, 
 
 Which Conscience points and Saints have trode. 
 
 So shall thy soul at length forsake 
 The fairest form e'er soul receiv'd, 
 Of those rich blessings to partake, 
 Which eye ne'er saw, nor heart conceiv'd. 
 
 There, 'midst the full angelic throng, 
 Praise Him, who those rich blessings gave, 
 There shall resume the grateful song, 
 A joyful victor o'er the grave.' " 
 
 Nor was this the only trifle with which he 
 amused his vacant hours at York. He had re- 
 nounced Spenser, and adopted Hammond as a 
 model to imitate; but the same judicious moni- 
 tress who had ridiculed his folly in the former in- 
 stance, attacked it in the present ; and so sensible 
 was he to her suggestions, that he soon abandoned 
 his love master in writing, and took his leave of 
 him in the following spritely lines, written almost 
 extempore : 
 
 " ' When wise men love they love to folly, 
 When blockheads love they're melancholy, 
 When coxcombs love, they love for fashion, 
 And quaintly call it the belle passion. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 85 
 
 Old bachelors, who wear the" willow, 
 May dream of love and hug the pillow, 
 Whilst love, in poet's fancy rhyming, 
 Sets all the hells of folly chiming. 
 
 But women, charming women, prove 
 The sweet varieties of love, 
 They can love all, but none too dearly, 
 Their husbands too, but not sincerely. 
 
 They'll love a thing, whose outward shape 
 Marks him twin brother to an ape ; 
 They'll take a miser for his riches, 
 And wed a beggar without breeches. 
 
 Marry, as if in love with ruin ? 
 A gamester to their sure undoing, 
 A drunkard raving, swearing, storming, 
 For the dear pleasure of reforming. 
 
 They'll wed a lord, whose breath shall falter 
 Whilst he is crawling from the altar : 
 What is there women will not do, 
 When they love man and money too ?* " 
 
 If the reprehension of his mother extended only 
 to the danger of imitation, as a practice which is 
 apt to enfeeble the mind, and make it diffident of 
 its own powers, I fully accord with the prudence of 
 her proceeding, for no imitator has ever risen to 
 eminence ; but if she implied, in her disapprobation 
 of the practice, any censure of the writer whose 
 strains were the object of her son's imitation, I 
 should reluctantly believe the testimonies which 
 I have mentioned, of her superior capacity and 
 taste. No writer in our language has written with 
 more tender elegance than Hammond, if a living 
 
86 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 author perhaps be excepted ; and though it were 
 said that his love, his woes, his sighs, and his 
 prayers were fictitious ; that he threatened to kill 
 himself when he meant to live, and that he sung 
 of being in despair when he was perfectly happy 
 and contented, it would not therefore follow that 
 his imagination was not soft and persuasive, that his 
 language was not melodious and appropriate, or 
 that his images were not, in the highest degree, 
 affecting and pathetic, If praise be denied to 
 him, whose topics are imaginary, though his 
 descriptions are natural, to whom shall it be 
 given ? Poetry is perfect in proportion as it is an 
 accurate representation of life, of things that are 
 real and probable ; and if it can be shewn, as surely 
 it may be shewn, that authors have written upon 
 fictitious subjects with a warmth and expression 
 which the reality could not have inspired in a 
 higher degree, the greatest praise will be due to 
 that skill which hides the art by which we are 
 made to believe in representations that have no 
 foundation but in the poet's fancy. 
 
 Tickell, in his elegy upon the death of Addison, 
 has these lines : 
 
 Slow comes the verse that real grief inspires ; 
 What mourner ever felt poetic fires ? 
 
 And the question is asked with a plausibility of 
 truth which deceives the reader into an assent of 
 what is implied by it. But if there be any justice 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. S7 
 
 in the opinion, that what we feel most we can best 
 express, I see no reason why the deepest grief 
 should not be uttered with the deepest pathos. 
 At all events, if neither visionary nor real sorrows 
 can be truly depicted ; if the one must be frigid, 
 and the other insufficient, where are we to look 
 for that which poetry has always been supposed 
 capable of giving — a vivid transcript of our feel- 
 ings? We must reform our notions of the power 
 of language to express the sentiments of the heart, 
 and receive words only as tokens of imaginary 
 value. 
 
 Johnson, whose mental perception was often as 
 defective as his visual one, has attempted to deride 
 the plaintive effusions of Hammond'smuse, by talk- 
 ing of their pedantry ; but I suppose no reader will 
 be disposed to defer very implicitly to his opinions 
 upon a question of amatory feeling. The first 
 requisite to excellence is to understand the subject 
 we are discussing ; and I doubt if Johnson knew 
 much of love in its refined state. His was a mind 
 formed to embrace the vast, but not to seize the 
 minute ; and though he wrote verses which men- 
 tioned love in all its languishing sensibility of de- 
 sire, I suspect his images were borrowed from 
 writers who had been faithful to nature, and whom 
 to imitate therefore, could not be to err. What 
 his notions of this passion were may be easily 
 inferred from various parts of his writings ; espe- 
 cially from Rasselas, and his observations upon 
 
SS LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Pope's Elegy on the Death of an Unfortunate 
 Young Lady. Yet, it is upon record, that he was 
 susceptible of amorous fondness; of a sort of sen- 
 sual dalliance, which is quite distinct from love in 
 its state of purity. Such lascivious endearments 
 have not even the quality of Pope's description of 
 lust, which. 
 
 Through some certain strainers well refined, 
 Is gentle love that charms all womankind. 
 
 Let us not wonder that such a man should in- 
 distinctly comprehend the delicate sentiments of 
 a writer like Hammond, or that he should have 
 pronounced of his elegies, that they have " neither 
 passion, nature, nor manners," which surely he 
 could not have done bad he read, or if he read, 
 had he been capable of feeling, the beautiful strain 
 of thought and expression which peculiarly distin- 
 guishes the thirteenth elegy. Is there not nature 
 also in the following stanza : 
 
 Let others buy the cold, unloving maid, 
 
 In forc'd embraces act the tyrant's part j 
 While I their selfish luxury upbraid, 
 
 And scorn the person, where I doubt the heart. — Elegy II 
 
 May we not believe there is truth in the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 No virgin's easy faith I e'er betray'd, 
 
 My tongue ne'er boasted of a feign'd embrace ; 
 
 No poisons in the cup have I conveyed, 
 Nor veil'd destruction with a friendly face. — Elegy IV. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 89 
 
 And is there not passion in these stanzas : 
 
 Ah, gentle door, attend my humble call, 
 
 Nor let thy sounding hinge our thefts betray ; 
 
 So all my curses far from thee shall fall, 
 We angry lovers mean not what we say. 
 
 Remember now the fiow'ry wreaths I gave, 
 
 When first I told thee of my bold desires ; 
 Nor thou, O Cynthia, fear the watchful slave, 
 
 Venus will favour what herself inspires. 
 
 ft 
 
 She guides the youth who see not where they tread, 
 
 She shews the virgin how to turn the door ; 
 Softly to steal from off her silent bed, 
 
 And not a step betray her on the floor. II 
 
 The fearless lover wants no beams of light, 
 The robber knows him, nor obstructs his way ; 
 
 Sacred he wanders through the pathless night, 
 Belongs to Venus, and can never stray. 
 
 I scorn the chilling winds, and beating rain, 
 Nor heed cold watchings o'er the dewy ground ; 
 
 Jf all the hardships I for love sustain, 
 With love's victorious joys at last be crown'd. — Elegy V. 
 
 That Johnson should have attempted to degrade 
 such poetry as this, may displease, but need not 
 excite our surprise, when we recollect that Bur- 
 leigh thought Spenser a mere ballad-maker ; that 
 Locke regarded Blackmore as the greatest genius, 
 except Milton, which this country had produced*, 
 
 * See his correspondence with Mr. Molineux, who says, in a letter to 
 Locke, " Mr. Churchill favoured me with the present of Sir Richard 
 Blackmore's King Arthur. I had read P. Arthur before, and read it with 
 admiration, which is not at all lessened^by this second piece. All our 
 
90 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 and that Gray, in a letter to Mason, speaks of the 
 Nouvelle Heloise of Rousseau in terms of ridicule 
 and sarcastic contempt. Such are the diversities 
 of opinion among mankind ; and so utterly may 
 one man differ from the rest of his fellow-creatures 
 upon a question of mere taste. 
 
 The reader will pardon this digression, which 
 has afforded me an opportunity of attempting the 
 vindication of a man whose genius and writings 
 deserved to be rescued from the heavy aspersions 
 of one whose opinions carry with them an acknow- 
 ledged authority. I now return to my narrative. 
 
 When Cumberland returned to Cambridge, the 
 opinion of his merits was such, that the master, Dr. 
 Smith, and the seniors had agreed upon an altera- 
 tion of the existing statutes in his favour, by which 
 he might be made eligible to a fellowship with a 
 shorter date of standing than was usually required. 
 When this plan was communicated to him, he 
 had some honourable scruples about him, which 
 made him hesitate to admit of an arrangement 
 which, by favouring him contrary to established 
 rules, must operate to the prejudice of others 
 whose regular claims were prior to his. With 
 some little sophistry, however, he quieted his 
 
 English poets (Milton excepted) have been mere ballad-makers in compa-> 
 rison to him" — To this, Locke replied, " I shall, when I see Sir R. Black- 
 more, discourse him as you desire. Thtre is, I with pleasure find, a 
 strange harmony throughout, between your thoughts and mine" And, in 
 another letter, he says that Sir Richard shews as great strength and pens- 
 tration of judgment, as his poetry shews fiights of fancy. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 91 
 
 alarms upon the subject, and had prepared himself 
 to receive the full benefit of the proposed kind- 
 ness, when he was suddenly called away from all 
 his dreams of academical promotion and honours 
 to receive others of a political complexion. 
 
 Lord Halifax, in grateful consideration of the 
 services which his father had rendered him, 
 appointed his son to the station of his lordship's 
 private and confidential secretary ; a post highly 
 flattering to the views and hopes of a young man, 
 as far as human prudence can calculate the proba- 
 ble effects of any advancement in life ; but one 
 which eventually proved so little beneficial to 
 Cumberland that, looking back upon the period, 
 he says " had certain passages of his past life been 
 then stated to him as probabilities to occur, he 
 would have stuck to his college, and endeavoured 
 to have trodden in the steps of his ancestors/' He 
 represents himself, indeed, as unfit for a state of 
 dependence. The truth, perhaps, was, that he 
 was solely ambitious of literary distinction, and 
 averse from any pursuit that was likely to inter- 
 rupt his progress in the career which his fancy had 
 marked out. 
 
 Lord Halifax (who was a collateral descendant of 
 the celebrated n bleman of that name, the familiar 
 companion of wits and poets, and himself no mean 
 wit and poet,) was distinguished as a states- 
 man, and though he did not add to the literary 
 dignity of his ancestor, he did not diminish from 
 
92 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 It, for he enjoyed the reputation of a good scholar, 
 and they who knew him best say he was one. He 
 was fond of English poetry, and recited it, says 
 Cumberland, " very emphatically after the manner 
 of Quin, who had been his master in that art," and 
 he had an hereditary fondness for the compositions 
 of Prior. He was married to a lady who brought him 
 a large fortune, and from whom he took the name 
 of Dunk, being made also a freeman of the city of 
 London, to entitle him to marry, in conformity to 
 the conditions of her father's will. At the time 
 when Cumberland entered the family, it consisted 
 of Lord and Lady Halifax, three daughters, and an 
 elderly clergyman of the name of Crane, who had 
 been his lordship's tutor, and had acquired a com- 
 plete ascendancy over him. This ascendancy, 
 however, he deserved to have, for- he possessed 
 sagacity to distinguish what was right, and virtue 
 and authority enough to enforce it. His opinions 
 were listened to with submissive deference by his 
 former pupil ; and as they were never offered un- 
 til solicited, their influence was not obstructed by 
 that prejudice which is sometimes excited when 
 advice is obtruded with too little delicacy and cir- 
 cumspection. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 93 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 He enters upon the duties of his new office. — -His 
 disappointment. — Regrets the calm retirement of 
 his College. — Obtains a fellowship. — Discusses 
 classical literature with Charles Townsend. — Se- 
 neca . — The folly of lavishing indiscriminate praise 
 upon all we know. — Bubb Dodington. — His villa 
 of La Trappe, and the visitors who frequented 
 it. — Cumberland obtains a lay fellowship. 
 
 Cumberland hastened to London to enter upon 
 the duties of his new office. Lodgings had been 
 provided for him, by his lordship's orders, in 
 Downing-street, for the purpose of being near Mr. 
 John Pownall, who was then acting-secretary to 
 the board of trade, at which it was Lord Halifax's 
 office to preside ; and from him it was intended he 
 should derive some knowledge of those details of 
 business which it was likely he would have to 
 transact. Mr. Pownall was a mere man of office, 
 and Cumberland was a mere collegian ; two cha- 
 racters so opposed to each other, that it was im- 
 possible they should meet but to provoke mutual 
 disgust. The one was proud to teach what he 
 knew ; the other, too proud perhaps to learn what 
 he wanted. 
 
94 LIFE Of CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Cumberland feelingly describes his vexation and 
 disappointment at finding himself suddenly re- 
 moved from the congenial tranquillity and studious 
 solemnity of the university, to move in a sphere 
 for which he was as little qualified by inclination 
 as by habit. He had quitted a state of society 
 which a learned man always finds agreeable, and 
 entered upon one which nothing but custom can 
 rescue from being disagreeable to an enlarged capa- 
 city; he had exchanged the free excursions of an 
 enquiring mind, for the precise and unvarying 
 avocations of a secretary's desk ; he had forsaken 
 companions who could meet his thoughts on any 
 topic, who could impart knowledge, and keep the 
 faculties in wholesome exercise and activity, for a 
 race of mortals very necessary in society, but not 
 exactly of such qualifications as an intellectual 
 man would prefer in his assosiates. To endure 
 such mental banishment patiently was something 
 more than could be expected of a young man who 
 had not perhaps learned to subdue his fancy to his 
 reason, nor had acquired that hardest lesson of our 
 moral nature, to find our pleasure in our duty. 
 With a mind inflamed by disappointment, there- 
 fore, anxiously looking back to what it had lost, 
 and impatiently anticipating disgust in what it had, 
 let us not wonder that all he saw was odious, and 
 that the lapse of fifty years was insufficient to re- 
 move the strong impressions of displeasure thus 
 excited. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 93 
 
 Something, however, be gained from his situation. 
 Being advised to inform himself respecting the 
 colonies, he travelled through volumes of useless 
 knowledge, which told every thing but what he 
 wanted to know ; and though he brought away 
 nothing applicable to the immediate object of his 
 reading, he remembered various facts and striking 
 events, which he afterwards employed as plots for 
 tragedies, and other dramatic exhibitions. 
 
 When the recess took place, and statesmen and 
 their secretaries retired from the labours of a poli- 
 tical campaign, to recruit themselves in the refresh- 
 ing bosom of nature, Cumberland accompanied 
 his patron into Northamptonshire, and from thence 
 went to Cambridge, there to resume operations 
 more congenial to him. The hopes of a fellowship 
 still amused his imagination, and supported as he 
 was by collegiai as well as other interest, he had 
 no reasonable grounds to apprehend a failure. 
 He was opposed, indeed, by one of the electing 
 seniors, and upon very just principles, that his op- 
 portunity for success was obtained at the expense 
 of justice due to others, who, by such deviatiou 
 from established practice, were deprived of their 
 only chance of ever obtaining their unquestiona- 
 ble rights. This person was Dr. Mason ; and 
 when Cumberland waited upon him, as usual, to 
 return him thanks, he very honestly replied, 
 " You owe me no compliment, for I tell you 
 plainly, I opposed your election, not because ] 
 
96 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 have any personal objection to you, but because 
 I am no friend to innovation, and think it hard 
 upon the excluded candidates to be subjected on 
 a sudden to a regulation, which, according to my 
 calculation, gives you two chances to their one, 
 and takes away, as it has proved, even that one. 
 But you are in ; so there's an end of it, and I give 
 you joy." 
 
 Having thus obtained his fellowship, and not 
 without a rigorous examination which only a 
 well grounded education could have undergone, 
 he returned home, to receive the congratula- 
 tions of his family, and to repose himself after the 
 fatigues of so arduous a contest. His retirement 
 was not of long duration, for we find him again 
 immersed in the duties of his official station, and 
 relieving his mind from its dry and irksome forms, 
 by expatiating in the regions of poetry. He wrote 
 An Elegy on St. Mark's Eve, a particular period 
 of time, when it is believed, by the superstitious, 
 that the apparitions of all those who are to die in 
 the course of the ensuing year, will be seen walk- 
 ing across the churchyard at midnight. But the 
 public had no sympathy with so idle a tale, and 
 the piece, which Dodsley published, passed 
 quietly into that oblivion in which, as the author 
 has not drawn it forth, nor I have ever seen it, it 
 may be permitted to remain. 
 
 In his capacity as confidential secretary, he had 
 some opportunities also for bringing his acquire- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 97 
 
 merits into action. He happened to excite Charles 
 Townsend's notice, by solving some kind of 
 enigma which required a geometrical process, and 
 he rewarded his skill in a manner sufficiently 
 flattering to a young and inexperienced youth. 
 He put into his hands a report of his own drawing 
 up, for he was one of the Lords of Trade, and 
 required Cumberland to give his unbiassed opinion 
 upon its merits. This, from such a man, so pre- 
 eminently gifted, and so qualified to do well what- 
 ever he thought fit to do at all, must have been 
 flattering to the vanity of Cumberland, though, 
 perhaps, the act itself was no more than a piece of 
 courtly politeness, which repays a favour by doing 
 nothing with the graceful importance which 
 belongs to doing much. The youthful secretary 
 performed his task with the modest presumption 
 of one who wishes to prove himself worthy of a 
 trust, and is yet fearful of overstepping the limits 
 of decorum. Some things he pointed out that 
 might be amended, and many more, no doubt, he 
 admired : the objections were politely listened to, 
 and the admiration was repaid by compliments ad- 
 dressed to his just taste and sagacity. 
 
 The same distinguished character afforded him 
 another opportunity of displaying his scholastic 
 acquirements. He mentioned the following quo- 
 tation, which *he had met with in an anonymous 
 writer, who maintained highly impious doctrines : 
 
 Post mortem nihil est, ipsaq ; mors nihil. 
 
 H 
 
98 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Where this line was to be found he had for- 
 gotten, and he referred to Cumberland, as to a 
 man fresh from the study of the classics and likely 
 to know its author. He recollected it was in one 
 of the tragedies of Seneca, and some time after, 
 looking through his works, he discovered it in the 
 second act of the Troades. He copied it, with 
 the context, and sent it to Townsend, accom- 
 panied by a poetical version of the passage. As 
 the reader may find pleasure both in the original 
 and the translation, I will here transcribe them. 
 
 " Verum est, an timidos fabula decipit 
 Umbras corporibus vivere conditis ? 
 Cum conjux oculis imposuit manum, 
 Supremusq ; dies solibus obstitit, 
 Et tristes cineres urna coercuit, 
 Nonprodest animam traderefuneri, 
 Sed restat miseris vivere longius, 
 An toti morimur, nullaq; pars manet 
 Nostri, cum profugo spiritus halitu 
 Immistus nebulis cessit in aera, 
 Et nudum tetigit subditafax latus — ? 
 
 Quidquid sol oriens, quidquid et occidens 
 JVovit, cosruleis oceanus fretis 
 Quidquid vel veniens velfugiens lavat> 
 JEtas pegaseo corripiet gradu. 
 Quo bissena volant sidera turbine, 
 Quo cursu properat secula volvere 
 Astrorum dominus, quo properat modo 
 Obliquis Hecate currere fiexubus, 
 Hoc omnes petimus fata ; necamplias 
 Juratos Superis qui tetigit lacus 
 Usquam est; ut calidusfumus ab ignibus 
 Vanescit, spatium per breve sordidus, 
 Ut nubes gravidas , quas modo vidimus, 
 Arctoi Borece disjicit impetus, 
 Sic hie, quo regimur, spiritus effluet. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 99 
 
 Post mortem nihil est, ipsaq ; mors nihil ; 
 Velocis spatii meta novissima. 
 Spem ponant avidi, solliciti metum ! 
 Quceris quo jaceas post obitum loco-"? 
 Quo non nata jacent. 
 Tempus nos avidum devorat, et chaos : 
 Mors individua est ; noxia corpori, 
 Nee parcens animce. Tcenara, et aspero 
 Regnum sub domino, Urn en et obsidens 
 Castos nonfacili Cerberus ostio, 
 Riunores vacui, verbaq ; inania, 
 Et par sollicito fabula somnio. 
 
 " Chorus of Trojan Women. 
 
 " * Is it a truth, or fiction all, 
 
 Which only cowards trust, 
 Shall the soul live beyond the grave. 
 
 Or mingle with our dust ? 
 
 When the last gleam of parting day 
 
 Our struggling sight hath blest, 
 And in the pale array of death 
 
 Our clay-cold limbs are drest. 
 
 Did the kind friend, who clos'd our eyes, 
 
 Speak peace to us in vain ? 
 Is there no peace, and have we died 
 
 To live and weep again ? 
 
 Or sigh'd we then our souls away, 
 
 And was that sigh our last, 
 Or e'er upon the flaming pile 
 
 Our bare remains were cast ? 
 
 All the sun sees, the ocean laves, 
 
 Kingdoms and kings shall fall, 
 Nature and nature's works shall cease, 
 
 And time be lord of all. 
 
 HS 
 
100 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND 
 
 Swift as the monarch of the skies 
 
 Impels the rolling year, 
 Swift as the gliding orb of night 
 
 Pursues her prone career, 
 
 So swift, so sure we all descend 
 Down life's continual tide, 
 
 Till in the void of fate profound 
 We sink with worlds beside. 
 
 As in the flame's resistless glare 
 Th' envelop'd smoke is lost, 
 
 Or as before the driving North 
 The scatter'd clouds are tost, 
 
 So this proud vapour shall expire, 
 
 This all-directing soul, 
 Nothing is after death ; you've run 
 
 Your race and reach'd the goal. 
 
 Dare not to wish, nor dread to meet 
 
 A life beyond the grave ; 
 You'll meet no other life than now 
 
 The unborn ages have. 
 
 Time whelms us in the vast Inane, 
 A gulph without a shore ; 
 
 Death gives th' exterminating blow,, 
 We fall to rise no more. 
 
 Hell, and its triple-headed guard, 
 And Lethe's fabled stream, 
 
 Are tales that lying gossips tell, 
 And moon-struck Sybils dream.' " 
 
 It must have occurred to every reader of Cum- 
 berland's Memoirs, that he employs, on all occa- 
 sions, a commodious kind of praise, a sort of familiar 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 101 
 
 eulogy which he lavishes too unsparingly to be 
 always just. If virtues were as common as the 
 air we breathe, and vices as rare as a Queen 
 Anne' s farthing or a tortoiseshell he-cat, we might 
 suppose it a man's ordinary destiny to find, in all 
 his friends and acquaintance, qualities of so en- 
 gaging a character that only strong encomiastic 
 phrases could properly describe them. But while 
 the world is what it is ; while human nature con- 
 tinues to be compounded of such mixed materials ; 
 and while we know that in the purest dispositions 
 there will, and must, exist an alloy which only 
 weakness can overlook, or hypocrisy deny, it seems 
 to argue one or both in him who affects to possess 
 a circle of connexions so immaculate, that no vice 
 dare enter within its sacred precincts. I know 
 the reply to which this censure is exposed, and it 
 is one that will always carry with it the appro- 
 bation of the unthinking. It will be said, that it 
 is amiable and benevolent to dwell upon the bright 
 side of human nature, and especially of our friends; 
 that we should leave to enemies or strangers the 
 office of displaying the dark one ; and that in 
 celebrating the good qualities of those we love 
 and esteem, we only teach a lesson which we 
 secretly hope to find practised towards ourselves. 
 These are plausible excuses for the practice, but 
 they are no vindication of the principle. Truth is 
 immutable, and her authority paramount ; nor 
 can we sacrifice her rights to expediency without 
 
109 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 opening a door to the influx of evils more dreadful 
 than may be, at first, imagined. 
 
 Men of strong and discriminating minds are 
 usually least disposed to prostitute their praise. 
 I need only refer to the names of Pope, Swift, 
 Arbuthnot, and Johnson. Their commendations 
 were qualified, as every commendation must be 
 that is true : or if they applauded only, they ap- 
 plauded with such decorum of expression as did 
 not exalt its object to a height of blameless purity. 
 They knew human nature too well, had too quick 
 an insight into her structure and play, and were 
 coo deeply conscious of the infirmities of this 
 earthly state, to believe any man deserving of that 
 ascription of universal excellence which belongs 
 to no man. 
 
 I am willing 10 believe that this kind of adu- 
 lation is often laudable in its origin ; and I do 
 believe that in Cumberland it sprung from -a ge- 
 neral benevolence of character which made him 
 think men as good as he wished them to be. 
 But the effect is, notwithstanding, partly ludicrous 
 and partly offensive ; for when we behold names 
 unknown till then read of, invested with every 
 form of praise which united genius, worth, and 
 piety could call forth ; when we behold them in- 
 vested with every moral grace, and with every 
 mental superiority, we are apt to wonder why 
 they were never heard of before, and at last to 
 <; aspect that they are heard of now only to be 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 103 
 
 forgotten. We close our minds against the ad- 
 mission of truth, because it is forced upon us with 
 too little attention to probability ; and as we 
 have reason to suspect some things we suspect all. 
 
 Among the friends thus soothed with the 
 blandishments of praise is the grandson of Bishop 
 Reynolds, who is still living, and who was re- 
 motely related to Cumberland by the marriage of 
 his ancestor. To this gentleman he addresses a 
 mysterious paragraph, at page 168 of the first 
 volume of his Memoirs. It seems to hint at a 
 transaction of gallantry between Cumberland and 
 his friend's sister, but without any mixture of vice. 
 What the transaction precisely was I do not 
 know. 
 
 About this period he projected an epic poem 5 
 which, from the specimen he has given, it might 
 be wished he had finished. The subject seems to 
 have been the Discovery of India by the Portu- 
 guese ; and though this topic has been nobly 
 treated by Camoens,* as a national one, it em- 
 braces a field wide enough for another adventurer 
 to signalise himself in. Why the design was 
 laid aside, the author himself does not appear to 
 
 * Why has Miekle's spirited and elegant translation of the Lusiad of 
 Camoens languished so long in the public estimation ? Where shall we 
 find a more varied strain of poetry, more melody of versification, more 
 dignity of language, or more of the enthusiasm of the muse, than in this 
 work? Mickle has happily succeeded in combining the respective ex- 
 cellencies of the two great masters of English verse ; he has united the 
 freedom and variety of Dryden with the terse, harmonious energy of Pope, 
 
104 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 know : but he regrets that it was not pursued at 
 those periods of his life when he had leisure for 
 the undertaking. When the reader has perused 
 the following fragment, in which the discoveries 
 of the Portuguese are introduced, he will 5 perhaps, 
 think with me that it is to be regretted he never 
 followed up the project to its completion. I 
 know nothing of Cumberland's that has more 
 poetical merit. 
 
 " Fragment. 
 
 iS Long time had Afric's interposing mound, 
 
 Stretching athwart the navigator's way, 
 
 Fenc'd the rich East, and sent th' advent' rous hark 
 
 Despairing home, or whelm'd her in the waves. 
 
 Gama the first on bold discovery bent, 
 
 With prow still pointing to the further pole, 
 
 Skirted Caffraria till the welcome cape, 
 
 Thence call'd of Hope — but not to Asia's sons-r 
 
 Spoke the long coast exhausted ; still 'twas hope ? 
 
 Not victory ; nature in one effort foil'd, 
 
 Still kept the contest doubtful, aivd enrag'd, 
 
 Itous'd all the elements to war. Meanwhile, 
 
 At once the Titans, with Saturnian Jove, 
 
 So he in happier hour and his bold crew 
 
 Undaunted conflict held : old Ocean storm'd, 
 
 Loud thunder rent the air, the leagued winds. 
 
 R-oar'd in his front, as if all Afric's Gods 
 
 With necromantic spells had charm'd the storm 
 
 To shake him from his course — in vain ; for Fate. 
 
 That grasp'd his helm with unrelenting hand, 
 
 Had register'd his triumph : through the breach 
 
 All Lusitania pour'd ; Arabia mourn'd. 
 
 And saw her spicy caravans return 
 
 Shorn of their wealth , the Adriatic bride 
 
 Like a neglected beauty pin'd away ; 
 
 Europe, which by her hand of late received 
 
 India's rich fruits, from the deserted mart 
 
 Now turn'd aside and pluekt them as they grew 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 105 
 
 " A new-found world from out the waves arose. 
 Now Soffaia, and all the swarming coast 
 Of fruitful Zanguebar, till where it meets 
 The sultry Line, pour'd forth their odorous stores. 
 The thirsty West drank deep the luscious draught, 
 And reel'd with luxury ; Emmanuel's throne 
 Blaz'd with barbaric gems ; aloft he sate 
 Encanopied with gold, and circled round 
 With warriors and with chiefs in Eastern pomp 
 Resplendent with their spoils. Close in the rear 
 Of conquest march'd the motley papal host, 
 Monks of all colours, brotherhoods and names : 
 Frowning they rear'd the cross ; th' affrighted tribes 
 Look'd up aghast, and, whilst the cannon's mouth 
 Thundcr'd obedience, dropt th' unwilling knee 
 In trembling adoration of a God, 
 Whom, as by nature tutor'd, in his works 
 They saw, and only in his mercy knew. 
 But creeds, impos'd by terror, can ensure 
 No fixt allegiance, but are strait dismiss'd 
 From the vert conscience, when the sword is sheath'd. 
 " Now- when the barrier, that so long had stood 
 
 'Twixt the disparted nations, was no more, 
 
 Like fire, once kindled, spreading in its course, 
 
 Onward the mighty conflagration roll'd. 
 
 As if the Atlantic and the Southern seas, 
 
 Driv'n by opposing winds and urg'd amain 
 
 By fierce tornadoes, with their cumbrous weight 
 
 Should on a sudden at the narrowing pass 
 
 Of Darien burst the continental chain 
 
 And whelm together, so the nations rush'd 
 
 Impetuous through the breach, where Gama forc'd 
 
 His desperate passage , terrible the shock, 
 
 From Ormus echoing to the Eastern isles 
 
 Of Java and Sumatra ; India now 
 
 From th' hither Tropic to the Southern Cape 
 
 Show'd to the setting sun a shore of blood : 
 
 In vain her monarchs from a hundred thrones 
 
 Sounded the arbitrary word for war ; 
 
 In vain whole cataracts of dusky slaves 
 
 Pour'd on the coast : earth trembled with the weight : 
 
106 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 But what can slaves ? What can the nerveless arm, 
 Shrunk by that soft emasculating clime, 
 What the weak dart against the mailed breast 
 Of Europe's martial sons ? On sea, on shore 
 Great Almeed triumph'd, and the rival sword 
 Of Albuquerque, invincible in arms. 
 Wasted the nations, humbling to the yoke 
 Kings, whom submissive myriads in the dust 
 Prostrate ador'd, and from the solar blaze 
 Of majesty retreating veil'd their eyes. 
 
 *' As when a roaming vulture on the wing 
 From Mauritania or the cheerless waste 
 Of sandy Thibet, by keen hunger prest, 
 With eye quick glancing from his airy height 
 Haply at utmost need descries a fawn, 
 Or kid, disporting in some fruitful vale, 
 Down, down at once the greedy felon drops 
 With wings close cow'ring in his hollow sides 
 Full on the helpless victim ; thence again 
 Tow'ring in air he bears his luscious prize, 
 And in his native wild enjoys the feast : 
 So these forth issuing from the rocky shore 
 Of distant Tagus on the quest for gain 
 In realms unknown, which feverish fancy paints 
 Glittering with gems and gold, range the wide seas, 
 Till India's isthmus, rising with the sun 
 To their keen sight, her fertile bosom spreads, 
 Period and palm of all their labours past ; 
 Whereat with avarice and ambition fir'd, 
 Eager alike for plunder and for fame, 
 Onward they press to spring upon their prey ; 
 There every spoil obtain 'd, which greedy haste 
 By force or fraud could ravish from the hands 
 Of Nature's peaceful sons, again they mount 
 Their richly freighted bark ; she, while the cries 
 Of widows and of orphans rend the strand, 
 Striding the billows, to the venal winds 
 Spreads her broad vans, and flies before the gale. 
 
 " Here as by sad necessity I tell 
 Of human woes to rend the hearer's heart, 
 Truth be my Muse, and thou, my bosom's star, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 107 
 
 The planetary mistress of my birth, 
 Parent of all my bliss, of all my pain, 
 Inspire me, gentle Pity, and attune 
 Thy numbers, heavenly cherub, to my strain ! 
 Thou, too, for whom my heart breathes every wish, 
 That filial love can form, fairest of isles, 
 Albion, attend and deign to hear a son, 
 Who for afflicted millions, prostrate slaves 
 Beneath oppression's scourge, and waining fast 
 By ghastly famine and destructive war, 
 No venal 9uit prefers ; so may thy fleets, 
 Mistress of commerce, link the Western world 
 To thy maternal bosom, chase the sun 
 Up to his source, and in the bright display 
 Of empire and the liberal search of fame 
 Belt the wide globe — but mount, ye guardian waves, 
 Stand as a wall before the spoiler's path ! 
 Ye stars, your bright intelligence withdraw, 
 And darkness cover all, whom lust of gold, 
 Fell rapine, and extortion's guilty hope 
 Rouse from their native dust to rend the thrones 
 Of peaceful princes, and usurp that soil, 
 Where late as humble traffickers they sought 
 And found a shelter : thus what they obtain'd 
 By supplication they extend by force, 
 Till in the wantonness of power they grasp 
 Whole provinces, where millions are their slaves. 
 Ah whither shall I turn to meet the face 
 Of love and human kindness in this world, 
 On which I now am ent'ring ? Gracious heaven, 
 If, as I trust, thou hast bestow'd a sense 
 Of thy best gift benevolence on me, 
 Oh visit me in merc} r , and preserve 
 That spark of thy divinity alive, 
 Till time shall end me ! So when all the blasts 
 Of malice and unkindness, which my fate 
 May have in store, shall vent their rage upon me, 
 Feeling, but still forgiving, the assault, 
 I may persist with patience to devote 
 My life, my love, my labours to mankind/ ' 
 * * * 
 
108 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Somewhere about this time Lord Halifax lost 
 his wife, in whom Cumberland also lost a sincere 
 and tender friend. She was not of noble birth, 
 but she possessed virtues which might have en-, 
 nobled any birth. Her advancement to a title 
 never elated her mind beyond the due dignity of 
 her station ; she knew herself accurately, nor 
 wished to act beyond her sphere ; and she studied 
 successfully to contribute to her husband's hap- 
 piness and welfare, both by her affection and her 
 prudence. His grief for her loss was vehement 
 and sincere, and his friends regretted her death 
 because the calm serenity of her temper had 
 always proved an admirable counterpoise to the 
 fiery qualities of her lord's. 
 
 The duties of his station called him off from 
 unavailing grief however, and Cumberland aN 
 tended him to London at the beginning of the 
 winter season. His situation with Lord Halifax 
 must have been at this time rather nominal than real, 
 for he represents himself as passing his time in all 
 the solitude of a hermit, devoted only to his books, 
 and visited only by one friend of the name of 
 Higgs. But that friend could not supply every want 
 of his heart. His separations from his family were 
 long and frequent ; and accustomed as he had 
 been to all the endearing intercourse of a parent's 
 roof, he found nothing in the metropolis which 
 could supply its loss. Luckily, however, at the 
 very moment when these thoughts were acquiring 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 109 
 
 a paramount domination, and were leading him 
 to the project of renouncing his post for retirement 
 and home, his good and amiable father,j actuated 
 by similar impressions, had concluded an exchange 
 for his living at Stanwick, with the Rev. Mr. 
 Samuel Knight, and, with permission of the Bishop 
 of London, took the vicarage of Fulham as an equi- 
 valent. Thus the wishes, most ardently enter- 
 tained by him, were at once gratified, and his 
 situation rendered less irksome, by being compati- 
 ble with a nearer and more frequent intercourse 
 with his family. 
 
 At this time, Sherlock was Bishop of London, 
 but he was in the last stage of bodily decay. Cum- 
 berland was occasionally admitted to his presence, 
 in company with his father. He found him in a 
 state awfully calculated to humble our pride, if 
 any thing could humble it, save our own calami- 
 ties, and even they cannot always do it. His 
 speech was almost unintelligible, and his features 
 hideously distorted by the palsy. But his mind 
 was entire amid the general wreck of his corporeal 
 faculties, for in this state he arranged the last vo- 
 lumes of his sermons for publication : nor did the 
 selection diminish aught of that high fame which 
 his preceding volumes had obtained. 
 
 In the adjoining parish of Hammersmith, lived 
 the celebrated Bubb Doclington, at a splendid villa, 
 which he fantastically enough denominated La 
 Trappe ; an appellation bestowed with as much 
 
110 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 propriety as if a id an should call Newgate the 
 Elysiari Fields. Here he was surrounded by a 
 train of needy dependants, artists, authors, and 
 physicians, who kept their stations about him by a 
 subserviency not always very reputable, I suspect. 
 Ralph was one of these : a man noted only for his 
 political venality, and as one of the heroes of the 
 Dunciad*. Paul Whitehead was another, and 
 Dodington would willingly have associated John- 
 son with them, as we learn from a curious note 
 preserved in Hawkins* life of him ; but Johnson 
 declined the honour, and ridiculed him who prof- 
 fered it, in one of his Ramblers. 
 
 These, indeed, were not the only visitors at this 
 celebrated mansion. Men of virtue and talent 
 sometimes assembled there, and diversified a scene 
 which else had presented nothing but wealthy ar- 
 rogance on one side, and dependent meanness on 
 the other. Of these better associates Cumberland 
 has given a picture so lively and amusing, that my 
 readers will thank me for its transcription here. 
 It may be observed, indeed, that Cumberland never 
 appears to greater advantage than as the narrator of 
 familiar scenes of life. His delineations are so ac- 
 curate, and his colouring so vivid, that the picture 
 is placed before us with all the strong characters 
 of reality. This was a talent which he eminently 
 possessed ; and it is, in fact, so nearly allied to 
 
 * Silence, ye wolves ! while Ralph to Cynthia howls, 
 And makes night hideous— answer him ye owls. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. Ill 
 
 dramatic composition that we need hardly wonder 
 at his felicity in its application. 
 
 "His inmates and fami liars/.' says he, " were 
 Mr. Windham, his relation, whom he made his 
 heir, Sir William Breton, privy purse to the 
 king, and Doctor Thompson, a physician out 
 of practice ; these gentlemen formed a very curious 
 society of very opposite characters ; in short, it 
 was a trio consisting of a misanthrope, a courtier, 
 and a quack. Mr. Glover, the author of Leonidas, 
 was occasionally a visitor, but not an inmate as 
 those above-mentioned. How a man of Doding- 
 ton's sort came to single out men of their sort 
 (with the exception of Mr. Glover), is hard to say, 
 but though his instruments were never in unison, 
 he managed to make music out of them all. He 
 could make and find amusement in contrasting the 
 sullenness of a Grumbletonian with the egregious 
 vanity and self-conceit of an antiquated coxcomb, 
 and as for the Doctor he was a jack-pudding ready 
 to his hand at any time. He was understood to be 
 Dodington's body-physician, but I believe he 
 cared very little about his patient's health, and his 
 patient cared still less about his prescriptions ; and 
 when in his capacity of superintendant of his pa- 
 tron's dietetics, he cried out one morning at break- 
 fast to have the muffins taken away, Dodington 
 aptly enough cried out at the same time to the ser- 
 vant to take away the raggamuffin, and truth to 
 say a more dirty animal than poor Thompson was 
 
119 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 never seen on the outside of a pigstye ; yet he had 
 the plea of poverty and no passion for cold water. 
 
 " It is about a short and pleasant mile from 
 this villa to the parsonage house of Fulham, and 
 Mr. Dodington having visited us with great polite- 
 ness, I became a frequent guest at La Trappe, and 
 passed a good deal of my time with him there, in 
 London also, and occasionally in Dorsetshire. He 
 was certainly one of the most extraordinary men 
 of his time, and as I had opportunities of contem- 
 plating his character in all its various points of 
 view, I trust my readers will not regret that I 
 have devoted some pages to the further delineation 
 of it. 
 
 " I have before observed, that the nature of my bu- 
 siness as private secretary to Lord Halifax, was by no 
 means such as to employ any great portion of my 
 time, and of course I could devote many hours to 
 my own private pursuits without neglecting those 
 attendances which were due to my principal. Lord 
 Halifax had also removed his abode to Downing- 
 street, having quitted his house in Grosvenor- 
 square, upon the decease of his lady, so that I 
 rarely found it necessary to sleep in town, and 
 could divide the rest of my time between Fulham 
 and La Trappe. It was likewise entirely corre- 
 spondent with Lord Halifax's wishes that I should 
 cultivate my acquaintance with Mr. Dodington, 
 with whom he not only lived upon intimate terms 
 as a friend, but was now in train to form, as it 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 113 
 
 seemed, some opposition connexions ; for at this 
 time it happened, Jhat upon a breach with the 
 Duke of Newcastle, he threw up his office of First 
 Lord of Trade and Plantations, and detached him- 
 self from administration. This took place towards 
 the latter end of the late king's reign, and the 
 ground of the measure was a breach of promise on 
 the part of the Duke to give him the seals and a 
 seat in the cabinet as Secretary of State for the 
 colonies. 
 
 " In the summer of this year, being now an ex- 
 •secretary of an ex-statesman, I went to Eastbury, 
 the seat of Mr. Dodington, in Dorsetshire, and 
 passed the whole time of his stay in that place. 
 LordHalifax with his brother-in-law Col. Johnstone 
 of the Blues, paid a visit there, and the Countess 
 Dowager of Stafford, and old Lady Hervey, were 
 resident with us the whole time. Our splendid 
 host was excelled by no man in doing the honours 
 of his honse and table ; to the ladies he had all 
 the courtly and profound devotion of a Spaniard, 
 with the ease and gaiety of a Frenchman towards 
 the men. His mansion w r as magnificent, massy, 
 and stretching out to a great extent of front, with 
 an enormous portico of Doric columns, ascended 
 by a stately flight of steps ; there were turrets and 
 wings that went I know not whither, though now 
 they are levelled with the ground, and gone to 
 more ignoble uses: Vanbrugh, who constructed 
 this superb edifice, seemed to have had the plan of 
 
 I 
 
114 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Blenheim in his thoughts, and the interior was as 
 proud and splendid as the exterior was bold and 
 imposing. All this was exactly in unison with 
 the taste of its magnificent owner, who had gilt 
 and lurnished the apartments with a profusion of 
 finery that kept no terms with simplicity, and not 
 always with elegance or harmony of style. What- 
 ever Mr. Doding ton's revenue then was } he had 
 the happy art of managing it with that regularity 
 and economy, that I believe he made more display 
 at less cost than any man in the kingdom but him- 
 self could have done. His town house in Pall- 
 Mail, his villa at Hammersmith, and the mansion 
 above described, were such establishments as few 
 nobles in the nation were possessed of. In either 
 of these he was not to be approached but through 
 a suite of apartments, and rarely seated but under 
 painted ceilings and gilt entablatures. In his villa 
 you were conducted through two rows of antique 
 marble statues, ranged in a gallery floored with 
 the rarest marbles, and enriched with columns of 
 granite and lapis lazuli; his saloon was hung with 
 the finest Gobelin tapestry, and he slept in a bed 
 encanopied with peacocks' feathers, in the style of 
 Mrs. Montague. When he passed from Pall-Mail 
 to La Trappe, it was always in a coach, which I 
 could suspect had been his ambassadorial equipage 
 at Madrid, drawn by six fat unwieldy black horses, 
 short docked, and of colossal dignity; neither w T as 
 he less characteristic in apparel than in equipage ; 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. \\5 
 
 he had a wardrobe loaded with rich and flaring 
 suits, each in itself a load to the wearer, and of 
 these, I have no doubt, but many were coeval 
 with his embassy above-mentioned, and every 
 birth-day had added to the stock. In doing this 
 he so contrived as never to put his old dresses out 
 of countenance by any variations in the fashion of 
 the new ; in the mean time his bulk and corpu- 
 lency gave full display to a vast expanse and pro- 
 fusion of brocade and embroidery, and this, when 
 set off with an enormous tye-perriwig and deep- 
 laced ruffles, gave the picture of an ancient cour- 
 tier in his gala habit, or Quin in his stage dress ; 
 nevertheless it must be confessed this style, 
 though out of date, was not out of character, but 
 harmonised so well with the person of the wearer, 
 that I remember when he made his first speech in 
 the House of Peers, as Lord Melcombe, all the 
 flashes of his wit, all the studied phrases and well- 
 turned periods of his rhetoric, lost their effect, sim- 
 ply because the orator had laid aside his magiste- 
 rial tye, and put on a modern bag wig, which was 
 as much out of costume, upon the broad expanse 
 of his shoulders, as a cue would have been upon 
 the robes of the Lord Chief Justice. 
 
 " Having thus dilated more than perhaps I 
 should have done upon this distinguished person's 
 passion for magnificence and display, when I. pro- 
 ceed to enquire into those principles of good taste, 
 which should naturally have been the accompani- 
 
 12 
 
116 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 merits and directors of that magnificence, I fear I 
 must be compelled by truth to admit, that in these 
 he was deficient. Of pictures he seemed to take 
 his estimate only by their cost ; in fact he was not 
 possessed of any ; but I recollect his saying to me 
 one day, in his great saloon at Eastbury, that if he 
 had half a score pictures of a thousand pounds 
 apiece, he would gladly decorate his walls with 
 them, in place of which, I am sorry to say, he had 
 stuck up immense patches of gilt leather, shaped 
 into bugle horns, upon hangings of rich crimson 
 velvet ; and round his state bed he displayed a 
 carpeting of gold and silver embroidery, which too 
 glaringly betrayed its derivation from coat, waist- 
 coat, and breeches, by the testimony of pockets, 
 button-holes, and loops, with other equally incon- 
 trovertible witnesses, subpoena* d from the tailor's 
 shopboard. When he paid his court at St. James's, 
 to the present queen, upon her nuptials, he ap- 
 proached to kiss her hand, decked in an embroi- 
 dered suit of silk, with lilac waistcoat and breeches, 
 the latter of which, in the act of kneeling down, 
 forgot their duty, and broke loose from their moor- 
 ings in a very indecorous and uncourtly manner. 
 
 " In the higher provinces of taste we may con- 
 template his character with more pleasure, for he 
 had an ornamented fancy and a brilliant wit. He 
 was an elegant Latin classic, and well versed in 
 history, ancient and modern. — His favourite prose 
 writer was Tacitus, and I scarce ever surprised him 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 117 
 
 in his hours of reading, without finding that au- 
 thor upon his table before him. He understood 
 him well, and descanted upon him very agreeably, 
 and with much critical acumen. Mr. Dodington 
 was in nothing more remarkable than in ready per- 
 spicuity and clear discernment of a subject thrown 
 before him on a sudden ; take his first thoughts 
 then, and he would charm you ; give him time to 
 ponder and refine, you would perceive the spirit of 
 his sentiments, and the vigour of his genius, eva- 
 porate by the process ; for though his first view of 
 the question would be a wide one and clear withal, 
 when he came to exercise the subtlety of his dis- 
 quisitorial powers upon it, he would so ingeni- 
 ously dissect and break it into fractions, that as an 
 object, when looked upon too intently for a length 
 of time, grows misty and confused, so would the 
 question under his discussion, when the humour 
 took him to be hyper-critical. Hence it was that 
 his impromptu's in parliament were generally more 
 admired than his studied speeches, and his first 
 suggestions in the councils of his party better 
 attended to than his prepared opinions. 
 
 " Being a man of humble birth, he seemed to 
 have an innate respect for titles, and none bowed 
 with more devotion to the robes and fasces of high 
 rank and office. He was decidedly aristocratic : 
 he paid his court to Walpole in panegyric poems, 
 apologising for his presumption by reminding him, 
 that it was better to be pelted with roses than with 
 
IIS LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 rotten eggs : to Chesterfield, to Wilmington, Pul- 
 teney, Fox, and the luminaries of his early time, 
 he offered up the oblations of his genius, and in- 
 censed them with all the odours of his wit: in his 
 latter days, and within the period of my acquaint- 
 ance with him, the Earl of Bute, in the plenitude 
 of his power, was the god of his idolatry. That 
 noble lord was himself too much a man of letters, 
 and a patron of the sciences, to overlook a witty 
 head, that bowed so low, he accordingly put a co- 
 ronet upon it, which, like the barren sceptre in the 
 hand of Macbeth, merely served as a ticket for the 
 coronation procession, and having nothing else to 
 leave to posterity in memory of its owner, left its 
 mark upon the lid of his coffin. 
 
 '■' During my stay at Eastbury, we were visited 
 by the late Mr. Henry Fox and Mr. Alderman 
 Beckford ; the solid good sense of the former, 
 and the dashing loquacity of the latter, formed a 
 striking contrast between the characters of these 
 gentlemen. To Mr. Fox our host paid all that 
 courtly homage, which he so well knew how to 
 time, and where to apply ; to Beckford he did not 
 observe the same attentions, but in the happiest 
 flow of his raillery and wit, combated this intrepid 
 talker with admirable effect. It was an interlude 
 truly comic and amusing. Beckford loud, voluble, 
 self-sufficient, and galled by hits, which he could 
 not parry, and probably did not expect, laid him- 
 self more and more open in the vehemence of his 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 119 
 
 argument ; Dodington, lolling in his chair, in per- 
 fect apathy and self-command, dosing and even 
 snoring at intervals in his legarthic way, broke 
 out every now and then into such gleams and 
 flashes of wit and irony, as by the contrast of his 
 phlegm with the other's impetuosity, made his 
 humour irresistible, and set the table in a roar. 
 He was here upon his very strongest ground, for 
 no man was better calculated to exemplify how 
 true the observation is — 
 
 Ridiculum acri 
 Fortius ac melius — 
 
 " At the same time he had his serious hours and 
 graver topics, which he would handle with all due 
 solemnity of thought and language, and these were 
 to me some of the most pleasing hours I have 
 passed with him, for he could keep close to his 
 point, if he would, and could be not less argumen- 
 tative than he was eloquent, when the question 
 was of magnitude enough to interest him. It is 
 with singular satisfaction, I can truly say, that I 
 never knew him flippant upon sacred subjects. 
 He was however generally courted and admired as 
 a gay companion rather than as a grave one. 
 
 " I have said that the dowager Ladies Stafford 
 and Hervey made part of our domestic society, 
 and as the trivial amusement of cards was never 
 resorted to in Mr. Dodington's house, it was his 
 custom in the evenings to entertain his company 
 
120 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 with reading, and in this art he excelled ; his selec- 
 tions, however, were curious, for he treated these 
 ladies with the whole of Fielding's Jonathan Wild, 
 in which he certainly consulted his own turn for 
 irony, rather than their' s for elegance, but he set 
 it off with much humour, after his manner, and 
 they were polite enough to be pleased, orat least 
 to appear as if they were. 
 
 # His readings from Shakspeare were altogether 
 as whimsical, for he chose his passages only where 
 buffoonery was the character of the scene ; one of 
 these, I remember, was that of the clown, who 
 brings the asp to Cleopatra. He had, however, a 
 manuscript copy of Glover's Medea, which he 
 gave us con amore, for he was extremely warm iij 
 his praises of that classical drama, which Mrs. 
 Yates afterwards brought upon the stage, and 
 played in it with her accustomed excellence ; he 
 did me also the honour to devote an evening to 
 the reading of some lines, which I had hastily 
 written, to the amount of about four hundred, 
 partly complimentary to him as my host, and in 
 part consolatory to Lord Halifax, upon the event 
 of his retiring from public office; they flattered 
 the politics then in favour with Mr. Dodington, 
 and coincided with his wishes for detaching Lord 
 Halifax from the administration of the Duke of 
 Newcastle. I was not present, as may well be 
 conceived, at this reading, but I confess, I sate 
 listening in the next room, and was not a little 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 121 
 
 gratified by what I overheard. Of this manuscript 
 I have long since destroyed the only copy that I 
 had, and if I had it now in my hands it would be 
 only to consign it to the flames, for it was of that 
 occasional class of poems for the day, which have 
 no claim upon posterity,and in such I have not been 
 ambitious to concern myself; it served the pur- 
 pose, however, and amused the moment ; it was 
 also the tribute of my mite to the lares of that man- 
 sion, where the muse of Young had dictated his 
 tragedy of The Revenge, and which the genius of 
 Voltaire had honoured with a visit; here Glover 
 had courted inspiration, and Thomson caught it : 
 Dodington also himself had a lyre, but he had 
 hung it up, and it was never very high-sounding ; 
 yet he was something more than a mere admirer 
 of the muse. He wrote small poems with great 
 pains, and elaborate letters with much terse- 
 ness of style, and some quaintness of expression : 
 I have seen him refer to a volume of his own 
 verses, in manuscript, but he was very shy, and I 
 never had the perusal of it. I was rather better 
 acquainted with his diary, which, since his death, 
 has been published, and I well remember the 
 temporary disgust he seemed to take, when upon 
 his asking what I would do with it, should he be- 
 queath it to my discretion, I instantly replied, 
 that I would destroy it. There was a third, which 
 I more coveted a sight of than of either of the 
 above, as it contained a miscellaneous collection 
 
122 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 of anecdotes, repartees, good sayings, and humor- 
 ous incidents, of which he was part author and 
 part compiler, and out of which he was in the 
 habit of refreshing his memory, when he prepared 
 himself to expect certain men of wit and pleasantry, 
 either at his own house or elsewhere. Upon this 
 practice, which he did not affect to conceal, he 
 observed to me one day, that it was a compliment 
 he paid to society, when he submitted to steal 
 weapons out of his own armoury for their enter- 
 tainment, and ingenuously added, that although 
 his memory was not in general so correct as it had 
 been, yet he trusted it would save him from the 
 disgrace of repeating the same story to the same 
 hearers, or foisting it into conversation in the 
 wrong place, or out of time. No man had fewer 
 oversights of that sort to answer for, and fewer still 
 were the men, whose social talents could be com- 
 pared with those of Mr. Dodington." 
 
 This is a copious extract ; but surely no reader 
 will think it a tedious one. 
 
 Academical remunerations were still to be 
 showered upon Cumberland. When he returned 
 out of Dorsetshire, he was solicited to offer him- 
 self as a candidate for the lay fellowship, then va- 
 cant by the death of Mr.Titley, the Danish envoy. 
 As there are but two fellowships of this descrip- 
 tion, it may be supposed that many sought it who 
 were disappointed. Cumberland tried and gained 
 it ; he was supported by the same powerful in- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 123 
 
 terest as before, and where there -is patronage as 
 well as merit, it is natural to expect success. It 
 does not appear that any undue influence was em- 
 ployed, or any positive enactments dispensed with 
 in his favour ; but he did not hold the possession 
 long, for he soon entered into that state which 
 effectually disqualified him for retaining his fellow- 
 ship, by qualifying him for holding a station much 
 more honourable and useful, that of a husband and 
 a father of a family. 
 
12i LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 CHAP. VL 
 
 Cumberland writes The Banishment of Cicero, — 
 Complimentary Letter from War bur ton. — The 
 mutual Civilities of Authors commonly ridicu- 
 lous, — Offered to Garrick by Lord Halifax ', for 
 Representation, but refused, — Cumberland mar- 
 ries, — Accompanies Lord Halifax to Ir eland y 
 who is appointed Lord Lieutenant, — His Duties, 
 — Offered a Baronetcy, but refuses it. — Sketch 
 of Society in Dublin. — Cumberland* s Father 
 promoted to the See of Clonfert, 
 
 We have now arrived at the period when Cumr 
 berland made his first appearance before the pub- 
 lic as a d amatic writer. The subject which he 
 chose for his virgin effort was one very little cal r 
 culated to mould into the requisite form for repre- 
 sentation, though sufficiently tempting perhaps to 
 a scholar. Its title (The Banishment of Cicero) 
 will tell what that subject was. Such an action 
 might afford scope for the production of a fine clas- 
 sical drama, replete with elevated sentiments, en- 
 forced in a style of chaste and dignified eloquence; 
 but it could not comprise such incidents as a mo- 
 dern audience would receive with applause. This 
 defect the author very justly allows, but he insi- 
 nuates, at the same time, that if he did not pro- 
 duce a good acting play, he at least produced a good 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 125 
 
 reading one. This opinion he thinks deducible 
 from the approbation bestowed upon it, both in 
 England and Ireland, by competent judges, and 
 among others, by Bishop Warburton, a compli- 
 mentary letter from whom to Cumberland, is pre- 
 served in the Memoirs ; but there are few testimo- 
 nies less to be depended upon than those which 
 an author's friends deliver; especially when a 
 work is politely presented, and an opinion politely 
 requested. What can be expected but one po- 
 litely given ? Politeness and truth, however, are 
 not inseparable companions. It cannot be ex- 
 pected, indeed, that a man's love of integrity will 
 be so paramount to all other feelings, that he 
 would recompence an author's civility who had 
 presented him with a copy of his work, by telling 
 him that it was a worthless production. There is 
 an allowable evasion of truth in these cases, which 
 all men practise, and all men know to be practised, 
 except when they are its objects, and then it is no 
 longer truth evaded but truth herself. Hence the 
 w 7 ide difference between the public sentence upon 
 a book, and that which we often find in the letters 
 of eminent judges addressed to the authors them- 
 selves ; and hence the mutual compliments of lite- 
 rary men which commonly appear so ludicrous 
 when divested of those accidental circumstances 
 by which, in their first application, they are ren- 
 dered respectable. ' 
 " Let me thank you," says Warburton, " for 
 the sight of a very fine dramatic poem. It is much 
 
126 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 too good for a prostitute stage." What is this 
 but common civility in the first place, and com- 
 mon cant in the second ? That the poem would 
 be very fine might be anticipated ; as much is al- 
 ways said on similar occasions. That the stage 
 was a prostitute one, is no more than what every age 
 says of itself. Nothing is good but what is gone, 
 and that which is gone was bad while it was pre- 
 sent. This is the accustomed jargon of each gene- 
 ration. And where then can we look for a period of 
 acknowledged and evident virtue, by a comparison 
 with which we may estimate the degree of subse- 
 quent degeneracy ? Not in the testimonies of 
 those who lived in that period, but in that of those 
 who lived after it. This is like a child who be« 
 wails the bauble that is destroyed, and neglects 
 the one it possesses, only because the one cannot 
 be had, and the other can. To such puerility it 
 might be expected Warburton would have been 
 superior; but the prejudice was a vehicle for 
 praise, and he could play the courtly panegyrist 
 with admirable dexterity, as every reader will ac- 
 knowledge who remembers the adulatory corre- 
 spondence between himself and Bishop Hurd, 
 lately published. Prelatical courtesy is there car- 
 ried to its height ; and to a height which no one 
 can contemplate with much pleasure. 
 
 Though the drama of Cumberland wa» printed, 
 it has never happened to fall under my notice ; nor 
 could I obtain it any where upon recent inquiry. 
 What are its claims, therefore, to the applause 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 127 
 
 which the author demands for it, I know not ; but 
 if I am to form my judgment of the whole from 
 the specimens presented by Cumberland, I should 
 hesitate to believe that it was either ajine drama- 
 tic poem, or too good for any stage, prostitute or 
 chaste. The dialogue, in these extracts, is too 
 tame, and the language too feebly correct. Whe- 
 ther I am wrong in forming this opinion let the 
 reader judge from the same evidence as I have 
 had. 
 
 " Gab. — Cato is still severe, is still himself: 
 
 Rough and unshaken in his squalid garb, 
 He told us he had long in anguish mourn'd, 
 Not in a private but the public cause, 
 Not for the wrong of one, but wrong of all, 
 Of Liberty, of Virtue, and of Rome. 
 
 " Clod.-— "No more : I sleep o'er Cato's drowsy theme. 
 
 He is the senate's drone, and dreams of liberty, 
 When Rome's vast empire is set up to sale, 
 And portion'd out to each ambitious bidder 
 In marketable lots " 
 
 66 In the further progress of the same scene Pom- 
 pey is mentioned, and Calphurnius Fiso intro- 
 duced in the following terms : — - 
 
 " Gal?. Oh ! who shall attempt to read 
 
 In Pompey's face the movements of his heart ? 
 The same calm artificial look of state, 
 His half-clos'd eyes in self-attention wrapt, 
 Serve him alike to mask unseemly joy, 
 Or hide the pangs of envy and revenge. 
 
 " Clod.—- See, yonder your old colleague Piso comes ! 
 But name hypocrisy and he appears. 
 
128 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 How like his grandsire's monument he looks J 
 
 He wears the dress of holy Numa's days, 
 
 The hrow and beard of Zeno ; trace him home, . 
 
 You'll find his house the school of vice and lusty 
 
 The foulest sink of Epicurus' sty, 
 
 And him the rankest swine of all the herd." 
 
 " I find the two first acts are wound up with 
 some couplets, in rhyme, after the manner of the 
 middle age. It will, I hope, be pardonable, if I 
 here insert the lines with which Clodius concludes 
 the first act — 
 
 " When flaming comets vex our frighted sphere, 
 Though now the nations melt with awful fear, 
 From the dread omen fatal ills presage, 
 Dire plague and famine and war's wasting rage ; 
 In time some brighter genius may arise, 
 And banish signs and omens from the skies, 
 Expound the comet's nature and its cause, 
 Assign its periods and prescribe its laws, 
 Whilst man grown wise, with his discoveries fraught, 
 Shall wonder how he needed to be taught." 
 
 This play Lord Halifax, who requested a peru- 
 sal of it, undertook to present to Garrick, using 
 all his influence with him to obtain its representa- 
 tion. Cumberland accompanied his lordship to 
 the manager, and heard the strong recommenda- 
 tion of his patron ; but he read, in the countenance 
 of Garrick, the fate of his drama. It was left with 
 him for his opinion ; that opinion was given a day 
 or two afterwards, and confirmed the predictions 
 of the author. He bore his disappointment unre- 
 pining; but his lordship, who probably thought 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 199 
 
 his avowed protection of the writer a sufficient tes- 
 timony of his merits, felt so indignant at the re- 
 jection, that he suspended for some time his usual 
 intercourse with Garrick. Cumberland candidly 
 adds, " when I published this play I was consci- 
 ous that I published Mr. Garrick's justification 
 for refusing it ;" with so much more prudence did 
 the author contemplate the transaction than the 
 peer. 
 
 In the 201st page of his Memoirs, Cumberland 
 expatiates upon the difficulty of his undertaking, 
 and reviews his qualifications for the task of deli- 
 neating himself. Among those which he consi- 
 ders necessary to his purpose, he reckons some 
 which, had he possessed them, no one would be 
 pleased with their exertion. He deprecates the 
 idea of merely recording the respective dates of 
 his several productions, and aspires to the office of 
 a censor over himself, vainly supposing that he 
 could " act as honestly and conscientiously in his 
 own case as he would in the instance of another 
 person," and " resolving not to speak partially of 
 his own works, because they are his own." Here 
 is an assumption of power which no one would 
 believe him to possess, had he really possessed it, 
 or were it possible for any one to possess it. His 
 praise would be ascribed to partiality, his censure 
 to affectation ; and so little are mankind accus- 
 tomed to confide in the accuracy of opinions 
 which a man entertains of himself, that their 
 
 K 
 
130 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 notions of things would receive no modification 
 from such an authority, nor would they be pre- 
 vented from forming_their own decisions respect- 
 ing him and/his actions. The candour and truth, 
 therefore, which Cumberland wished to employ, 
 Would nave answered no ultimate purpose satis- 
 factory to himself; and he would have done better 
 by aiming only at that neutrality of opinion which 
 leans to neither side, but simply states the evi- 
 dence with regard to a particular circumstance, 
 without urging its application to any specific 
 inference. 
 
 In the year 17-59, Cumberland resigned his fel- 
 lowship for a wife, an exchange of very dubious 
 benefit, and which some men have made without 
 finding the equivalent of what they resigned. The 
 lady whom he married, was Elizabeth, the only 
 daughter of George Ridge, Esq. an intimate friend 
 of his father's and a gentleman at whose house he 
 had passed many happy and social hours before he 
 probably ever thought of connecting himself so 
 tenderly with the destiny of one of its inmates. 
 He pays an affectionate, and I doubt not a sincere, 
 testimony to her virtues, and of course celebrates 
 her personal attractions. They lived happily to- 
 gether for many years, though 1 have been told, by 
 a friend who was likely to be well informed, that 
 his wife's love for him was sometimes displayed 
 with too little attention to his liberty, and that her 
 desire of having him always in her presence, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 131 
 
 especially during her last illness, amounted to a 
 virtual prohibition of his seeing any person who 
 did not come home to him. This is a degree of 
 fondness very pleasing perhaps to her who exer- 
 cises it, but seldom acceptable, I suspect, to him 
 who is its object. 
 
 In 1760 the king's death caused, as usual, some 
 political changes, and among others Lord Halifax 
 was promoted to the important post of Lord 
 Lieutenant of Ireland, a post which demands a 
 more than ordinary union of prudence, activity, 
 and wisdom. Every great man, when he is ap- 
 pointed to any station to which extensive patron- 
 age is annexed, is soon overwhelmed with applica- 
 tions for what he has to give ; some expect the re- 
 ward of past services, some the performance of past 
 promises, and some the meed of acknowledged ta- 
 lents and worth: the difficulties of the giver are 
 increased, by the contending claims of the appli- 
 cants, and he is embarrassed to discover, not where 
 he can confer a benefit but how he can avoid in- 
 flicting a disappointment. Cumberland, being im- 
 mediately about the person of Lord Halifax, was 
 not unmindful of his own friends and relatives; 
 and he enumerates some instances wherein he 
 availed himself of his influence to communicate 
 good fortune to others. His father went out with 
 the new Lord Lieutenant as one of his chaplains. 
 
 Lord Halifax was accompanied by Gerard Ha- 
 milton, as chief secretary. This gentleman, (well 
 
 1(2 
 
132 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 known as the associate of Johnson and his literary 
 circle, as well as by the quaint appellation of 
 " single speech Hamilton,") was not chosen to that 
 office by his employer, but appointed to it by his 
 political friends, and it might be expected, there- 
 fore, that he would enjoy no more of the confi- 
 dence of Lord Halifax than was necessarily con- 
 nected with the business they had to transact in 
 common. All that could be subtracted from this 
 ordinary detail of affairs was reserved for the pri- 
 vate ear of Cumberland, and to him was entrusted 
 the management of his lordship's most important 
 personal concerns. With the title and rank of 
 Ulster secretary only, he possessed the privileges, 
 and perhaps the toils without the emoluments, of 
 chief. Transactions which had no right to pass 
 under his notice were committed to him, and his 
 situation was rendered delicate, responsible, and 
 in some measure, dangerous. He had the entire 
 control over his lordship's finances, and, as they by 
 no means flourished, and his lordship, succeeding 
 the Duke of Bedford, was resolved not to shine 
 less than his predecessor, he found the task one 
 which required no small exertion and skill to 
 maintain the dignity of the vice regal court, with- 
 out exhausting the funds that were to support it. 
 
 He had leisure, however, from these intricate 
 and laborious duties, to observe that George 
 Faulkner had pirated his Banishment of Cicero, 
 (which he had published in London, " upon quar- 
 
 i 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 133 
 
 to paper, in a handsome type,") and sold it for 
 sixpence ! The anxieties of the author were thus 
 obtruding upon the cares of the secretary ; though 
 he seems to have indulged in a philosophical apathy 
 at this period, respecting his literary success,which 
 I am afraid he soon afterwards lost, for he gave to 
 the world a poem upon the accession of the new 
 king, and never enquired what was its fate among 
 readers or critics. I suppose it was a quiet one, 
 or the rumour of a contrary destiny would have 
 reached him in the midst of his indifference. 
 
 It will not be necessary to dwell at much length 
 upon the events which happened during his resi- 
 dence in Ireland. Lord Halifax discharged his 
 trust in a manner that satisfied both those whom 
 he governed, and those for whom he governed. 
 His speech, upon opening the session, was ad- 
 mired for its excellence, a great part of which, Cum- 
 berland insinuates, was communicated to it from 
 the pen of Gerard Hamilton ; and from what he 
 observed on this occasion he w r as led to a hasty 
 belief that Hamilton might be the author of Junius' 
 Letters, because there was a great similarity be- 
 tween his style and that of Junius: a very vague 
 foundation for his opinion, which, however, he 
 does not seem to embrace with much ardour. 
 
 One thing deserves to be mentioned, as it re- 
 dounds highly to the honour of Lord Halifax. It 
 was during his government that the vote was passed 
 for augmenting the revenue of the Lord Lieute- 
 
134 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 nant, and though he accepted and passed it in 
 favour of his successors, he peremptorily rejected 
 it for himself. This is an instance of disinterested 
 conduct very rare in men who have opportunities 
 of increasing their wealth ; and it was peculiarly 
 noble in Lord Halifax, for he had actually dis- 
 bursed sums considerably greater than his revenue, 
 which then amounted to not more than twelve 
 thousand pounds a year. It endeared him also to 
 the Irish nation, who beheld his departure with 
 regret, and put up prayers for his return, while 
 they distinguished his retirement from office by 
 every token of respect and admiration which gra- 
 titude and esteem could devise. 
 
 Let me not, however, forget the moderation of 
 Cumberland in celebrating that of his patron. The 
 fidelity and zeal with which he had discharged the 
 customary duties of his station, and some supere- 
 rogatory ones, called upon Lord Halifax for a 
 more specific notice of them than what belonged 
 to their simple remuneration ; especially as that 
 remuneration had not been increased by any of 
 those arts of aggrandisement which are too often 
 put in practice. Cumberland had a mind which 
 disdained to derive any advantages from disho- 
 nourable practices ; preferring a moderate compe- 
 tency, with an unspotted conscience, to flattering 
 gains, with a reproaching one. This degree of 
 virtue could not pass unnoticed by a man so capa- 
 ble of practising a similar greatness of conduct ; 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 135 
 
 and as an honorary gratification for so much purity 
 of action he offered to obtain for him the rank of a 
 baronet. But rank, without a fortune to invest it 
 with due splendour, is an object of very little 
 respect in modern times, when money is the test 
 by which every man's claims to notice are finally 
 adjusted. His lordship felt, indeed, that a barren 
 title, unaccompanied by that which should give it 
 weight and efficacy, was but what Montesquieu 
 denominates " money of opinion/' a sort of cheap 
 reward which kings bestow for services without 
 exhausting their treasuries. He hinted, therefore, 
 that his father would probably obtain a bishopric, 
 and that he possessed, besides, a competent estate, 
 which would descend to him. These, perhaps, 
 were reasons why a man might accept a title, but 
 not why a title should be offered to him ; and it is 
 something like mockery torecompence services by 
 the gift of an empty name without any of those 
 substantial rewards which make life happier by 
 making it independent. 
 
 Cumberland, indeed, viewed the proffered ho- 
 nour just in this light. He required, however, 
 some time*o meditate upon it, that he might con- 
 sult his family. Their sense of it coincided with 
 his own, and he accordingly intimated his respect- 
 ful refusal of the intended dignity. How far it had 
 been prudent to have accepted it as an earnest of 
 future favours, and as a means of conciliating those 
 from whom such favours were to be expected, is 
 
136 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 another question ; and a question easily answered , 
 perhaps, for Lord Halifax considered the refusal as 
 a tacit renunciation of his patronage. Not that 
 he withdrew his countenance immediately: but 
 Cumberland seems to regard it as one of those 
 circumstances which ultimately led to conse- 
 quences, of a decisive character. 
 
 Of the society whinh Cumberland found in 
 Dublin, I cannot do better than copy the account 
 in his own words. I have already borne testimony 
 to the felicity with which he sketches characters, 
 and it would be a puerile ambition in me to discard 
 his phraseology for the introduction of my own. 
 
 " Hamilton, who in the English parliament got 
 the nick-name of Single-speech, spoke well, but 
 not often, in the Irish House of Commons. He 
 had a promptitude of thought, and a rapid flow of 
 well-conceived matter, with many other requisites, 
 that only seemed waiting for opportunities to 
 establish his reputation as an orator. He had a 
 striking countenance, a graceful carriage, great 
 self-possession and personal courage : he was not 
 easily put out of his way by any of those unac- 
 commodating repugnances, that men#of weaker 
 nerves or more tender consciences might have 
 stumbled at, or been checked by ; he could mask 
 the passions, that were natural to him, and assume 
 those, that did not belong to him: he was inde- 
 fatigable, meditative, mysterious ; his opinions 
 were the result of long labour and much reflection * 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 137 
 
 but be had the art of setting them forth as if they 
 were the starts, of ready genius and a quick per- 
 ception : he had as much seeming steadiness as a 
 partisan could stand in need of, and all the real 
 flexibility, that could suit his purpose, or advance 
 his interest. He would fain have retained his 
 connexion with Edmund Burke, and associated 
 him to his politics, for he well knew the value of 
 his talents, but in that object he was soon disap- 
 pointed : the genius of Burke was of too high a 
 cast to endure debasement. 
 
 " The bishopric of Elphinbecame vacant, and was 
 offered to Doctor Crane, who, though moderately 
 beneficed in England, withstood the temptation 
 of that valuable mitre, and disinterestedly declined 
 it. This was a decisive instance of the purity as 
 well as moderation of his mind, for had he not 
 disdained all ideas of negociation in church pre- 
 ferments, he might have accepted the see of Elphin, 
 and traded with it in England, as others have done 
 both before and since his time. He was not a man 
 of this sort ; he returned to his prebendal house at 
 Westminster in the little Cloysters, and some 
 years before his death resided in his parsonage 
 house at Sutton, a living given him by Sir Roger 
 Burgoyne, near to which I had a house, from which 
 I paid him frequent visits, and with unspeakable 
 concern saw that excellent man resign himself 
 with patience truly christian to the dreadful and 
 tormenting visitation of a cancer in his face. I 
 
138 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 was at my house at Tetworth near Sutton in Bed- 
 fordshire, when he rode over to me one morning, 
 and complained of a soreness on his lip, which he 
 said he had hurt in shaving himself; it was hardly 
 discernible, but alas! it contained the seeds of 
 that dire disease, and from that moment kept 
 spreading over his face with excruciating agony, 
 which allowed him no repose, till it laid him in 
 his grave. 
 
 " By his refusal of Elphin, Doctor Oswald was 
 promoted to an inferior bishopric, and my father 
 thereby stood next upon the roll for a mitre : in 
 the mean time he formed his friendships in Ireland 
 with some of the most respectable characters, and 
 made a visit, accompanied by my mother, to 
 Doctor Pocock, Bishop of Ossory, at his episcopal 
 house in Kilkenny. That celebrated oriental tra- 
 veller and author was a man of mild manners and 
 primitive simplicity : having given the world a full 
 detail of his researches in Egypt, he seemed to 
 hold himself excused from saying any thing more 
 about them, and observed in general an obdurate 
 taciturnity. In his carriage and deportment he 
 appeared to have contracted something of the Arab 
 character, yet there was no austerity in his silence, 
 and though his air was solemn, his temper was 
 serene. When we were on our road to Ireland, I 
 saw from the windows of the inn at Daventry a 
 cavalcade of horsemen approaching on a gentle 
 trot, headed by an elderly chief in clerical attire, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 139 
 
 who was followed by five servants at distances 
 geometrically measured and most precisely main- 
 tained, and who upon entering the inn proved to 
 be this distinguished prelate, conducting his horde 
 with the phlegmatic patience of a Scheik. 
 
 " I found the state of society in Dublin very 
 different from what I had observed in London ; 
 the professions more intermixt, and ranks more 
 blended ; in the great houses I met a promiscuous 
 assembly of politicians, lawyers, soldiers, and 
 divines ; the profusion of their tables struck me 
 with surprise ; nothing that I had seen in England 
 could rival the Polish magnificence of Primate 
 Stone, or the Parisian luxury of Mr. Clements. 
 The style of Dodington was stately, but there was 
 a watchful and well-regulated ceconomy over all> 
 that here seemed out of sight and out of mind. 
 The professional gravity of character maintained 
 by our English dignitaries were here laid aside, 
 and in several prelatical houses the mitre was so 
 mingled with the cockade, and the glass circulated 
 so freely, that I perceived the spirit of conviviality 
 was by no means excluded from the pale of the 
 church of Ireland. 
 
 " Primate Stone was at that time in the zenith 
 of his power ; he had a great following ; his in- 
 tellect was as strong as ever, but his constitution 
 was in its waine. I had frequent occasions to 
 resort to him, and much reason to speak highly of 
 his candour and condescension. No man faced 
 
140 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 difficulties with greater courage, none overcame 
 them with more address : he was formed to hold 
 command over turbulent spirits in tempestuous 
 seasons ; for if he could not absolutely rule the 
 passions of men, he could artfully rule men by the 
 medium of their passions ; he had great suavity of 
 manners when points were to be carried by in- 
 sinuation and finesse ; but if authority was neces- 
 sarily to be enforced, none could hold it with 
 a higher hand : he was an elegant scholar, a con- 
 summate politician, a very fine gentleman, and in 
 every character seen to more advantage than in 
 that, which according to his sacred function should 
 have been his chief and only object to sustain. 
 
 " Doctor Robinson was by Lord Halifax trans- 
 lated from the see of Ferns to that of Kildare. I 
 had even then a presentiment that we were for- 
 warding his advancement towards the primacy, 
 and persuaded myself that the successor of Stone 
 would be found in the person of the Bishop of 
 Kildare. Of him I shall probably have occasion 
 to speak more at large hereafter, for the acquaint- 
 ance, which I had the honour to form with him at 
 this time, was in the further course of it ripened 
 into friendship and an intimacy, which he never 
 suffered to abate, and I prized too highly to 
 neglect. 
 
 " I made but one short excursion from Dublin, 
 and this was to the house of that gallant officer 
 Colonel Ford, who perished in his passage to 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. HI 
 
 India, and who was married to a relation of my 
 wife. Having established his fame in the battle 
 of Plassey and several other actions, he seated 
 himself at Johnstown in the centre of an inveterate 
 bog, but the soil, such as it was, had the recom- 
 mendation to him of being his native soil, and all 
 its deformities vanished from his sight. 
 
 " 1 had more than once the amusement of dining 
 at the house of that most singular being George 
 Faulkner, where I found myself in a company so 
 miscellaneously and whimsically classed, that it 
 looked more like a fortuitous concourse of oddities, 
 jumbled together from all ranks, orders and de- 
 scriptions, than the effect of invitation and design. 
 Description must fall short in the attempt to con- 
 vey any sketch of that eccentric being to those, 
 who have not read him in the notes of Jephson, 
 or seen him in the mimickry of Foote, who in his 
 portraits of Faulkner found the only sitter, whom 
 his extravagant pencil could not caricature ; for 
 he had a solemn intrepidity of egotism, and a 
 daring contempt of absurdity, that fairly outfaced 
 imitation, and like Garrrick's Ode on Shakspeare, 
 which Johnson said e defied criticism/ so did 
 George in the original spirit of his own perfect 
 buffoonery defy caricature. He never deigned to 
 join in the laugh he had raised, nor seemed to 
 have a feeling of the ridicule he had provoked : at 
 the same time that he was pre-eminently and by 
 preference the butt and buffoon of the company 5 
 
142 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 he could find openings and opportunities for hits 
 of retaliation, which were such left-handed thrusts 
 as few could parry: nobody could foresee where 
 they would fall, nobody of course was fore-armed, 
 and as there was in his calculation but one super- 
 eminent character in the kingdom of Ireland, and 
 he the printer of the Dublin Journal, rank was no 
 shield against George's arrows, which flew where 
 he listed, and fixed or missed as chance directed, 
 he cared not about consequences. He gave good 
 meat and excellent claret in abundance ; I sate at 
 his table once from dinner till two in the morning, 
 whilst George swallowed immense potations with 
 one solitary sodden strawberry at the bottom of 
 the glass, which he said w T as recommended to him 
 by his doctor for its cooling properties. He never 
 lost his recollection or equilibrium the whole time, 
 and was in excellent foolery; it was a singular 
 coincidence, that there was a person in company, 
 who had received his reprieve at the gallows, and 
 the very judge, who had passed sentence of death 
 upon him. This did not in the least disturb the 
 harmony of the society, nor embarrass any human 
 creature present. All went off perfectly smooth, 
 and George, adverting to an original portrait of 
 Dean Swift, which hung in his room, told us 
 abundance of excellent and interesting anecdotes 
 of the Dean and himself with minute precision and 
 an importance irresistibly ludicrous. There was 
 also a portrait of his late lady Mrs. Faulkner, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 143 
 
 which either made the painter or George a liar, for 
 it was • frightfully ugly, whilst he swore she was 
 the most divine object in creation* In the mean 
 time he took credit to himself for a few deviations 
 in point of gallantry, and asserted that he broke 
 his leg in flying from the fury of an enraged hus- 
 band, whilst Foote constantly maintained that he 
 fell down an area with a tray of meat upon his 
 shoulder, when he was journeyman to a butcher: 
 I believe neither of them spoke the truth. George 
 prosecuted Foote for lampooning, him on the stage 
 of Dublin ; his counsel the prime serjeant com- 
 pared him to Socrates and his libeller to Aristo- 
 phanes ; this I believe was all that George got by 
 his course of law ; but he was told he had the best 
 of the bargain in the comparison, and sate down 
 contented under the shadow of his laurels. In 
 process of time he became an alderman ; I paid my 
 court to him in that character, but I thought he 
 was rather marred than mended by his dignity. 
 George grew grave and sentimental, and sentiment 
 and gravity sate as ill upon George, as a gown 
 and square cap would upon a monkey." 
 
 A short time previously to the departure of Lord 
 Halifax from Ireland (in the government of which 
 he was succeeded by the Duke of Northumber- 
 land,) a vacancy happened in the bench of bishops, 
 and Cumberland's father was promoted to the see 
 of Clonfert. This vacancy occurred so imme- 
 diately before the expiration of his lordship's go- 
 
144 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 vernment, that the right of nomination seemed 
 almost to belong to his successor, and many and 
 vigorous efforts were made to wrest it from Lord 
 Halifax. But he firmly resisted the attempt, and 
 bestowed the mitre upon one whose whole life 
 did honour to his appointment, service to the 
 church, and glory to God. 
 
 But it was an advancement which he had not taught 
 himself to expect, and the news of it came upon 
 him with that suddenness of surprise which some- 
 times gives an additional zest to joy. He had 
 returned to his vicarage of Fulham, contented with 
 the issue of his expedition, and prepared to wear 
 out the remainder of his life in the discharge of its 
 duties. When his son first apprised him of the 
 vacancy, he listened to the probability of his pro- 
 motion with a calm mind, observing that he did 
 not think himself much adapted for public life, and 
 that if he were presented to the vacant see, he 
 should feel himself bound by conscience to use 
 his patronage for the benefit of the clergy of his 
 own diocese, to the utter exclusion of his English 
 friends. This resolution he afterwards adopted, 
 with a firmness of conscious rectitude which did 
 him the highest honour. In the anticipation of 
 his promotion, also, he expressed his determination 
 to follow the illustrious example of his grandfather 
 in the appropriation of his episcopal revenue, ob- 
 serving that though he despaired of imitating him 
 in the loftier features of his character, he hoped he 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 145 
 
 should be able to escape degeneracy in the 
 humbler course of his virtues. He manifested 
 no avidity, however, to urge his suit, and abso- 
 lutely forbad his son to importune Lord Halifax 
 on the subject : " you have shewn your modera- 
 tion/' added he, " in declining the title that was 
 offered you ; let me, at least, betray no eagerness 
 in courting that which may, or may not, devolve 
 upon me. Had it not been for you it would never 
 have come under my contemplation : I should still 
 have remained parson of Stan wick ; but the same 
 circumstances which have drawn you from your 
 studies, have taken me from my solitude, and if 
 you are thus zealous to transport me and your 
 mother into another kingdom, I hope you will be 
 not less solicitous to visit and console us with the 
 sight of you, when we are there." 
 
 This affectionate and paternal wish Cumberland 
 amply gratified, and it must have been among the 
 happiest reflections of his life that he had thus 
 piously contributed to the comfort of such pa- 
 rents. 
 
 The reluctance which his father felt to impor- 
 tune Lord Halifax upon the subject, did not delay 
 the appointment ; and it was the joyful office of 
 his son to announce to him his promotion to the 
 see of Clonfert. He soon arranged his affairs and 
 departed for Ireland with his wife and daughter; 
 took possession of his bishopric, and. there re- 
 mained, faithfully attentive to its duties till an- 
 
 L 
 
146 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 other vacancy happening, he was translated to the 
 see of Kilmore. 
 
 Meanwhile, Lord Halifax received the seals of 
 Secretary of State, and Cumberland could not but 
 expect some preferment. He had devoted ten 
 years of his life to his lordship's service, receiving 
 in return an income certainly not sufficient for the 
 support of that appearance which the situation 
 imposed upon him ; and now that his patron had 
 an opportunity of rewarding those years of assi- 
 duous attention, without any personal sacrifice, it 
 could not be very presumptuous in Cumberland to 
 suppose that his will would be second to his 
 power. But he knew not a courtier's code of 
 ethics. He had studied our moral duties in ano- 
 ther school, and when he applied his reasonings to 
 the actions of a minister of state, he found them 
 useless ; he found the simple notions of right and 
 wrong too unadorned to captivate the hearts and 
 minds of men, versed in the collusions of political 
 science, and practised in the evasions of truth. 
 
 Lord Halifax had to name an under-secretary, 
 and, passing over him who had the fairest and most 
 apparent right to the nomination, he appointed a 
 Mr. Sedgewicke to the situation : a person whose 
 claims amounted only to one year's attendance 
 upon Lord Halifax in Ireland, as his Master of the 
 Horse, and some little proficiency perhaps in 
 details not yet familiar to Cumberland. To him 
 however the vacancy was given ; and he stepped 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 14? 
 
 into a station of honour and profit, by the mere 
 aid of intrigue and subserviency to designs at 
 which a better man would have spurned. When 
 Cumberland tendered his services, as a matter of 
 form, upon his lordship's appointment, he received 
 this cool, brief, and repulsive answer- — he was not 
 Jit for every situation. And wherein was his de- 
 ficiency ? Because he could not fluently dis- 
 course in French. Such was the ostensible reason ; 
 but the real one was -so different that, as Cum- 
 berland justly observes, " had he possessed the 
 elegance and perfection of Voltaire himself in that 
 language, he would not have been a step nearer to 
 the office in question/' 
 
 Driven from what might be considered as his 
 legitimate road of promotion, he turned aside and 
 sought for indemnification in humbler paths. 
 And here, I cannot justify his conduct. It was 
 not dishonourable, but it was mean ; it was not 
 the course of a man perfectly high minded, who 
 feels, with dignity, the contempt that is shewn him, 
 and proves, by his actions, that it was unjustly 
 bestowed. He retired from the employment of 
 Lord Halifax, and condescended to apply for and 
 accept, the very situation which his rival, Mr, 
 Sedgewicke, had vacated. This was confirming 
 that inferiority which Lord Halifax had asserted ; 
 and it betrayed, likewise, an unworthy desire of 
 money, for surely no other motive could prompt 
 him to a step so inconsistent with his own re~ 
 
 L 2 
 
14S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 spectability. Nor was the salary, attached to the 
 situation, such as could render its possession an 
 object of desire to a man whose feelings of pro- 
 priety were not in total slavery to his avarice: it 
 was but two hundred pounds a-year, certainly not 
 necessarily an income of importance to a man 
 whose talents might always procure more than that 
 without any degradation. I do not wonder, there- 
 fore, that when he mentioned his intention of ap- 
 plying for this situation, (which was that of Clerk 
 of the Reports to the Board of Trade), to Lord 
 Halifax, his lordship remonstrated with him upon 
 the indignity, and hinted at the meanness of sub- 
 mi tting to such an office, after the situation he 
 had stood in with respect to him. 
 
 It had been no reply to this reproof had Cumber- 
 land answered — " Why then does not your lordship 
 provide for me more worthily ? — Why do you not 
 give me a station fitter for one who has served under 
 you in a post of confidence and trust ?" This might 
 have been a reproach of his lordship's dereliction, 
 but no justification of Cumberland's. The action 
 by which he sought to retrieve the loss he had 
 sustained, was one which belonged solely to him- 
 self: it was not forced upon him by any injustice 
 of others, nor by any considerations of necessity 
 with regard to his own condition : he had lost 
 something which might easily have been replaced 
 by economy and industry in various paths of ex- 
 ertion : but, submitting to be the successor of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 149 
 
 him who had stepped info the vacancy he had a 
 right to expect, and which he missed, from in- 
 capacity, was a proceeding altogether foreign trom 
 the feelings of a man whose self-reverence is 
 founded upon a clear and distinct conception of 
 what he owes to himself. I confess I wish Cum- 
 berland had acted just the reverse of what he did, 
 and nobly disdained a compensation which he 
 could not but ignobly receive. 
 
 Such was the termination of his intercourse 
 with Lord Halifax ; an intercourse which com- 
 menced auspiciously, but ended as court con- 
 nexions commonly do, with disappointment 
 and vexation. Had Cumberland been more ob- 
 sequious, he had, perhaps, been more successful : 
 and more obsequious he probably had been, but 
 for a secret bias to literature which, wherever it 
 exists, effectually controls every other passion, 
 absorbs every other wish, and leaves its object 
 no other desire but to signalise himself in the 
 theatre which his imagination has adorned with 
 the most profuse splendor. Eager to pursue the 
 career of literary glory, which amused his fancy 
 with its enticing forms, it is likely he was less 
 zealous to court favour in her political haunts, 
 satisfied if she bestowed enough to carry on the 
 chief concerns of life, without demanding from 
 him sacrifices that would enfeeble his pursuit of 
 the renown he greatly coveted ; and hence, per- 
 haps, he quietly sat down in Mr. Sedgewicke's 
 
150 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 place when capricious fortune had denied him 
 a better. 
 
 Whatever resentment Cumberland may have 
 felt at the moment when he was thus injuriously 
 treated by Lord Halifax, all remembrance of it 
 seems to have subsided, when he wrote his Me- 
 moirs, for the recollection of these events calls 
 forth no revilings from his pen, no expressions of 
 bitterness, nor any of those allowable censures 
 which the contemplation of insincerity may be 
 permitted to excite. Christian forbearance implies 
 patience under every injury, and I hope it was 
 from this motive only that Cumberland acted ; but 
 human nature is so apt to rebel, and those feelings 
 which heaven itself has given us, which education 
 developes, which society brings into action, and 
 which individual honour is compelled to summon 
 as its safeguard and testimony, concur so power- 
 fully to overthrow that perfect humility and suffer- 
 ing which our Saviour so divinely taught and so 
 divinely practised, that when I behold it acting 
 without any alloy of human weakness, I own I am 
 rather inclined to think it the guise of hypocrisy, 
 which veils its resentments when they are in- 
 effectual, rather than the language of a purely 
 Christian meekness, which forgives as truly as it 
 hopes to be forgiven. Not that I would insinuate 
 this with regard to Cumberland, for I should abhor 
 the man whose rancour neither the death of its 
 object, nor the long lapse of years could subdue ; 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 1,51 
 
 and it would redound only so much the more to 
 the gentleness of his character to suppose that his 
 mild recital of these transactions arose, not from an 
 insensibility tohislordship'sdissimulation, but from 
 a sincere oblivion in his own breast, of every senti- 
 ment of anger and displeasure. What I have said, 
 I have delivered as a general opinion, called forth 
 by a contemplation of my subject ; and I have 
 formed the opinion from a close observation of 
 their conduct who talk most loudly of forgiveness 
 of injuries; who affect most vehemently to prac- 
 tise what they inculcate ; and who prove, by 
 their actions, that they pardon only when they 
 cannot revenge, and praise the loveliness of for- 
 bearance when their hearts are bursting under its 
 inevitable restraint. Their submission to injuries 
 is involuntary, and, therefore unwilling : but they 
 know how to mask their sentiments, and extract 
 from a servitude they abhor, maxims of obedience 
 which might sanctify the lips of a Saint. 
 
 I know the difficulty with which our nature 
 bends to the infliction of evil without forming a 
 design (I will not say a wish — perhaps that's im* 
 possible at the moment of suffering) of retaliation. 
 I know also how hard it is so to subdue the evil 
 passions of our heart, as to be able and willing to 
 do justice to him who has wronged us ; and 
 therefore I am the more willing to praise the 
 placability of Cumberland, and the sincerity with 
 which he allows, to Lord Halifax, those eminent 
 
\$¥ LIFE CTF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 virtues and qualifications which he indubitably 
 possessed. 
 
 I had known him too intimately/' he observes, 
 " not to know, in the very moment, of which I 
 have been speaking, that what he was by accident 
 he was not by nature. I am persuaded he was 
 formed to be a good man, he might also have been 
 a- great one: his mind was large, his spirit active, 
 his ambition honourable; he had a carriage noble 
 and imposing; his first approach attracted notice, 
 his consequent address ensured respect ; if his 
 talents were not quite so solid as some, nor alto- 
 gether so deep as others, yet they were brilliant, 
 popular, and made to glitter in the eyes of men; 
 splendor was his passion ; his good fortune threw 
 opportunities in his way to have supported it ; his 
 ill fortune blasted all those energies which should 
 have been reserved for the crisis of his public 
 fame ; the first offices of the state, the highest 
 honours which his sovereign could bestow, were 
 showered upon him when the spring of his mind 
 was broken, and his genius, like a vessel overloaded 
 with treasure, but far gone in decay, was only 
 precipitated to ruin by the very freight, that in its 
 better days would have crowned it with prosperity 
 
 and riches."- i<f He had filled the high stations 
 
 of First Lord of Trade and Plantations, Lord 
 Lieutenant of Ireland, Principal Secretary of State, 
 First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Lieutenant of 
 the County of Northampton, and Knight of the 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 153 
 
 Garter. He had no son, and his title is extinct. 
 I saw him in his last illness, when his constitu- 
 tion was an absolute wreck ; I never knew that 
 man, whose life, if circumstantially detailed, 
 would furnish a more striking moral, and a more 
 tragical catastrophe. Nature endowed him libe- 
 rally with her gifts, Fortune showered her favours 
 profusely upon him, Providence repeatedly held 
 forth the most extraordinary vouchsafements. 
 What a mournful retrospection ! I am not bound 
 to dwell upon it. I turn from it with horror/ ' 
 
 Such was the mixture of applause and disappro- 
 bation with which he mentioned his early friend 
 and patron, when age had cooled his resentments, 
 strengthened his mind, and invigorated his piety. 
 Let us hear how he contemplated the same subject 
 only a few weeks before his death. 
 
 When in a luckless hour I threw aside 
 My college gown, and Halifax was pleas'd 
 To call me to his confidence, metbought 
 Form more engaging never grac'd a court ; 
 Aspiring, elegant, with genius fraught, 
 A scholar in my native college train'd, 
 With academic honours justly crown'd ; 
 In his domestic character correet, 
 The faithful husband of a virtuous wife- 
 Such he appeared to me, and such he was ; 
 A patron better fitted to attract 
 My admiration than engage my love : 
 Active in office, warm in party zeal, 
 And if with eloquence not richly stor'd, 
 Yet in deliv'ry he so grac'd his speech, 
 That he stood high in fame, and first of those 
 With whom Newcastle in that easy time 
 
1<54 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Held brief consult, and bustled through his day. 
 
 But where no system is, chance gives no heed 
 
 To cause or consequence, but veers about 
 
 And as it whirl'd Newcastle's windmill round, 
 
 It swept my patron out of place and power. 
 
 Fierce war ensu'd ; high swell'd the indignant heart 
 
 Of this bold Montagu, the foe declar'd 
 
 Of his false friend ; but the same chance, that caus'd, 
 
 Soon cur'd the mischief and allay'd the strife. 
 
 So this short tragedy was soon wound up, 
 
 And Montagu and Capulet shook hands.— 
 
 Heav'n ! what sweet tempers politicians have ! 
 
 Meanwhile of this sage minister I saw 
 
 As much as my humility desir'd, 
 
 And knew as much as small men know of great. 
 
 Of him, with whom so much of life I pass'd, 
 
 If more I were to tell, 'twould only prove 
 
 The sun that rises clear may set in clouds." Retrospection.* 
 
 Here the conclusion corresponds with that of 
 the preceding extract, and they both refer to 
 events well known, I suppose, to the author, but 
 not very generally familiar to the world. They 
 need not be so; he to whom they relate is dead: 
 a solemn proposition : and I cannot help thinking 
 that it would have been more decorous in Cumber- 
 land to have refrained wholly from touching upon 
 his vices, or to have done it more explicitly than 
 by dark hints and exclamations of horror. These 
 only serve to awaken the imagination without 
 satisfying the reason ; and when conjecture is idly 
 excited in its darkest colours, we all know that 
 
 * A poem in familiar blank verse, devoted to the celebration of those 
 characters and events which had been before celebrated in prose in his Me* 
 moirs. It was published only a few weeks before his death. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 155 
 
 there is a propensity in man to push it to extremities. 
 I would deprecate, therefore, every attack which 
 comes masked in the guise of exclamatory disgust 
 or insidious benevolence, which, by a sinister kind 
 of charity, affects to deplore the excesses it more 
 than exposes by telling their existence, without 
 disclosing their magnitude and quality. A man 
 will sooner lose his character by a shrug of the 
 shoulder aptly performed at his appearance, or a 
 smile of significant surprise when he talks of ho- 
 nesty, or a solemn shake of the head when another 
 praises his integrity, than he will by any open 
 and manifest attack conducted either by truth or 
 artifice; and, by a parity of reasoning, to record 
 the merits of any one, to refer mysteriously, at the 
 conclusion, to the contrast between those merits 
 and certain defects, and then abruptly to quit the 
 discussion as one too heart-rending, too skocking 
 to be pursued, is the most certain, though not the 
 most allowable method, to make the reader believe 
 all that we wish, and more than is true. 
 
156 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 Cumberland produces his Summer's Tale. — His 
 felicity in being independent of booksellers, — Has 
 a controversy with Bickerstaff. — Roused to a pur- 
 suit of the legitimate drama by the remonstrance 
 of Smith. — Visits Ireland with his family. — Ac- 
 count of his father s improvements in the condition 
 of the peasantry of his diocese. — Returns to Eng- 
 land, and produces his comedy of The Bro- 
 thers. — His mode of study censured. — The cha- 
 racters of that play examined. — Mrs. Inchbald's 
 opinion controverted. — The epilogue contains some 
 delicate flattery to Garrick. — Arrogance of the 
 prologue. 
 
 Neither the duties nor the emoluments of his 
 station, were such as tempted him to remain intel- 
 lectually idle. He had leisure for labour, and 
 occasion for money ; and he resorted to the stage 
 as the easiest way of performing the one and ac- 
 quiring the other. 
 
 Bickerstaff had been successfully producing his 
 Love in a Village^ and The Maid of the Mill; the 
 people had acquired a relish for music and songs ; 
 and an author who wished to try the issue of a dra- 
 matic attempt could not select a plan less liable to 
 miscarriage than the composition of an English 
 opera. The judgment of the audience was trans- 
 ferred from the mind to the ear ; the composer, the 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 157 
 
 fiddler, and the singer, ensured the success of the 
 writer ; wit, humour, language, character, and in- 
 cident, modestly retired from view, while a succes- 
 sion of dialogues, leading naturally or not naturally 
 to a song and a dance, supported the author's fame, 
 and filled his pockets. 
 
 An undertaking thus humble in performance 
 was the first to which the dramatic muse of Cum- 
 berland addressed herself; and after a few weeks 
 diligence produced The Summer s Tale. The mu- 
 sic was chiefly composed by Abel, Bach, Arne, 
 and Arnold ; Beard, Miss Brent, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Mattocks, supported the vocal parts ; and Shuter 
 aided the comic : but with all this profusion of 
 assistance, the piece languished through nine 
 nights, and was then heard of no more. The 
 motto which Cumberland prefixed to it when pub- 
 lished, aptly .designated its value: — Vox, et pr ca- 
 tered nihil: — yet, I should suspect his own opi- 
 nion of its worthlessness to be rather assumed than 
 real, for he attempted again to interest the public 
 in its favour, by presenting it to their notice, some- 
 what altered, and under the name of Amelia. He 
 gave the profits of the ninth night to the Fund 
 for the support of decayed actors : but the ninth 
 night of an unsuccessful play would not produce 
 a very splendid donation. 
 
 Cumberland may now be considered as having 
 made his deliberate decision, and entered upon 
 that career which, I have already observed, was 
 most congenial to his temper, pursuits, and ac- 
 
138 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 quirements. It deserves to be reckoned, how- 
 ever, among the felicities of this period of his life, 
 that his condition was such as exempted him 
 from the degrading necessity of toiling for book- 
 sellers as their drudge. His was a free election, 
 and freely he pursued it. In privacy he excogi- 
 tated the subjects he chose to discuss, in privacy 
 he pursued them, wrote when he pleased, and 
 what he pleased. His mind was not harrassed by 
 the dread of poverty, and all its train of iron evils ; 
 he saw no miseries hovering over his devoted steps 
 if he remitted the eternal movements of his pen ; 
 his genius suffered no insults from a race of men 
 who estimate the progress of mind by the progress 
 of a printer's compositor, and know no difference 
 between the labours of excellence and those of 
 rapidity ; who contract for the production of a 
 book, as a man does for a suit of clothes, and pre- 
 sume that it is as easy to controul the operations 
 of intellect as those of a tailor's needle ; who 
 have no conception that delay can produce benefit, 
 or that to digest the materials of a work, to ar- 
 range them with perspicuity, to amend, to revise, 
 to pause for better modes of reason, or happier 
 methods of illustration, would confer an additional 
 value upon the performance that is to be pro- 
 duced ; all this is unembodied fantasy, mere vi- 
 sionary rant to them ; and the very thing they 
 want, (a saleable commodity, to use their own 
 phrase) is often defeated by their improvident haste 
 to obtain it. From toils like these Cumberland 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND* 159 
 
 was absolved ; he wrote for himself and from him- 
 self; and it is only those, who like a Johnson, a 
 Goldsmith, and a Dryden, endured a harder fate, 
 that can fully appreciate the value of that liberty, or 
 fully feel the debasement and humility of its oppo- 
 site slavery. If there be a condition more truly 
 lamentable than another, it is that where a man of 
 talent is doomed, by the augustce res domi, to tra- 
 mel in his mind to the conceptions of those who 
 rate the labours of intellect like the labours of the 
 hand, by the simple computation of reiterated mo- 
 tion. The history of literature is full of instances 
 which justify this anathema; it is a servitude 
 which every man, who can. feel its bitterness must 
 wish to see destroyed. It is not imaginary : it has a 
 real existence : hundreds have smarted beneath 
 the yoke : hundreds still pine under its galling 
 pressure : and hundreds yet unborn will feel it too. 
 Credidi, propter quod locutus sum. 
 
 Exceptions there have been, honourable excep- 
 tions, to this general character. I have known 
 some : I have read of more than I have known ; 
 the names of Elmsley, Becket, and Nichols, are 
 recorded in the imperishable pages of men of ge- 
 nius ; they deserve to be so, and I wish the list 
 could be extended beyond my patience to transcribe. 
 Cumberland, happy in enjoying a privilege of 
 value, beyond all price, to an intellectual man, 
 found other enemies to combat with, teasing 
 enough, but not so formidable to a man's happi- 
 ness. The jealous spirit of literary enterprise so 
 
160 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 far prevailed in Bickerstaff, that he considered the 
 composition and production of operas as his own 
 unalienable right ; as a possession which he had 
 acquired, nobody enquired how, but which no- 
 body was to infringe upon. Accordingly, when 
 Cumberland presumed to occupy a portion of that 
 territory which he had vainly marked out as his 
 own, he employed every engine of open and con- 
 cealed hostility, to drive him from his lodgement. 
 Intelligence of this enmity reached the knowledge 
 of its object, and Cumberland, perfectly with the 
 spirit and liberality of a gentleman, remonstrated 
 with the petulant and monopolising author. He 
 considered his attack as arising not from any mo- 
 tives of personal dislike, but from those feelings 
 which possess a man when he believes another to 
 be unfairly obstructing his livelihood. Bickerstaff 
 had persuaded himself, that all competition with 
 him was, in fact, a direct violation of his rights ; and 
 as his whole support was derived from the emolu- 
 ments which his musical productions supplied, he 
 was naturally solicitous respecting any interference 
 which threatened to abridge those emoluments. 
 These were the arguments of a needy man, but not 
 of a just one. They were such, however, as had 
 their weight with Cumberland, and he wrote to 
 Bickerstaff upon the subject. The letter he did 
 not preserve ; but its purport was this, " that if 
 his contempt of Cumberland's performance was 
 really what he professed it to be, he had no need 
 to fear him as a rival, and might relax from his in- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 161 
 
 temperance; on the contrary, if alarm for his own 
 interest had any share in the motives for his ani- 
 mosity, he was perfectly ready to purchase his 
 peace of mind and good will by the sacrifice of 
 those emoluments, which might eventually accrue 
 from his rights, in any such way as might relieve 
 his anxiety, and convince him of his entire disin- 
 terestedness in commencing author*, adding, in 
 conclusion, that he might assure himself he would 
 never hear of him again as a writer of operas." 
 
 This promise he did not wholly perform, for he 
 produced one or two musical pieces afterwards, but 
 it was, I believe, when BickerstafF had ceased to 
 bring forth any. By thus separating himself from 
 the road which led to competition, these two au- 
 thors lived in concord afterwards, and BickerstafF 
 was candid enough to acknowledge to Garrick that 
 his conduct had been violent and unjustifiable, 
 and that no future opportunity should tempt him 
 to a renewal of such proceedings. An opportunity, 
 however, either for his aggression or forbearance, 
 was not afforded him again. 
 
 Cumberland's mind was first aroused to the con- 
 templation and performance of worthier objects of 
 dramatic structure, by the reproof of his fellow-col- 
 legian, Smith, who was distinguished as an actor of 
 the old school, and to whom most of the dramatists 
 
 * This was a declaration which Cumberland might have spared. It is 
 with me, beyond a doubt, that his motives for commencing - author were to 
 improve his circumstances, 
 
 M 
 
162 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 of his day were much in deb ted for the support he gave 
 to their characters. He had been educated at St. 
 John's, but turned aside from the path to which, 
 it may be presumed, his studies were preparatory, 
 to follow the strange vicissitudes of a theatrical 
 life ; a life so little to be loved or coveted, in its 
 outset, and so little enviable in any stage, short 
 of pre-eminence in the art, that I have heard 
 a living actor, who justly enjoys that pre-emi- 
 nence, but who attained it through every gradation 
 of histrionic misery, pathetically deplore its 
 wretchedness, and vehemently dissuade from its 
 adoption, but as the last resource of desperate cir- 
 cumstances. Like an author, however, the de- 
 luded candidate for renown is bewildered by vi- 
 sionary bursts of applause, by fancied honours, 
 and by the blandishments of vanity which eter- 
 nally whisper in his ears, the highest place is re- 
 served for you. 
 
 The remonstrance of Smith had its due effect 
 upon Cumberland, as the reader may easily antici- 
 pate. 
 
 Wherrfhe Board of Trade broke up for its usual 
 recess, in the summer of this year, Cumberland 
 prepared to fulfil the promise which the affection 
 of his father had drawn from him, and which his 
 own heart no less prompted him to pay. Accom- 
 panied by his wife, and part of his family, he vi- 
 sited Ireland. The pleasure with which he met 
 his parents, and the filial pride with which he 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 163 
 
 recounts the beneficial exertions of the Bishop to 
 reform the peasantry of his diocese, shall be told 
 in his own words. 
 
 " They waited for us in Dublin, where my fa- 
 ther had taken the late of Bishop of Meath's house 
 in Kildare-street, next door to the Duke of Lein- 
 ster's. When we had reposed ourselves for a few 
 days, after the fatigues of a turbulent passage, we 
 all set off for Clonfert, in the county of Galway. 
 Every body, who has travelled in Ireland, and 
 witnessed the wretched accommodation of the 
 inns, particularly in the west, knows that it re- 
 quires some forecast and preparation to conduct a 
 large family on their journey. It certainly is as 
 different from travelling in England as possible, 
 and not much unlike travelling in Spain ; but with 
 my father for our provider, whose appointments of 
 servants and equipage were ever excellent, we 
 could feel few wants, and arrived in good time at 
 our journey's end, where, upon the banks of the 
 great river Shannon, in a nook of land, on all sides, 
 save one surrounded by an impassable bog, we 
 found the episcopal residence, by courtesy called 
 palace, and the church of Clonfert, by custom 
 called cathedral. This humble residence was not 
 devoid of comfort and convenience, for it con- 
 tained some tolerable lodging rooms, and was ca- 
 pacious enough to receive me and mine without 
 straitening the family. A garden of seven acres, 
 well planted, and disposed into pleasant walks, 
 M 2 
 
164 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 kept in the neatest order, was attached to the 
 house, and at the extremity of a broad gravel walk 
 in front, stood the cathedral. Within this boun- 
 dary the scene was cheerful : all without it was 
 either impenetrable bog, or a dreary undressed 
 country ; but whilst all was harmony, hospitality, 
 and affection, underneath the parental roof, c the 
 mind was its own place,' and every hour was 
 happy. My father lived, as he had ever done, 
 beloved by all around him ; the same benevolent 
 and generous spirit, which had endeared him to 
 his neighbours and parishioners in England, now 
 began to make the like impressions on the hearts 
 of a people as far different in character as they 
 were distant in place, from those whom he had 
 till now been concerned with. Without descend- 
 ing from the dignity he had to support, and con- 
 descending to any of the paltry modes of courting 
 popularity, I instantly perceived how high he 
 stood in their esteem ; these observations I was 
 perfectly in the way to make, for I had no forms to 
 keep, and was withal uncommonly delighted with 
 their wild eccentric humours, mixing with all 
 ranks and descriptions of men, to my infinite amuse- 
 ment. If I have been successful in my dramatic 
 sketches of the Irish character, i t was here I studied it 
 in its purest and most primitive state ; from high to 
 low it was now under my view. Though I strove 
 to present it in its fairest and best light upon the 
 stage, truth obliges me to confess there was an- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 165 
 
 other side of the picture, which could not have 
 been contemplated without affright and horror! 
 Atrocities and violences, which set all law and 
 justice at defiance! were occasionally committed in 
 this savage and licentious quarter, and suffered to 
 pass over with impunity. In the neighbouring- 
 town of Eyre Court, they had, by long usage, 
 assumed to themselves certain local and self-con- 
 stituted privileges and exemptions, which ren- 
 dered it unapproachable by any officers or emis- 
 saries of- the civil power, who were universally de- 
 nounced as mad-dogs, and subjected to be treated 
 as such, and even put to death, with as little cere- 
 mony or remorse. I speak of what actually oc- 
 curred within my own immediate knowledge, 
 whilst I resided with my father, in more instances 
 than one, and those instances would be shocking 
 to relate. To stem these daring outrages, and to 
 stand in opposition to these barbarous customs, 
 was an undertaking that demanded both philan- 
 thropy and courage, and my father of course was 
 the very man to attempt it. Justice and genero- 
 sity were the instruments he employed, and I saw 
 the work of reformation so auspiciously begun, 
 and so steadily pursued by him, as convinced me 
 that minds the most degenerate may be to a de- 
 gree reclaimed by actions that come home to their 
 feelings, and are evidently directed to the sole pur- 
 poses of amending their manners, and improving 
 their condition. To suppose they were a race of 
 
166 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 beings stupidly vicious, devoid of sensibility, and 
 delivered over by their natural inertness, to barba- 
 rism and ignorance, would be the very falsest cha- 
 racter that could be conceived of them ; it is, on 
 the contrary, to the quickness of their apprehen- 
 sive faculties, to the precipitancy and unrestrained 
 vivacity of their talents and passions, that we must 
 look for the causes, and in some degree for the ex- 
 cuse of their excesses ; together with their feroci- 
 ous propensities there are blended and compounded 
 humours so truly comic, eccentricities so peculiar, 
 and attachments and affections at times so incon- 
 ceivably ardent, that it is not possible to contem- 
 plate them in their natural characters, without be- 
 ing diverted by extravagancies, which we cannot 
 seriously approve, and captivated by professions 
 which we cannot implicitly give credit to. 
 
 " The bishop held a considerable parcel of land, 
 arable and grazing, in his hands, or more properly 
 speaking in the phrase of the country, a large 
 demesne, with a numerous tribe of labourers, gar- 
 deners, turf-cutters, herdsmen, and handicraft- 
 men of various denominations. — His first object, 
 and that not an easy one to attain, was to induce 
 them to pursue the same methods of husbandry as 
 were practised in England, and to observe the same 
 neat and cleanly course of cultivation. This was a 
 great point gained ; they began it with unwillingness, 
 and watched it with suspicion : their idle neigh- 
 bours, who were without employ, ridiculed the 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 167 
 
 work, and predicted that their hay-stacks would 
 take fire, and their corn be rendered unfit for use ; 
 but in the further course of time, when they ex- 
 perienced the advantages of this process, and wit- 
 nessed the striking contrast of these productive 
 lands, compared with the slovenly grounds around 
 them, they began to acknowledge their own errors, 
 and to reform them. With these operations the 
 improvements of their own habitations were con- 
 trived to keep pace : their cabins soon wore a 
 more comfortable and decent appearance ; they 
 furnished them with chimnies, and emerged out 
 of the smoke, in which they had buried and suf- 
 focated their families and themselves. When these 
 old habits were corrected within doors, on the 
 outside of every one of them there was to be seen 
 a stack of hay, made in the English fashion, 
 thatched and secured from the weather, and a lot 
 of potatoes, carefully planted and kept clean, 
 which, with a suitable proportion of turf, secured 
 the year's provision both for man and beast. 
 When these comforts were placed in their view, 
 they were easily led to turn their attention to the 
 better appearance of their persons, and this reform 
 was not a little furthered by the premium of a 
 Sunday's dinner to all, who should present them- 
 selves in clean linen and with well-combed hair, 
 without the customary addition of a scare-crow 
 wig, so that the swarthy Milesian no longer ap- 
 peared with a yellow wig upon his coal-black hair, 
 
168 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 nor the yellow Dane with a coal-black wig upon 
 his long red locks : the old barbarous custom also 
 of working in a great coat loosely thrown over the 
 shoulders, with the sleeves dangling by the sides, 
 was now dismissed, and the bishop's labourers 
 turned into the field, stript to their shirts, proud 
 to shew themselves in whole linen, so that in 
 them vanity operated as a virtue, and piqued them 
 to excel in industry as much as they did in ap- 
 pearance. As for me, I. was so delighted with 
 contemplating a kind of new creation, of which 
 my father was the author, that I devoted the 
 greatest portion of my time to his works, and had 
 full powers to prosecute his good intentions to 
 whatever extent I might find opportunities for 
 carrying them. This commission was to me 
 most gratifying, nor have any hours in my past 
 life been more truly satisfactory, than those in 
 which I was thus occupied as the administrator of 
 his unbounded benevolence to his dependant fel- 
 low creatures. My father, being one of the go- 
 vernors of the Linen Board, availed himself also 
 of the opportunity for introducing a branch of that 
 valuable manufacture into his neighbourhood, and 
 a great number of spinning-wheels were distri- 
 buted, and much good linen made in consequence 
 of that measure. The superintendance of this 
 improving manufacture furnished an interesting 
 occupation to my mother's active mind, and it 
 nourished under her care." 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 169 
 
 When he returned from Ireland he brought out his 
 first comedy at Covent Garden theatre. The piece 
 was entitled The Brothers, and was produced, ac- 
 cording to Cumberland, in a desultory manner; 
 written at snatches of time, in the midst of his 
 children, and surrounded with the noise, confu- 
 sion, and amusements of a nursery. Whether he 
 tells this to extenuate its faults, or to prove the 
 pliability of his thoughts, which could accommo- 
 date themselves to such a mode of study, I do not 
 know : but it seems to me an evidence, not of 
 peculiar powers of abstraction, but of that medio- 
 crity of employment which nothing can disturb, 
 because it requires no attention to perform. A 
 man may write a song in the midst of singing, or 
 a book for children surrounded with children ; or, 
 he may pen the loose and unconnected scenes 
 of a play, where the dialogue does not rise above 
 the level of colloquial discourse, where the cha- 
 racters are drawn from the surface of life, and the 
 sentiments are derived from superficial manners su- 
 perficially pourtrayed, without any interruption 
 from tumult or conversation : all this he might do 
 in a cotton-mill as well as in a nursery ; but let 
 no man say that he can plan a series of well con- 
 trived incidents, that he can observe an artificial 
 coherency between them, that he can elicit cha- 
 racters and adequately support them, that he can 
 form a quick and animated reciprocation of dia- 
 logue sparkling with wit, elegant and appropriate, 
 
170 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 that he can devise scenes of humour and pourtray 
 them, that he can conduct his whole action to 
 such a developement at the end as may surprise 
 by its novelty, yet please by its probability, and 
 that he can maintain the interest of the piece from 
 its commencement to its close, in the midst of 
 turmoil and distraction, environed with children 
 at their gambols, or absorbed in the details of bu- 
 siness. This may be attempted, but will never 
 be performed ; and he who does attempt it will find 
 that leisure, solitude, and retirement, are requisite 
 to every intellectual undertaking which aspires to 
 permanent celebrity and success. Inferior per- 
 formances may be brought forth with inferior 
 means of excellence : but nothing that is truly great 
 has ever been achieved under the actual and im- 
 mediate disqualifications of noise and distraction. 
 The Brothers was produced in 1769 ? at the sole 
 responsibility of Mr. Harris, then one of the pro- 
 prietors of the theatre ; for it seems that his asso- 
 ciates did not give their sanction to its appearance ; 
 and its success on the stage, in some measure, 
 justified his opinion, whatever conclusions may 
 be drawn as to its merits in the closet. To 
 me indeed it appears to want precisely that 
 which it was impossible its author should give 
 it, composing it in the manner already de- 
 scribed. It wants variety of incident, and a skil- 
 ful coherency of action : the scenes are hurried on 
 with too much rapidity ; that which is required is 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 171 
 
 produced at the author's will, not as the necessary 
 or probable effect of preceding events. There is 
 no exhibition of original character. Perfidious 
 brothers, wittol husbands, peevish mistresses, and 
 licentious wives, are the common property of stage 
 writers, and afford few opportunities for novelty of 
 situation or of sentiment. The author is tied 
 down by the familiarity of his plot, and follows too 
 servilely the steps of his predecessors. 
 
 The only character that can be considered as 
 original in the hands of Cumberland is that of 
 Captain Ironsides : but if we admit that nothing is 
 to be ascribed to the remembrance of Cqngreve's 
 Ben, we shall be forced to allow that much may 
 be referred to the recollection of Smollett's Lieu- 
 tenant Bowling, and Commodore Trunnion : while 
 Skiff is only Pipes transferred from the novel to 
 the play. 
 
 The diction is neither comic nor tragic : it wants 
 the sprightliness of the one and the dignity of the 
 other. It is so little suited to the characters, 
 that except the technical jargon of Ironsides and 
 Skiff, it might be spoken by any of them without 
 any violation of propriety. The dialogue is a cold 
 interchange of conversation, relieved neither by 
 wit nor humour : it is merely elegant discourse. 
 
 In delivering this opinion I am not unconscious 
 how much I differ from that of a lady, (Mrs. 
 Inchbald) with whom I should be proud to concur 
 upon a question of dramatic criticism, for her 
 
172 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 knowledge of the subject may be presumed to be 
 accurate both in speculation and practice. I can- 
 not, however, gainsay the dictates of my own 
 mind, in deference to the decisions of another. 
 Mrs. Inchbald says, " that the Brothers is ac- 
 knowledged by all critics to be a very good play." 
 I would ask what critics have allowed this ? I 
 know of none that have said so ; and if she means 
 to refer to the diurnal critics of the time, I should 
 not hesitate to disregard their authority, in any 
 question of literature. To say that it is a very 
 good play, is a prostitution of language : it may 
 have merits of a certain sort : but that its 
 merits entitle it to that unqualified approbation 
 which is contained in the sentence I have quoted, 
 is what no one will affirm who has read the piece 
 and judges dispassionately. 
 
 Mrs. Inchbald knows what belongs to a good 
 comedy. Some of her remarks upon this very 
 drama prove that she does. But it is one of the 
 inconveniences of criticism upon contemporary 
 writers, that few have boldness enough to say 
 what they think, unless they speak from the in- 
 fluence of some personal antipathy. I cannot believe 
 that Mrs. Inchbald would have said as much of 
 the Brothers had it been the production of Colley 
 Gibber, or of any deceased author. Her censure 
 would have manifested more distinct and decisive 
 features, while her praises, being unbiassed, would 
 have relished more of sincerity. 
 
LIFE OP CUMBERLAND. 173 
 
 Cumberland himself has ventured to claim for a 
 particular part of this comedy, a commendation 
 which the critic cannot allow. He says that the 
 sudden manifestation of spirit and command, in 
 Sir Benjamin Dove, " is one of those starts of cha- 
 racter which is always a striking incident in the 
 construction of a drama, and when a revolution of 
 that sort can be brought about without violence to 
 nature, and for purposes essential to the plot, it is a 
 point of art well worthy the attention and study of 
 a writer for the stage. The comedy of Rule a W T ife 
 and have a Wife, and particularly that of Mas- 
 singer's City Madam, are strong instances in 
 point." 
 
 To the principles laid down in this passage, as 
 applying to a general truth, no one will object : 
 and the instances adduced by Cumberland of their 
 effect are strong proofs of their justness. But those 
 instances are strangely misapplied in supposing 
 that they are at all similar to the case of Sir 
 Benjamin Dove, Leon, in Rule a Wife and have a 
 Wife, is a fool, and the pliant tool of his wife, for a 
 time only ; he has a specific purpose in view, which 
 is known to the audience almost from the first, and 
 which justifies his assumed stolidity and uxorious 
 submission ; when, therefore, " he throws his 
 cloud off, and appears himself/' the spectator is 
 pleased at the transformation but hardly surprised ; 
 for he had a general anticipation of such a meta- 
 morphosis : the precise course indeed of his ac- 
 
174 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 tions afterwards, how far he would enforce his 
 authority and vindicate himself from his fatuity 
 (which, like the elder Brutus, he wore only as a 
 mask to conceal his aim at a nobler object), he 
 does not foresee : but the act itself of re-assuming 
 his character, he is frequently prepared for by the 
 intimations of Leon himself. In the City Madam 
 of Massinger also, Lukes stupidity is only a 
 feigned one : a counterfeited baseness, manifested 
 no longer than circumstances required it, and suc- 
 ceeded by a character of energetic villainy very 
 distinct from what preceded it. In both these 
 instances the change is natural because the de- 
 ception is unnatural, and probable, because it is 
 produced by adequate causes. But the craven- 
 spirited Sir Benjamin is a tame fool, with no other 
 motive for being so than a man who squints has for 
 obliquity of vision : because he could not help it. 
 His submission to his wife's fantastic humours, to 
 her freakish tyranny, to her unyoked caprice, has no 
 secret aim : he endures her suspected infidelity 
 patiently from no concealed project of revenge : 
 his baseness is not fictitious but real, not merely 
 an outward shew but an inborn pusillanimity of 
 disposition : and his sudden display of vigour and 
 dignity, therefore, towards the conclusion of the 
 play, is a direct violation of probability : it is a 
 miracle indeed which the author works, but which 
 neither the spectator nor the reader believes ; and 
 it is essentially distinguished from that " start of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 175 
 
 character," which Cumberland has justly praised 
 in Beaumont and Fletcher, and in Massinger. 
 By what fallacy he persuaded himself that they 
 w r ere similar instances of excellence I know not: 
 I have shewn that they cannot be compared with 
 each other. 
 
 The production of this play was the immediate 
 occasion of an introduction to Garrick, and of a 
 subsequent intimacy between him and Cumber- 
 land. Garrick, who was present at its first per- 
 formance, was unexpectedly gratified by an allu- 
 sion to his theatrical excellence, which Cumber- 
 land dextrously introduced in the epilogue in the 
 following lines : — 
 
 " Who but hath seen the celebrated strife, 
 Where Reynolds calls the canvas into life ; 
 And 'twixt the tragic and the comic muse, 
 Courted of both, and dubious where to choose, 
 Th' immortal actor stands ." 
 
 This was flattery delicately administered ; and 
 as Cumberland did not, I presume, know that its 
 object would be present, (though perhaps he might 
 anticipate such an event as probable) its intro- 
 duction had all the appearance of sincerity. The 
 consequence was that Mr. Fitzherbert, the father 
 of Lord St. Helen, who was in the box with 
 Garrick, immediately went over to the one where 
 Cumberland was sitting, and told him how much 
 the manager was pleased with the unexpected 
 compliment : the immortal actor, from that time, 
 
176 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 sought every opportunity of cultivating his friend- 
 ship, and Cumberland reaped the harvest of his 
 panegyric in the production of his future dramas 
 under the superintendance of Garrick. 
 
 But, if the epilogue gained one friend, the pro- 
 logue made many enemies. It was written in a 
 style of conscious superiority which excited very 
 general displeasure ; and it contained an attack 
 upon contemporary dramatists which no one 
 should make who consults his own peace, with 
 whatever pretensions to pre-eminence he may 
 think himself graced. After upbraiding them with 
 gleaning from novels, pilfering from periodical pub- 
 lications, and purloining from French writers, he 
 ventured to insinuate, in the following lines, that 
 his play had none of these vices, but was composed 
 of original and indigenous materials. 
 
 " Not so our bard, to night he bids me say, 
 You shall receive and judge an English play : 
 From no man's jest he draws felonious praise, 
 Nor from his neighbour's garden crops his bays : 
 From his own breast the filial story flows, 
 And the free scene no foreign master knows : 
 Nor only tenders he his work as new : 
 He hopes 'tis good, or would not give it you." 
 
 There was neither poetry nor prudence in these 
 lines : and when Cumberland, in his Memoirs, 
 strove to vindicate them by an appeal to the lofty 
 independence which characterised Johnson's pro- 
 logue to his Irene, he should have remembered 
 the mighty chasm which separated him from the 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 177 
 
 man whose authority he would produce as his own 
 justification. I do not however think, that even the 
 arrogance of Johnson is to be applauded : it was 
 characteristic of the writer, but it was an example 
 which does not deserve to be followed. In a 
 situation where success confessedly does not 
 always follow merit, and where the decision that 
 is delivered can be revoked by no appeal, it is 
 surely more prudent to conciliate than to dare our 
 judges : and as no man loves to be bullied even 
 into justice, I suspect an author does not much 
 advance his interest who proudly claims, as his 
 right, what caprice may withhold or may give, and 
 what he can obtain from no other dispensers of 
 public honours than those whom he would in- 
 timidate into an acknowledgement of his merits. 
 There is something in arrogance, however sup- 
 ported by ability, which is sure to offend : and 
 though a haughty candidate for renown may snatch 
 the laurel without deigning to solicit it, he will 
 wear it with less complacent pride, and less good 
 will from mankind, than the modest suitor whose 
 hopes are proudly turned towards success, but 
 whose humility teaches him to value it as a gift 
 best bestowed, when bestowed with the concur- 
 rent assent of his contemporaries. 
 
 N 
 
178 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 Cumberland the original of Sheridan's Si:r 
 Fretful Plagiary.- — Miss Seward's opi- 
 nion of Cumberland* s Memoirs. — Censure of 
 her Letters, recently published. — Instances of 
 her vanity, affectation, and vitiated phraseology. 
 — Mr. Walter Scott's Portrait. — Mr. Sou- 
 they's Poem of Ma doc neglected by the pre- 
 sent generation. — The Rev. Mr. Fellowes' sa- 
 gacity, aided by the sagacity of Mr. Scott. — 
 Cumberland writes the West Indian. — Account 
 of some adventures which happened to him in 
 Ireland. 
 Cumberland repeatedly reminds his readers that 
 he has written a greater number of plays than any 
 other English author : the remark may be true : 
 but a prolific pen must not be confounded with a 
 vigorous one. It is from the quality of the pro- 
 duct that we judge of the soil, not from the 
 quantity. To produce much betokens fertility ; 
 but to produce well, is a proof of something better 
 than fecundity. 
 
 In the 269th page' of the first volume of his 
 Memoirs, he enters into a laboured vindication of 
 himself from all envy towards other authors, and 
 from all unfair modes of exalting or upholding his 
 own reputation. He refers, explicitly, to a report 
 which had been circulated respecting his endea- 
 vours to decry the merits of The School for 
 Scandal at its first appearance ; and he affirms 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 179 
 
 that he offered his accuser positive proof of his 
 being at Bath during the first run of that very 
 superior comedy. The gentleman (a reviewer) 
 was convinced, he says, of his innocence, but had 
 no opportunity of testifying his conviction to the 
 world : of course the accusation remains uncon- 
 tradicted except in the avowal of Cumberland 
 himself. 
 
 The anecdote, as I have heard it stated, was 
 this. When Sheridan produced his School for 
 Scandal^ Cumberland, who sat in a conspicuous 
 part of the theatre, preserved an inflexible rigidity 
 of muscle as often as the audience were testifying 
 their approbation by repeated bursts of laughter, 
 and he frequently expressed his surprise that they 
 should laugh at what had not the power even to 
 make him smile. There are social traitors in every 
 circle, and one such soon conveyed the sarcasm 
 to Sheridan, who coolly and wittily replied that 
 it was something ungracious in Cumberland not 
 to laugh at his comedy, when he had lately laughed 
 at one of his tragedies from the beginning to the 
 end. This was no doubt soon re-echoed in the 
 ears of Cumberland; and thus began that hostility 
 which led to Sheridan's severe exposure of his 
 opponent in Sir Fretful Plagiary*. 
 
 * This anecdote I have retained, because it is commonly believed, and 
 is related with all the confidence of truth. But it proceeds upon an erro- 
 neous supposition. Cumberland produced his first tragedy, (The Battle cj 
 Hastings) in 1778 ; — The School for Scandal was acted in 1776. If Cum- 
 
 NS 
 
180 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 This is one account. There is another which 
 states the provocation to have been given by Cum- 
 berland in his farce of the Note of Hand, or a 
 Trip to Newmarket, in which some satire is levelled 
 against the late Charles Fox, the Duke of Devon- 
 shire, and others, who were the heads of that party 
 under whose banners Sheridan had enlisted 
 himself. To retaliate the satire, he projected 
 and exhibited Sir Fretful. Which of these rela- 
 tions is true, or whether either of them has any 
 right to be believed I cannot tell. The question 
 can be satisfactorily answered only by one man. 
 
 It has been a very generally received opinion, 
 however, that Sir Fretful Plagiary was in- 
 tended for Cumberland : and so true was the re- 
 semblance, I have been told, that one of his sons 
 being present at the representation immediately 
 recognised his father. The late Miss Seward, in- 
 deed, draws an inference, even from his Memoirs, 
 which 1 confess appears to me unwarranted by the 
 general tenor of that work. 
 
 berland therefore did not laugh at Sheridan's comedy, it is most certain 
 that Sheridan could not then have laughed at his tragedy. If we suppose, 
 however, that Cumberland was not present at the representation of the 
 School for Scandal, till some time after its first appearance, (which will 
 agree with his own account), and that his solemnity was exhibited when he 
 did see it (probably after the production of the Battle of Hastings) , then 
 Sheridan, without any violation of chronology, might have uttered the 
 retort mentioned in the text, and have avenged himself by drawing the 
 character of Sir Fretful the ensuing year (1779), when the Critic was first 
 performed. Or, v/e may apply this inference to the supposition that the 
 tacit censure of Cumberland was not conveyed to Sheridan till long after 
 the period of its expression. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 181 
 
 c; In despite/' says she,* " of Mr. Cumberland's 
 repeated disavowals of envy and injustice towards 
 
 * See her Correspondence lately published, Vol. vi. p. 309. Of this 
 heterogeneous mass of vanity, pedantry, and virulence, let me take this 
 occasion to give my opinion. 
 
 It is perhaps unexampled in the history of literature, patiently to com- 
 pose letters that were to be afterwards patiently copied, and patiently 
 to be treasured up as a valuable bequest to mankind. I know not whe- 
 ther most to condemn the egregious egotism of this proceeding, or its 
 folly. I can find only one excuse for it, and that is the writer's sex. How 
 eminently her friends must value her correspondence now that they find 
 they were made merely the convenient vehicles for amassing a heap of 
 letters which, in their original conception, were intended, not to answer 
 the common purpose of such compositions ; not to be the unaffected me- 
 dium of conveying kindness, truth, or counsel, to an absent friend or 
 relative ; but to serve as repositories for her own notions upon literature, 
 politics, and morals, to be copied diligently into a common place book, and 
 to be bequeathed to a bookseller for publication after her death. Her 
 letter to Mr. Constable, in which this bequest is communicated to him, is 
 an accurate picture of female vanity and literary coquetry. 
 
 In passing from the principle which dictated this compilation, to its 
 execution, I do not find much to approve. I have been very thoroughly 
 disgusted with her pertness, her affectation, and her vitiated style ; and 
 I have been more than disgusted with her rancour towards the memory of 
 Johnson, whom, on every occasion, she malignantly traduces ; with her 
 petty malice and envy towards some living authors ; and her hyperbolical 
 adulation of others. In what she writes I find neither dignity of sentiment, 
 novelty of remark, nor acuteness of criticism : on all occasions her judge- 
 ments are the offspring of her passions : and we hence find some of the 
 most respectable names of modern literature ridiculously depreciated, 
 while others, who were never heard of till now found in these volumes, 
 are tickled into a belief of such endowments as can be paralleled only 
 by those which nature granted to a Shakspeare and a Milton. The reader 
 stares w ith astonishment as he finds himself in the company of such illus- 
 trious beings, and wonders by what fatality they were never known before ; 
 but a moment's reflection dispels the illusion, and he remembers that Miss 
 Seward praised all who praised her : that praise was a literary currency 
 between her and her associates, which no depreciation could rob of its value ; 
 and that no flattery is too gross for one author to give or another to 
 receive. 
 
182 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 other authors, this egotistic volume of his rivets, 
 instead of removing my long established conviction 
 
 The only merit which these volumes can be said to possess is, that they 
 contain some pleasing literary anecdotes : beyond that, I am yet to learn 
 what other claims they have to approbation. Their sentimental effusions 
 have nothing in them but antiquated raptures, or affected bursts of maudlin 
 sympathy and tenderness. 
 
 The opinion which I have here expressed has been formed from a very 
 diligent inspection of the volumes I condemn ; and I will extend this 
 note yet a little further, to communicate to my readers some of those pas- 
 sages which have concurred, with others, to its production. 
 
 Of her vanity, affectation, and vitiated phraseology, the following sen- 
 tences, from p. 241 of Vol. iv. may serve as a specimen :■ — 
 
 " That resemblance to Mrs. Fitzherbert, with which I have been so 
 variously, so repeatedly flattered, was observed by the polite, obliging, and 
 agreeable Lady Harewood last night, who has taken me to each assembly 
 since I had first the honour of her notice, 
 
 " So I think I will even go to Brighton instead of Harrowgate, to see if 
 I cannot rival Lady Jersey, by recalling former impressions, and make a 
 certain personage behave better to his amiable and lovely wife. Would 
 not that be a nice piece of amorous Knight, or rather Knightess errantry ? 
 My autumnalities would scarcely be an objection to a taste so partial to 
 mellow fruit." 
 
 Perhaps a perfectly delicate female might have omitted the last observa- 
 tion, considering that the letter is addressed to a gentleman. 
 
 In the same letter we have the following simple and unadorned descrip- 
 tion of a hot day in August : — 
 
 ** A week ago, we had a sudden transition from hybernal coldness to skies 
 of cloudless blaze. Phoebus shakes his fiery tresses on the rocks, and over 
 the wide stretched mountains, that girdle this vale and its golden crescent. 
 (The letter is written from Buxton.) The busy little world, that swarms 
 in the Arcade and its precincts, now gasp beneath a climate, which I should 
 suppose somewhat resembles the description of Mulciber's gilded palace in 
 Pandemonium. The aspect of the crescent is south east. Its colonnade 
 drinks the morning beams, and reflects tbem back with dazzling and op- 
 pressive force. Those to whom the lines of Milton are familiar, might be 
 inclined to exclaim, 
 
 The torrid walls, vaulted with fire, 
 Smite on their dazzled eyes." 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 183 
 
 that Sheridan's portrait of him, Sir Fretful 
 Plagiary, is not a caricature. That conviction 
 
 This is miserable rant. Let it suffice for the writer's taste. 
 Her hyperbolical adulation to living authors may be surmised from the 
 following instance. In a letter to Mr. Southey is this sentence : — 
 
 *' No foreigner ever did, or perhaps ever can attain that perfect know- 
 ledge of our language which might enable him to comprehend the dignity 
 and beauty of our noblest blank verse : consequently, they will never per- 
 ceive the superiority of Shakspeare, Milton, and ." Imagine, reader, 
 
 if you can, what name completes the triumvirate : but do not let your fancy 
 revert to the productions of Thomson, Akenside, Armstrong, or Cowper : 
 no : they were writers not to be joined with Shakspeare and Milton : hear 
 then who was :< — '* consequently " says Miss Seward, " they will never 
 perceive the superiority of Shakspeare, Milton, and Southey, to any 
 writer that ever gemm'd the runic fetters with ideas even the most in- 
 trinsically poetic." (Vol. VI. p. S76.J 
 
 Of this passage the conclusion appears to me unintelligible nonsense : 
 the rest I commit to the reader's judgment. How will he be surprised, 
 however, to learn that this corrival of Shakspeare and Milton, this third 
 poet tc whom no fourth can be found*, has fallen upon an age of such bar- 
 barism that his " glorious poem" (I use Miss Seward's words) of Madoc 
 produced, after a year's sale, no greater profit than— blush my country- 
 men — blush ! "THREE POUNDS, SEVENTEEN SHILLINGS, and ONE PENNY." 
 
 (See Vol. VI. Letter 66, p. 369). I can conceive with what pathetic ten- 
 derness of expression, the " poetically great Southey," (Miss Seward's 
 own words again, and her usual mode of compellation) communicated 
 this afflicting intelligence to his sympathising friend. 
 
 The fact, however, is a curious one. Does it proclaim the degeneracy 
 or the purity of our national taste ? The answer is obvious. 
 
 Mr. Walter Scott, I believe, is the avowed editor of these volumes. I 
 wish it were possible to know how he felt when he read the proof of that 
 sheet in the sixth volume, which contains the sixty-first letter. As it is 
 another instance of what I have said respecting Miss Seward and this cor- 
 respondence, I will transcribe a part of it here. It is addressed to a 
 Mr. Carey. 
 
 * What now becomes of Dryden's celebrated lines for the picture of 
 Milton ? 
 
184 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 was founded on attested anecdotes of his ingra- 
 titude, his pride, and his envy of superior writers." 
 
 " More immediately should I have noticed the kind contents of 'your 
 letter, had it arrived at a less interesting juncture. At two that day, Fri- 
 day last, the poetically great Walter Scott came, like a sun beam, to my 
 dwelling ! I found him sturdily maintaining the necessity of limiting 
 his inexpressibly welcome visit to the next day's noon. You will not won- 
 der that I could spare no minutes from hours so precious and so few. 
 
 " Ah ! fortunate if one of your filial sojourners here had proved the 
 means of introducing my poetic friends to each other. Such presentations 
 are amongst my heart's luxuries, fyc." 
 
 They who recollect the picture of Mr. Scott, prefixed to his Lady of the 
 Lake, a sturdy little gentleman, cooling himself upon a stump, will be 
 pleased with the following one by Miss Seward, and will admire the mo- 
 desty of Mr. Scott in permitting its insertion : 
 
 " This proudest boast of the Caledonian muse is tall, and rather robust 
 than slender, but lame in the same manner as Mr. Hayley*, and in a 
 greater measure. Neither the contour of his face, nor yet his features, are 
 elegant ; his complexion healthy, and somewhat fair, without bloom. 
 We find the singularity of brown hair and eye-lashes, with flaxen eye- 
 brows, and a countenance open, ingenuous^ and benevolent. When seri- 
 ously conversing, or earnestly attentive, though his eyes are rather of a 
 lightish grey, deep thought is on their lids : he contracts his brow, and 
 the rays of genius gleam aslant from the orbs beneath them. An upper 
 lip, too long, prevents his mouth from being decidedly handsome, but the 
 sweetest emanations of temper and of heart play about it when he talks cheer- 
 fully, or smiles ; and, in company, he is much oftener gay than contem- 
 plative. His conversation, an overflowing fountain of brilliant wit, appo- 
 site allusion, and playful archness, while, on serious themes it is nervous 
 and eloquent. The accent decidedly Scotch, yet by no means broad. On 
 the whole no expectation is disappointed, which his poetry must excite m 
 all who feel the powers and the graces of Aonian inspiration." 
 
 Some parts of this description it is not in the poAver of ridicule to exag- 
 
 * Why had he not a hump like Pope, sore eyes like Horace, and an 
 asthma like Virgil ? May not Mr. Scott say with the satirist, 
 ** Go on obliging creatures — make me see, 
 All that disgrae'd my betters met in me," 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 185 
 
 However reluctant the reader may be to accord 
 with Miss Seward in this opinion, he will perhaps 
 
 gerate. Deep thought seated on a man's eye-lids, and gleams of genius 
 darting sideways from the penthouse of a frown, are images so irresistibly 
 burlesque, that I have never yet found one who could read them without 
 merriment. Such slanting gleams might be expected from a man whose 
 obliquity of vision rivalled that of the once celebrated John Wilkes. The 
 description of his blooming complexion, his flaxen eye-brows, his grey 
 eyes, and his pouting upper lip, forms, altogether, a picture so ludicrous, 
 that no man would willingly have his portrait sketched in a similar way. 
 It reminds the reader of a young girl in some novel, who is depicting, to 
 some friend as sagacious as herself, the personal accomplishments of 
 her lover. But here, the ludicrous is heightened by the recollection of the 
 writer's age, her object, and her motive. 
 
 Before I conclude this note, I am tempted to amuse my reader with an 
 instance of profound erudition, for which he will be indebted to the pen of the 
 Rev.Mr.Fellowes. I do not, by any means, wish to be considered as speaking 
 with disrespect of that gentleman ; not because, as the conductor of the 
 Critical Revieiv , he may retaliate by telling his readers that this is a worth- 
 less production — a thing which, if done, will be done without the least 
 concern on my part — but because I do consider him as a man of talent, 
 and as the author of some valuable productions. He is one of Miss 
 Seward's correspondents, and of course receives his full share of extrava- 
 gant encomiums, especially in the letter which contains the passage I 
 allude to. How he could waste one moment in penning a proposi- 
 tion so idly self-evident, I am at a loss to conjecture. What should we 
 think of a man who told us in a pompous, well-rounded period, that if pig* 
 neither died nor were killed, there would soon be an accumulated popula- 
 tion of them, and that either the young pigs must be killed, to make 
 room for the old pigs, or the old pigs killed to make room for the young 
 pigs ? Yet such is precisely the information contained in the following 
 sentence from one of Mr. Fellowes' works, and which Miss Seward justly 
 commends for its truth : 
 
 " If the supposed increased durability of life," says Mr. F. " were the 
 common privilege of all men, it is evident that the earth must soon teem 
 ■with an accumulated population ; and that either the young must be de- 
 stroyed to leave room for the older, or the old to leave room for the young." 
 And as if this were not simple enough, Mr. Scott adds, " It is equally evi- 
 dent that, if mankind had not been born to die, a sphere of a thousand 
 times the extent of the earth, could not have contained all who have been 
 
186 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 more willingly assent to some of those which she 
 afterwards expresses. 
 
 " There is an absurd attempt in his Observer, to 
 ridicule that immortal and matchless imaginary 
 history, the Clarissa, which Dr. Johnson pro- 
 nounced not only the first novel, but perhaps the 
 first work in this language*. 
 
 " To the author of a little volume of very inge- 
 nious essays, published by Cadell in 1788, and 
 entitled Variety, I gave two numbers, which ex- 
 posed the false reasoning of that invidious tract in 
 the Observer. This history, which the author 
 of that work gives of himself in a huge quarto vo- 
 lume, contains a new attempt to tear the laurels 
 from those glorious volumes. It has the effrontery 
 to call their Grandison a nauseous pedant. And 
 how Cumbey, as Johnson used to call him, writhes 
 
 born since Adam's time. How much less then could the little garden of 
 Eden !" (Vol VI. p. 239). Really such " laboured nothings in so grave a 
 style" deserve to be stigmatised. 
 
 Here I close this long note. I have expressed a very strong and unquali- 
 fied disapprobation of Miss Seward's Letters, and I thought it but equit- 
 able to advance some grounds for my censures. I cannot be certain that 
 they will appear equally valid to others as to myself ; but of this I am cer- 
 tain, that I am actuated by no sinister motive. Miss Seward I never saw ; 
 with her I never corresponded ; from her pen I have received neither cen- 
 sure nor praise. I read with an unprejudiced mind, and with an unpre- 
 judiced mind I have declared my sentiments. They who differ from me 
 will think me perhaps unreasonably fastidious; let them think me sincere, 
 and I shall be contented. 
 
 * When it suits this lady to corroborate her own sentiments by those of 
 Dr. Johnson, how willingly she refers to him as an authority ; on all other 
 occasions her malignity towards him is no less conspicuous than it is con- 
 temptible. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 187 
 
 under the fame of the young Roscius, and avows 
 the mortification it cost him to see Master Betty, 
 as in scorn he terms him, going to rehearsal in a 
 coach that bore a ducal coronet ! 
 
 " And, on my word, Cumbey slips his falcon 
 at high game, inverse as well as in prose, since, 
 with equal effrontery to his defamation of Richard- 
 son, does he speak of Gray, whom Dr. Beattie 
 justly pronounced next to Milton in the strength 
 and grandeur of his muse. 
 
 " Then, with what acrimony does he resent 
 Mr. Hayley's testimony to an opinion universal in 
 the learned world, of Dr. Bentley as a critic in 
 English poetry. On what foundation that opinion 
 stands, let Bentley's ridiculous edition of Milton, 
 with its heap of absurd notes and presumptuous* 
 alterations of the text, witness ! Surely every au- 
 thor is free to speak his opinion of a deceased bro- 
 ther ! If that opinion be unjust, let men of letters 
 prove that injustice by reasons shewn ; but for a 
 descendant of an arraigned author to take up the 
 matter with resentment, and make it a family quar- 
 rel, is ridiculous in the extreme. There are, how- 
 ever, very amusing things in this selfish quarto — 
 good characteristic portraits of Soame Jenyns, 
 Foote, Goldsmith, Johnson, and Garrick ; and 
 poor Cumbey was vilely treated by our govern- 
 ment concerning that Spanish expedition. The 
 violation of its engagement to him was utterly dis- 
 honest and cruel, of which the official letters are 
 proofs incontrovertible." 
 
18S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 To some of the opinions contained in the preced- 
 ing extract, I shall have occasion to recur in the 
 progress of this work ; but it is sufficiently proved 
 by one part of it, that Cumberland's title to the 
 original of Sheridan's portrait has been faithfully 
 believed by many. 
 
 In the ensuing year (1770) Cumberland paid his 
 annual visit to his father, and while there he pro- 
 jected, and partly composed, his comedy of the 
 West Indian. The history of its production jus- 
 tifies my remarks upon the folly of that mode of 
 study which Cumberland boasts having adopted 
 when he wrote the Brothers. Instead of writing in 
 the midst of children he now seated himself in a 
 little closet in his father's mansion, unfurnished 
 and out of use, with only one window, and no 
 prospect from that window but a turf-stack, with 
 which it was almost in contact. 
 
 This was now his plan : but surely it was incon- 
 sistent with his former account, to declare, as he 
 does at page 276 of his Memoirs, " that in all his 
 hours of study it had been his object through life 
 so to locate himself as to have little or nothing to 
 distract his attention." I conceive there are few 
 things more calculated to distract our attention 
 than the babble of children, which he acknow- 
 ledges he sometimes endured, while he was soli- 
 citous to exclude the cheering and unobtrusive 
 beauties of nature from his view at such times, by 
 4C always avoiding pleasant prospects." 
 
 In this closet his mother occasionally visited him, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 1S9 
 
 and animated him with her remarks upon the pro- 
 gress of his work, which went on felicitously, for 
 every thing combined to render its author so. Re- 
 moved from the bustle of office and its cares, 
 from the intrusions of society and its temptations, 
 and surrounded by his parents, sister, wife, and 
 children, he beheld within his view all that a man 
 can desire, whose views of happiness are founded 
 upon a rational basis. Safe too from the malevo- 
 lence of critics, and the competitions of rivalry, 
 his mind was calm and concentrated to its pur- 
 pose ; and he declares that at no other period 
 of his life did the same happy circumstances com- 
 bine to cheer him in any of his literary labours. 
 
 In his poem of Retrospection he indulges in a 
 pleasing vein of contemplation as he recals those 
 moments of departed happiness, which he passed 
 in the bosom of his family. It is short, and may 
 be transcribed : 
 
 But come, Oh Memory, bring thy volume forth, 
 
 And let me see how many whiter days 
 
 In years long past thy calendar can shew. 
 
 Oh blest remembrances ! ye now unfold, 
 
 And spread before me, scenes of young delight ; 
 
 Stanwick's beloved mansion greets me now — 
 
 I feel a mother's welcome fond embrace ; 
 
 I see, I see a sainted father smile, 
 
 List'ning indulgent to my school-boy tale— 
 
 Oh stay delicious vision ! Vanish not 
 
 So suddenly, ye dear parental shades. 
 
 O leave not yet a son, who lov'd you ever, 
 
 Obey'd you living, and bewail' d you dead ; 
 
 Behold me now, how chang'd, how grey with years ! 
 
 Stay then, and from my filial bosom draw 
 
 These thorns that never would have rankled here 
 
90 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Had I, like you my father, humbly been 
 The servant of my God, nor toil'd to earn 
 The unpaid wages of a thankless world. 
 
 Still, still by Retrospection's magic power, 
 
 Though threescore years and ten have intervene, 
 
 I'm wafted back to boyhood, and behold, 
 
 To mental clear as to my nat'ral eye 
 
 The honour'd form of Bentley. — At his desk 
 
 Beside his garden window, deep in thought, 
 
 With books embay'd, the learn'd master sits .• 
 
 Unaw'd I run to him : around my neck 
 
 He throws his arms ; methinks e'en now I feel 
 
 Their pressure and his kiss upon my cheek : 
 
 And lo ! at once the page of ancient lore, 
 
 That offers no amusement to my sight 
 
 Is shut, the golden chain of his bright thoughts 
 
 Is snapt without a murmur — palsey struck 
 
 And halting, see ! he rises from his chair^ 
 
 And spreads before me what his shelves can show 
 
 Of prints, to gratify an idle boy." 
 
 There is a tender melancholy in this passage 
 which wins its way to the reader's heart. It ex- 
 hibits such remembrances as every man feels, and 
 feels with greater fervency, as the rude collisions 
 of the world remind him of what he has lost. 
 
 If the memory of Cumberland were faithful, and 
 that in writing his Memoirs he did not sometimes 
 confound the notions of advanced life with what 
 he conceived himself to have possessed when a 
 younger man, it may be pronounced that he 
 formed a very distinct and just conception of the 
 province of a comic writer for the stage, when he 
 himself meditated to assume that character. There 
 is necessarilv, however, some uncertainty attached 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 191 
 
 to the delivery of opinions at seventy, as those 
 which we had when forty ; and he must have a 
 more than ordinary power of discrimination who 
 can venture to affirm that he knows precisely the 
 chronology of his sentiments. The principles, 
 however, laid down by Cumberland, are such as 
 every writer may advantageously consult whpse 
 ambition it is to live in the memory of succeeding 
 generations. One praise which he assumes to 
 himself no one will deny : that in all his dramas 
 he has studiously avoided giving attractions to 
 vice by rendering it so amiable that our detesta- 
 tion of it is lost in admiring its more attractive 
 qualities. This was the reproach of Congreve, 
 Farquhar, and the dramatic writers of Charles 
 the Second's reign : but it is a reproach from 
 which Cumberland is wholly free. Transeat in 
 exemplum ! 
 
 During this visit to his father he experienced 
 some adventures which it may not be unpleasing 
 to give the reader in his own words, but I wish 
 one part of them had been more befitting the 
 gentleman and the scholar, than a main at cock- 
 fighting. 
 
 " During; an excursion of a few davs upon a 
 
 O %/ i 
 
 visit to Mr. Talbot of Mount Talbot, a very re- 
 spectable and worthy gentleman in those parts, I 
 found a kind of hermitage in his pleasure grounds, 
 where I wrote some few scenes, and my amiable 
 host was afterwards pleased to honour the 'thor 
 of the West Indian with an inscription, afliA 
 
192 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 that building, commemorating the use that had 
 been made of it ; a piece of elegant flattery very 
 elegantly expressed. 
 
 " On this visit to Mr. Talbot I was accompanied 
 by Lord Eyre of Eyre Court, a near neighbour and 
 friend of my father. This noble Lord, though 
 pretty far advanced in years, was so correctly in- 
 digenous, as never to have been out of Ireland in 
 his life, and not often so far from Eyre Court as in 
 this tour to Mr. Talbot's. Proprietor of a vast 
 extent of soil, not very productive, and inhabiting 
 a spacious mansion, not in the best repair, he lived 
 according to the style of the country with more 
 hospitality than elegance : whilst his table groaned 
 with abundance, the order and good taste of its 
 arrangement were little thought of: the slaughtered 
 ox was hung up whole, and the hungry servitor 
 supplied himself with his dole of flesh, sliced from 
 off the carcase. His lordship's day was so ap- 
 portioned as to give the afternoon by much the 
 largest share of it, during which, from an early 
 dinner to the hour of rest, he never left his chair, 
 nor did the claret ever quit the table. This did 
 not produce inebriety, for it was sipping rather 
 than drinking, that filled up the time, and this 
 mechanical process of gradually moistening the 
 human clay was carried on with very little aid 
 from conversation, for his lordship's companions 
 were not very communicative, and fortunately he 
 was not very curious. He lived in an enviable 
 independence as to reading, and of course he had 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 193 
 
 no books. Not one of the windows of his castle 
 was made to open, but luckily he had no liking 
 for fresh air, and the consequence may be better 
 conceived than described. 
 
 " He had a large and handsome pleasure boat on 
 the Shannon, and men to row it ; I was of two or 
 three parties with him on that noble water as far 
 as to Pertumna, the then deserted castle of the 
 Lord Clanrickarde. Upon one of these excursions 
 we were hailed by a person from the bank, who 
 somewhat rudely called to us to take him over to 
 the other side. The company in the boat making 
 no reply, I inadvertently called out — ' Aye, aye, 
 Sir ! stay there till we come/ — Immediately I 
 heard a murmur in the company, and Lord Eyre 
 said to me — ' You'll hear from that gentleman 
 again, or I am mistaken. You don't know perhaps 
 that you have been answering one of the most 
 irritable men alive, and the likeliest to interpret 
 what you have said as an affront.' He predicted 
 truly, for the very next morning the gentleman 
 rode over to Lord Eyre, and demanded of him to 
 give up my name. This his lordship did, but in- 
 formed him withal that I was a stranger in the 
 country, the son of Bishop Cumberland at Clon- 
 fert, where I might be found, if he had any com- 
 mands for me. He instantly replied, that he 
 should have received it as an affront from any 
 other man, but Bishop Cumberland's was a cha- 
 racter he respected, and no son of his could be 
 
 O 
 
19i< LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 guilty of an intention to insult him. Thus this 
 valiant gentleman permitted me to live, and only 
 helped me to another feature in my sketch of 
 Major O'Flaherty. 
 
 " A short time after this, Lord Eyre, who had 
 a great passion for cock-fighting, and whose cocks 
 were the crack* of all Ireland, engaged me in amain 
 at Eyre Court. I was a perfect novice in that 
 elegant sport, but the gentlemen from all parts 
 sent me in their contributions, and having a good 
 feeder I won every battle in the main but one. 
 At this meeting I fell in with my hero from the 
 Shannon bank. Both parties dined together, but 
 when I found that mine, which was the more 
 numerous and infinitely the most obstreperous 
 and disposed to quarrel, could ho longer be left in 
 peace with our antagonists, I quitted my seat by 
 Lord Eyre and went to the gentle above-alluded 
 to, who was presiding at the second table, and 
 seating myself familiarly on the arm of his chair, 
 proposed to him to adjourn our party, and assemble 
 them in another house, for the sake of harmony 
 and good fellowship. With the best grace in life 
 he instantly assented, and when I added that I 
 should put them under his care, and expect from 
 him as a man of honour and my friend, that every 
 mothers son of them should be found forthcoming 
 and alive the next morning — 'Then by the soul 
 
 * Cumberland was fond of this vulgarism. In his account of the West 
 Indian's first appearance, he talks of the audience in the gallery " sending 
 up a hearty crack." 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. \9o 
 
 of me/ he replied, ' and they shall ; provided only 
 that no man in company shall dare to give the glo- 
 rious and immortal memory for his toast, which no 
 gentleman, who feels as I do, will put up with/ 
 To this I pledged myself, and we removed to a 
 whiskey house, attended by half a score pipers, 
 playing different tunes. Here we went on very 
 joyously and lovingly for a time, till a well-dressed 
 gentleman entered the room, and civilly accosting 
 me, requested to partake of our festivity, and join 
 the company, if nobody had an objection — c Ah 
 now, don't be too sure of that/ a voice was in- 
 stantly heard to reply, c I believe you will find 
 plenty of objection in this company to your being 
 one amongst us/ What had he done, the gen- 
 tleman demanded- — ' What have vou done/ re- 
 joined the first speaker, e Doi/t I know you for 
 the miscreant, that ravished the poor wench against 
 her will, in presence of her mother? And didn't 
 your Pagans, that held her down, ravish the mo- 
 ther afterwards, in presence of her daughter ? And 
 do you think we will admityou into our company? 
 Make yourself sure that we shall not ; therefore 
 get out of this as speedily as you can, and away 
 wid you !' Upon this the whole company rose, 
 and in their rising the civil gentleman made his 
 exit and was off. I relate this incident exactly 
 as it happened, suppressing the name of the gen- 
 tleman, who was a man of property and some 
 consequence.- — When my surprise had subsided 
 
 O 9 
 
196 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 and the punch began to circulate with a rapidity 
 the greater for this gentleman's having troubled 
 the waters, I took my departure, having first cau- 
 tioned a friend, who sate by me, (and the only 
 protestant in the company) to keep his head cool 
 and beware of the glorious memory; this gallant 
 young officer, son to a man* who held lands of my 
 father, promised faithfully to be sober and discreet, 
 as well knowing the company he was in ; but my 
 friend having forgot the first part of his promise, 
 and getting very tipsy, let the second part slip out 
 of his memory, and became very mad ; for stepping 
 aside for his pistols, he re-entered the room, and 
 laying them on the table, took the cockade from 
 his hat, and dashed it into the punch-bowl, de- 
 manding of the company to drink the glorious and 
 immortal memory of King William in a bumper, 
 or abide the consequences. I was not there, and 
 if I had been present I could neither have stayed 
 the tumult, nor described it. I onlv know he 
 turned out the next morning merely for honour's 
 sake, but as it was one against a host, the mag- 
 nanimity of his opponents let him off with a shot 
 or two, that did no execution. I returned to the 
 peaceful family at Clonfert, and fought no more 
 cocks. 
 
 " The fairies were extremely prevalent at Clon- 
 fert: visions of burials attended by long pro- 
 cessions of mourners were seen to circle the church 
 yard by night, and there was no lack of oaths and 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 197 
 
 attestations to enforce the truth of it. My mother 
 suffered a loss by them of a large brood of fine 
 turkies, who were every one burnt to ashes, bones 
 and feathers, and their dust scattered in the air by 
 their provident nurse and feeder to appease those 
 mischievous little beings, and prevent worse con- 
 sequences : the good dame credited herself very 
 highly for this act of atonement, but my mother 
 did not see it quite in so meritorious a light. 
 
 " A few days after as m}^ father and I were 
 riding in the grounds we crossed upon the Ca- 
 tholic priest of the parish. My father began a 
 conversation with him, and expressed a wish that 
 he would caution his flock against this idle super- 
 stition of the fairies : the good man assured the 
 bishop that in the first place he could not do it 
 if he would ; and in the next place confessed that 
 he was himself far from beino* an unbeliever in their 
 existence. My father thereupon turned the 
 subject, and observed to him with concern, that 
 his steed was a very sorry one, and in very 
 wretched condition — ' Truly, my good lord/ he 
 replied, ' the beast himself is but an ugly garron, 
 and whereby I have no provender to spare him, 
 mightily out of heart, as I may truly say ; but 
 your lordship must think a poor priest like me has 
 a mighty deal of work and very little pay — ' 6 Why 
 then, brother/ said my good father, whilst bene- 
 volence beamed in his countenance, ' 'tis fit that 
 I, who have the advantage of you in both respects, 
 should mount you on a better horse, and furnish 
 
198 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 you with provender to maintain him — .' This 
 parley with the priest passed in the very hay-field, 
 where the bishop's people were at work ; orders 
 were instantly given for a stack of hay to be made 
 at the priest's cabin, and in a few days after a 
 steady horse was purchased and presented to him. 
 Surely they could not be true born Irish fairies, 
 that would spite my father, or even his turkies, 
 after this. 
 
 " Amongst the labourers in my father's garden 
 there were three brothers of the name of O'Rourke, 
 regularly descended from the kings of Connaught, 
 if they were exactly to be credited for the cor- 
 rectness of their genealogy. — There was also an 
 elder brother of these, Thomas O'Rourke, who 
 filled the superior station of hind, or headman; it 
 was his wife that burnt the bewitched turkies, 
 whilst Tom burnt his wig for joy of my victory at 
 the cock-match, and threw a proper parcel of 
 oatmeal into the air as a votive offering for my 
 glorious success. One of the younger brothers 
 was upon crutches in consequence of a contusion 
 on nis hip, which he literally acquired as follows — 
 When my father came down to Clonfert from 
 Dublin, it was announced to him that the bishop 
 was arrived : the poor fellow was then in the act 
 of lopping a tree in the garden ; transported at the 
 tidings, he exclaimed — ' Is my lord come ? Then 
 I'll throw myself out of this same tree for joy — .' 
 He exactly fulfilled his word, and laid himself up 
 for some months. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 199 
 
 C| When I accompanied my mother from Clon- 
 fert to Dublin, my father having gone before, we 
 passed the night at Killbeggan, where Sir Thomas 
 CufTe, (knighted in a frolic by Lord Townshend) 
 kept the inn. A certain Mr. Geoghegan was ex- 
 tremely drunk, noisy and brutally troublesome to 
 Lady Cuffe the hostess : Thomas O'Rourke was 
 with us, and being much scandalised with the 
 behaviour of Geoghegan, took me aside, and in a 
 whisper said — ' Squire, will I quiet this same Mr. 
 Geoghegan V When I replied by all means, but 
 how was it to be done ? — Tom produced a knife of 
 formidable length, and demanded — c Haven't I got 
 this? And won't this do the job, and hasn't he 
 wounded the woman of the inn with a chopping 
 knife, and what is this but a knife, and wouldn't it 
 be a good deed to put him to death like a mad dog? 
 Therefore, Squire, do you see, if it will pleasure 
 you and my lady there above stairs, who is ill 
 enough, God he knows, I'll put this knife into that 
 same Mr. Geoghegan's ribs, and be off the next 
 moment on the grey mare ; and isn't she in the 
 stable ? Therefore only say the word, and I'll do 
 it.' This was the true and exact proposal of 
 Thomas O'Rodrke, and as nearly as I can re- 
 member, I have stated it in his very words. 
 
 " We arrived safe in Dublin, leaving Mr. 
 Geoghegan to get sober at his leisure, and dis- 
 missing O'Rourke to his quarters at Clonfert. 
 When we had passed a few days in Kildare-Street, 
 I well remember the surprise it occasioned us one 
 
200 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 afternoon, when without any notice we saw a 
 great gigantic dirty fellow walk into the room, and 
 march straight up to my father for what purpose 
 we could not devise. My mother uttered a scream, 
 whilst my father with perfect composure addressed 
 him by the name of Stephen, demanding what he 
 wanted with him, and what brought him to Dub- 
 lin- — ' Nay, my good lord,' replied the man, ' I 
 have no other business in Dublin itself but to take 
 a bit of a walk up from Clonfert to see your sweet 
 face, long life to it, and to beg a blessing upon me 
 from your lordship; that is all/ So saying he 
 flounced down on his knees, and in a most piteous 
 kind of howl, closing his hands at the same time 
 cried out — ■' Pray, my lord, pray to God to bless 
 Stephen Costello- — .' The scene was sufficiently 
 ludicrous to have spoiled the solemnity, yet my 
 father kept his countenance, and gravely gave his 
 blessing, saying as he laid his hands on his head 
 — c God bless you, Stephen Costello, and make 
 you a good boy !■ The giant sung out a loud 
 amen, and arose, declaring he should immediately 
 set out and return to his home. He would ac- 
 cept no refreshment, but with many thanks and a 
 thousand blessings in recompence for the one he 
 had received, walked out of the house, and I can 
 well believe resumed his pilgrimage to the west- 
 ward without stop or stay. I should not have 
 considered this and the preceding anecdotes as 
 worth recording, but that they are in some degree 
 characteristic of a very curious and peculiar people* 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 201 
 
 who are not often understood by those who profess 
 to mimic them, and who are too apt to set them 
 forth as objects for ridicule only, when oftentimes 
 even their oddities, if candidly examined, would 
 entitle them to our respect. 
 
 " I will here mention a very extraordinary ho- 
 nour, which the city of Dublin was pleased to 
 confer upon my father in presenting him with his 
 freedom in a gold box ; a form of such high respect 
 as they had never before observed towards any 
 person below the rank of their chief governor ; I 
 state this last-mentioned circumstance from au- 
 thorities that ought not to be mistaken; if the fact 
 is otherwise, I have been misinformed, and the 
 honour conferred upon the bishop of Clonfert was 
 not without a precedent. The motives assigned 
 in the deed, which accompanied the box, are in 
 general for the great respectability of his character, 
 and in particular for his disinterested protection of 
 the Irish clergy. Under this head it was supposed 
 they alluded to the benefice, which he had be- 
 stowed upon a most deserving clergyman, his own 
 particular friend and chaplain, the Reverend Dixie 
 Blondel, who happened also to be at that time 
 chaplain to the Lord Mayor of Dublin. I have 
 the box at this time in my possession/' 
 
202 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 
 Cumberland returns to England, and offers his 
 West Indian to Garrick. — It is accepted and 
 performed. — History of its success. — Criticisms 
 upon it by Lord Lyttleton and Lord Clare. — 
 Observations upon its fable, characters, and Ian- 
 guage. — Belcour. — Major O' Flaherty not skil- 
 fully drawn. — Inferior to the delineations of Irish 
 character by Colman and Miss Edgeworth. — 
 Ungrammatical construction of the language. — 
 Mrs. Inchbald* s mode of criticism. 
 
 When Cumberland returned to England, his first 
 step was to offer the West Indian to Garrick, with 
 some confidence as to its fate, remembering the 
 incident of the " immortal actor/' Immortal as 
 he was in his talents, he was mortal in his passions : 
 no man deserved praise more than he did ; no man 
 received it in larger portions : and no man sought 
 it withrmore voracity. His vanity had a stomach 
 that could swallow whatever was offered : with a 
 mind formed to delight in the judicious commenda- 
 tion of the discerning few, it was no less capable 
 of battening on the gross and undistinguishing 
 panegyric of the multitude: nay, such was his 
 eagerness to be applauded, that he did not always 
 observe whether the applause was the genuine 
 offspring of admiration, or the lure of self-interest 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 203 
 
 by which he was to be entrapped for some ser- 
 vice : as in the well known instance of Mallet, 
 who amused him with the phantom of a conspi- 
 cuous mention in the life of Marlborough, and 
 thus opened an avenue for his Alfred to appear on 
 the stage. It may be supposed, therefore, that 
 the dextrous eulogy bestowed upon him by Cum- 
 berland had some share in disposing his mind to a 
 favourable reception of whatever he might after- 
 wards tender. 
 
 But he did not confine himself merely to a favour- 
 able reception of the West Indian. He did more ; 
 and he did what shewed that he at least wished its 
 success, while it proved, also, the docility with 
 which the author adopted whatever was proposed 
 to him as a means likely to ensure that success. 
 Many alterations were suggested and improvements 
 proposed in the course of frequent interviews be- 
 tween him and Cumberland ; his hints were scru- 
 pulously followed, and it may be inferred, there- 
 fore, that the West Indian owes some of that 
 excellence which it now displays, to the friendship 
 of Garrick. 
 
 In the interval between its acceptance and re- 
 presentation, Cumberland's opinion of its merits 
 seems to have been so very slender, (for I presume 
 he anticipated success as the necessary conse- 
 quence of merit), that he offered to give its 
 eventual produce to Garrick, for a picture in his 
 
204 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 possession, a copy from a Holy Family of Andreo 
 del Sarto : and the bargain would have been con- 
 cluded had not Garrick happened to set a par- 
 ticular value upon the picture as the gift of Lord 
 Baltimore. 
 
 On the first night of its performance, the audi- 
 ence assembled with intentions hostile to its pros- 
 perity. It had been rumoured, from the title of 
 the piece, that it contained some satirical strokes 
 against the West Indians, and numbers of those 
 who conceived that they were to be ridiculed un- 
 der this appellation, repaired to the theatre with a 
 resolution to rescue themselves from the antici- 
 pated indignity. 
 
 When the first lines of the prologue were 
 spoken, the tumult began to shew itself. All was 
 uproar and confusion ; Garrick, who was sitting in 
 his own box with the author, remarked, that he had 
 never seen such decided indications of a turbulent 
 disposition in an audience, and drew the most un- 
 favourable conclusions as to the success of the 
 play. Cumberland was not impressed with the 
 same terrors; he trusted to the actual scope and 
 intention of his drama, and believed that when 
 they saw his views were honourable they would 
 give him honourable reception. 
 
 His conjecture was the right one. Silence was 
 enforced, and the actor ordered to re-commence 
 the prologue ; it was now suffered to proceed till 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 205 
 
 it came to the line where they were told to expect 
 from the chief character of the play, 
 
 " Some emanations of a noble mind." 
 
 This, if it did not quiet their fears, gave them 
 reasonable motives for awaiting the developement 
 of the piece, and they remained without offering 
 any further interruption ; ready for peace or war, 
 according as they were soothed or provoked. 
 
 The success of this play I need not tell. Every 
 murmur of disapprobation was silenced before the 
 curtain dropped, and the author retired from the 
 field flushed with the honours of victory. It en- 
 countered some opposition from the critics indeed, 
 and Garrick stood forth in its defence : but their 
 cavils had not power to turn aside the current of 
 popularity ; the public opinion was fixed, and the 
 town crowded for eight and twenty successive 
 nights, to behold its representation. 
 
 The rumours of fame, however, were not all that 
 gladdened the imagination of Cumberland. Mr. 
 Evans, the treasurer of the theatre, arrived at his 
 house in a coach, with " a huge bag of money/ ' 
 and spread before his wondering eyes the shining 
 heap, which, uniting its own substantial qualities 
 to the airy and immaterial ones of renown, com- 
 pounded together such a real and visible reward 
 as every author desires, but does not always get. 
 
 In addition to this, he sold the copy-right for 
 150/. to Griffin in Catherine-street, who had no 
 
206 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 reason to regret his purchase, for he boasted of 
 having vended 12,000 copies of it. In this state- 
 ment, however, I suspect there is some exagge- 
 ration. 
 
 While the author was wantoning in the exu- 
 berance of his good fortune, Garrick was ma- 
 liciously preparing a slight antidote for him ; 
 something that would obscure, with a momen- 
 tary gloom, the cloudless azure of his mind. 
 Cumberland called upon him one morning, 
 " and found him with the St. James's even- 
 ing paper in his hand, which he began to read 
 with a voice and action of surprise, most admira- 
 bly counterfeited, as if he had discovered a mine 
 under his feet, and a train to blow him up to de- 
 struction. ' Here, here/ he cried, ' if your skin 
 is less thick than a rhinoceros's hide, egad, 
 here is that will cut you to the bone. This is a 
 terrible fellow ; I wonder who it can be ?' He 
 began to sing out* his libel in a high declamatory 
 tone, with a most comic countenance, and pausing 
 at the end of the first sentence, which seemed to 
 favour his contrivance for a little ingenious tor- 
 menting, when he found he had hooked him, he 
 laid down the paper, and began to comment upon 
 the cruelty of newspapers, and moan over him 
 with a great deal of malicious fun and good hu- 
 mour. ' Confound these fellows, they spare no- 
 
 * A vulgar mode of expression which Cumberland to© often employ?. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 207 
 
 body. I dare say this is Bickerstaff again ; but 
 you don't mind him ; no, no, I see you don't mind 
 him ; a little galled, but not much hurt; you may 
 stop his mouth with a golden gag, but we'll see 
 how he goes on.' He then resumed his reading, 
 cheering him all the way as it began to soften, till 
 it wound up in the most professed panegyric, of 
 which he was himself the writer." 
 
 It was thus that Garrick had his joke, which to 
 be comprehended must have been seen ; and it was 
 thus, I suppose, that he repaid the compliment of 
 Cumberland in the prologue to the Brothers. 
 
 These, however, were but fictitious objections 
 to his play ; but Lord Lyttleton started one that 
 had all the weight of truth to recommend it. This 
 took place one evening at Mrs. Montague's, when 
 his lordship observed to Cumberland, that the 
 expedient of sending 0' Flaherty behind the scene 
 to listen, was one equally repugnant to the nature 
 of true comedy, and to the avowed feelings of ho- 
 nour by which every gentleman is supposed to be 
 influenced. Cumberland scarcely sought to vin- 
 dicate the incident, for his politeness so far outrun 
 his judgment that he ventured to inform his lord- 
 ship, " no precedent could justify any thing which 
 his better judgment had condemned ;" but. as he 
 could not remove the offending scene without a 
 greater alteration in other parts than was thought 
 prudent, he qualified its obnoxious character by 
 introducing the clause in the Major's speech, 
 
208 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND* 
 
 " that a good soldier must sometimes fight in am- 
 bush as well as in the open field/' 
 
 Lord Nugent also played the critic upon this 
 drama. He condemned the five wives of O'Fla- 
 herty, as a violent outrage upon morality. To this 
 censure Cumberland listened with equal docility ; 
 and his lordship's delicacy was propitiated by a 
 lucky suggestion of Moody, who played the part, 
 and who avowed his polygamy with the salvo of 
 en militaire; a soldier being supposed to have a 
 privilege of possessing as many wives as he can 
 seduce, and more than he can keep. Davies, in 
 his life of Garrick, says that this qualifying phrase 
 was adopted by Moody, from his own persuasion 
 of its necessity ; but I should suppose Cumber- 
 land more likely to know the truth. 
 
 Of this comedy, thus auspiciously presented to 
 the world, I will now give that opinion which a 
 very frequent observation of it on the stage, and 
 a recent perusal, have enabled me to form. 
 
 I am not prepared to affirm that it is the 
 best of Cumberland's plays, because I think his 
 Jew, his Fashionable Lover, and his Wheel of 
 Fortune entitled to contend that claim with it. 
 It is, undoubtedly, however, a very good comedy, 
 and bears internal evidence of that study and 
 retirement which, being denied to The Brothers, 
 rendered it so inferior a production. The scenes 
 are not so incoherently abrupt as in that and 
 some other of the author's dramas ; they are harmo- 
 nised with more skill, being dismissed neither with 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 209 
 
 unsatisfying brevity, nor protracted into languid 
 prolixity. They succeed each other without any 
 violation of dramatic probability ; and hasten on 
 the action by means which appear natural, be- 
 cause not produced by the Jidt of the author, but 
 by the course of the events themselves. This is a 
 praise which cannot always be given to the plays 
 of Cumberland. 
 
 The plot is pleasingly intricate, though I have 
 always thought that much of its interest was de- 
 stroyed by the premature disclosure of Stockwell's 
 paternity in relation to Belcour ; that agreeable 
 surprise which the author might have advan- 
 tageously reserved till the developement of the 
 action is thrown away without any equivalent. 
 Had this been avoided, I know nothing that could 
 have been added to render the argument of the 
 play completely excellent. 
 
 Of the characters, Belcour & is the most promi- 
 nent, and the most laboured. In him the author 
 concentrated his chief efforts to please, and he at- 
 tained what he wished. Belcour is a man such as 
 the world often presents ; a man whose passions are 
 sometimes too strong for his virtue, but whose 
 virtue is never wholly destroyed. Benevolent and 
 impetuous, he forgets that justice is paramount to 
 generosity, and gives away the property of another 
 with the same indifference and with greater culpa- 
 bility than he would squander his own. He has 
 
 P 
 
21X) LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 all the turbulent qualities of youth, and some of 
 its amiable inconsistencies ; incautious in giv- 
 ing offence, but quick in resenting it, and as 
 quick in meeting a generous offer of reconciliation 
 when his honour has been duly propitiated. Such 
 is Belcour^ and such as he is, he never fails to 
 command the good- will both of the spectator and the 
 reader. Why he is made a West Indian^ however, 
 I am unable to conjecture. No quality is given 
 to him which might not belong to a European, 
 and those qualities which would have distin- 
 guished him, in conformity with his appellation, 
 are withheld. 
 
 Of Charlotte Rusport I think as Mrs. Abington 
 thought when she accepted the part ; it is a sketch 
 and not a character. The same may be said of 
 Louisa Dudley. They are interesting however. 
 
 The other personages require no comment, if 
 Major OFlaherty be excepted. What the au- 
 thor's intentions were in delineating this character 
 he has himself told us. He put him into the 
 Austrian service to remind the public that an Irish 
 Catholic is the victim of penal disabilities; but I 
 hope, if those disabilities are ever removed, they 
 will be removed, not precipitately, but with deep 
 and patient consideration of probable and possible 
 consequences. He gave him courage, for it be- 
 longs to his nation ; a proposition to which I wil- 
 lingly accede. " I endowed him with honour," 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 211 
 
 he continues, " for it belongs to his profession, 
 and I made him proud, jealous, susceptible, for 
 such the exiled veteran will be, who lives by the 
 earnings of his sword, and is not allowed to draw 
 it in the service of that country which gave him 
 birth, and which of course he was born to defend ; 
 for his phraseology I had the glossary ready at 
 hand ; for his mistakes and trips, vulgarly called 
 bulls, I. did not know the Irishman of the stage 
 then existing, whom I would wish to make my 
 model ; their gross absurdities, and unnatural con- 
 trarieties have not a shade of character in them. 
 When his imagination is warmed, and his ideas 
 rush upon him in a cluster, 'tis then the Irish- 
 man will sometimes blunder ; his fancy having 
 supplied more words than his tongue can well dis- 
 pose of, it will occasionally trip. But the imita- 
 tion must be delicately conducted ; his meaning is 
 clear, he conceives rightly, though in delivery he 
 is confused : and the art, as I conceive it, of find- 
 ing language for the Irish character on the stage, 
 consists not in making him foolish, vulgar, or ab- 
 surd, but on the contrary, while you furnish him 
 with expressions that excite laughter, you must 
 graft them upon sentiments that deserve ap- 
 plause." ' 
 
 To establish the rules by which a thing may be 
 well performed, and to perform it well, do not 
 always belong to the same person. The power to 
 
 P2 
 
212 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 conceive is often much stronger than the power to 
 execute, for a man may imagine a character which 
 he cannot afterwards depict. His notions may be 
 drawn from a judgment speculatively accurate; 
 but they may not be enforced by a practice equally 
 accurate; and in this predicament I consider Cum- 
 berland to stand with respect to Major O'Flaherty. 
 His idea of what the Irish character should be, 
 dramatically, is just ; but I do not think he has 
 made O' Flaherty that Irishman which, in fancy, 
 he perceived to be his perfect delineation. He 
 seldom speaks either the language or the senti- 
 ments of his countrymen; but is made to utter 
 a dialect which belongs neither to England nor 
 Ireland, for an Irish gentleman is in no respect 
 distinguishable from an English one, or if there 
 be any distinction, it is perhaps in favour of the 
 former : but a plebeian Irishman is an animal dis- 
 tinct from all the rest of mankind. 
 
 When Cumberland, therefore, made his charac- 
 ter an officer, he made him a gentleman by impli- 
 cation, and in giving him the stage cant of the Irish- 
 man, he gave him what I do not think he could 
 easily have found in Ireland. Refinement and 
 education give to the higher classes of society a 
 character nearly uniform ; it is only the lower that 
 are discriminated by habits which each man 
 adopts, according to his own notions of what is 
 excellent. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 213 
 
 Cumberland, I believe, was the first who at- 
 tempted to introduce the Irish gentleman on the 
 stage, but the attempt may be considered as unsuc- 
 cessful, for the national diversity is not marked by 
 lines of sufficient distinctness to strike the fancy. 
 I suppose there is no reader who does not prefer 
 the delineations of the Irish character, by Colman, 
 and Miss Edgeworth to the O'Flaherty of Cum- 
 berland ; and I believe no one doubts that they 
 are more faithfully copied from nature. Miss 
 Edgeworth's, indeed, are beyond all praise. 
 
 The language of this comedy is, in general, ele- 
 gant and suitable to the characters ; but it is not 
 always so correct as it ought to be. I have ob- 
 served, indeed, (and shall have frequent occasion 
 to notice it in the course of this work) that Cum- 
 berland is often inexcusably negligent in the gram- 
 matical construction of his sentences. Comedy, 
 as an exhibition of real life, is more or less perfect 
 as it approaches more or less to that which real life 
 presents. This, at least, may be said of the man- 
 ners ; but in the diction the author is to consider 
 not how his characters would speak, but how, 
 according to their respective qualities, they ought 
 to speak. Thus a chambermaid may be allowed 
 to use double negatives and double comparatives ; 
 but her mistress should speak a language purified 
 from all such errors, as it is presumed she re- 
 presents an individual of education and good- 
 breeding. 
 
214 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 To this distinction, however, Cumberland was 
 never sufficiently attentive, but puts such modes 
 of expression into the mouths of his ladies and 
 gentlemen as would incur a reprimand in the 
 theme of a school-boy. Thus, in this play, where 
 the language, in all other respeets, is so scrupu- 
 lously polished, I find such errors as, " Was I 
 only a visitor/' (Act I. Sc. V.J. — " Was^ 1 to 
 chuse a pupil," (ib.)—" You was brought up," 
 (Act I. Sc. VI. J — " You was about to join your 
 regiment," (Act II. Sc. I.J Both these forms 
 of construction are invariably used, though there 
 is hardly an attorney's clerk who would not avoid 
 such gross mistakes, even in familiar conver- 
 sation. 
 
 Before I dismiss this play from my notice, I 
 must be permitted to observe upon the curious 
 method of ascertaining it's author's merits employed 
 by Mrs. Inchbald. After some prefatory remarks, 
 which relate more to the history of the drama 
 than to its excellencies or defects, she concludes by 
 quoting the following letter from the Spectator : 
 
 " Mr. Spectator, 
 
 " Be so kind as to let me know what you esteem 
 to be the chief qualification of a good poet, espe- 
 cially of one who writes plays ?" 
 
 To this a very silly answer was returned, viz. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 215 
 
 " To be a well-bred man :" and Mrs. Inchbald 
 heightens its absurdity by this inference : 
 
 " On this position — Mr. Cumberland is a man 
 of perfect good breeding/ ' 
 
 If there be any wit or ingenuity of applica- 
 tion in this which I cannot find out, let my dull- 
 ness bear the fault. If it be criticism let those 
 profit by it who think it such. 
 
216 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 Cumberland enters the path of controversy. — Writes 
 against Bishop Lowth . — Reflections upon the 
 freedom of discussing the merits of literary men. 
 • — He loses a present which was sent to his uncle 
 as the presumed author of the tract. — Writes to 
 the donor. — Made the heir of a distant relation. — 
 Disappointed ultimately. — Cumberland's own 
 account of this curious transaction. 
 
 Justly proud of the literary honours of his race, 
 Cumberland was no less tenacious of their reputa- 
 tion. As their descendant, he considered himself 
 obliged, by the ties of consanguinity, no less than 
 by a principle of veneration common to every man 
 who reveres the memory of his ancestors, to watch, 
 with a jealous eye, over their posthumous renown, 
 and to stand forth as their champion against any 
 daring hand that should strive to tarnish the laurels 
 they had won. 
 
 But every virtue may be carried to excess, and 
 it may perhaps be thought that Cumberland's 
 reverential solicitude for the literary character of 
 Bentley, degenerated into captiousness. Cer- 
 tainly, a dead author is the legitimate prey of every 
 living one ; and it seems a morbid delicacy of feel- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 217 
 
 Ing to rouse at every attack which the celebrity of 
 a man draws upon him. Bentley's, indeed, was a 
 character more calculated to provoke hatred and fear 
 than to conciliate esteem or affection : and it might 
 be supposed that he who had assaulted his antago- 
 nists with a coarseness too often disgraceful to let- 
 ters, would find opponents as willing and as capa- 
 ble to encounter him with the same weapon. It is 
 the common fate of arrogance to excite enemies: 
 every man is eager to pull him down, who vaunts 
 too loudly when he is up, even though there be 
 ability to countenance the haughtiness by which 
 it is degraded. 
 
 Cumberland must have known that whatever 
 domestic benevolence belonged to the character of 
 his grandfather, there was very little of literary 
 courtesy in it ; and he must also have known 
 enough of human nature to conclude that a man 
 who treated, with excessive rudeness, all who 
 differed from him in opinion, would sometimes 
 find as little politeness as he shewed. Why then 
 was he, on all occasions, so incensed against 
 those who presumed to speak of Bentley in a man- 
 ner which he considered as disrespectful ? Why 
 did he claim for him a privilege whose authority 
 was never acknowledged by Bentley himself? 
 This alone gives an air of ridicule to his vehement 
 declamations: but the principle itself is, perhaps, 
 still less to be defended. If there were now a lineal 
 descendant of Shakspeare in the literary world, 
 
218 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 surely we should but smile if he were to attack 
 his commentators with all the acrimony of pious 
 zeal, and intemperately censure those who dared 
 to censure his illustrious ancestor. This would 
 be a species of immunity unknown in the republic 
 of letters, where every man enjoys a perfect free- 
 dom of opinion as long as the moral character re- 
 mains untouched, and where all who distinguish 
 themselves, tacitly invite the rest of mankind to 
 applaud or condemn them as they choose. 
 
 If I may judge from Cumberland's practice, 
 however, he considered both dead and living au- 
 thors (including himself and family) as sacred, and 
 their merits not to be agitated by the rude breath 
 of criticism. He seems to have been equally sen- 
 sible of any attack, whether directed towards the 
 controversial asperity of Bentley, or to his own dra- 
 mas ; and to have lived in perpetual dread of that 
 power whose decrees he affected to despise. The 
 probability of this, with regard to himself, I shall 
 have occasion to discuss hereafter ; but his pam- 
 phlet addressed to Lowth, and his controversy 
 with Mr. Hayley sufficiently prove it with respect 
 to Bentley. 
 
 Lowth had taken occasion, in a tract which he 
 wrote professedly against Warburton, to stigmatise 
 the character of Bentley. Cumberland considered 
 this as an unnecessary aggression, being foreign to 
 the object of the work, and meditated to avenge 
 the insult. The reader must smile, however, as 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 219 
 
 he contemplates his notions of forbearance. " The 
 bishop/' says he, " is now dead, and I will not 
 use his name irreverently ;" of course, when, 
 only a few lines before, he denominates his pam- 
 phlet " unepiscopally intemperate in the highest 
 degree," accuses him of going out of his course 
 " to hurl dust upon the coffin of Bentley," and 
 afterwards arraigns him of " downright black- 
 guardism/' as well as of indulging in acrimonious 
 censure " till his lawn-sleeves were bloody," (no 
 very delicate or elegant metaphor), he considered 
 those gentle modes of reproof as the very essence 
 of a reverential regard for a deceased antagonist. 
 Surely, when Lowth called Bentley aut caprhnul- 
 gus aut fossor, (the dire offence for which his de- 
 scendant took up arms against him), the attack 
 was not much coarser than the one I have just 
 exhibited, perpetrated under the very avowal of 
 mildness and civility. Perhaps, indeed, the bi- 
 shop's was the least offensive, as it was veiled in 
 the obscurity of a learned language. 
 
 Cumberland, however, believed the cause a 
 sacred one, and he listened to its call with alacrity. 
 The son of Bentley was yet living, to whom, as he 
 stood nearer in relationship to the traduced critic, 
 he thought the task of defending him more pro- 
 perly belonged, and he therefore submitted to his 
 acceptance the post of honour. He declined the 
 task (perhaps because he considered it one of use- 
 less tendency) and begged that Cumberland, in 
 
220 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 adopting it, would so conduct the proposed attack 
 that it might not be mistaken for his ; a request 
 not very indicatory of much estimation for the 
 undertaking. Cumberland promised to designate 
 himself in such a manner as should leave no room 
 for doubt, and then vigorously commenced his 
 operations. 
 
 The pamphlet soon grew to a considerable size, 
 and was published with the following involved and 
 confused title : " A Letter to the Right Rev. the 
 Lord Bishop of O d, containing some animad- 
 versions upon a character given of the late Dr. 
 Bentley, in a Letter from a late Professor in the 
 University of Oxford, to the Right Reverend Au- 
 thor of the Divine Legation of Moses demon- 
 strated/' 
 
 This was the motto : 
 
 Jam parce stpulto. 
 
 The pamphlet had some success, for it went 
 through " two full editions," but Lowth never con- 
 descended to notice it by any reply. His silence, 
 which might aptly be construed into contempt, 
 Cumberland asserts to have arisen from a consci- 
 ousness of its justice, for he had occasion to 
 know that he refused the voluntary services of a 
 clergyman who offered to fight his lordship's bat- 
 tles, by observing that the retaliation was equita- 
 ble, and that it would be better to let it pass with- 
 out reply. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 221 
 
 This pamphlet I have never seen, and therefore 
 can say no more of it than what its author has 
 communicated. Pie selects from it the following 
 passage, as an attack which he considers to be 
 " fairly pressed? upon Lowth, and in which 
 opinion the reader will probably concur. 
 
 " Recollect, my lord, the warmth, the piety, 
 with which you remonstrated against Bishop 
 
 W 's treatment of your father, in a passage of 
 
 his Julian : — c It is not, you therein say, in behalf 
 of myself that I expostulate, but of one for whom I 
 am much more concerned, that is my father.' 
 These are your lordship's words — amiable, affect- 
 ing expression ! instructive lesson of filial devo- 
 tion ! alas, my lord, that you who were thus sensible 
 to the least speck which fell upon the reputation of 
 your father, should be so inveterate against the 
 fame of one at least as eminent, and perhaps not 
 less dear to his family/' 
 
 These are, indeed, arguments ad hominem, but 
 I do not know that they invalidate the principle of 
 the attack which Lowth made upon Bentley. 
 
 His uncle's desire not to be mistaken for the 
 author of this letter, was amply gratified, except 
 in the instance of one old gentleman, whose mis- 
 conception was the occasion of a handsome gra- 
 tuity to him as the presumed defender of Bentley. 
 This gentleman was Mr. Commissary Greaves, of 
 Fulborne, in Cambridgeshire, who had a great 
 affection for the memory of Bentley, and was, as 
 
222 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Cumberland believed, indebted to him for some 
 essential services. Supposing the son of his de- 
 ceased friend and benefactor, to have been the au- 
 thor of the letter to Lovvth, he not only compli- 
 mented the writing, but sent a valuable present to 
 him as the writer. 
 
 This present Cumberland seems to have regretted 
 the loss of, conceiving it but fair, that he who en- 
 dured all the labour and incurred all the peril, 
 should receive all the reward ; and when he heard of 
 the unfortunate misapprehension, he despatched a 
 letter to the old gentleman, in which it is amusing to 
 see the artifice with which its real object is endea- 
 voured to be concealed while it seems to be merely 
 a complimentary epistle. The thoughts of the dona- 
 tion were still floating before the writer's fancy, 
 and he ingeniously strives to remind the giver, that 
 he who deserved it did not get it. 
 
 For the reader's gratification I will transcribe 
 this letter. 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 " When in the warmth of your affection for the 
 memory of my grandfather, you could praise a 
 pamphlet written by me, and address your praises 
 to my uncle, as supposing him to be the author of 
 it, I am more flattered by your mistake than I will 
 attempt to express to you. You have ever been so 
 good to me, that had your commendations been di- 
 rected rightly, I must have ascribed the greater 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 223 
 
 share of them to your charitable interpretation of 
 my zeal, and the rest I should have placed to the 
 account of your politeness. 
 
 " When I was an under graduate at Trinity Col- 
 lege, you was so obliging as to let me be informed 
 of your intention to encourage and assist me in 
 my studies ; and though circumstances at that 
 time intervened*, to postpone your kind design, 
 you have so abundantly overpaid me, that I have 
 no greater ambition now at heart than that I may 
 continue so to write as to be mistaken for my 
 uncle, and you so to approve of what you read, 
 as to see fresh cause of applauding him, who is so 
 truly deserving of every favour you can bestow. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, &c." 
 " To William Greaves^ Esq. Fulbome." 
 
 It does not appear that Mr. Greaves understood 
 the hint, or if he understood it, he did not proba- 
 bly think himself bound to shew that he did. It 
 is evident, however, that Cumberland thought 
 himself (and justly it must be confessed) the legi- 
 timate object of his bounty. 
 
 Nor was this the only instance in which an 
 intended beneficence was frustrated between 
 the first conception and the final act. When 
 
 * This intended encouragement consisted of a proposed present of books, 
 ^o the amount of twenty pounds ; but a wet season took place ; bis fen lands 
 were under water ; and Cumberland went without his books. He remind* 
 him, however, that such a thing 1 was once thought of. 
 
2%4> LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the West Indian had made him popular, he was 
 selected by a distant relation as his heir, and the 
 testator waited upon him personally, to assure him 
 of his intentions. The commencement and con- 
 clusion of this curious business shall be given in 
 Cumberland's own words. 
 
 " I was surprised one morning, at an early hour, 
 by a visit from an old clergyman, the Rev. Deci- 
 mus Reynolds. I knew there was such a person 
 in existence, and that he was the son of Bishop 
 Reynolds by my father's aunt, and of course his 
 first cousin, but I had never seen him to my 
 knowledge in my life, and he came now at an hour 
 when I was so particularly engaged, that I should 
 have denied myself to him, but that he had called 
 once or twice before, and been disappointed of 
 seeing me. I had my office papers before me, and 
 my wife was making my tea, that I might get down 
 to Whitehall in time for my business, and the 
 coach was waiting at the door. He was shewn 
 into the room ; a more uncouth person, habit and 
 address, was hardly to be met with ; he advanced, 
 stopt, and stood staring with his eyes fixed upon 
 me for some time, when, putting his hand into a 
 pocket in the lining of the breast of his coat, he 
 drew out an old packet of paper rolled up and tied 
 with whip-cord, and very ceremoniously de- 
 sired me to peruse it. I begged to know what it 
 was ; for it was a work of time to unravel the 
 knots — he replied— " My will." And what am I 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 295 
 
 to do with your will, Sir? — ' My heir—' Wei], 
 Sir, and who is your heir ? (I really did not un- 
 derstand him — c Richard Cumberland — look at 
 the date- — left it to you twenty years ago — my 
 whole estate—- real and personal — come to town 
 on purpose— brought up my title deeds — put them 
 into your hands — sign a deed of gift, and make 
 them over to you hard and fast.' 
 
 " All this while I had not looked at his will ; I 
 did not know he had any property, or, if he had, 
 I had no guess where it laid, nor did 1 so much as 
 know whereabouts he lived. In the mean time he 
 delivered himself in so strange a style, by starts and 
 snatches, with long pauses and strong sentences, 
 that I suspected him to be deranged, and I saw, by 
 the expression of my wife's countenance, that she 
 w r as under the same suspicion also. — I now cast 
 my eye upon the will ; I found my name there as 
 his heir, under a date of twenty years past ; it was 
 therefore no sudden caprice, and I conjured him to 
 tell me if he had any cause ot' quarrel or displeasure 
 with his nearer relations. Upon this he sate 
 down, took some time to compose himself, for he 
 had been greatly agitated, and having recovered 
 his spirits, answered me deliberately and calmly, 
 that he had no immediate matter of offence with 
 his relations, but he had no obligations to them of 
 any sort, and had been entirely the founder of his 
 own fortune, which by marriage he had acquired, 
 and by economy improved. I stated to him that 
 
 Q 
 
226 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 my friend and cousin Mr. Richard Reynolds, of 
 Paxton, in Huntingdonshire, was his natural heir, 
 and a man of most unexceptionable worth and 
 good character : he did not deny it, but he was 
 wealthy and childless, and he had bequeathed it 
 to me, as his will would testify, twenty years ago, 
 as being the representative of the maternal branch 
 of his family ; in fine he required of me to accom- 
 pany him to my conveyancer, and and direct a po- 
 sitive deed of gift to be drawn up, for which pur- 
 pose he had brought his title deeds with him, and 
 should leave them in my hands. He added, in fur- 
 ther vindication of his motives, that my father had 
 been ever his most valued friend, that he had con- 
 stantly watched my conduct, and scrutinised my 
 character, although he had not seen occasion to 
 establish any personal acquaintance with me. Up- 
 on this explanation, and the evidence of his having 
 inherited no atom of his fortune from his paternal 
 line, I accepted his bounty so far as to appoint the 
 next morning for calling on Mr. Heron, who then 
 had chambers in Grav's Inn, when I would state 
 the case to him, and refer myself to his judgment 
 and good counsel. The result of my conference 
 with the lately deceased Sir Richard Heron, was 
 the insertion of a clause of resumption, empower- 
 ing the donor to revoke his deed at any future 
 time, when he should see fit, and this clause I par- 
 ticularly pointed out to my benefactor, when he 
 signed the deed. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 227 
 
 " It was with difficulty I prevailed upon him to 
 admit it, and can witness to the uneasiness it gave 
 him, whilst he prophetically said I had left him 
 exposed to the solicitations and remonstrances of 
 his nephews, and that the time might come, when 
 in the debility of age and irresolution of mind, he 
 might be pressed into a revocation of what he had 
 decided upon as the most deliberate act of his 
 life. 
 
 " My kind old friend stood a long siege before 
 he suffered his prediction to take place ; for it was 
 not till after nearly ten years of uninterrupted cor- 
 diality, that, weak and wearied out by importunity, 
 he capitulated with his besiegers, and sending his 
 nephew into my house in Queen-Ann-street, un- 
 expectedly one morning, surprised me with a de- 
 mand, that I would render back the whole of his 
 title deeds : I delivered them up exactly as 1 had 
 received them ; his messenger put them into his 
 hackney-coach, and departed. 
 
 " In consequence of this proceeding I addressed 
 the following letter to the Rev. Mr. Decimus Rey- 
 nolds, at Clophill, in Bedfordshire : 
 
 s Queen-iVnn-Street, 
 8 Dear Sir, ' Monday, 13th Jan. 1779. 
 
 c I received your letter by the conveyance 
 c of Major George Reynolds, and in obedience to 
 * your commands have resigned into his hands all 
 ' your title deeds, entrusted to my custody. I 
 
 Q2 
 
£28 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 4 would liaVe -'had a schedule taken of them by 
 4 Mr. Kipling, for your better satisfaction and 
 4 security, but as your directions were peremptory, 
 4 and Major Reynolds, who was ill, might have 
 4 been prejudiced by any delay* I thought it best 
 c to put them into his hands without further form, 
 4 which, be assured, I have done, without the 
 4 omission of one, for they have lain under seal at 
 4 my banker's ever since they have been com- 
 6 mitted to my care. 
 
 4 Whatever motives may govern you, dear Sir, 
 4 for recalling either your confidence, or your 
 ' 4 bounty, from me and my family, be assured you 
 4 will still possess and retain my gratitude and 
 6 esteem. I have only a second time lost a father, 
 ' and I am now too much in the habit of disap- 
 c pointment and misfortune, not to acquiesce with 
 ' patience under the dispensation. 
 
 4 You well can recollect, that your first bounty 
 4 was unexpected and unsolicited ; it would have 
 'been absolute, if I had not thought it for mv re- 
 4 putation to make it conditional, and subject to 
 4 your revocation : perhaps I did not believe you 
 4 would revoke it, but since you have been in- 
 4 diicecl to wish it, believe me, I rejoice in the re- 
 4 flection, that every thing has been clone by me 
 \ for your accommodation, and I had rather my 
 4 children should inherit an honourable poverty 
 4 than an ample patrimony, which caused the 
 4 giver of it one moment of regret. " 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. %g§ 
 
 ' I believe I have some few papers still at Tet- 
 ' worth, which I received from you in the coun- 
 c try. I shall shortly go down thither, and will 
 c wait upon you with them. At the same time, if 
 I you wish to have the original conveyance of your 
 ' lands, as drawn up by Sir Richard Heron, I shall 
 c obey you by returning it; the uses being cancelled 
 ' the form can be of little value, and I can bear in 
 ' memory your former goodness without such a 
 c remembrancer. 
 
 ' Mrs. Cumberland and my daughters join me 
 c in love and respects to you and Mrs. Reynolds, 
 6 whom by this occasion I beg to thank for all her 
 1 kindness to me and mine. I spoke yesterday to 
 ' Sir Richard Heron,' [Sir Richard Heron was 
 Chief Secretary in Ireland] c and pressed with more 
 '" than common earnestness upon him, to fulfil your 
 ' wishes, in favour of Mr. Decimus Reynolds, in 
 c Ireland. It would be much satisfaction to me to 
 ' hear the deeds came safe to hand, and I hope you 
 4 will favour me with a line to say so. 
 
 c I am, &c. &c. 
 
 ■ r. c: 
 
 " I have been the more particular in the detail 
 of this transaction, because I had been unfairly re- 
 presented by a relation, whom, in the former part 
 of these memoirs, I have recorded as the friend of 
 my youth ; a man, whom I dearly loved, and to- 
 
230 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 wards whom I had conducted myself through the 
 whole progress of this affair with the strictest 
 honour and good faith, voluntarily subjecting my- 
 self, the father of six children, to be deprived of 
 a valuable gift, which the bestower of it wished to 
 have been absolute and irrevocable/ 1 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 231 
 
 CHAP. XI. 
 
 The 'popularity which attended a successful drama- 
 tic author in preceding times.- — Causes of this, 
 and of the decay of that popularity. — The cele- 
 brity of Cumberland from the performance of 
 the West Indian. — Obtains him the society of 
 Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Reynolds, 
 Sfc. — His character of Johnson. — An adum- 
 bration of him in the Observer. — Comparison 
 between him and Burke in the poem of Retro- 
 spection. — Johnson a better Greek Scholar 
 than is insinuated by Cumberland. — Observa- 
 tions upon simplicity of style. 
 
 The production of a successful play, fifty years 
 ago, was an event not commonly beheld, and its 
 value was not cheapened in the eyes of men by 
 its frequency. A dramatic writer came forth, 
 with all the attractions which novelty and merit 
 could give him ; and if he succeeded, he succeeded 
 with a degree of popularity which is now denied 
 to all literary enterprise, for in no department 
 can a candidate exert himself in which competi- 
 tors are not hourly contending with him for supre- 
 macy. A play-writer is now the most familiar of 
 human objects ; he that can produce nothing else, 
 can produce a something which, by the help of 
 
23% LIFE OF CUMBERLAND.-' 
 
 scenery, grimace, and a cant phrase or two, shall 
 run nine nights, then to recede from public notice, 
 to make way for some other thing just as excellent 
 and just as brief in its existence. The demand for 
 novelty is incessant, and incessantly is it supplied; 
 but, as voracious eaters are commonly observed to 
 be not very nice or fastidious in their food, so those 
 whose appetites for what is new are stronger than 
 their relish of what is good, and it naturally results 
 that their providers will furnish them with the 
 cheapest commodities. The frequency of modern 
 dramas, indeed, produces an effect something like 
 the familiar exhibitions of the person of Hal, and 
 the profound observations of life that are contained 
 ill the reproof which Shakspeare has put into his 
 father's mouth, will aptly apply to the surfeited 
 and over-gorged stage of the present day : — 
 
 (t They began 
 To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little 
 More than a little is by mnch too much. 
 So when we had occasion to be seen, 
 He was but as the cuckoo is in June, 
 Heard, not regarded ; seen, but with such eyes, 
 As, sick and blunted with community 
 Afford no extraordinary gaze, 
 Such as is bent on sun-like majesty 
 When it shines seldom in admiring eyes." 
 
 If the difficulty of success, however, was in- 
 creased to the dramatic writers of former times, 
 their renown, when successful, was in proportion 
 to the obstructions by which its acquisition was 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 233*" 
 
 intercepted. No mode of literary labour was so 
 certainly calculated to secure that idol, popularity, 
 to which all men sacrifice who have any anxiety 
 for the " last infirmity of noble minds/' or who 
 wish to secure power by the appearance of possess- 
 ing it already. The conceptions of the author 
 were aided by those of the actor ; his wit and hu- 
 mour acquired fresh lustre and fresh powers of 
 exciting mirth, by the assistance of gesture, look, 
 and voice ; scenic splendour concurred to increase 
 the general delusion, and that which in the closet 
 was found to have but little dominion over the 
 gay or serious feelings of the reader, made him 
 smile or weep without resistance, when he sat in 
 the theatre as a spectator. 
 
 This command over the passions, in which some- 
 times more belonged to the actor than to the author, 
 was ascribed chiefly to the genius of the latter, and 
 every man was eager to behold, to court, and to cele- 
 brate him whose pen had produced such extraordi- 
 nary effects. His happiest passages were repeated 
 from mouth to mouth ; his flashes of wit were told 
 at every table ; his felicity of execution was related 
 with applause ; and hardly any company could 
 assemble where some rumours of his glory and 
 success would not be heard. His name resounded 
 in every house ; and he could scarcely appear 
 abroad without hearing something that reminded 
 him of his dramatic celebrity. 
 
 These were the rewards of those who, in former 
 
l 234t LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 times, trod in the steps of Shakspeare, Ford, 
 Massinger, Shirley, Beaumont and Fletcher, and 
 Jonson. They were a race of men not common 
 enough to be despised. They wrote with leisure, 
 for one good play w r as held to be sufficient for one 
 season ; they had few competitors, for there was 
 no demand for novelties beyond what a few able 
 writers could supply ; and every man who could 
 connect together some twenty scenes of conversa- 
 tion, divided afterwards into five acts, and call the 
 speakers, characters, was not then a dramatic 
 writer, nor was there any easy avenue to a public 
 trial of his skill. 
 
 As, therefore, the field of exertion was reserved 
 for a few candidates, and as those few but seldom 
 exacted the applauses of their judges, their appear- 
 ance came to be a rarity, and their success a thing 
 to be talked of. Dryden, indeed, in the period to 
 which I allude, was an exception to this absti- 
 nence; but the list of dramas produced by Con- 
 greve, Otvvay,Rowe, Southerne, Steele, and others, 
 sufficiently testifies the truth of my assertions, 
 and sufficiently accounts for that sort of popularity 
 which once belonged to a successful dramatist. 
 
 I k.iow, indeed, but of one path, in modern 
 times, that will certainly lead either to equal re- 
 nown or to equal reward : and that is the path of 
 calumny. A convicted libeller, (especially a poli- 
 tical one) is sure to make his fortune, and to raise 
 his name ; for while he triumphantly enters the 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 23o 
 
 prison, which is the legal reward of his actions, 
 some knave or fool proposes a subscription to re- 
 lieve his sufferings, and that is his political reward. 
 His name is, for a time, in the mouths of the vul- 
 gar, and his pockets are filled by the donations of 
 the crafty, the weak, and the credulous. The 
 time of his liberation arrives ; he walks forth from 
 his dungeon a stranger to the face of day; infests 
 society for awhile with repetitions of his calum- 
 nies and abuse, till insulted law again consigns 
 him to his cell, and another subscription buys him 
 again his " dirty and dependent bread." 
 
 Crimine ah uno disce omnes 
 
 Though the infrequency of dramatic productions 
 was something less in Cumberland's time than in 
 that which preceded it, there was still, however, 
 enough of novelty in the event to excite much 
 public attention, and to procure much popularity 
 for the successful writer; and Cumberland himself 
 says, that after the acting of the West Indian, he 
 was the Master Betty of his day, a mode of com- 
 parison for which he was indebted to a public 
 fatuity as extraordinary as ever disgraced the taste 
 of any nation. 
 
 One consequence of this popularity was, that 
 he was admitted to the society of men of eminence 
 for rank and talent, and among his associates we 
 find the names of Burke, Reynolds, Johnson, Gar- 
 rick, Goldsmith, Foote, and Jenyns. With these 
 
236 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 illustrious characters he lived in familiar society, 
 and he has transmitted to posterity, both in his 
 Memoirs, and in his poem of Retrospection, some 
 highly finished sketches of their peculiar qualities 
 and excellencies. These are, perhaps, the best 
 things he ever wrote, whether in prose or poetry ; 
 they are distinguished by a felicity of expression, 
 and vividness of colouring, which affect the mind 
 with the same impressions of real and visible 
 existence, as a fine painting does the physical or- 
 gan of sight. As they relate, also, to persons of 
 whom too much cannot be known, they are always 
 read with that interest which attaches to every 
 thing connected with the illustrious dead ; and 
 being the testimony of one who knew them well, 
 they come before the reader with an authority and 
 recommendation which all transmitted testimonies 
 must always want. 
 
 Of Johnson it may be thought that nothing has 
 been untold which kindness or enmity could re- 
 late; yet, as every man views an object wjth feel- 
 ings which are peculiarly his own, and wrjich dis- 
 tinguish his representation from every other, the fol- 
 lowing portrait of that extraordinary character still 
 pleases, because it contains some finer strokes 
 not familiar to us, though all the bolder outlines 
 are. 
 
 " Who will, say," he asks, " that Johnson 
 would have been such a champion in literature, 
 such a front-rank soldier in the fields of fame, if he 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 237 
 
 had not been pressed into the service, and driven 
 on to glory with the bayonet of sharp necessity 
 pointed at his back? If fortune had turned him 
 into a field of clover, he would have laid down 
 and rolled in it. The mere manual labour of writ- 
 ing would not have allowed his lassitude and love 
 of ease to have taken the pen out of the inkhorn* 
 unless the cravings of hunger had reminded him 
 that he must fill the sheet before he saw the table 
 cloth. He might indeed have knocked down Os- 
 bourne for a blockhead, but he would not have 
 knocked him down with a folio of his own writing. 
 He would perhaps have been the dictator of a 
 club, and wherever he sate down to conversation, 
 there must have been that splash of strong bold 
 thought about him, that we might still have had a 
 collectanea after his death ; but of prose I guess 
 not much, of works of labour none, of fancy per- 
 haps something more, especially of poetry, which 
 under favour I conceive was not his tower of 
 / strength. I think we should have had his Rasse- 
 las at all events, for he was likely enough to have 
 written at Voltaire, and brought the question to 
 the test, if infidelity is any aid to wit. An ora- 
 tor he must have been ; not improbably a parlia- 
 mentarian, and, if such, certainly an oppositionist, 
 for he preferred to talk against the tide. He 
 would indubitably have been no member of the 
 Whig Club, no partisan of AYilkes, no friend of 
 Hume, no believer in Macpherson ; he would have 
 
23S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 put up prayers for early rising, and laid in bed all 
 day, and with the most active resolutions possible 
 been the most indolent mortal living. He was a 
 good man by nature, a great man by genius, we 
 are now to enquire what he was by compulsion. 
 
 " Johnson's first style was naturally energetic, 
 his middle style was turgid to a fault, his latter 
 style was softened down and harmonised into pe- 
 riods, more tuneful and more intelligible. His 
 execution was rapid, yet his mind was not easily 
 provoked into exertion ; the variety we find in his 
 writings was not the variety of choice arising from 
 the impulse of his proper genius, but tasks im- 
 posed upon him by the dealers in ink, and con- 
 tracts on his part submitted to in satisfaction of the 
 pressing calls of hungry want ; for, painful as it is 
 to relate, I have heard that illustrious scholar as- 
 sert (and he never varied from the truth of fact) 
 that he subsisted himself for a considerable space 
 of time upon the scanty pittance of fourpence half- 
 penny per day. How melancholy to reflect that 
 his vast trunk and stimulating appetite were to be 
 supported by what will barely feed the weaned in- 
 fant ! Less, much less, than Master Betty has 
 earned in one night, would have cheered the 
 mighty mind, and maintained the athletic body of 
 Samuel Johnson in comfort and abundance for a 
 twelvemonth. Alas! I am not fit to paint his 
 character : nor k there need of it ; Etiam mortuus 
 loquitur; every man, who can buy a book, has 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. VW 
 
 bought a Boswell ; Johnson is known to all the 
 reading world. I also knew him well, respected him 
 highly, loved him sincerely ; it was never my chance 
 to see him in those moments of moroseness and ill 
 humour, which are imputed to him, perhaps with 
 truth, for who would slander him] But I am not 
 warranted by any experience of those humours to 
 speak of him otherwise than of a friend, who 
 always met me with kindness, and from whom I 
 never separated without regret. — When I sought 
 his company he had no capricious excuses for 
 withholding it, but lent himself to every invitation 
 with cordiality, and brought good humour with 
 him, that gave life to the circle he was in. He 
 presented himself always in his fashion of apparel; 
 a brown coat with metal buttons, black waistcoat 
 and worsted stockings, with a flowing bob wig, 
 was the style of his wardrobe, but they were in 
 perfectly good trim, and with the ladies, which he 
 generally met, he had nothing of the slovenly phi- 
 losopher about him ; he fed heartily, but not vora- 
 ciously, and was extremely courteous in his com- 
 mendations of any dish, that pleased his palate ; he 
 suffered his next neighbour to squeeze the China 
 oranges into his wine glass after dinner, which 
 else perchance had gone aside, and trickled into 
 his shoes, for the good man had neither straight 
 sight nor steady nerves. 
 
 " At the tea table he had considerable demands 
 upon his favourite beverage, and I remember when 
 
240 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND* 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, at my house, reminded him 
 that he had drank eleven cups, he replied — c Sir, I 
 did not count your glasses of wine, why should 
 you number up my cups of tea ?' And then laugh- 
 ing in perfect good humour, he added — ' Sir, I 
 should have released the lady from any further 
 trouble, if it had not been for your remark ; but 
 you have reminded me that I want one of the 
 dozen, and I must request Mrs. Cumberland to 
 round up my number — ' When he saw the readi- 
 ness and complacency with which my wife obeyed 
 his call, he turned a kind and cheerful look upon 
 her, and said- — c Madam, I must tell you for your 
 comfort, you have escaped much better than a cer- 
 tain lady did awhile ago, upon whose patience I 
 intruded greatly more than I have done on yours ; 
 but the lady asked me for no other purpose but to 
 make a Zany of me, and set me gabbling to a par- 
 cel of people I knew nothing of: so, madam, I had 
 my revenge of her: for I swallowed five and twenty 
 cups of her tea, and did not treat her with as 
 many words — ' I can only say my wife would 
 have made tea for him as long as the New River 
 could have supplied her with water. 
 
 " It was on such occasions he was to be seen in 
 his happiest moments, w T hen, animated by the 
 cheering attention of friends, whom he liked, he 
 would give full scope to those talents for narration, 
 in which, I verily think, he was unrivalled, both 
 in the brilliancy of his wit, the flow of his humour. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 241 
 
 and the energy of his language. Anecdotes of 
 times past, scenes of his own life, and characters 
 of humourists, enthusiasts, crack-brained projec- 
 tors, and a variety of strange beings, that he 
 had chanced upon, when detailed by him at 
 length, and garnished with those episodical re- 
 marks, sometimes comic, sometimes grave, which 
 he would throw in with infinite fertility of fancy, 
 were a treat, which though not always to be pur- 
 chased by five and twenty cups of tea, I have 
 often had the happiness to enjoy for less than half 
 the number. He was easily led into topics ; it 
 was not easy to turn him from them : but who 
 would wish it? If a man wanted to shew himself 
 off, by getting up and riding upon him, he was 
 sure to run restive and kick him off; you might as 
 safely have backed Bucephalus, before Alexander 
 had lunged him. Neither did he always like to be 
 overfondled ; when a certain gentleman out-acted 
 his part in this way, he is said to have demanded of 
 him — c What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have 
 I said any thing that you understand ?— Then I 
 ask pardon of the rest of the company — ' But this 
 is Henderson's anecdote of him, and I won't 
 swear he did not make it himself. The following 
 apology, however, I myself drew from him, when 
 speaking of his tour, I observed to him, upon 
 some passages, as rather too sharp upon a country 
 and people, who had entertained him so hand- 
 somely — ' Do you think so, Cumbey?' he re- 
 
 R 
 
242 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 plied. — ' Then I give you leave to say, and you 
 may quote me for it, that there are more gentlemen 
 in Scotland than there are shoes. — ' 
 
 " The expanse of matter, which Johnson had 
 found room for in his intellectual storehouse, the 
 correctness with which he had assorted it, and the 
 readiness with which he could turn to any article 
 that he wanted to make present use of, were the 
 properties in him, which I contemplated with the 
 most admiration. Some have called him a savage ; 
 they were only so far right in the resemblance, as 
 that, like the savage, he never came into suspici- 
 ous company without his spear in his hand, and 
 his bow and quiver at his back. In quickness of 
 intellect few ever equalled him, in profundity of 
 erudition many have surpassed him. I do not 
 think he had a pure and classical taste, nor was 
 apt to be best pleased with the best authors, but 
 as a general scholar he ranks very high. When I 
 would have consulted him upon certain points of 
 literature, whilst I was making my collections 
 from the Greek dramatists for my essays in the 
 Observer, he candidly acknowledged, that his stu- 
 dies had not lain amongst them, and certain it is 
 there is very little shew of literature in his Ram- 
 blers, and in the passage, where he quotes Aris-' 
 totle, he has not correctly given the meaning of the 
 original. But this was merely the result of haste 
 and inattention, neither is he so to be measured, 
 for he had so many parts and properties of scholar- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 243 
 
 ship about him, that you can only fairly review 
 him as a man of general knowledge. As a poet 
 his translations of Juvenal gave him a name in the 
 world, and gained him the applause of Pope* He 
 was a writer of tragedy, but his Irene gives him 
 no conspicuous rank in that department. As an 
 essayist he merits more consideration; his Ram- 
 blers are in every body's hands ; about them opi- 
 nions vary, and I rather believe the style of these 
 essays is not now considered as a good model ; this 
 he corrected in his more advanced age, as may be 
 seen in his Lives of the Poets, where his diction, 
 though occasionally elaborate and highly metapho- 
 rical, is not nearly so inflated and ponderous, as in 
 the Ramblers. He was an acute and able critic ; 
 the enthusiastic admirers of Milton, and the friends 
 of Gray, will have something to complain of, but 
 criticism is a task, which no man executes to all 
 men's satisfaction. His selection of a certain pas- 
 sage in the Mourning Bride of Congreve, which he 
 extols so rapturously, is certainly a most unfortu- 
 nate sample; but unless the oversights of a cri- 
 tic are less pardonable than those of other men, we 
 may pass this over in a work of merit, which 
 abounds in beauties far more prominent than its 
 defects, and much more pleasing to contemplate. 
 In works professedly of fancy he is not very copi- 
 ous; yet, in his Rasselas we have much to admire, 
 and enough to make us wish for more. It is the 
 work of an illuminated mind, and offers many wise 
 
 R2 
 
244 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 and deep reflections, clothed in beautiful and har- 
 monious diction. We are not indeed familiar with 
 such personages as Johnson has imagined for the 
 characters of his fable, but if we are not exceed- 
 ingly interested in their story, we are infinitely 
 gratified with their conversation and remarks. In 
 conclusion, Johnson's era was not wanting in men 
 to be distinguished for their talents, yet, if one 
 was to be selected out as the first great literary 
 character of the time, I believe all voices would 
 concur in naming him." 
 
 There is nothing in this character which is not 
 warranted by all that we know of the man, except 
 that anecdote which Cumberland hesitatingly de- 
 livers upon the authority of Henderson. Of this 
 I doubt the truth. It has not Johnson's usual man- 
 ner of retort; it has neither cool, sarcastic irony, 
 nor overbearing vehemence of contradiction or 
 attack ; it has more of feeble insolence in it than 
 either of these ; but when Johnson meant to sub- 
 due by severity, his onset was vigorous and deci- 
 sive ; he overcame by irresistible force. 
 
 Non telum imbelle sine ictu conjecit. 
 
 There is, however, a paper in the Observer, which 
 seems to oppose Cumberland's having doubted the 
 authenticity of this anecdote, or at least it involves 
 him in the absurdity of telling twice what he hardly 
 believed at all. In No. XVII. of that paper, he 
 describes his visit to Vanessa (probably Mrs. Men- 
 
LIFE OP CUMBERLAND. 245 
 
 tagu), who had invited him to a feast of reason. 
 Here, among the company who are present, is one 
 evidently intended for Johnson. " He spoke," 
 says Cumberland, " with great energy, and in the 
 most chosen language ; nobody yet attempted to 
 interrupt him, and his words rolled not with the 
 shallow impetuosity of a torrent, but deeply and 
 fluently like the copious current of the Nile. He 
 took up the topic of religion in his course, and, 
 though palsy shook his head, he looked so terri- 
 ble in Christian armour, and dealt his stroke with 
 so much force and judgment, that infidelity, in the 
 persons of several petty skirmishers, sneaked away 
 from before him." 
 
 This grave personage is pestered with the vapid 
 applauses of a pert listener, of whom the sage is at 
 last provoked to ask, " Have I said any thing, 
 good Sir, that you do not comprehend?" — " No, 
 no ;" replied the teasing animal, U I perfectly well 
 comprehend every word you have been saying ;" — 
 " Do you, Sir," said the philosopher, " then I 
 heartily ask pardon of the company for misemploy- 
 ing their time so egregiously," — and stalked away 
 without waiting for an answer. 
 
 This is a reply exactly similar in its import, to 
 that which is ascribed to Johnson in the Memoirs; 
 there are some verbal differences in it, but they do 
 not destroy the obvious conclusion that the same 
 speaker is intended in both. 
 
 Johnson had some regard for Cumberland, 
 
$46 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 and thought highly of his intellectual powers. 
 In Mrs. Piozzi's collection of his letters, there is 
 one, (Letter CCXV.) in which he says, " the 
 want of company is an inconvenience, but Mr. 
 Cumberland is a million." This was a brief but 
 emphatic commendation ; and is entitled to much 
 consideration, when we consider that Johnson 
 seldom praised those whom he had not found de- 
 serving of praise upon the closest inspection. 
 
 I should suspect, however, that the intercourse 
 between them was not very habitual, for Cumber- 
 land's name does not once appear as an interlocutor 
 in that most accurate digest of Johnson's conversa- 
 tion and visits, Boswell's Life of him, Had he 
 been a frequent or customary member of those so- 
 cieties in which Johnson moved, he would some- 
 times have found a place in those volumes. But 
 he knew him enough to admire his talents, to re- 
 verence his virtues, and to love his memory. Be- 
 sides the sketch of his character already quoted, he 
 wrote the following lines more concisely descrip- 
 tive of him :— 
 
 " Herculean strength, and a Stentorian voice, 
 
 Of wit a fund, of words a countless choice ; 
 
 In learning rather various than profound, 
 
 In truth intrepid, in religion sound ; 
 
 A trembling form, and a distorted sight, 
 
 But firm in judgment, and in genius bright ; 
 
 In controversy seldom known to spare, 
 
 But humble as the publican in prayer ; 
 
 To more, than merited his kindness, kind, 
 
 And though in manners harsh, of friendly mind ; 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 247 
 
 Deep ting'd with melancholy's blackest shade,. 
 And though prepar'd to die, of death afraid, — 
 Such Johnson was, of him with justice vain 
 When will this nation see his like again V* 
 
 I will not praise the execution of this passage ; 
 nor can I apply to it the trite phrase, materiam 
 superabat opus. It were impossible, indeed, 
 to do this, had a Milton sat down to the task, or a 
 Pope, in the happiest mood of poetical inspiration, 
 drawn the character of such a man, with a felicity of 
 performance rivalling the matchless delineations of 
 Wharton and Atticus. I will however produce, from 
 the same pen, a poetical picture as far surpassing 
 this as theirs would have surpassed either. I can- 
 not think it necessary to make any courteous 
 apologies to the reader for these extracts ; the end 
 of all writing is to please, and he will most likely 
 produce pleasure who produces the greatest variety 
 and the greatest excellence. 
 
 The quotation which follows, is from his poem 
 of u Retrospection/' where he discusses, with a 
 pleasing familiarity of style, the respective merits 
 of Burke and Johnson, two names not to be paral- 
 leled in the records of modern literature : 
 
 " Nature gave to each 
 Pow'rs, that in some respects may be compar'd, 
 For both were orators— -and could we now 
 Canvass the social circles where they mix'd, 
 The palm for eloquence, by general vote, 
 Would rest with him whose thunder never shook 
 The senate or the bar. When Burke harangu'd 
 
248 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 The nation's representatives, methought 
 The fine machinery that his fancy wrought,* 
 Rich but fantastic, sometimes would obscure 
 That symmetry which ever should uphold 
 The dignity and order of debate : 
 'Gainst orator like this, had Johnson rose, 
 So clear was his perception of the truth, 
 So grave his judgment, and so high the swell 
 Of his full period, I must think his speech 
 Had charm'd as many, and enlightened more. 
 
 Yet, that the sword of Burke could be as sharp 
 As it was shining, Hastings can attest 
 Who, through a siege of ten long years, withstood 
 * Its huge, two-handed sway,' that stript him bare 
 Of fortune, and had cut him deeper still 
 Had innocence not arm'd him with that shield 
 Which turn'd tfye stroke aside, and sent him home 
 To seek repose in his paternal farm. 
 
 Johnson, if right I judge, in classic lore, 
 Was more diffuse than deep, he did not dig 
 So many fathoms down as Bentley dug 
 In Grecian soil, but far enough to find 
 Truth ever at the bottom of his shaft ; 
 Burke, borne by genius on a lighter wing, v 
 Skimm'd o'er the fiow'ry plains of Greece and Rome, 
 And, like the bee, returning to its hive, 
 Brought nothing home but sweets ; Johnson would dash 
 Thro' sophists or grammarians, ankle deep, 
 And rummage in their mud to trace a date, 
 Or hunt a dogma down that gave offence 
 To his philosophy. 
 
 Both had a taste 
 For contradiction, but in mode unlike ; 
 Johnson at once would doggedly pronounce 
 Opinions false, and after prove them such : 
 Burke, not less critical, but more polite 
 With ceaseless volubility of tongue, 
 Play'd round and round his subject, till at length, 
 
 * These two lines form, accidentally, a couplet. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 249 
 
 Content to find you willing to admire, 
 He ceas'd to urge or win you to assent. 
 
 Burke of a rival's eminence would speak 
 With candour always, often with applause ; 
 Johnson, tho' prone to pity, rarely prais'd. 
 
 The pun which Burke encourag'd, Johnson spurn'd ; 
 Yet none with louder glee would cheer the laugh 
 That well-tim'd wit, or cleanly humour rais'd ; 
 And when no cloud obscur'd his mental sphere, 
 And all was sunshine in his friendly breast, 
 He would hold up a mirror to our eyes, 
 In which the human follies might be seen 
 In characters so comic, yet so true, 
 Description from his lips was like a cbarm 
 That fix'd the hearers motionless and mute. 
 Burke, by his senatorial pow'rs obtain'd, 
 Ten times as much as Johnson by his pen ; 
 
 But ' thanks to Thurlow,' I rejoice to own, 
 
 That learning and morality at last 
 
 Could earn a pittance, humble as it was. 
 Splendor of style, fertility of thought, 
 
 And the bold use of metaphor in both, 
 
 Strike us with rival beauty ; Burke display' d 
 
 A copious period, that with curious skill 
 
 And ornamental epithet drawn out, 
 
 Was, like the singer's cadence, sometimes apt, 
 
 Although melodious, to fatigue the ear ; 
 
 Johnson, with terms unnaturalis'd and rude, 
 
 And Latinisms fore'd into his line 
 
 Like raw undrill'd recruits would load his text, 
 
 High sounding and uncouth : yet if you cull 
 
 His happier pages you will find a style 
 
 Quinctilian might have prais'd ; still I perceive 
 
 Nearer approach to purity in Burke, 
 
 Though not the full accession to that grace, 
 
 That chaste simplicity, which is the last 
 
 And best attainment an author can possess." 
 
 Of these characters, thus pleasingly given, very 
 little can be said in diminution of their accuracy. 
 I observe, however, that Cumberland repeats his 
 
250 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 opinion of Johnson's inferiority as a Greek scholar, 
 and he seems to repeat it with too little allowance 
 for what he did possess in that language. It is 
 true, he was not so profoundly versed in the Gre- 
 cian authors as Bentley, for he had not made them 
 his peculiar study ; perhaps he knew less of Greek 
 writers than Cumberland himself; he acknow- 
 ledged to him, indeed, that this was the case with 
 respect to some parts of Greek literature; but we 
 have the testimony of Dr. Burney (Qui mihi unus 
 est instar omnium) " that he could give a Greek 
 word for almost every English one ; and that, al- 
 though not sufficiently conversant in the niceties 
 of the language, he, upon some occasions, disco- 
 vered, even in these, a considerable degree of cri- 
 tical acumen." The late Mr. Dalzel, also, Greek 
 Professor in the University of Edinburgh, had 
 formed a very high notion of Johnson's acquire- 
 ments in Greek from a conversation which he held 
 with him on that language. 
 
 Nor are these the only evidences that his gene- 
 ral proficiency was greater than Cumberland 
 apparently insinuates it, though it happened 
 that he consulted him in vain upon some 
 topics relative to the Greek fragments. We are 
 told by Mrs. Piozzi, in her Anecdotes of Johnson, 
 " that when the King of Denmark was in England, 
 one of his noblemen was brought by Mr. Colman 
 to see Dr. Johnson at her country house ; and 
 having heard, he said, that he was not famous for 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 2ol 
 
 Greek literature, attacked him on the weak side-, 
 politely adding, that he chose that conversation on 
 purpose to favour himself. The Doctor, however, 
 displayed so copious, so compendious a knowledge 
 of authors, books, and every branch of learning in 
 that language, that the gentleman appeared asto- 
 nished. When he was gone home, Johnson said, 
 < Now for all this triumph, I may thank Thrale's 
 Xenophon here, as, I think, excepting that one, 
 I have not looked in a Greek book these ten years ; 
 but see what haste my dear friends were all in 
 (continued he) to tell this poor innocent foreigner 
 that I knew nothing of Greek ! Oh no, he 
 knows nothing of Greek !' with a loud burst of 
 laughing.' ' 
 
 From these testimonies it may surely be in- 
 ferred, with little danger of error, that though 
 Johnson could not rank with a Bentley, a Porson, 
 a Burney, or a Parr, his general knowledge of Greek 
 was such as would have conferred distinction upon 
 any man less pre-eminently endowed than he was 
 with other qualities of excellence : and thai Cum- 
 berland, while he insinuated what he did not 
 possess, hardly allowed, with sufficient candor, 
 that which he confessedly did possess. 
 
 In the preference which Cumberland seems to 
 give to Burke's style, he speaks of its superior 
 simplicity compared to that of Johnson. But in 
 this judgement I do not think him correct. The 
 language of Burke is diffuse, copious, and sonorous: 
 
2,59 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 richly ornamented with metaphor, allusion, and 
 prosopopeia ; declamatory and vehement, and suited 
 rather to the orator than the writer. It rushes 
 along, sometimes, with all the majestic rapidity 
 of a deep and impetuous torrent, and at others 
 flows with an ease and gentleness of course that 
 resembles the passage of a limpid stream between 
 the verdant banks of a champaign country. In 
 the selection of his words he does not so often 
 employ pure Latinismsas Johnson, and he is com- 
 monly very felicitous in the use of terms that 
 express a complex association of ideas. 
 
 Burke, indeed, has never been reckoned, as far as 
 I know, to possess simplicity of style ; but, on the 
 I contrary, it was usually urged against him, both in 
 his speeches and in his writings, that he employed 
 a language more artificial, florid, and rhetorical, 
 than was supposed to be consistent with the ge- 
 nius of the English tongue. When he imitated 
 Bolingbroke he wrote perhaps with more sim- 
 plicity than on any other occasion. Warburton in- 
 deed said that his Vindication of Natural Society 
 was superior in composition to any work which he 
 afterwards produced : and a modern writer,* whose 
 opinion is entitled to great respect, concurs with 
 him in this notion. But he is not disposed to 
 allow that Burke's style had any simplicity in it. 
 
 " Its defect," he observes, " lay in his taste, 
 which, when left to itself without the guidance of 
 
 * Dugald Stewart : see his Philosophical Essays : 1810. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. §53 
 
 an acknowledged standard of excellence, appears 
 not only to have been warped by some peculiar 
 notions concerning the art of writing: but to have 
 been too wavering and versatile, to keep his ima- 
 gination and his fancy (stimulated as they were by 
 an ostentation of his intellectual riches, and by an 
 ambition of Asiatic ornament), under due control. 
 With the composition of Bolingbroke, present 
 to his thoughts, he has shewn with what ease he 
 could equal its most finished beauties ; while, on 
 more than one occasion, a consciousness of his 
 own strength has led him to display his superiority, 
 by brandishing, in his sport, still heavier weapons 
 than his master was able to wield/' 
 
 Simplicity is a quality in writing, which, when 
 skilfully employed always pleases. But it is a 
 dangerous pursuit: for, where one succeeds in his 
 endeavours to attain it, hundreds fail. Cumberland 
 himself failed, as I shall endeavour to prove here- 
 after. The admirers of simplicity are too apt to 
 confound with it, meanness and vulgarity ; and, 
 by studiously receding from all that is ornamental 
 in composition, degenerate into feebleness and 
 inelegance. Compared to such writing, however, 
 the worst errors of a turgid and bombastic 
 phraseology are preferable. A mean or trite 
 idea pompously caparisoned, like an insignificant 
 fellow richly dressed, captivates our senses, if it 
 do not add to our knowledge: but a mean idea, 
 meanly expressed, is as sorry a spectacle as a 
 
95^ LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 scoundrel in rags, having neither real nor apparent 
 worth in it. 
 
 The perfection of writing consists, however, not 
 in uniformity but variety ; in a style so flexible 
 that it adapts itself to the subject discussed, and 
 rises or falls as the ideas are elevated or familiar. 
 Always to fly, or always to walk, is the character 
 of a bad writer : he who has genius to conceive 
 lofty thoughts, will have power to construct his 
 language suitably to them ; and when he descends, 
 his diction will assume a corresponding depression. 
 In this conformity consists the art of good writing : 
 and we may judge of its difficulty from its rarity. 
 We more commonly find a manner in distinguished 
 authors, which results from a specific structure of 
 their sentences, and the frequent employment of 
 peculiar modes of expression. It would be easy 
 to exemplify this by select passages from Johnson, 
 Gibbon, Robertson, Swift, and Burke: but this is 
 not the place: I pass to more legitimate topics. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. . 955 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 Motives for the extracts from Cumberland. — His 
 portrait of Go ldsmith . — A defence of Sir John 
 Hill and of Goldsmith's Histories. — Also 
 his Animated Nature. — Anecdotes of him. — 
 Johnson s epitaph upon him, and encomiastic 
 sentence in the Life of Pamell. — The poem of 
 Retaliation. — His epitaph upon Cumberland 
 contains more censure than praise. — Proof of 
 this. — Cumberland } s sketch of him in his Retro- 
 spection, more happily touched off than in his 
 Memoirs. 
 
 I reluctantly forego the pleasure of accom- 
 panying Cumberland through the other portraits 
 which he has given of Garrick, Foote, Burke, and 
 Jenyns. They are distinguished by the same fe- 
 licity of delineation, and give the same pleasure in 
 perusal : but as they are of men, whose general 
 qualities, both public and private, are already 
 familiar to most readers, and as it maybe presumed 
 that many who read this volume, will have read 
 the book in which they are to be found, their 
 omission here will be the more venial. Nor, in- 
 deed, do I wish to encumber my pages with 
 superfluous or excessive quotation, but simply to 
 be guided by a consideration of what I consider 
 
%56 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 really interesting to the reader, consistently with 
 my avowed purpose and desire to produce an ori- 
 ginal work. I have occasionally relieved the nar- 
 rative by the transcription of such passages as I 
 thought would be deprived of much of their value 
 if mutilated, or told in any language but Cumber- 
 land's, and I have sometimes been influenced in 
 my adoption of his words, from a desire to give 
 authenticity to particular statements. 
 
 Consistently with this motive, however, I could 
 well have extended my quotations from that part 
 of his Memoirs which contain the characters already 
 mentioned, to a much greater degree, had not my 
 inclination to do so, been subdued by considera- 
 tions of another nature, co-operating powerfully 
 with those already stated, and sufficiently obvious, 
 perhaps, to render any further explanation of them 
 unnecessary. 
 
 One exception to my forbearance I must be 
 allowed to claim in behalf of Goldsmith, a writer 
 of whom so little is known, that every addition to 
 that little becomes valuable. Cumberland knew 
 him well, and has sketched his strangely incon- 
 sistent character with fidelity. This, and the 
 anecdotes relating to him, I will copy. 
 
 " At this time," says Cumberland, " I did not 
 know Oliver Goldsmith even by person ; I think 
 our first meeting chanced to be at the British 
 CofFee-House ; when we came together, we very 
 speedily coalesced, and I believe he forgave me for 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 957 
 
 all the little fame I had got by the success of my 
 West Indian, which had put him to some trouble, 
 for it was not his nature to be unkind, and I had 
 soon an opportunity of convincing him how in- 
 capable I was of harbouring resentment, and how 
 zealously I took my share in what concerned his 
 interest and reputation. That he was fantasti- 
 cally and whimsically vain all the world knows, 
 but there was no settled and inherent malice in his 
 heart. He was tenacious to a ridiculous extreme 
 of certain pretensions, that did not, and by nature 
 could not, belong to him, and at the same time 
 inexcusably careless of the fame, which he had 
 powers to command. His table-talk was, as Gar- 
 rick aptly compared it, like that of a parrot, whilst 
 he wrote like Apollo ; he had gleams of eloquence, 
 and at times a majesty of thought, but in general 
 his tongue and his pen had two very different 
 styles of talking. What foibles he had he took no 
 pains to conceal, the good qualities of his heart 
 were too frequently obscured by the carelessness 
 of his conduct, and the frivolity of his manners. 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds was very good to him, and 
 would have drilled him into better trim and order 
 for society, if he would have been amenable, for 
 Reynolds was a perfect gentleman, had good sense, 
 great propriety with all the social attributes, and 
 all the graces of hospitality, equal to any man. He 
 well knew how to appreciate men of talents, and 
 how near a kin the Muse of poetry was to that 
 
 S 
 
25S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 art, of which he was so eminent a master. From 
 Goldsmith he caught the subject of his famous 
 Ugolino: what aids he got from others, if he 
 got any, were worthily bestowed and happily 
 applied. 
 
 " There is something in Goldsmith's prose, that 
 to my ear is uncommonly sweet and harmonious ; 
 it is clear, simple easy to be understood ; we never 
 want to read his period twice over, except for the 
 pleasure it bestows ; obscurity never calls us back 
 to a repetition of it. That he was a poet there is 
 no doubt, but the paucity of his verses does not 
 allow us to rank him in that high station, where 
 his genius might have carried him. There must 
 be bulk, variety, and grandeur of design to con- 
 stitute a first-rate poet. The Deserted Village, 
 Traveller, and Hermit, are all specimens beautiful 
 as such, but they are only birds eggs on a string, 
 and eggs of small birds too. One great magnifi- 
 cent whole must be accomplished before we can 
 pronounce upon the maker to be the 6 Tco^mc, 
 Pope himself never earned this title by a work 
 of any magnitude but his Homer, and that being 
 a translation only constitutes him an accomplished 
 versifier. Distress drove Goldsmith upon under- 
 taking's, neither congenial with his studies, nor 
 worthy of his talents. I remember him, when in 
 his chamber in the Temple, he shewed me the 
 beginning of his Animated Nature; it was with a 
 sigh, such as genius draws, when hard necessity 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. v 259 
 
 diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and 
 talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which 
 Pidcock's show-man would have done as well. 
 Poor fellow, he hardly knew an ass from a mule, 
 nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on 
 the table. But publishers hate poetry, and Pater- 
 noster-Row is not Parnassus. Even the mighty 
 Dr. Hill, who was not a very delicate feeder, could 
 not make a dinner out of the press till by a happy 
 transformation into Hannah Glasse he turned 
 himself into a cook, and sold receipts for made 
 dishes to all the savoury readers in the kingdom. 
 Then, indeed, the press acknowledged him second 
 in fame only to John Bunyan ; his feasts kept pace 
 in sale with Nelson's fasts, and when his own name 
 was fairly written out of credit, he wrote himself 
 into immortality under an alias. Now, though 
 necessity, or I should rather say, the desire of 
 finding money for a masquerade, drove Oliver 
 Goldsmith upon abridging histories, and turning 
 BufTon into English ; yet I much doubt, if without 
 that spur, he would ever have put his Pegasus into 
 action; no, if he had been rich, the world would 
 have been poorer than it is by the loss of all the 
 treasures of his genius and the contributions of 
 his pen/' 
 
 There is, in this extract, too contemptuous a 
 mention of Sir John Hill, a man who like Black- 
 more, was so borne down by the ridicule of his 
 contemporaries, that justice has not been done to 
 
 S 2 
 
260 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the merits he really possessed. That he was an 
 indefatigable, if not a very accurate, inquirer, must 
 be allowed: and if he often failed in his schemes, 
 it must also be allowed that he attempted more 
 than most men. His misfortune was that he dis- 
 sipated his strength upon many undertakings at 
 once, and by doing many things ill, it was at last 
 thought he could do nothing well. Yet he was a 
 writer who, when livings commanded much atten- 
 tion, and though some of his works may be suf- 
 fered to remain in oblivion without any loss to 
 mankind, there are others which deserve to be 
 remembered. He was irritable, and rushed 
 intemperately into controversies with men who 
 were more powerful than himself, and who ge- 
 nerally succeeded in repelling his attacks: but 
 he sometimes vindicated himself with dignity and 
 force, as in his altercation with Fielding, who had 
 lampooned him in his Covent Garden Journal, and 
 to whom he replied in such a manner as shewed 
 he could resent an insult without scurrility or 
 abuse. He was a voluminous writer, and pos- 
 sessed great activity of mind : nor would his name 
 now stand in the contempt it does had he produced 
 less, and been more careful to conciliate contem- 
 porary wits, whose jests and epigrams upon him are 
 remembered and repeated, while those of his works 
 are neglected which would rescue his memory 
 from undeserved obscurity. 
 
 I could wish also that Cumberland had ex- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 261 
 
 pressed himself with less flippancy than he does 
 when he mentions the histories of Goldsmith and 
 his Animated Nature. It is true that he has not 
 assumed the historic dignity of Hume, of Robert- 
 son, or of Gibbon : he has disentangled no ob- 
 scurities, searched into no records for facts that 
 were before unknown, nor attempted to infer from 
 those that were known consequences more in- 
 genious perhaps than solid : these were things 
 which, as he did not profess to do, he cannot be 
 censured for omitting. But his object, such as it 
 was, he completely attained. He produced a 
 familiar and lucid arrangement of historical events, 
 told them in elegant and harmonious language, 
 with becoming brevity, and with the occasional 
 expression of opinions favourable to liberty, morals, 
 and religion. 
 
 His History of England has long been considered 
 as the most judicious and pleasing epitome that 
 there is in the language: it is, with great propriety, 
 introduced into all public schools ; and perhaps as 
 much may be known from it, as can be known, 
 with any advantage, from more voluminous his- 
 torians, who are generally biassed towards some 
 peculiar tenets, who tell all that will support those 
 tenets, suppress what does not, invent what truth 
 will not justify, then educe their own conclusions, 
 and give the whole to the world as a record of 
 facts. Every man who has deliberately considered 
 
269 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the subject, must allow, that much of history is 
 nothing more than mere curious speculation, and 
 that in reading it, the observance of Voltaire's 
 maxim that incredulity is the source of wisdom, 
 will be our best security for the acquisition of 
 real knowledge. 
 
 Nor does his History of Animated Nature de- 
 serve to be so petulantly characterised as is done 
 by Cumberland, when he denominates it " turning 
 BufFon into English/' I doubt if he could have 
 produced a work so pleasingly executed with the 
 same materials, and without any aids from indi- 
 vidual observation or scientific research. Naturalists 
 indeed will not respect it as an authority in any 
 disputed question: but they who read for plea- 
 sure, and are content to be instructed without the 
 labour of minute investigation, they who are satisfied 
 with knowing the grand and permanent features of 
 nature without inquiring into her hidden mysteries 
 or contemplating her almost evanescent operations, 
 will not willingly dismiss the volumes of Gold- 
 smith from their shelves. Truth is dressed, by 
 him, in her most enticing garb, while the errors 
 that dwell upon his page are such as a man may 
 receive without finding his utility or happiness 
 impaired. 
 
 These very productions, indeed, which Cum- 
 berland dismisses with such contemptuous 
 brevity, strongly illustrate and justify the eulo- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 265 
 
 gium of his friend Johnson in his epitaph upon 
 him, 
 
 Qui nullum fere scribendi genus 
 
 Non tetigit : 
 Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit, 
 
 and the introductory paragraph to the life of Par- 
 nell, in which he pronounces him to be, " a man 
 of such variety of powers, and such felicity of per- 
 formance, that he always seemed to do best that 
 which he was doing: a man who had the art of 
 being minute without tediousness, and general 
 without confusion : whose language was copious 
 without exuberance, exact without constraint, and 
 easy without weakness." 
 
 This character, to be just, must embrace all his 
 writings ; and that it is just, he who is best ac- 
 quainted with his writings will be most ready to 
 allow. The language of Cumberland, perhaps, 
 expressed more than his meaning ; a thing not un- 
 common in a man who writes with an ambition 
 to be striking. 
 
 I will now transcribe the conclusion of his 
 anecdotes of him. 
 
 " Oliver Goldsmith began at this time to write 
 for the stage, and it is to be lamented that he did 
 not begin at an earlier period of life to turn his 
 genius to dramatic compositions, and much more 
 to be lamented, that, after he had begun, the suc- 
 ceeding period of his life was soon cut off. There 
 is no doubt but his genius, when more familiarised 
 
264 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 to the business, would have inspired him to ac- 
 complish great things. His first comedy of The 
 Good-natured Man was read and applauded in its 
 manuscript by Edmund Burke, and the circle, in 
 which he then lived and moved ; under such pa- 
 tronage it came with those testimonials to the 
 director of Covent Garden theatre, as could not 
 fail to open all the avenues to the stage, and be- 
 speak all the favour and attention from the per- 
 formers and the public, that the applauding voice 
 of him, whose applause was fame itself, could 
 give it. This comedy has enough to justify the good 
 opinion of its literary patron, and secure its author 
 against any loss of reputation, for it has the stamp 
 of a man of talents upon it, though its popularity 
 with the audience did not quite keep pace with 
 the expectations, that were grounded on the fiat 
 it had antecedently been honoured with. It was 
 a first effort, however, and did not discourage its 
 ingenious author from invoking his muse a second 
 time. It was now, whilst his labours were in 
 projection, that I first met him at the British 
 Coffee-house, as 1 have already related somewhat 
 out of place. He dined with us as a visitor, in- 
 troduced as I think by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and 
 we held a consultation upon the naming of his 
 comedy, which some of the company had read, 
 and which he detailed to the rest after his manner 
 With a great deal of good humour. Somebody 
 suggested — She Stoops to Conquer — and that title 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 265 
 
 was agreed upon. When I perceived an embar- 
 rassment in his manner towards me, which I could 
 readily account for, I lost no time to put him at 
 his ease, and I flatter myself I was successful. As 
 my heart was ever warm towards my contempora- 
 ries, I did not counterfeit, but really felt a cordial 
 interest in his behalf, and I had soon the pleasure 
 to perceive that he credited me for my sincerity — 
 8 You and 1/ said he, ' have very different motives 
 for resorting to the stage. I write for money, and 
 care little about fame/ I was touched by this 
 melancholy confession, and from that moment 
 busied myself assiduously amongst all my con- 
 nexions in his cause. The whole company 
 pledged themselves to the support of the ingenuous 
 poet, and faithfully kept their promise to him. In 
 fact he needed all that could be done for him, as 
 Mr. Colman, then manager of Covent-Garden 
 theatre, protested against the comedy, when as 
 yet he had not struck upon a name for it. John- 
 son at length stood forth in all his terrors as 
 champion for the piece, and backed by us his 
 clients and retainers demanded a fair trial. Col- 
 man again protested, but, with that salvo for his 
 own reputation, liberally lent his stage to one of 
 the most eccentric productions that ever found 
 its way to it, and She Stoops to Conquer was put 
 into rehearsal. ****** 
 " As the life of poor Oliver Goldsmith was now 
 fast approaching to its period, I conclude my 
 
$66 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 account of him with gratitude for the epitaph he 
 bestowed on me in his poem called Retaliation. 
 It was upon a proposal started by Edmund Burke, 
 that a party of friends, who had dined together at 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds' and my house, should meet 
 at the St. James's Coffee-house, which accordingly 
 took place, and was occasionally repeated with 
 much festivity and good fellowship. Dr. Bernard, 
 Dean of Deny, a very amiable and old friend of 
 mine, Dr. Douglas, since Bishop of Salisbury, 
 Johnson, David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund and Richard Burke, 
 Hickey, with two or three others constituted our 
 party. At one of these meetings an idea was 
 suggested of extemporary epitaphs upon the 
 parties present ; pen and ink were called for, and 
 Garrick off hand wrote an epitaph with a good 
 deal of humour upon poor Goldsmith, who was 
 the first in jest, as he proved to be in reality, that 
 we committed to the grave. The dean also gave 
 him an epitaph, and Sir Joshua illuminated the 
 dean's verses with a sketch of his bust in pen and 
 ink inimitably caricatured. Neither Johnson, nor 
 Burke wrote any thing, and when I perceived 
 Oliver was rather sore, and seemed to watch me 
 with that kind of attention, which indicated his 
 expectation of something in the same kind of 
 burlesque with their's, I thought it time to press 
 the joke no further, and wrote a few couplets at a 
 side table, which when I had finished and was 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 26j 
 
 called upon by the company to exhibit, Goldsmith 
 with much agitation besought me to spare him, 
 and I was about to tear them, when Johnson 
 wrested them out of mv hand, and in a loud voice 
 read them at the table. 1 have now lost all re- 
 collection of them, and in fact they were little 
 worth remembering, but as they were serious and 
 complimentary, the effect they had upon Gold- 
 smith was the more pleasing for being so entirely 
 unexpected. The concluding line, which is the 
 only one I can call to mind, was — 
 
 " All mourn the poet, I lament the man." 
 
 " This I recollect, because he repeated it several 
 times, and seemed much gratified by it. At our 
 next meeting he produced his epitaphs as they 
 stand in the little posthumous poem above-men- 
 tioned, and this was the last time he ever enjoyed 
 the company of his friends. 
 
 " As he had served up the company under the 
 similitude of various sorts of meat, I had in the 
 mean time figured them under that of liquors, 
 which little poem I rather think was printed, but 
 of this I am not sure. Goldsmith sickened and 
 died, and we had one concluding meeting at my 
 house, when it was decided to publish his Re- 
 taliation, and Johnson at the same time undertook 
 to write an epitaph for our lamented friend, to 
 whom we proposed to erect a monument by sub- 
 scription in Westminster-Abbey. This epitaph 
 
268 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Johnson executed : but in the criticism, that was 
 attempted against it, and in the Round-Robin 
 signed at Mr. Beauclerc's house I had no part. 
 I had no acquaintance with that gentleman, and 
 was never in his house in my life. 
 
 " Thus died Oliver Goldsmith, in his chambers 
 in the Temple, at a period of life, when his genius 
 was yet in its vigour, and fortune seemed disposed 
 to smile upon him. I have heard Dr. Johnson 
 relate, with infinite humour, the circumstance of 
 his rescuing him from a ridiculous dilemma by the 
 purchase money of his Vicar of Wakefield, which 
 he sold on his behalf to Dodsley, and, as I think, 
 for the sum of ten pounds only. He had run up 
 a debt with his landlady, for board and lodging, 
 of some few pounds, and was at his wits-end how 
 to wipe off the score and keep a roof over his head > 
 except by closing with a very staggering proposal 
 on her part, and taking his creditor to wife, whose 
 charms were very far from alluring, whilst her de- 
 mands were extremely urgent. In this crisis of his fate 
 he was found by Johnson in the act of meditating on 
 the melancholy alternative before him. He shewed 
 Johnson his manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield, 
 but seemed to be without any plan, or even hope, of 
 raising money upon the disposal of it; when Johnson 
 cast his eye upon it, he discovered something that 
 gave him hope, and immediately took it to Dodsley, 
 who paid down the price above-mentioned in 
 ready money, and added an eventual condition 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. %69 
 
 upon its future sale. Johnson described the pre- 
 cautions he took in concealing the amount of the 
 sum he had in hand, which he prudently admi- 
 nistered to him by a guinea at a time. In the 
 event he paid off the landlady's score, and re- 
 deemed the person of his friend from her embraces. 
 Goldsmith had the joy of finding his ingenious 
 work succeed beyond his hopes, and from that 
 time began to place a confidence in the resources of 
 his talents, which thenceforward enabled him to 
 keep his station in society, and cultivate the 
 friendship of many eminent persons, who, whilst 
 they smiled at his eccentricities, esteemed him 
 for his genius and good qualities/' 
 
 Cumberland affirms, in one part of his Memoirs, 
 that he regularly read Boswell's Life of Johnson 
 once a year. It may be wondered, therefore, that 
 he should fall into so gross a mistake, as to 
 state that Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield was 
 sold for ten pounds, when he might have learned, 
 from two passages in that work, that Johnson dis- 
 posed of it for sixty guineas. 
 
 He repeats, also, the same account of Gold- 
 smith's situation when he sent to Johnson and 
 shewed him his last resource in his manuscript, 
 as had been given by Mrs. Piozzi in her Anecdotes, 
 and which Boswell pronounced to be false. The 
 testimonies for the two relations seem to be nearlv 
 equal. Mrs. Piozzi and Cumberland tell their* s 
 from positive recollection : Boswell does the same, 
 
270 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 and he produces one totally different. Where does 
 the truth lie ? Johnson was a rigid observer of 
 fidelity in all that he told; and as two wit- 
 nesses are entitled to more credibility than one, 
 where there is an equal respectability in all, we 
 must suppose that the inaccuracy is in Boswell, 
 and that the exact account is to be found in Cum- 
 berland and Mrs. Piozzi. What increases the 
 confusion is, that Sir John Hawkins, who also 
 professes to tell what Johnson told, has given a 
 narrative which differs from both. 
 
 Who shall decide when doctors disagree ? 
 
 It is to be regretted that Cumberland did not 
 preserve his lines upon Goldsmith, produced on 
 the occasion, as he has stated it. He thanks him, 
 however, with gratitude for the epitaph which 
 Goldsmith bestowed upon him in his posthumous 
 poem of Retaliation, From this it may be con- 
 jectured that he considered the lines as encomiastic: 
 but though some of them certainly are, there are 
 others which I think convey more censure than 
 praise. Let the reader judge : 
 
 Here Cumberland lies, having acted his parts, 
 
 The. Terence of England, the mender of hearts ; 
 
 A flattering painter, who made it his care 
 
 To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are ; 
 
 His gallants are all faultless, his women divine, 
 
 And comedy wonders at being so fine : 
 
 Like a tragedy queen he has dizen'd her out, 
 
 Or rather like tragedy giving a rout. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 27* 
 
 His fools have their follies so lost in a crowd 
 Of virtues and feelings, that folly grows proud, 
 And coxcombs alike in their failings alone, 
 Adopting his portraits are pleas'd with their own ; 
 Say, Avhere has our poet this malady caught ? 
 Or, wherefore his characters thus without fault ? 
 Say, was it that vainly directing his view 
 To find out men's virtues, and finding them few, 
 Cjuite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf, 
 He grew lazy at last, and drew from himself? 
 
 The first two lines of this epitaph are certainly 
 encomiastic, and the last four are elegantly so. 
 But surely it is no praise to a dramatic writer to be 
 told that he has ec dizened comedy out like a tra- 
 gedy queen/' or made her " like tragedy giving a 
 rout." Nor is it very flattering to his skill in de- 
 picting real life, that he " draws men as they 
 ought to be, not as they are ;" these are such ex- 
 cellencies as a comedian can well spare. It is the 
 peculiar province of comedy to exhibit the man- 
 ners and characters with fidelity; to make its per- 
 sonages speak and act, as they are known to speak 
 and act in the world, with only so much exaggera- 
 tion as may serve to relieve the insipidity and lan- 
 guor of domestic life. If it depart from this se- 
 vere model, and encroach upon the confines of the 
 tragic muse by pomp of diction, elevation of cha- 
 racter, or dignity of incident, it ceases to be co- 
 medy, without becoming its opposite, and pleases 
 less than either. 
 
 Some of these defects certainly belong to Cum- 
 
272 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 berland : and it was with a reference to them, 
 which were conspicuously displayed in his early 
 dramas, that Goldsmith probably wrote those se- 
 vere lines which the object of them patiently con- 
 ceived to be complimentary. 
 
 It was well, however, he did think so ; or we 
 should never, perhaps, have had that character, and 
 those anecdotes of their author, which I have al- 
 ready transcribed, or the following still more 
 finished one : 
 
 « There wants but Goldsmith now to make us full, 
 And Garrick says he loiters by the way, 
 Because forsooth some idle knave has said, 
 That men of fashion should be always late, 
 And by their want of manners shew their taste. 
 Ah ! Oliver, your friend has found you out, 
 For Johnson, with emphatic eyes, declares 
 ' David is right/ and that confirms the truth. 
 But see, at length, th' eccentric being comes — 
 Seasons and times to Goldsmith are unknown ; 
 What he is not he would be, what he is 
 He knows not, or forgets. Give him a pen, 
 And clear as Helicon his period flows : 
 Let him employ his tongue to speak his thoughts, 
 It babbles idly, and betrays the trust. 
 Yet this is he, whose prose I should not fear 
 To match with Addison's, his verse with Pope's. 
 
 ' Heavens! is this he ?' a stranger might exclaim ; 
 But though no stranger eye perchance could trace 
 The secret mark, with which the muse had stamp'd 
 His passport to the Heliconian fount, 
 Yet Reynolds, by that sympathy of soul, 
 Which Genius shares with Genius, saw the mark, 
 And made his portrait witness to a mind, 
 Which ill the original so few descried. 
 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 27$ 
 
 But what avail'd it thee, neglected hard, 
 How thy verse trickl'd, or thy period flow'd ? 
 The loathsome vampire Poverty, through life, 
 Insatiate, clung to thee, and suck'd thy blood 
 To the last drop. By thy sick couch I stood, 
 And saw death's hand was on thee ; shall I say 
 That thou wert vain, and carelessly dispers'd 
 The slender pittance that thy genius earn'd ? 
 No, 'twere a cruel comment on thy life ; 
 He who no harvest reaps can hoard no grain ; 
 Had it not been that Johnson's generous zeal, 
 For a few pounds, barter'd thy ' Vicar's Tale,' 
 Penn'd in the veriest anguish of despair, 
 The pavement, or the step to some proud door 
 Had been thy stony pillow for the night." 
 
 After this just eulogy of a man whose works 
 will be forgotton only with the language in which 
 they are written, follows a temperate but discrimi- 
 nating censure of another poet (Mr. Walter Scott) 
 to whose volumes I should be unwilling to promise 
 an equal duration if I had any authority to lose 
 as a prophet. His popularity is great, and no man 
 acquires popularity without possessing something 
 that deserves it; but popularity is a very equivocal 
 test of merit. 
 
 The history of modern literature is full of names 
 that once stood upon as proud a height as this 
 " proudest boast of the Caledonian muse" (to 
 use the simple language of Miss Seward*), but 
 
 * Did Miss Seward ever read Burns ? Had she no feeling of his poetry, 
 justly so denominated ? I may be fastidious, perhaps, or utterly destitute 
 of taste, but I would not rank with Burns' Tarn O'Skanter, his Vision, (par- 
 ticularly the second DuanJ, his Twa Dogs, his Cotter's Saturday Nighty 
 or his Jolly Begga/rs, any thing that ,Mr. Scott ever h»s written, or ever 
 shall write. 
 
?74 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 which are now remembered neither with admira- 
 tion nor delight. Posterity has not ratified the 
 decree which contemporary applause too rashly 
 littered. 
 
 Mr. Scott has merit. No one will deny this who 
 wishes to be believed. His descriptions, whether 
 of visible nature, of feudal manners, or of the gor- 
 geous scenes of chivalry, have a distinctness and 
 appropriation in them as well as vigour, which 
 rouse the imagination to a forcible conception of 
 what he describes. But in that single excellence 
 begins and ends his claim to eminence. The graces 
 of composition he cannot display from the familiar 
 structure of his verses, which, by recalling to the 
 reader's mind the merry couplets of Butler and 
 Swift, destroy those ideas of dignity, sublimity, 
 and grandeur, which are associated with our no- 
 tions of heroic poetry. 
 
 If any one doubts the truth of this, let him try the 
 happiest passages of Mr. Scott's poems with those 
 of Milton or Dryden, Akenside or Pope, and mark 
 how mean and insignificant the jingle of his eight- 
 syllable lines will appear, compared to the lofty 
 and sonorous march of their language. 
 
 Neither do I think him gifted with the imagina- 
 tion of a poet. Where shall we find, in his pro- 
 ductions, that sublimity of conception which fills 
 the reader with a kindred greatness of thought, 
 and hurries him along at the writer's will? Where 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 975 
 
 shall we find those daring images by which, in a 
 single line, more is conveyed to the fancy than all 
 the stores of language could effect ? Does he ever 
 charm us with a continued stream of eloquent 
 composition, on which the mind dwells with a sort 
 of ravishment, reads, pauses to enjoy, reads again, 
 and at last turns away from the inspiring page with 
 eyes that beam forth a radiance of delight ? Are 
 there in his works any of those grand and sublime 
 moral truths which the memory treasures up as 
 axioms, and which are expressed with an energy 
 of diction corresponding to their greatness? Has 
 he given us any of those terrible graces of poetry 
 which harrow up the feelings, and fill us with a 
 sort of convulsive admiration, an agony of delight, 
 approaching to terror ; such as he feels who reads 
 those lines of Milton which tell of the comfort- 
 less mansions " where hope never comes ;" that 
 picture of a future state in Snakspeare, where 
 " the delighted spirit bathes in fiery floods ; 3> or 
 even that line of his countryman, Burns, which 
 describes the grey hairs of a murdered father, 
 sticking to the handle of the knife with which his 
 son had mangled him? 
 
 These are flights of genius which, alone, might 
 redeem volumes of dullness ; but they who took 
 them, took many as noble, and some nobler. Can 
 the admirers of Mr. Scott produce any thing in his 
 poems which even approaches, though at a dis- 
 tance, to such flights ? Can they — but I will not 
 
 T2 
 
$76 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 swell these interrogatories by pursuing them 
 through all the qualifications of a poet? I will 
 close them by one emphatic question. It has been 
 foolishly demanded, where does Mr. Scott differ 
 from our greatest poets, but in the structure of his 
 verse ? I ask — where does he resemble them? Let 
 this be satisfactorily answered, and Mr. Scott's 
 fame will then find that level now which it will 
 certainly find hereafter. 
 
 I am not Mr. Scott's enemy. I know nothing 
 of him but his works. Them I have read, and I 
 I suppose have read them with as little delight as 
 any man in the kingdom. He is too far elevated by 
 fortune and by popularity to be susceptible of any 
 pain from the opinions of one so far distant from 
 both as myself, or I would not tell him, that hav- 
 ing read the first two cantos of his Lady of the 
 Lake, from necessity, shortly after it appeared, I 
 have never sine? been able, by any efforts of reso- 
 lution, by any determinations of prudence, to finish 
 that work. Whether this maybe reckoned my hap- 
 piness or my misfortune, I will not say ; but I 
 am very certain that the world (I mean Mr. Scott's 
 world — his admirers), will ascribe it to something 
 I may not name, because I would rather it should 
 come from them than from me. 
 
 Yet 1 can be pleased with some things that he 
 has written, and have been particularly so, with 
 what, perhaps, is the best thing he ever did write ; 
 I mean those stanzas, in his last poem of Don 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 277 
 
 Roderick, which begin with this line: " A vari- 
 ous host, from kindred realms they came ;" and 
 which contain a spirited and poetical delineation 
 of the English, Scotch, and Irish characters. 
 
 When I consider the rapidity with which Mr. 
 Scott has produced his poems, I am sometimes 
 tempted to think that he has formed a much j uster 
 notion of his own talents than his applauders have ; 
 and that, finding himself popular without inquir- 
 ing how he became so, he wisely resolves to profit 
 by the lucky chance before the infatuation subsides, 
 andhiscommoditieslosethataccidentalvaluewhich 
 fashion now bestows upon them. I may be wrong 
 in this conjecture ; but I can divine no other mo- 
 tive for a man's writing so many verses in so short 
 a time. Were lasting fame his object I think he 
 would know better how to seek it. 
 
 This is not the place to analyse the causes of 
 Mr. Scott's popularity, or the peculiarities which 
 distinguish his compositions; but, as I have cen- 
 sured those compositions with that freedom which 
 I think becomes every man who means fairly (and 
 which any man may exercise towards me with 
 equal sincerity, or with less if he prefer it, with- 
 out provoking the slightest emotion of resentment), 
 I will not disdain to derive confidence in my opi- 
 nions from the authority of others, and shall there- 
 fore seek to propitiate the reader (if he happen to ad- 
 mire Mr. Scott's poetry something more than I do), 
 by shewing him that I do not stand quite alone. 
 
578 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 The following are the lines of Cumberland to 
 which I referred, and to which, indeed, must be 
 ascribed all the displeasure which this digression 
 may excite : 
 
 iC And was there then no patron to be found, 
 But one as base and needy as thyself ? 
 Ah thou, the muse of Marmion and the Lake, 
 Rich as Pactolus' stream, dost thou not blush, 
 To see thine elder, worthier, sister sit 
 In tatter'd raiment over Goldsmith's grave, 
 With that sweet * village poem' in her hand, 
 Sad emblem of her poor ' deserted' bard ? 
 Thou in thy banner'd hall, with kilted knights 
 And elfin page, array'd in painted vest, 
 Scrawl'd o'er with magic characters, devis'd 
 To puzzle and surprise the gaping crowd- 
 She, with no other canopy but Heav'n, 
 No trophy but the amaranthine wreath, 
 That binds her brow, in contemplation rapt, 
 Waiting the award of ages yet to come. 
 
 Conscious of all the peril I incur, 
 I must now leave my cause to future time, 
 And rest in humble hope, that what I have said, 
 Posterity will sanction. Sixty years 
 I've worn the livery of the true-born muse ; 
 She is my rightful mistress ; her I serve : 
 Witches and goblins must be chas'd away, 
 And truth and nature, and the genuine taste, 
 For classic purity must be restor'd, 
 Ere men shall listen to the measur'd strains 
 Of her melodious heav'n-strung harp again.'' 
 
 Had Miss Seward lived to peruse these lines, 
 methinks how she would have poured forth her 
 wrath and indignation in a letter to some friend, 
 (hereafter to be published), perhaps to Mr. Scott 
 himself; and she would have felt no hesitation in 
 
LIFE OP CUMBERLAND, §79 
 
 pronouncing them a fresh proof that Cumberland 
 was Sir Fretful Plagiary. A periodical critic, in- 
 deed, has insinuated that he wrote them from the 
 mingled feelings of disappointment, poverty, and 
 envy. I think otherwise: I think that he penned 
 them with sincere regret to see our classic models 
 disregarded, and from a real wish to rouse the pub- 
 lic taste from that lethargy which makes it slum- 
 ber over the strains of our ancient and approved 
 bards, while it is patiently receiving the fetters 
 which a new race of versifiers are forging for it. 
 
280 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND 
 
 CHAP. XIII 
 
 Cumberland produces the Fashionable Lover. 
 —A defence of sentimental comedy. — Menan- 
 der and Terence. — The passions which pre* 
 dispose to virtue more easily moved by tears than 
 by smiles. — Cumberland 9 s complaints against 
 the critics. — Lord Mansfield's opinion of 
 an anonymous defamer .—Examination of the 
 Fashionable Lover.— Total failure of the 
 author in drawing the Scotch character. — Cum- 
 ber land's ridicule of the citizens derived from for- 
 mer dramatists , not from actual inspection. — No 
 wit in this piece.— -Inconsistency of Cumberland. 
 
 The next drama which the prolific muse of Cum- 
 berland produced, was the Fashionable Lover. 
 This play he seems always to have contemplated 
 with much pleasure, as the happiest effort of his 
 pen, and as avowedly superior both in composi- 
 tion and in moral, to the West Indian. In this 
 I very willingly concur ; but I do not equally con- 
 cur in the author's belief, that it approaches very 
 nearly to what the true style of comedy ought 
 to be, — Joca non infra soccum, seria non usque 
 cothurnum. 
 
 It is a comedy of intrigue rather than of charac- 
 ter, for the chief delight of the reader or spectator 
 arises from the situations of its personages. It is 
 precisely what the French denominate la comedie 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 28 1 
 
 larmoyante. There is very little in it that pro- 
 duces merriment; but much that calls forth the 
 serious affections of our nature. " Aubrey and 
 his daughter Augusta/' says Davies very justly, 
 " are pathetic children of Melpomene." 
 
 The vehement censures which some critics, and 
 especially those of France, have fulminated against 
 the sentimental comedy, partake more of bigotry 
 than reason. Laughter and ridicule they consider 
 as the legitimate weapons of comedy ; but, if vir- 
 tue can be inculcated through the soft influence of 
 tears ; if, by awakening the heart to tenderness, 
 we can dispose it to the admission of moral truth, 
 he who would deny to comedy this privilege may 
 be pronounced an enemy to human happiness. 
 
 Perhaps, indeed, it would be easy to prove that 
 the mind is more apt to receive improvement, 
 more calculated to acknowledge the loveliness of 
 virtue, and to reject the allurements of vice, when 
 the affections are aroused by the pathetic than 
 when they are merely amused by the ridiculous. 
 Were it my office to amend the sinner, or to con- 
 firm the resolutions of the wavering penitent, I 
 would seize the moment of sadness and melan- 
 choly to commence my operations, rather than 
 that when 
 
 The ideot laughter keeps men's eyes, 
 And strain their cheeks to idle merriment, 
 A passion hateful to my purposes. 
 
 Ridicule is not the most effective weapon with 
 
582 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 which to encounter depravity, Make men laugh, 
 and you make them pleased ; and that with which 
 they are pleased they will not abhor. Gaiety dis- 
 poses the heart to contentment ; but contentment 
 is a state hostile to reformation. It invests objects 
 with appearances the most flattering and seducive, 
 and robs them of that importance which should be- 
 long to all that is connected with moral rectitude. 
 With our ideas of mirth we associate somewhat of 
 meanness ; for no man can laugh at and respect 
 the same thing. 
 
 One of the purposes of the drama, and its 
 noblest one, is to instruct mankind ; to make them 
 wiser and to make them better. Pity and terror 
 are the instruments by which the tragic muse com- 
 pletes her purpose ; laughter and ridicule are sup- 
 posed to be the exclusive ones of the comic. To 
 extend the influence of comedy, however, to 
 widen the sphere of its operative power, and to 
 give it additional means of doing good, is to 
 exalt its nature, and without depriving it of aught 
 that it already possesses to bestow upon it some- 
 thing more. 
 
 Nor by doing this can it be said that we destroy 
 its peculiar character, which is a representation 
 of real and familiar life. Such incidents as belong 
 to sentimental comedy, those touching scenes of 
 domestic woe which spring from domestic follies, 
 vices, or misfortunes, are as much the picture of 
 what may be found in society by actual inspection. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 283 
 
 as any thing which has hitherto been pronounced 
 the legitimate topics of the comic drama. Every 
 man's experience confirms this ; and while tragedy, 
 therefore, calls forth our tears alone, let it be the 
 province of comedy to mingle them with our 
 smiles, to awaken the serious as well as the cheer- 
 ful affections of our nature, and to enforce the 
 practice of virtue, by making us laugh at folly, and 
 weep for the consequences of vice. 
 
 Why, indeed, the exclusion of all tender and 
 pathetic incidents should be so rigorously de- 
 manded in comedy, I cannot tell. The ancients, 
 from whose practice we have derived our critical 
 dogmas, were not without examples of such mix- 
 tures; and Menander among the Greeks, and Te- 
 rence (his imitator) among the Romans, did not 
 disdain to borrow from tragedy her sighs and tears. 
 The Andria of Terence is preserved to us, and 
 forms a decisive instance; but of Menander no- 
 thing more than a few fragments have come down 
 to posterity, from which no certain inference can 
 be deduced. We know, however, that the Latin 
 poet copied from the Greek, and hence a similarity 
 of manner is presumed. 
 
 That which has its foundation in nature, how- 
 ever, no opposition can overthrow ; and senti- 
 mental comedy has continued to flourish both in 
 France and in England, almost to the exclusion of 
 what is denominated pure comedy. I fear indeed 
 that the abuse of it will soon extinguish, in this 
 
S84 fclFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 country, all emulation to attempt either the one 
 or the other; the stage will degenerate into a 
 receptacle for love-lorn tales, surprising adven- 
 tures, and unnatural incidents ; and those who 
 attempt to exhibit wit and humour in the de- 
 lineation of character, will substitute buffoonery 
 for the one, and exaggerated deformity for the 
 other. 
 
 Against this increasing depravity of dramatic 
 composition, it may be mentioned as the merit 
 of Cumberland, that he always opposed himself. 
 He considered the cause of legitimate comedy as 
 entrusted to his keeping, and whatever difference 
 of opinion may exist as to the energy with which 
 he fulfilled his high commission, it must at least 
 be allowed that he did not wilfully betray it. He 
 knew his duty, and performed it with a sincere 
 and honourable zeal: how much better a better 
 man might have performed it, need not be asked. 
 He maintained his post to the last, and some re- 
 spect is due to the fidelity of him who does all 
 he can to stem the torrent which nature has denied 
 him power to turn. 
 
 Of that species of comedy which we have been 
 considering, the Fashionable Lover is, perhaps, as 
 pleasing a specimen as the modern theatre can 
 produce. It was acted in 1772, and was well re- 
 ceived. That it does not continue to be performed 
 can arise only from that imperious demand for 
 novelty which, like a gulph, receives all that is, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 285 
 
 thrown into it, and into which good taste was 
 thrown long ago. Who would not prefer to wit- 
 ness the scenes of this play rather than the insipid 
 dialogues, and monstrous absurdities with which 
 an audience is presented in the dramas of Mr. 
 
 R Mr. D Mr. H or Mr. L ?* 
 
 In the advertisement to this play he acknow- 
 ledges the assistance he received from Garrick, 
 in the composition, and justly professes not to 
 have exhibited any original character in it. He 
 seizes the opportunity also of inveighing with his 
 accustomed bitterness, against the attacks of the 
 diurnal critics. In his zeal, indeed, to prove the 
 danger to literature in general, of permitting their 
 audacious censures, he shews that he is more con- 
 cerned to secure himself from their influence than 
 the rest of his brethren ; but he urges a mode of 
 reasoning, in support of his opinion, somewhat 
 ludicrous. 
 
 He supposes there were, at the time he 
 wrote, many men of fine talents for dramatic 
 composition, who, having all the sensibility of 
 genius about them, were deterred from bringing 
 their talents into action by the dread of news- 
 paper writers and critical pamphleteers. What a 
 loss, therefore, it might be presumed, the public 
 were sustaining by the tender solicitude of these 
 susceptible men of genius ; and how much it was 
 
 * If, in this instance, I have used the initials instead of the names, it is 
 because the ambiguity will embrace nearly the whole of our modern dra- 
 matic writers, and save me the trouble of distinct enumeration. 
 
286 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 to be deplored that the legislature did not devise 
 some means by which persons, gifted at once with 
 so much talent and so much sensibility, might be 
 secure, in displaying the one, from the violation 
 of the other. 
 
 Cumberland was well persuaded that there were 
 such men, because he knew " how general it is 
 for men of the finest parts, to be subject to the 
 finest feelings." Now, if by " the finest feelings," 
 he meant those selfish feelings which begin and 
 end only in the repose and happiness of their pos- 
 sessor ; if he meant those feelings which are 
 aroused into agony or resentment at the slightest 
 breath of censure; if, in short, he meant those 
 feelings which every irritated author may boast of, 
 when he writhes beneath the lash of an angry cri* 
 tic, (and the general tenor of the paragraph justi- 
 fies no other interpretation), why then, as Cumber- 
 land had those feelings to a degree sufficiently 
 inimical to his peace, and as he felt every mode of 
 reproof with such acuteness, that Garrick used to 
 call him the " man without a skin," it follows, 
 by a simple process of induction, that he thought 
 himself a " man of the finest parts," as he cer- 
 tainly had what he considered as the criterion of 
 them, a morbid irritability of mind. 
 
 This inference, indeed, is supported by a dis- 
 tinct avowal of Cumberland's, in the very same 
 paragraph, whence I have extracted the preceding 
 sentence, " Whether the reception of this co- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 287 
 
 medy, 5> says he, " may be such as shall encou- 
 rage me to future efforts, is of small consequence 
 to the public ; but if it should chance to obtain 
 some little credit with the candid part of mankind, 
 and its author, for once, escape without those per- 
 sonal and unworthy aspersions, which writers, who 
 hide their own names, fling on them who publish 
 theirs, my success, it may be hoped, will draw 
 forth others to the undertaking with far superior 
 abilities, &c/' 
 
 I am certain the conclusion of this hypothetical 
 sentence does not accord with the reader's precon- 
 ception of what was to come. But while Cumber- 
 land shewed he was thus sensible to attacks, could 
 he doubt that there would be plenty to attack 
 him ? The pleasure of every undertaking consists 
 partly in its success; and they who live by ca- 
 lumnies and scurrility, are always pleased to see 
 that they succeed in their vocation. Nothing 
 will sooner silence the tongue of defamation than 
 contempt; but if a man runs about to tell his 
 neighbours what has been said of him, or if he 
 writes and tells the world how he has been tra- 
 duced, he becomes the pander to his own disgrace, 
 he gives the slander circulation, and invites society 
 to be present at a feast where his own heart and 
 character ^are served up for the repast. Be to the 
 storm insensible, and the storm cannot hurt you ; 
 but if you weep and sigh at every blast that 
 
2SS LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 whistles round your defenceless head, you are at 
 once its victim and its sport. 
 
 Lord Mansfield formed a just notion of proce- 
 dure in these cases. " If," said he to Cum- 
 berland on a certain occasion, " a single syllable 
 from my pen could at once confute an anonymous 
 defamer, I would not gratify him with the word." 
 Would all mankind adopt this lofty principle, we 
 should soon see the herd of libellers perishing in 
 the filth of their own imaginations, which now is 
 quickened into vitality by the warmth of opposi- 
 tion. 
 
 Before passing on to the examination of the 
 Fashionable Lover , I will stop to applaud the 
 prologue, which is written with much gaiety, and 
 even with some degree of wit ; though, perhaps, 
 Johnson would have said it has more profanity 
 than wit. As it is not to be found in all editions 
 of the play, the reader may not be displeased, per- 
 haps, to see it here. It was spoken by Mr. Wes- 
 ton, in the character of a Printer s Devil. 
 
 lc I am a devil, so please you — and must hoof 
 
 Up to the poet yonder with this proof ; 
 
 I'd read it to you : but, in faith, 'tis odds 
 
 For one poor devil to face so many Gods. 
 
 A ready imp I am, who kindly greets 
 
 Young* authors with their first exploits in sheets ; 
 
 While the press groans, in place of dry nurse stands, 
 
 And takes the bantling from the midwife's hands, 
 
 If any author of prolific brains, 
 In this good company feels labour pains ; 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 289 
 
 If any gentle poet, big with rime, 
 Has run his reckoning out, and gone his time ! 
 If any critic pregnant with ill nature, 
 Cries out to be deliver'd of his satire, 
 Know such, that at our hospital of muses, 
 He may lie in, in private, if he chuses : 
 We've single lodgings there for secret sinners, 
 With good encouragement for young beginners. 
 
 Here's one now that is free enough in reason ; 
 This bard breeds regularly once a season ; 
 Three of a sort, of homely form and feature, 
 The plain coarse progeny of humble nature ; 
 Home bred and born ; no strangers he displays, 
 Nor tortures free-born limbs in stiff French stays ; 
 Two you have rear'd, but, between you and me, 
 This youngest is the fav'rite of the three. 
 Nine tedious months he bore this babe about, 
 Let it, in charity, live nine nights out ; 
 Stay but his month up ; give some little law ; 
 'Tis cowardly to attack him in the straw. 
 
 Dear gentlemen correctors, be more civil ; 
 Kind courteous sirs, take council of the devil ; 
 Stop your abuse, for while your readers see 
 Such malice, they impute your works to me ; 
 Thus, while you gather no one sprig of fame, 
 Your poor unhappy friend is put to shame ; 
 Faith, Sirs, you should have some consideration, 
 When e'en the devil pleads against damnation. 
 
 The action of this comedy is contrived with 
 considerable skill, though not with so much as 
 might be wished. The arrival of Aubrey just time 
 enough to meet Colin, who had before been just 
 in time to meet his daughter, are concurrences too 
 marked and too convenient for the author, to satisfy 
 the spectator. The effect which they produce might 
 
 U 
 
t?90 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 have been accomplished by circumstances some- 
 what more probably connected. 
 
 This, however, does not diminish the general 
 interest of the fable. The distresses of Augusta, 
 and her perils, awaken the tenderest emotions ; 
 while her final preservation from them, and her 
 union with the man, whom she loves, but who 
 hardly deserves her from his hasty belief of her 
 criminality, diffuse that calm satisfaction through 
 the mind which always accompanies the view of 
 innocence and virtue triumphant. 
 
 Of the characters of this play there remains 
 something to be said ; and first, of that wherein 
 the author has utterly failed— Colin Macleod. 
 
 How he came to attempt the portraiture of a 
 Scotchman, he has himself told us : 
 
 " In one of these meetings," says he (which 
 were held at the British Coffee-house, and fre- 
 quented by Garrick, Goldsmith, Beattie, Foote, 
 &c.) " it was suggested and recommended to me 
 to take up the character of a North Briton, as I 
 had those of an Irishman and West Indian. I ob- 
 served, in answer to this, that I had not the same 
 chance for success as I had in my sketch of 
 OFlaherty, for I had never resided in Scotland, 
 and should be perfectly to seek for the dialect of 
 my hero. ' How could that be/ Fitzherbert ob- 
 served, ; when I was in the very place to find it,' 
 (alluding to the British Coffee-house, and the 
 company we were in) * however/ he added 'give 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 291 
 
 your Scotchman character, and take your chance 
 for dialect ; if you bring a Roman on the stage, 
 you don't make him speak Latin/* — c No> no/ 
 cried Foote, c and if you don't make him wear 
 breeches, Garrick will be much obliged to you. 
 When I was at Stranraer I went to the Kirk, 
 where the Mess John was declaiming most furi- 
 ously against luxury, and, as heaven shall judge 
 me, there was not a pair of shoes in the whole 
 congregation/ " 
 
 From this accidental suggestion Cumberland 
 imprudently sat down to the task of delineating a 
 Scotchman, and his success was in proportion to 
 his presumption. Whoever has been in Scotland, 
 whoever is familiar with the writers in the Scottish 
 dialect, and above all, a Scotchman himself, will 
 be thoroughly disgusted with the Colin Macleod 
 of Cumberland. He says he had no other guide 
 for the dialect than what the Scotch characters on 
 the stage supplied him with ; but even of these he 
 did not make the use he might. Had he merely 
 copied from Mrs.Centlivre he would have avoided 
 much that now offends ; her character of Gibby in 
 
 * A frivolous observation. We do not make a Roman speak Latin, 
 because it is now a dead language, and the individual no longer represents 
 a nation. Rut to depict a Scotchman, an Irishman, or a Welchman, as such, 
 and deprive them of that dialect by which they are distinguished from their 
 fellow subjects, is as absurd as if a Welchman, Irishman, or Scotchman, 
 were to write a drama in their native language, and introduce an English- 
 man speaking it with propriety. Where would be the fine satirical humor 
 of Sir Pertinax Macsycophant's character, if M ackiin had written from 
 such rules ? 
 
 U2 
 
292 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the Wonder, is drawn with remarkable accuracy, 
 and was, perhaps, till Macklin wrote, the best por- 
 trait of a Scotchman which the stage possessed. 
 
 Cumberland was acquainted neither with the 
 sentiments nor the dialect of a Scotchman, nor 
 even with the orthography of his dialect. When 
 he had diversified it with a few such familiar and 
 vulgar phrases as " Hoot mon" — " The de'el burst 
 your weam" — " Muckle need" — "Lassie" — "Had 
 na\ could na*," &c. he fancied he was skilfully 
 exhibiting the phraseology of a Highlander. How 
 greatly he failed, however, is now better known 
 than when he wrote, for the genius of Burns has 
 familiarised a great portion of southern readers 
 with a form of speech which had been, heretofore, 
 regarded rather as the amusement of an antiquary 
 to unravel, than of a student in polite literature to 
 enjoy. He was, indeed, supremely ignorant of 
 what he laboured to display ; and when he hap- 
 pened to catch a Scottish word or phrase, he knew 
 not how to spell it. 
 
 Among the other characters, Bridgemore and 
 his family stand conspicuous. These were selected 
 from a class in society (the citizens), whom it had 
 long been the fashion with dramatic writers to pour- 
 tray with every aggravation of meanness, vulgarity, 
 and absurdity. Cuckoldom, whoredom, bestiality, 
 gluttony, ignorance, and a preposterous imitation 
 of pride, were considered as the indigenous growth 
 of the city; from thence, as from avast storehouse. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 993 
 
 the satirist, the lampooner, the humourist, and the 
 painter, transplanted his characters, and they be- 
 came at last such hereditary stock in the hands of 
 successive generations, that it was never inquired 
 by what right it was first obtained or afterwards held. 
 
 There can be no doubt that men who had risen 
 to affluence by the accumulations of trade, men 
 of obscure origin, of narrow minds, neglected 
 education, and plebeian manners, would, when 
 wealth gave them importance, display that im- 
 portance in various modes of absurdity and arro- 
 gance. He who crawls into day-light through 
 a common sewer, will carry about him the marks 
 of his progress ; and he whose qualifications fit 
 him only for the subordinate stations of life, will 
 not appear, in the eye of taste or reason, any thing 
 nearer to dignity or grace because he now possesses 
 a thousand pounds where once he possessed a gui- 
 nea. The original stamp of his extraction will re- 
 main upon him, uneffaced by his gold, his splen- 
 dor, or his extravagance. 
 
 This would be particularly the case when the 
 trading part of the community was separated from 
 the higher classes of society by distinct and visible 
 barriers ; when the pursuit of commerce was re- 
 garded as ignoble, and its agents as a community 
 of beings merely useful as they administered to the 
 luxuries of the great. It would be the case too, 
 when, education not being generally diffused, no 
 more of it was obtained by the tradesman than 
 
294 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 what enabled him to post his ledger, and compre- 
 hend the details of his business ; and as the exclu- 
 sion from polished society was the result of this 
 comparative degradation, it naturally followed 
 that these proscribed individuals would form a 
 distinct class, to which would belong manners, 
 habits, ceremonies, and even language, peculiar to 
 Itself; these manners and this language, tried 
 by the standard of courtly and Patrician life, would 
 seem, as in factthey were,vulgar and ridiculous ; and 
 they would appear more conspicuously so, because 
 commonly united with a degree of wealth which 
 enabled them to invite attention by awkward pomp 
 and obtrusive splendour. Hence they have been 
 adopted, by the muse of comedy, as fit objects to 
 provoke laughter; and it seemed that ridicule 
 could not transgress its limits in depicting those 
 whose preposterous follies defied all exaggeration. 
 
 But the progress of refinement has been gra- 
 dually softening all these asperities, and blending 
 the character of the merchant and the gentleman 
 into one ; till now, in the present day, a British 
 trader feels himself, and justly too, upon a proud 
 equality with title, rank, and fortune, nor need he 
 blush at the comparison. His education, his ha- 
 bits, his probity, his manners, and conversation, 
 place him on that level, while his spirit of enter- 
 prise, his liberal policy, and extensive know- 
 ledge make him a more useful member of society. 
 
 This honourable and beneficial change had been 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 29«5 
 
 operated, however, long before the name of a 
 citizen ceased to be synonimous, in the vocabulary 
 of a dramatist, with all that was despicable, un- 
 manly, and absurd. When Cumberland wrote, 
 indeed, I doubt if he could have paralleled his 
 character of Bridgemore in the whole range of the 
 city ; yet, he makes him just what all dramatists 
 had made a citizen before him, and puts into his 
 mouth the same hereditary cant which his 
 brethren had employed for a series of years. 
 He and his family are as vulgar, as mercenary, as 
 dishonest, and as preposterous, as they could have 
 been made had Tom Durfey held the pen : but 
 he would have given them a little more in- 
 decency, perhaps, and thus have completed the 
 picture. 
 
 How far it may be considered rational to have 
 ridiculed, with such unrelenting severity, a class 
 of men to whom a commercial country, like this, 
 must owe its greatness, its power, and its very ex- 
 istence, I will not stay to inquire : but I am happy 
 to add that the prejudice is now fast disappearing, 
 actually borne down by the increased and increasing 
 respectability and importance of its objects, and 
 that no dramatist would now think it prudent or 
 necessary to waste such buffoonery upon a citizen 
 as was once not only tolerated but enjoyed. 
 
 The next character that demands some notice 
 is Mortimer's. He is a humourist who bears 
 some affinity to the Sir William Thornhill of 
 
296 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Goldsmith; a man who does good without the 
 reputation of goodness, concealing his virtues 
 beneath the rough mask of cynical austerity: 
 whose heart and affections are benevolently warm, 
 but whose manners repel the approach of those 
 miseries they would relieve. His asperity some- 
 times degenerates into folly, as when Aubrey con- 
 gratulates him upon the society he finds in his 
 books, and he replies, " that truly their company 
 is more tolerable than that of their authors would 
 be ; I can bear them on my shelves, though I 
 should be sorry to see the impertinent puppies 
 who wrote them." This is not the humour of an 
 eccentric man, but the dullness of a foolish one ; 
 of a man who thinks that to say something which 
 contradicts received opinions, is a proof of 
 wisdom. 
 
 Nor is it necessary that a humourist should be 
 converted into a very silly jester : yet, Mortimer 
 appears in this light, when he exclaims, after 
 hearing of his nephew's intentions to marry, — 
 " A wife ! 'sdeath, sure some planetary madness 
 reigns amongst our wives : the dog-star never 
 sets, and the moon's horns are fallen on our 
 heads/' 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, these and some 
 similar defects in the character of Mortimer, it is 
 one that pleases, from the contrast which it 
 contains between real goodness and assumed 
 austerity. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 297 
 
 Cumberland was not very often successful when 
 he strove to be witty. His talents were rather 
 solid than shining : and the reader is often dis- 
 pleased with his abortive attempts at brilliancy. 
 Thus, in the play before me, the Frenchman is 
 made to ask of Colin why he sent away the horns, 
 and adds, " it is very much the ton in this country 
 for the fine gentlemen to have the horns :" in 
 which remark I have no doubt that Cumberland 
 meant to convey a witty allusion : but though the 
 allusion is obvious, the wit, to me, is hidden. 
 
 The other characters require no specific exami- 
 nation. Lord Abberville is merely a fashionable 
 scoundrel, who, of course, reforms before the fifth 
 act ends ; Tyrrel is a lover, much resembling his 
 generation on the stage ; and Dr. Druid a Welch 
 antiquary without humour enough to make him 
 interesting. Aubrey is little seen ; but his daugh- 
 ter maintains a firm hold over the affections 
 from the first to the last. Her interview with her 
 father is well conducted, and overpowers the 
 feelings ; and the author has concluded it with a 
 reflection in the character of Mortimer which I 
 think a very fine one. 
 
 " Look at that girl," he says, pointing to the 
 fainting Augusta, overwhelmed with the sudden 
 discovery of her father, " 'tis thus mortality en- 
 counters happiness ; 'tis thus the inhabitant of 
 earth meets that of heaven, with tears, with 
 
295 J.IFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 faintings, with surprise. Let others call this the 
 weakness of our nature : to me it proves the un- 
 worthiness ; for had we merits to entitle us to 
 happiness, the means would not be wanting to 
 enjoy it." 
 
 The language of this drama is constructed with 
 greater attention to what the diction of comedy 
 should be than is observable in the West Indian, 
 Cumberland was aware of this himself, and has 
 insinuated his preference of the present play, to 
 either of his preceding ones, in the prologue ; 
 while in his Memoirs he seems to consider it as the 
 very best of his dramatic progeny. The dialogue is, 
 in general, easy, natural, and elegant, and the sen- 
 timents are appropriated to the characters with 
 considerable judgment. He offends, however, 
 against grammatical construction, in several in- 
 stances similar to those which I have enumerated 
 in speaking of the West Indian, and therefore I 
 may pass them over here. If I could believe a 
 scholar capable of such errors upon principle, I 
 should be strongly tempted to think that Cum- 
 berland committed them from the influence of 
 some peculiar notions which he might have upon 
 the subject: but I suppose they are rather to be 
 ascribed to negligence. 
 
 Cumberland has, on various occasions, assumed 
 to himself the merit of having inculcated by pre- 
 cept, and enforced by example, that courtesy and 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. $99 
 
 benevolence which forbid the ridiculing of in- 
 dividuals merely on account of their country ; and 
 hence his characters of O y Flaherty and Macleod 
 were intended to associate in our minds notions 
 of dignity and worth with the idea of a dramatic 
 Irish and Scotchman. At a later period he en- 
 deavoured to perform the same benefit for the Jew, 
 both in his Observer, and in his comedy of that 
 name ; but, why his philanthropy was once with- 
 held from that devoted race of beings, as in the 
 play I have been considering, or why a Welchman 
 was excluded from the general amnesty that was 
 so ostentatiously vaunted by the author, I know 
 not. To a Welchman indeed, his antipathy seems 
 to have been rooted ; for not contented with 
 making his foolish antiquary Dr. Druid, of that 
 country, he afterwards selected the same people 
 for the characters of his John De Lancaster, and 
 has exhibited them with no very amiable qualities. 
 Yet, he says, in the person of Mortimer, referring 
 to these national reflections, " he would rather weed 
 out one such unmanly prejudice from the hearts 
 of his countrymen than add another Indies to their 
 empire. ,, 
 
 Such was his consistency in this respect, and 
 so much easier is it to believe ourselves acting in 
 conformity with our professions than to do it. I 
 know, indeed, that a man is not to be compared 
 too rigorously with his own sentiments: for as 
 
300 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 much as our conceptions of virtue transcend our 
 practice, so much will our practice differ from our 
 own declarations ; nor should I have adverted to 
 this deviation in Cumberland, had he not en~ 
 forced his claim with so much confidence. 
 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 301 
 
 CHAP. XIV. 
 
 Cumberland* s literary enterprises suspended for a 
 time by the death of his parents. — His account of 
 that event. — Produces the Choleric Man. — 
 Examination of this play. — Does not discrimi- 
 nate between accidental anger and general pas- 
 sion. — Dedicates the play to Detraction. — 
 Observation of Murphy's — Cumberland thinks 
 it the best of his dramas. — Examples of its defi- 
 ciency in point and spirit. — Writes and publishes 
 two Odes. — Alters and spoils Shakspeare's 
 Tim on of Athens . — The opinions o/Murphy 
 and D ay ies upon this alteration. 
 
 The literary enterprises of Cumberland now suf- 
 fered some interruption from the death of his father 
 and mother, which happened so immediately to- 
 gether, that his mind must have keenly felt the 
 stroke. Where there has existed a cordial and 
 reciprocal affection between a child and his pa- 
 rents, where that affection has ripened into rational 
 veneration, founded upon a real appreciation of 
 the virtues of its object, and where it springs both 
 from the recollection of past services and endear- 
 ments, and from the consciousness of a pious 
 duty, there are few events in this world more 
 dreadful, more severely proportioned to our powers 
 of endurance, than the death of such parents. We 
 feel the eternal separation with more than filial 
 
302 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 sorrow, and mingle with our tears the bitterness of 
 remembering that we have lost the friend, and the 
 companion, as well as the father and benefactor. 
 It is, then, indeed, that the quaint but emphatic 
 line of Young becomes a moral truth: 
 
 " When such friends part — 'tis the survivor dies." 
 
 Cumberland's father had been translated to the 
 see of Kilmore, and gained, by the exchange, a 
 better house to live in, and a race of beings, some- 
 what more civilized, to control. The annual visits 
 of his son had never been intermitted, and thus, 
 perhaps, he found the wish nearest his heart amply 
 gratified. But the decay of his bodily health became 
 more and more visible to Cumberland, as each re- 
 turning summer conveyed him to the paternal roof: 
 and he saw this decay with foreboding thoughts, that 
 were, too soon verified. The uniform temperance of 
 his father's life, left indeed every ground for hope 
 which can be derived from the advantages of a 
 constitution not debilitated by excesses : but the 
 phenomena of life are reducible to no immutable 
 laws ; we sometimes see the man whose clays have 
 been but a round of debauch flourishing in a 
 vigorous old age, while he whose temperate 
 wishes never hurried him beyond the wholesome 
 bounds of moderation, drops into the grave in 
 comparative youth. 
 
 The Bishop of Kilmore was one of nature's 
 most abstemious children. " In all his appetites 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 303 
 
 and passions," says Cumberland, " he was the 
 most moderate of men." His death was gradual 
 and gentle ; but at what period it took place, 
 Cumberland, with his accustomed and absurd 
 negligence with regard to dates, leaves in uncer- 
 tainty. It was somewhere, however, near the 
 period when his comedy of the Fashionable Lover 
 was produced, and that was in the year 1772. 
 What he says upon this melancholy event the 
 reader may, perhaps, wish to see. 
 
 " In the winter of that same year, whilst I was 
 at Bath by advice, for my own health, I received 
 the first afflicting intelligence of his death from 
 Primate Robinson, who loved him truly and la- 
 mented him most sincerely. This sad event was 
 speedily succeeded by the death of my mother, 
 whose weak and exhausted frame sunk under the 
 blow : those senses so acute, and that mind so 
 richly endowed, were in an instant taken from her, 
 and after languishing in that melancholy state for 
 a short but distressful period, she followed him to 
 the grave. 
 
 " Thus was I bereft of father and mother with- 
 out the consolation of having paid them the last 
 mournful duties of a son. One surviving sister^ 
 the best and most benevolent of human beings, 
 attended them in their last moments, and performed 
 those duties, which my hard fortune would not 
 suffer me to share. 
 
 " In a small patch of ground, enclosed with 
 
304 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 stone walls, adjoining to the church-yard of Kil- 
 more, but not within the pale of the consecrated 
 ground, my father's corpse was interred beside the 
 grave of the venerable and exemplary Bishop 
 Bedel. This little spot, as containing the remains 
 of that good and great man, my father had fenced 
 and guarded with particular devotion, and he had 
 more than once pointed it out to me as his destined 
 grave, saying to me, as I well remember, in the 
 words of the Old Prophet of Beth-el, " When I 
 am dead, then bury me in this sepulchre, wherein 
 the man of God is buried ; lay my bones beside 
 his bones." This injunction was exactly fulfilled, 
 and the protestant Bishop of Kilmore, the* mild 
 friend of mankind, the impartial benefactor and 
 unprejudiced protector of his Catholic poor, who 
 almost adored him whilst living, was not per- 
 mitted to deposit his remains within the precincts 
 of his own church-yard, though they howled over 
 his grave, and rent the air with their savage 
 lamentations. 
 
 " Thus, whilst their carcasses monopolise the 
 consecrated ground, his bones and the bones of 
 Bedel make sacred the unblest soil, in which they 
 moulder; but whilst I believe and am persuaded, 
 that his incorruptible is received into bliss eternal, 
 what concerns it me where his corruptible is laid ? 
 The corpse of my lamented mother, the instructress 
 of my youth, the friend and charm of my maturer 
 years, is deposited by his side. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 30 
 
 " My father's patronage at Kilmore was very 
 considerable, and this he strictly bestowed upon 
 the clergy of his diocese, promoting the curates to 
 the smaller livings, as vacancies occurred, and 
 exacting from every man, whom he put into a 
 living, where there was no parsonage-house, a 
 solemn promise to build ; but I am sorry to say 
 that in no single instance was that promise ful- 
 filled ; which breach of faith gave him great con- 
 cern, and in the cases of some particular friends? 
 whom he had promoted in full persuasion of their 
 keeping faith with him, afflicted him very sensibly, 
 as I had occasion to know and lament. The op- 
 portunities he had of benefiting his fortune and 
 family by fines, and the lapse of leases," which 
 might have been considerable, he honourably de- 
 clined to avail himself of, for when he had tendered 
 his renewals upon the most moderate terms, and 
 these had been delayed or rejected in his days of 
 health, he peremptorily withstood their offers, 
 when he found his life was hastening to its period 
 esteeming it according to his high sense of honour 
 not perfectly fair to his successor to take what he 
 called the packing-penny, and sweep clean be- 
 fore his departure. He left his see, therefore, 
 much more valuable than he found it, by this 
 liberal and disinterested conduct, by which it w r as 
 natural to hope he had secured to his executors 
 the good offices and assistance of his successor 
 in recovering the outstanding arrears due to his 
 
 X 
 
306 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 survivors — but in that hope we were shamefully 
 disappointed ; neither these arrears, nor even his 
 legal demands for monies expended on improve- 
 ments, beneficial to the demesne, and regularly 
 certified by his diocesan, could be recovered by me 
 for my sister's use, till the Lord Primate took the 
 cause in hand, and enforced the sluggish and un- 
 willing satisfaction from the bishop, who succeeded 
 him." 
 
 When he had leisure from his grief to resume 
 the operations of his pen, he sat down to the 
 composition of The Choleric Man, and in 1775 it 
 was produced on the stage of Drury-Lane. It was 
 successful, and perhaps deserved to be so ; but it 
 is executed with less uniformity of skill than was 
 displayed in his West Indian and Fashionable 
 Lover. 
 
 In the character of The Choleric Man, (Night- 
 shade,) he lost the opportunity which he pos- 
 sessed, of exhibiting the passion of anger as a 
 prevailing quality, by making him always in a 
 passion, and too often without sufficient or appa- 
 rent provocation : he is rather an outrageous bully 
 whom nothing can please, than a man of morbid 
 irritability whom most things can displease. Had 
 he looked abroad upon life, he would have found 
 no such being as his choleric man, for no indivi- 
 dual exists in a constant whirlwind of passion : no 
 individual exists, (out of Bedlam at least) who has 
 so far subdued his reason to the exacerbations of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 307 
 
 a violent temper, that he raves with fury if he be 
 contradicted, and yet extols his own patience and 
 meekness. 
 
 This he would not have found : but he might 
 have found, and too easily, indeed, for the hap- 
 piness of mankind, men whom long indulgence in 
 their own excesses has so corrupted, that they de- 
 form every scheme of social life, into which they 
 are permitted to intrude, with storm and tempest ; 
 men who have pampered themselves into habits of 
 such bloated arrogance, that they despise all the 
 blandishments of society, and, like wayward chil- 
 dren who annoy one into compliance, they enforce 
 a toleration of their excesses because to contend 
 with their exactions would be to provoke greater 
 evils than are sought to be avoided. Yet even 
 these men have their intervals of calm and quiet: 
 for it commonly happens that their anger is roused 
 by the application of peculiar behaviour, or the 
 discussion of peculiar topics, as it is often found 
 that insanity manifests itself only when a particular 
 idea is forced upon the attention. They are not 
 always angry, like the Choleric Man of Cumber- 
 land, but sometimes assume the appearance and 
 have the reality of reason. 
 
 To have discriminated this difference would have 
 afforded scope for a fine display of character, by 
 exhibiting the inconsistences into which the same 
 man may be betrayed who is, at one time, the slave 
 of violence, and at another the creature of reason* 
 
 X2 
 
308 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 From such a character, also, he might have deduced 
 a just moral, by contrasting the virtues of his calm 
 moments with the vices and follies of his enraged 
 ones ; and shewing that there is no security in the 
 integrity of a passionate man by making him annul, 
 or destroy, the efficacy of those beneficent actions 
 which he may have performed in the cool mo- 
 ments of deliberate and rational conduct. 
 
 This was what the author might have done with 
 such a character, instead of which he has exhibited 
 merely an impetuous ruffian,whose reformation is at 
 last produced by an act of violence committed from 
 such an idle provocation, or rather from no provo- 
 cation at all, that both the reader and the spectator 
 despise the extravagance of the incident. 
 
 The remaining personages of this play may be 
 dismissed without much examination. The two 
 brothers are opposed to each other with such 
 an obvious contrast of sentiments and conduct, 
 that we know the author's intention must have 
 been merely to produce an antithesis of cha- 
 racter, if I may be allowed the expression : for, 
 such fraternal contrariety is seldom witnessed in 
 actual life. They seem to have been drawn in 
 imitation of those artificially contrasted characters 
 which are to be found in the pla} r s of our best dra- 
 matists, but which always betray a poverty of inven- 
 tion. It is so easy, when one brother is calm and 
 placid, to make the other rough and boisterous, or 
 if one be crafty and insidious to pourtray the other 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 309 
 
 open, ingenuous, and unsuspecting, that a superior 
 writer might justly despise such an expedient for 
 its facility: while it might be worthy of his 
 highest ambition to discriminate them by those 
 delicate and almost evanescent shades of character 
 which gradually blend into each other like the 
 prismatic colours, and yet are distinguished one 
 from the other. 
 
 Cumberland, however, thought differently upon 
 this subject, and speaks of the " comic force" 
 with which the contrast between the two brothers 
 is supported, while he seems to applaud the in- 
 vention that contrived that contrast. But an 
 author has long been reputed the very worst judge 
 of his own works, whence, perhaps, the reason that 
 Cumberland says, of the present play, " that the 
 characters are humorously contrasted, and there is 
 point and spirit in the dialogue ;" and that, if ever 
 an editor shall, hereafter, make a collection of his 
 dramas, this * c will stand forward as one of the 
 most prominent among them/' To this opinion, 
 thus modestly expressed, I must object from a 
 strong conviction, in my own mind, that the dia- 
 logue has neither point nor spirit. 
 
 Perhaps, what the author has dignified with these 
 appellations, may appear to others dull and vapid ; 
 as, for example, when Manlove inquires of his 
 clerk what fee he received with a case from a 
 tailor, who asks how he is to proceed against his 
 wife for adultery: the clerk replies, " a light 
 
310 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 guinea," and Manlove answers, " tis more than a 
 light woman deserves" — and adds, in a strain of 
 equal wit and raillery, " give the tailor his guinea 
 again ; bid him proceed to his work, and leave a 
 good for nothing wife to go on with hers; and 
 hark'ee Frampton, you seem to want a new coat, 
 suppose you let him take your measure : the fellow, 
 you see, would fain be cutting out work for the 
 lawyers." 
 
 I have no doubt that when Cumberland wrote 
 this, he conceived he was producing a witty ob- 
 servation ; but I greatly doubt whether any per- 
 son ever thought so besides himself. 
 
 Neither can I much commend the point of the 
 following remark. 
 
 " I must believe," says Letitia, " that no man 
 would descend from the character of a gentleman, 
 who was not wanting in the requisites that go to 
 the support of it." 
 
 If a man want that which is essential to any 
 thing, he cannot surely be said to possess it: and 
 if he do not possess it, how can. he forfeit the 
 possession ? 
 
 If it were to such felicities of composition that 
 Cumberland alluded, when he pronounced so fa- 
 vourably of this play, the question is decided : but 
 probably he might mistake a dialogue approaching 
 nearly to licentiousness for point and spirit, in 
 which case I can suppose he had in his mind the 
 scene between Letitia, Mrs. Stapleton, and Jack 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 311 
 
 Nightshade, in the picture-room : a scene no less 
 distinguished for its absurdity of exaggerated 
 ignorance, than for a strain of conversation that 
 treads upon the very heels of indecency, and is 
 preposterously uttered in the presence of a young- 
 lady, un reproved by her or the matron who ac- 
 companies her. 
 
 The citizens, and especially the aldermen, must 
 have felt themselves greatly indebted to the 
 courtesy of Cumberland, when he consigned them 
 all to the honours of cuckoldom in one compre- 
 hensive inference. When the choleric man breaks 
 the head of a horn-blower, and inquires of his 
 servant in what state the wound is, he replies, 
 " he would not have such a star in his forehead, 
 to be the richest alderman in the city of London/' 
 to which his master rejoins, " tis a pity but he had 
 been one, for then his horns might have warded off 
 the blow." It may be that even this was ac- 
 counted spirit and point by the writer : but I 
 should be sorry to pronounce it such. 
 
 To this comedy is prefixed a long dissertation 
 which he calls a Dedication to Detraction. It is 
 not written with much humour, but it shews how 
 keenly he smarted from contemporary criticism, 
 and how anxious he was to persuade the world 
 that he did not feel at all. There is some erudition 
 idly lavished upon a topic which did not deserve 
 consideration, and which seems to have been pro- 
 duced rather as an ostentatious display of hisintel- 
 
312 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 lectual stores than from any necessity that was 
 forced upon him by personal considerations. It was 
 pertinently observed by Murphy, who mentions 
 this play in his life of Garrick, " that if the reader 
 wished to have the true idea of a Choleric Man, 
 he would find it in the Dedication to Detraction, 
 prefixed to the play." 
 
 His next undertaking was to write and publish, 
 in 1776, two odes, one to the sun, written at 
 Keswick, and invoking the appearance of that 
 luminary which did not shine often enough for 
 the author's accommodation, and the other to Dr. 
 James, eulogising his powders because they cured 
 Cumberland's son of a dangerous fever. Of these 
 twin productions I know no more than what may 
 be learned from the extracts which Cumberland 
 has preserved in his Memoirs, and they do not 
 excite any wish to increase my knowledge. 
 
 To the sun he says, 
 
 * f Soul of the world, refulgent sun, 
 Oh take not from my ravish' d sight, 
 Those golden beams of living light, 
 Nor, ere thy golden course be run 
 
 Precipitate the night. 
 Lo, where the ruffian clouds arise, 
 Usurp the abdicated skies, 
 And seize th' ethereal throne ; 
 Sullen sad the scene appears, 
 Huge Helvellyn streams with tears .■ 
 Hark! 'tis giant Skiddaw's groan ; 
 I hear terrific Lawdoor roar ; 
 The sabbath of thy reign is o'er, 
 The anarchy's begun ; 
 Father of light return : break forth refulgent sun '." 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 313 
 
 In the ode to Dr. James is the following de- 
 scription of the person of death : 
 
 " On his pale steed erect the monarch stands, 
 His dirk and javelin glittering in his hands ; 
 This from a distance deals th' ignoble blow, 
 And that despatches the resisting foe : 
 
 Whilst all beneath him, as he flies, 
 
 Dire are the tossings, deep the cries, 
 The landscape darkens and the season dies," 
 
 In these lines there is nothing to commend. The 
 best parts are those which he has taken from 
 other writers, for I trace, in them, the acknow- 
 ledged property of Milton, Addison, and Mason. 
 
 These odes, when published, being addressed 
 to Romney, who was then lately returned from 
 pursuing his studies at Rome, Johnson ob- 
 served that they were made to carry double, as 
 being subsidiary to the fame of another man : but 
 when he allowed that " they would have been 
 thought as good as odes commonly are, if Cum- 
 berland had not put his name to them," I suppose 
 he intended an indirect depreciation of Gray. 
 
 In the ensuing year ( 1777) he turned his thoughts 
 towards altering one of Shakspeare's plays, (Timon 
 of Athens) and adapting it for the modern stage. 
 This had already been attempted by Shadwell 
 in 1678, and by Love in 1768 : but in neither 
 case was the project successful, and Cumberland's 
 shared the fate of its precursors. To amend 
 Shakspeare, indeed, is a task which demands no 
 
314 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 ordinary powers of mind, and though it has been 
 done with some sort of plausibility, where the strong 
 interest of the piece has overcome the defects of 
 mutilations, transpositions, and omissions, (as in 
 Richard the Third, the Tempest, and King Lear) 
 it will hardly be endured, when the chief delight 
 of the reader or spectator arises from the majesty 
 of Shakspeare's thoughts, and the matchless excel- 
 lence of his language, as is peculiarly the case in 
 Timon of Athens, The fable of this play is less 
 intricate than most of Shakspeare's ; but the flashes 
 of genius that illumine the whole, the profound 
 knowledge of life which is displayed in the 
 speeches of Timon, his caustic severity of satire, 
 his manly fulminations against the herd of parasites 
 who surrounded him, and his nobleness of nature 
 in the midst of all his excesses, are touches so pe- 
 culiarly Shakspeare's that no man can successfully 
 incorporate any thing of his own with them. How 
 Cumberland has succeeded let the following speci- 
 men testify : 
 
 "Act II. Scene III. 
 
 '* Lucullus and Lucius. 
 
 Lucid. — How now, my Lord? in private? 
 Lue. — Yes, I thought so, 
 
 Till an unwelcome intermeddling Lord 
 
 Stept in and ask'd the question. 
 Lucid. — -What, in anger ! 
 
 By heav'ns I'll gall him 1 for he stands before me 
 
 In the broad sunshine of Lord Timon's bounty, 
 
 And throws my better merits into shade. (Aside) . 
 
 Lite. — Now would I kill him if I durst. (.hide). 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 315 
 
 Lucul— Methinks 
 
 You look but coldly. What has cross'd your suit ? 
 
 Alas, poor Lucius ! but I read your fate 
 
 In that unkind one's frown. 
 Luc— No doubt, my Lord, 
 
 You, that receive them ever, are well-vers'd 
 
 In the unkind-one's frowns : as the clear stream 
 
 Reflects your person, so may you espy 
 
 In the sure mirror of her scornful brow 
 
 The clouded picture of your own despair., 
 Lucul. — Come, you presume too far ; talk not thus idly 
 
 To me, who know you. 
 Luc. — Know me ? 
 LucuL— -Aye, who know you, 
 
 For one, that courses up and down on errands, 
 
 A stale retainer at Lord Timon's table ; 
 
 A man grown great by making legs and cringes, 
 
 By winding round a wanton spendthrift's heart, 
 
 And gulling him at pleasure— Now do I know you ? 
 Luc— Gods, must I bear this ? bear it from Lucullus ! 
 
 I, who first brought thee to Lord Timon's stirrup, 
 
 Set thee in sight, and breath'd into thine ear 
 
 The breath of hope ? What hadst thou been, ingrateful, 
 
 But that I took up Jove's imperfect work, 
 
 Gave thee a shape, and made thee into man? 
 
 Alcibiades to them. 
 Alcib. — What, wrangling, Lords, like hungry curs for crusts ? 
 
 Away with this unmanly war of words ! 
 
 Pluck forth your shining rapiers from their shells, 
 
 And level boldly at each other's hearts. 
 
 Hearts did I say ? Your hearts are gone from home, 
 
 And hid in Timon's coffers— Fie upon it ! 
 Luc. — My Lord Lucullus, I shall find a time. 
 Alcib. — Hah ! find a time ! the brave make time and place. 
 
 Gods, gods, Avhat things are men ! you'll find a time ? 
 
 A time for what ? — To murder him in's sleep ? 
 
 The man, who wrongs me, at the altar's foot 
 
 I'll seize, yea, drag him from the shelt'ring aegis 
 
 Of stern Minerva. 
 Luc. — Aye ; 'tis your profession. 
 Alcib.—- Down on your knees, and thank the gods for that, 
 
316 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Or woe for Athens, were it left to such 
 
 As you are to defend. Do ye not hate 
 
 Each other heartily ? Yet neither dares 
 
 To bear his trembling falchion to the sun. 
 
 How tame they dangle on your coward thighs I 
 JLucul.—We are no soldiers, Sir. 
 Alcib. — No, ye are Lords ; 
 
 A lazy, proud, unprofitable crew ; 
 
 The vermin gender'd from the rank corruption 
 
 Of a luxurious state — No soldiers, say you ? 
 
 And wherefore are ye none ? Have ye not life, 
 
 Friends, honour, freedom, country, to defend ? 
 
 He, that hath these, by nature is a soldier, 
 
 And, when he wields his sword in their defence, 
 
 Instinctively fulfils the end he lives for.—" 
 &c. &c. 
 
 This is Cumberland's own ; and how it accords 
 with the sentiments and language of Shakspeare, 
 I need not tell. The piece was acted however, 
 but it met with a cold reception, though sup- 
 ported by the talents of Mr. and Mrs. Barry. The 
 opinion of its failure has been uniformly expressed 
 by all who have mentioned the undertaking. 
 " What Mr. Cumberland did to such a play," says 
 Murphy, " or how he contrived to mangle it, is 
 now not worth the trouble of enquiring." 
 
 " Those who have read Shad well's Timon," ob- 
 serves Davies, in his Life of Garrick, (and his opi- 
 nion upon a question of theatrical adaptation is 
 entitled to respect), " will not, I believe, scruple to 
 prefer it to Mr. Cumberland's, though both the 
 aiterers had better have forborne a task to which 
 they were unequal. It is almost impossible to 
 graft large branches upon the old stock of Shaks- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 317 
 
 peare ; none have succeeded in their alterations of 
 that poet, but such as have confined themselves to 
 the lopping off a few superfluous boughs, and add- 
 ing, where necessary, some small slips of their 
 own, and that too with the utmost caution/' 
 
 " The alterer has, by his management, utterly 
 destroyed all pity for the principal characters of 
 the play. Shad well gave Timon a mistress, who 
 never forsook him in his distress ; but Mr. Cum- 
 berland has raised him up a daughter, whose for- 
 tune the father profusely spends on flatterers and 
 sycophants ; this destroys all probability, as well 
 as extinguishes commiseration. What generous 
 and noble-minded man, as Shakspeare has drawn 
 his Timon, would be guilty of such baseness as to 
 wrong his child, by treating his visitors with the 
 wealth that should be reserved for her portion? 
 
 " It is, indeed, a miserable alteration of one of 
 Shakspeare* s noblest productions. There is not, 
 perhaps, in any work, ancient or modern, more 
 just; reflection and admirable satire than in Timon ; 
 Cumberland and his original do not, in the least, 
 assimilate, for in their style they are widely dif- 
 ferent ; some excellent scenes of Shakspeare are 
 entirely omitted, and others grossly mutilated." 
 
 • From these testimonies, and from the present 
 oblivion of the piece, we may conclude, without 
 much fear of violating truth, that had Cumberland 
 duly considered his fame as a writer, he would 
 have abstained from an attempt which can only 
 
3ft> LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 confer an humble reward, if successful, but will 
 incur much contempt if unsuccessful. 
 
 The last thing which Cumberland produced on 
 the Drury-lane stage, before the secession of 
 Garrick from its management, was the Note of 
 Hand, or a Trip to Newmarket. This farce was 
 acted with moderate applause ; and was the cause, 
 it has been said, as I have already noticed, that 
 Sheridan transplanted the author to his canvass, 
 when he drew the character of Sir Fretful. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 319 
 
 CHAP. XV. 
 
 The fecundity of Cumberland 9 s muse, — Produces 
 the Battle of Hastings.— Examination of 
 this tragedy. — Its total deficiency in every thing 
 that constitutes a tragedy. — Examples of his 
 plagiarisms from Shakspeare, Pope, and 
 other writers. — Instances of the pure Bathos. — 
 If Sheridan laughed at it ivho could blame 
 him? — Cumberland obtains promotion in his 
 office. 
 
 There was at least as much truth as gaiety in 
 Cumberland's prologue to the Fashionable Lover, 
 when he said of himself, 
 
 " This bard breeds regularly once a season." 
 
 His eagerness to produce, indeed, was greater 
 than his caution to produce well ; and this eager- 
 ness appears somewhat remarkable, if we believe 
 his own declaration to Bickerstaff, that in com- 
 mencing author he was actuated by motives purely 
 " disinterested." To him who writes for bread, it 
 may sometimes be forgiven, if he writes more than 
 will enlarge his fame ; but there is no excuse for 
 a man who sacrifices his reputation to a mere itch 
 of composition which must always be relieved by 
 the scratching of a pen. I have no doubt, how- 
 
320 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 ever, that when Cumberland composed his dra- 
 mas he thought at least as much of the treasurer 
 of the theatre as he did of the rumours of renown, 
 or the pleasure of beholding himself in print. His 
 were golden dreams ; and Fame presented herself 
 to his imagination, with the lucky profits of an 
 author's three nights pleasantly glittering in her 
 hand. 
 
 The next offspring of his fast-teeming muse 
 was the Battle of Hastings^ a tragedy, of which 
 he says but little himself, and of which little can 
 be said by any one in its favour. I have heard 
 that Garrick interested himself in its fate, and 
 recommended it warmly to Sheridan's protection, 
 but that Cumberland did not testify a just sense 
 of his exertions, which greatly hurt the feelings of 
 Garrick, who openly expressed his displeasure at 
 such an unmerited requital. Something, however, 
 is attributed, in this account, perhaps, to a wrong 
 cause ; for Cumberland represents himself as having 
 been unjustly treated by Garrick, who empowered 
 him to engage Henderson for Drury Lane, and after- 
 wards annulled the engagement upon the report of 
 his brother George, who saw him perform at Bath, 
 and formed a less exalted notion of his excellence. 
 The acrimony which this proceeding excited, Cum- 
 berland was probably not anxious to conceal ; and 
 $he expression of it was attributed to a motive very 
 distinct, perhaps, from what really existed. Such 
 negligence is too common in the rumours of popu 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 321 
 
 pular report, and too often engenders feuds and 
 abhorrence, where kindness and respect might 
 otherwise have existed. 
 
 From whatever cause, however, it may have 
 arisen, I fear there was some coolness between 
 Garrick and Cumberland a short time previously 
 to the death of the former, who, when he was 
 asked his opinion of the Battle of Hastings, con- 
 stantly evaded a distinct answer, by replying, Sir, 
 what all the world says must be true ; a mode of 
 replication which evidently sprung from an unwil- 
 lingness to utter a falsehood, and too much kind- 
 ness for the man to tell an unwelcome truth. 
 
 In the prologue to this play, the author again 
 acquaints the world with what pangs the critic's 
 sneer affected him, and how he smarted from the 
 attacks of newspaper writers; again he whines 
 about detraction, and the hard fate it was his lot 
 to endure. The audiences of those days must 
 have been patient beings, for I doubt if any such 
 complaints would now be tolerated. These are 
 his lines of dolorous declamation : 
 
 " Your poet thus profanely led aside, 
 
 To range o'er tragic land without a guide, 
 
 To pick, perhaps, with no invidious aim, 
 
 A few cast fallings from the tree of fame. 
 
 Damn'd, tho' untried, by the despotic rule 
 
 Of the stern doctors in detraction's school ; 
 
 Lash'd down each column of a public page, 
 
 And driv'n o'er burning ploughshares to the stage ; 
 
 Be-rhim'd and ridicul'd with doggrel wit, 
 
 Sues out a pardon from his Pope — the Pit. 
 
 Y 
 
322 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Pensive he stands in penitential weeds> 
 With a huge rosary of untold beads ; 
 Sentenc'd for past offences to rehearse 
 Ave Apollos to the God of verse ; 
 And sure there's no one but an author knows 
 The penance which an author undergoes. 
 
 To this cant, from a man who professed to write 
 for pleasure only, and not for bread, a brief answer 
 might have been given — abjure the path that is so 
 thorny ; you entered it for amusement ; but as 
 there can be no amusement in the persecution you 
 so pathetically deplore, escape the one by renounc- 
 ing the other. To such a reply, had it been of- 
 fered, what could Cumberland have said ? 
 
 Of the tragedy itself I have not much to say. I 
 will not analyse its plot, nor examine its charac- 
 ters. They are both too feeble to provoke cen- 
 sure. The incidents are few and uninteresting, 
 and belong neither to tragedy nor comedy ; they are 
 too dull for the latter, and too trivial for the 
 former. The title sufficiently expresses from what 
 period of English history the action is derived; 
 but he who had not read the play would scarcely 
 anticipate that the battle of Hastings could be made 
 the argument of a drama, and the Duke of Norman- 
 dy excluded from its characters. Cumberland 
 seems to have wholly forgotten what a noble plot 
 might have been formed from the introduction of 
 William, and the contrasted hopes and fears of his 
 Norman followers with those of the English army ; 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 523 
 
 or, perhaps, he saw the greatness, but felt he could 
 not reach it. 
 
 What success this play had I have not heard. 
 Cumberland is silent upon the subject, and hence 
 it may be inferred that it was not very eminent. 
 It did not indeed deserve success ; for, besides the 
 barrenness of the plot, and the imbecility of the 
 characters, the sentiments and language form such 
 a motley whole, as will not easily be paralleled. 
 Instead of catching any of the warm and glowing 
 energy of Shakspeare, Otway, or Southerne, in- 
 stead of forming himself upon them, he appears 
 to have borrowed only the worst features from 
 the tragedies of Rowe and Phillips ; imitating 
 their cold and artificial declamations, their frigid 
 similes, and unnatural tumour of expression. These 
 he mistook for that elevation of style, that mea- 
 sured cadence of verse, and that dignity of senti- 
 ment, which belong to tragedy as the representa- 
 tion of great and striking events. 
 
 Some instances of these defects shall be here 
 produced, as they may, at least, amuse the reader, 
 especially if he have ever found pleasure in The Art 
 of Sinking, by Martinus Scriblerus. The play, in- 
 deed, does not require the application of serious 
 criticism; it defies it. 
 
 When Raymond issues from the castle to receive 
 his master, in the first scene, he thinks it neces- 
 sary that the bugle should be sounded, but, as it 
 would be unsuitable for a tragic writer to use such 
 
 Y2 
 
324 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 colloquial expressions as blow or sound, he bids the 
 herald "provoke the bugle," by which an un- 
 learned reader might suppose it to be some- 
 thing capable of anger, rather than a passive 
 instrument susceptible only of noise. I have no 
 objection to the metaphorical use of the word pro- 
 voke, only here the occasion did not justify it, 
 and its employment reminded me of the writer 
 who feared to bid his servant shut the door, but 
 exclaimed 
 
 " The wooden guardian of our privacy 
 Quick on its axle turn*. 
 
 Nothing can be more distinct from dignity than 
 such a turgid phraseology. " Ce'st une belle 
 chose," observes Corneille, " que de faire vers 
 puissans et majesteux ; cette pompe ravit d'ordi- 
 naire les esprits, et pour le moins les eblouet ; 
 mais il faut que les sujets en fassent naitre les 
 occasions." 
 
 Edgar returning at night to his mistress, finds 
 the castle gate open. An ordinary man would 
 have concluded that the porter or warder had for- 
 gotten to lock it ; but a poetical lover understands 
 the matter in a very different way. 
 
 * Pope, who ridiculed this bombast, (or perhaps wrote it as a specimen 
 of what should be ridiculed), has exhibited the same operation in a manner 
 not less swollen : 
 
 " The bolt obedient to the silken cord, 
 
 To the strong staple's inmost depth restor'd, 
 
 Secur'd the valve." Odyssey, B. I. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 325 
 
 " O Lave ! 
 Small elf, who, by the glow-worm's twinkling light, 
 Fine fairy-finger'd child, can slip the bolt 
 While the cramm'd warden snores, this is thy doing." 
 
 This fanciful account is perfectly in character, it 
 must be confessed ; and I suppose if the author 
 had brought a house-breaker to the spot, instead of 
 a lover, the gentleman finding the event equally 
 convenient for his purpose, would have ascribed 
 all the honour and glory of it to Mercury, who is 
 the patron god of thieves as Cupid is of lovers. 
 
 There is nothing more dangerous to a man than 
 the ambition of imitating what is far beyond his 
 powers of performance. When Phaeton mounted 
 the chariot of his father, he perished for his pre- 
 sumption. A direct endeavour to equal another 
 provokes the most rigorous comparison ; and no 
 one should attempt it who does not feel a confi- 
 dence amounting to conviction, that he can per- 
 form what he attempts. Shakspeare, in his Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, soars into one of his 
 boldest flights in describing the poet, whose 
 
 " Eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
 Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, 
 And, as imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing, 
 A local habitation, and a name." 
 
 This lofty and majestic description Cumberland 
 obviously labours to imitate in the following one: 
 
3$6 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 " The poet, by the magic of his song, 
 Can charm the listening moon^ ascend the spheres, 
 And in his airy and extravagant flight 
 Belt wide creation's round." 
 
 This is frigid enough ; but the conclusion ex- 
 ceeds it, for the reader will hardly imagine that 
 Edgar, who utters this to his mistress, does it to 
 assure her, that though the poet can perform such 
 feats as those described, 
 
 " Yet can he never 
 Invent that form of words to speak his passion." 
 
 Cumberland is not a modest borrower, indeed ; 
 he draws largely upon the property of others, and 
 Sheridan might have justified the name he gave 
 him from this play alone. For the gratification of 
 the reader I will trace him through a few of his 
 boldest thefts ; such as are but slightly transmuted 
 in passing through his intellectual crucible. 
 
 In Hamlet we find Laertes giving just counsel 
 to his sister, and warning her how frail is virgin 
 reputation, in the following lines of matchless 
 beauty : 
 
 " The chariest maid is prodigal enough. 
 If she unmask her beauty to the moon : 
 Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes ; 
 The canker galls the infants of the spring 
 Too oft before their buttons be disclosed j 
 And in the morn and liquid dew of youth 
 Contagious blastments are most imminent. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 32? 
 
 Ill the tragedy before us, Earl Edwin is made 
 to sav, 
 
 " The tenderest flower that withers at the breeze, 
 Or, if the amorous sun but steal a kiss, 
 Drops its soft head and dies, is not more frail 
 Than maiden reputation ; 'tis a mirror 
 Which the first sigh defiles." 
 
 Here the imitation is rather in the idea than in 
 the expression ; in the following it is in both. 
 Macbeth, meditating the murder of Duncan, ob- 
 serves, that 
 
 " Pity, like a naked, new-born babe, 
 Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd 
 Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 
 Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 
 That tears shall drown the wind." 
 
 Edgar returns to the camp of Harold with great 
 expedition, riding against time perhaps. Edwin 
 tells him, 
 
 " You methinks did ride, 
 As you'd o'ertake the couriers of the sky, 
 Hors'd on the sightless winds." 
 
 Pope says, in his Essay on Criticism, 
 
 " Praise undeserv'd is scandal in disguise." 
 
 And Matilda says in the Battle of Hastings, 
 
 " Praise undeserv'd, what is it but reproach ? " 
 
 But the line would have been better had 
 taken the other half of it from the same author. 
 
32S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Shakspeare is the chief storehouse whence Cum- 
 berland drew his allusions, when he needed strik- 
 ing and emphatic ones. In Richard the Third, 
 the tyrant exclaims, with a savage ferocity of 
 truth, 
 
 " Crowns got by blood, must be by blood maintain'd." 
 
 And this sort of royal logic Harold employs 
 when he says, 
 
 " Possessions by ill deeds obtain'd, by worse 
 Must be upheld." 
 
 Alliterative harmony is a favourite ornament 
 with some writers, and when skilfully used, as it 
 has been by Milton and Pope, it produces an 
 effect not unpleasing to the ear. Cumberland 
 occasionally employs it, but when, in the fourth 
 act, Elwina talks of a u bloody breathless corse/ 1 
 it recalls the ludicrous exemplication of this 
 figure by Shakspeare : 
 
 £& 
 
 " Whereat with blade, with bloody, blameful blade. 
 He bravely broach'd his boiling-, bloody breast." 
 
 Had Cumberland lived when the renowned 
 treatise on the Bathos was published, and had he 
 written this tragedy before it was composed, how 
 vast a fund for illustration it would have afforded. 
 I could select numerous instances of the profound 
 from its pages ; but a few shall suffice. I think 
 the following may be considered as an authentic 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 329 
 
 specimen. Edwin thus solemnly adjures Edgar 
 to resume his post in the field of battle : 
 
 " By your thrice plighted oath I do conjure you, 
 By all the world calls honest, by your hopes, 
 Come to the camp.'* 
 
 Such a pompous exordium leading to such a lame 
 and impotent conclusion (like the stately palaces 
 of the Russian nobility, which often conduct to 
 internal meanness and poverty) resembles the 
 burlesque lines of Johnson : 
 
 " Hermit hoar, in solemn cell 
 Wearing out life's evening gray, 
 Strike thy bosom, sage, and tell 
 What is bliss, and which the way ? 
 
 Thus I spoke, and speaking sigh'd, 
 Scarce repress'd the starting tear : 
 When the hoary sage replied, 
 Come my lad and drink some beer." 
 
 The witty Duke of Buckingham in the Rehear- 
 sal, ridiculed the unnatural use of expanded si- 
 miles, when nothing but passion should be ex- 
 pressed, by these lines which are a parody upon 
 some that Dryden wrote in the Conquest of 
 Granada : 
 
 " So boar and sow, when any storm is nigh, 
 Snuff up and smell it gath'ring in the sky : 
 Boar beckons sow to trot in chesnut groves, 
 And there consummate their unfinished loves ; 
 Pensive in mud they wallow all alone, 
 And snore and gruntle to each other's moan." 
 
330 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 How justly, also, might the following simile in 
 this tragedy be ridiculed : a simile which Edwina 
 breaks out into, when, after a struggle, she recon- 
 ciles herself to the departure of her lover. Let 
 him go, she exclaims, I can only die, and when I 
 am gone, his fame shall be immortal : 
 
 So when the bleak and wintry tempest rends 
 
 The mantling ivy from the worshipp'd sides 
 
 Of some aspiring tower, where late it hung ; 
 
 The stately mass, as with a sullen scorn, 
 
 From its proud height looks down upon the wreck, 
 
 And disencumber'd from its feeble guest, 
 
 Bares its broad bosom and defies the storm. 
 
 Is this the language of nature ? Would any 
 woman, whose heart was bursting at the dread 
 thought of her lover's departure for the field of 
 battle, solace herself with such frigid declamation ? 
 Do we find any such coldly artificial talking, in 
 the characters of Constance, Desdemona, Juliet, or 
 Belvidera, when they are labouring with their 
 griefs ? Produce me one such unnatural soliloquy 
 in them, and I will consent that Cumberland has 
 been faithful to the genuine workings of the hu- 
 man heart. I will consent, also, that the following- 
 rant of Edgar is the language of nature : 
 
 By heav'n I love thee 
 More than the sun burnt earth loves softening showers, 
 More than new ransom'd captives love the day ; 
 Or dying martyrs breathing forth their souls, 
 The acclamations of whole hosts of angels. 
 
 I will not protract this discussion by extracting 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 831 
 
 all that occurs to me as either ludicrous, or turgid, 
 or mean. Yet I will select two or three more 
 instances in justification of the opinion I have 
 expressed, (if it can possibly require a further one) 
 and because they are such as may provoke the 
 reader's smiles, if he be not a second Cassius. 
 
 I question if the most profound inquirer into 
 the works of nature, ever beheld, or heard of, a 
 phenomenon like the following: 
 
 Power supreme ! 
 Whose words can bid the gathering clouds disperse, 
 And chain the stubborn and contentious winds, 
 When they unseat the everlasting rocks. 
 And cast them to the sky. 
 
 I am not quite certain whether Miss Edgeworth 
 would not admit these lines into the next edition 
 of her Irish Bulls. To unseat everlasting rocks, 
 appears to me to contain an idea just as philoso- 
 phically accurate as the following couplet of Pope: 
 
 When first young Maro, in his boundless mind, 
 A work to outlast immortal Rome design'd. 
 
 Of new and appropriate metaphors, expressed 
 with a happy felicity of style, the following may 
 serve as a specimen : 
 
 Once I was happy : 
 Clear and serene my life's calm current ran 
 While scarce a breezy wish provok'd its tide ; 
 Down the smooth flood the tuneful passions fell 
 In easy lapse, and slumber'd as they pass'd. 
 
 From this it may be concluded that they 
 
332 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 were somnambulists, for their progressive motion 
 was not hindered by sleep. 
 
 One more instance and I have done. Matilda 
 Informs her train, that on the following morning 
 they must employ themselves in singing, to the 
 harp, songs of victory : and this she very pointedly 
 enforces by observing, that " they must teach 
 their throats a loftier strain/' Now the throat is 
 certainly the organ of sound, and it may be taught 
 how to emit tones harmoniously; but if a meto- 
 nymy can ever be advantageously employed, I 
 think it might have been so here. 
 
 I will not stop to detect other blemishes, such 
 as making his characters eruditely familiar with 
 classical learning, and especially the Lady Matilda. 
 She talks as fluently of Jove, and Minerva, and 
 Apollo, and Janus, as the author's grandfather could 
 have done ; nay, I question whether Lady Jane 
 Grey herself, in the plenitude of that knowledge 
 which so astonished honest Roger Ascham, could 
 have exhibited a more commendable proficiency. 
 These acquisitions are remarkable only when we 
 consider the era in which the action of the play 
 is laid; and when, as far as I know, the study of 
 heathen mythology or the Roman poets was not 
 much cultivated in this island. A poet, to be 
 sure, whose imagination is very fervid, may out- 
 strip the tardy pace of time, and exhibit, as the 
 customs of the eleventh century, what belongs to 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND* 333 
 
 the fifteenth. Shakspeare has done this, and why 
 not Cumberland? 
 
 A spirit of candour, which, though a rare qua- 
 lity in a critic, is one that becomes him more 
 than the most acute severity, induces me to copy 
 the following lines from this tragedy, describing 
 the death of Harold, and in which the reader will 
 find a vigour and animation somewhat remarkable 
 in a writer whose tragic style was so peculiarly 
 feeble without delicacy, or turgid without strength. 
 Had he written always thus, I had been spared 
 the trouble of following him through his inflated 
 imbecility, and the reader would have escaped the 
 perusal of my pursuit. 
 
 Matilda inquires the issue of the battle, and 
 Edgar answers : 
 
 Hearken : 
 The hireling troops had fled ; one native phalanx 
 Fatally brave, yet stood ; there deep engulph'd, 
 Within the Norman host I found thy father, 
 Mounted like Mars upon a pile of slain : 
 Frowning he fought, and wore his helmet up, 
 His batter'd harness at each ghastly sluice 
 Streaming with blood : life gush'd at every vein, 
 Yet liv'd he, as in proud despight of nature, 
 His mighty soul unwilling to forsake 
 Its princely dwelling : swift as thought I flew, 
 And as a sturdy churl his pole-axe aim'd 
 Full at the hero's crest, I sprung upon him, 
 And sheath'd my rapier in the caitiff's throat. 
 
 Matilda. Didst thou? then art thou faithful. Open Wide, 
 And shower your blessings on his head, ye heavens. 
 
 Edgar. Awhile the fainting hero we upheld ; 
 
334 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 (For Edwin now had join'd me) : but as well 
 We might have driven the mountain cataract 
 Back to its source, as stemm'd the battle's tide. 
 I saw the imperial Duke, and with loud insults 
 Provok'd him to the combat : but in vain ; 
 The pursey braggart now secure of conquest 
 Rein'd in his steed, and wing'd his squadron round 
 To cut us from retreat : cold death had stopp'd 
 Thy father's heart ; e'en hope itself had died : 
 Midst showers of darts we bore him from the fields 
 And now, supported on his soldier's pikes, 
 The venerable ruin comes. 
 
 Every thing is great or mean only by compa* 
 rison ; and it is only by comparing Cumberland 
 with himself that this passage can deserve ap- 
 plause. Thus compared, however, it has merit ; 
 and slender as it is, its value can be appreciated 
 only by him whose fate it has been to read the 
 traged}^ through, and to whom this parting gleam 
 is like the farewell lustre of the setting sun in 
 November after a dull and foggy day. I will 
 now dismiss this play with two questions : if 
 Sheridan laughed at it, who can blame him ? and 
 if it were possible for an author to judge his 
 own works dispassionately, could Cumberland 
 have said of it, " that it is better written than 
 planned ?" 
 
 Shortly after the performance of this tragedy, 
 his fisrt patron and master, the Earl of Halifax, 
 died. Cumberland's character of him I have 
 already given. He was succeeded in his office, 
 as secretary for the colonial department, by Lord 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 335 
 
 George Germain, a nobleman to whom Cumber- 
 land was not at all known, and from whom he could 
 hence expect few favours. He prepared himself, 
 therefore, to remain contentedly in his subordinate 
 office of clerk of the reports, when he suddenly 
 and agreeably found, in his new principal, a 
 courtesy and kindness which, as he did not expect 
 it, must have been the more pleasing to him. 
 
 " When Lord George had taken the seals/' says 
 he, " I asked my friend Colonel James Cunning- 
 ham to take me with him to Pall-Mali, which he 
 did, and the ceremony of paying my respects was 
 soon dismissed. I confess I thought my new chief 
 was quite as cold in his manner as a minister need 
 be, and rather more so than my intermediate friend 
 had given me reason to expect. I was now living 
 in great intimacy with the Duke of Dorset, and 
 asked him to do me that grace with his uncle, 
 which the honour of being acknowledged by him 
 as his friend would naturally have obtained for me. 
 This I am confident he would readily have done 
 but for reasons, which precluded all desire on my 
 part to say another word upon the business. I 
 was therefore left to make my own way with a 
 perfect stranger, whilst I was in actual negociation 
 with Mr. Pownall for the secretaryship, and had 
 understood Lord Clare to be friendly to our treaty 
 in the very moment, when he ceased to be our 
 first lord, and the power of accommodating us in 
 our wishes was shifted from his hands into those 
 
336 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 of Lord George. I considered it, therefore, as an 
 opportunity gone by, and entertained no further 
 hopes of succeeding. A very short time sufficed 
 to confirm the idea I had entertained of Lord 
 George's character for decision and dispatch in 
 business : there was at once an end to all our cir- 
 cumlocutory reports and inefficient forms, that had 
 only impeded business, and substituted ambiguity 
 for precision : there was (as William Gerard Ha- 
 milton, speaking of Lord George, truly observed 
 to me) no trash in his mind ; he studied no choice 
 phrases, no superfluous words, nor ever suffered 
 the clearness of his conceptions to be clouded by 
 the obscurity of his expressions, for these were 
 the simplest and most unequivocal that could be 
 made use of for explaining his opinions, or dic- 
 tating his instructions. In the mean while he was 
 so momentarily punctual to his time, so religiously 
 observant of his engagements, that we, who served 
 under him in office, felt the sweets of the ex- 
 change we had so lately made in the person of 
 our chief. 
 
 " I had now no other prospect but that of 
 serving in my subordinate situation under an easy 
 master with security and comfort, for as I was not 
 flattered with the show of any notices from him, 
 but such as I might reasonably expect, I built no 
 hopes upon his favour,*nor allowed myself to think 
 I was in any train of succeeding in my treaty with 
 our secretary for his office ; and as I had reason to 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. S3? 
 
 believe he was equally happy with myself in serving 
 under such a principal, I took for granted he would 
 move no further in the business. 
 
 " One day, as Lord George was leaving the office, 
 he stopt me on the outside of the door, at the 
 head of the stairs, and invited me to pass some 
 days with him and his family at Stoneland near 
 Tunbridge Wells. It was on my part so unex- 
 pected, that I doubted if I had rightly understood 
 him, as he had spoken in a low and submitted 
 voice, as his manner was, and I consulted his con- 
 fidential secretary, Mr. Doyley, whether he would 
 advise me to the journey. He told me that he 
 knew the house was filled from top to bottom with 
 a large party, that he was sure there would be no 
 room for me, and dissuaded me from the under- 
 taking. I did not quite follow his advice by neg- 
 lecting to present myself, but I resolved to secure 
 my retreat to Tunbridge Wells, and kept my chaise 
 in waiting to make good my quarters. When I 
 arrived at Stoneland I was met at the door by 
 Lord George, who soon discovered the precaution 
 I had taken, and himself conducting me to my 
 bed-chamber, told me it had been reserved for me, 
 and ever after would be set apart as mine, where 
 he hoped I would consent to find myself at home. 
 This was the man I had esteemed so cold, and 
 thus was I at once introduced to the commence- 
 ment of a friendship, which day by day improved, 
 
 Z 
 
338 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 and which no one word or action of his life to 
 come ever for an instant interrupted or dimi- 
 nished. 
 
 " Shortly after this, it came to his knowledge 
 
 that there had been a treaty between Mr. Pownall 
 
 mi 
 
 and me for his resignation of the place of secretary, 
 and he asked me what had passed ; I told him how 
 it stood, and what the conditions were, that my 
 superior in office expected for the accommodation. 
 I had not yet mentioned this to him, and probably 
 never should. He said he would take it into his 
 own hands, and in a few days signified the king's 
 pleasure that Mr. Pownall' s resignation was ac- 
 cepted, and that I should succeed him as secretaiy 
 in clear and full enjoyment of the place, without 
 any compensation whatsoever. Thus was I, be- 
 yond all hope and without a word said to me, that 
 could lead me to expect a favour of that sort, pro- 
 moted by surprise to a very advantageous and de- 
 sirable situation. I came to my office at the hour 
 appointed, not dreaming of such an event, and took 
 my seat at the adjoining table, when, Mr. Pownall 
 being called out of the room, Lord George turned 
 round to me and bade me take his chair at the 
 bottom of the table, announcing to the Board his 
 majesty's commands, as above recited, with a po- 
 sitive prohibition of all stipulations. AYhen I had 
 endeavoured to express myself as properly on the 
 occasion as my agitated state of spirits would allow 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 339 
 
 of, I remember Lord George made answer, c That 
 if I was as well pleased upon receiving his ma- 
 jesty's commands, as he was in being the bearer of 
 them, I was indeed very happy/ — If I served him 
 truly, honestly, and ardently ever after, till I fol- 
 lowed him to the grave, where is my merit ? How 
 could I do otherwise ?" 
 
 Z 2 
 
340 IXFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 CHAP. XVI. 
 
 Cumberland produces the opera of Calypso. — 
 And afterwards the Widow of Delphi. — 
 Exerts himself in behalf of the unfortunate 
 Perreau. — Solicited to do the same for Dr. 
 Dodd, but declines when he hears that Johnson 
 undertook his cause. — Anecdotes of Lord Rod- 
 ney. — A maxim of that gallant Admiral* s. — 
 Lines addressed to Lord Mansfield, by 
 Cumberland, in reference to a transaction of 
 Rodney's. 
 
 In 1779 Cumberland produced the opera of 
 Calypso, of which the dedication, to the Duchess 
 of Manchester, is elegantly encomiastic. The 
 opera itself requires little notice. Telemachus and 
 Mentor singing songs is something too much ; it is 
 as bad as Garrrick's alteration of Shakspeare's Tem- 
 pest, in which all the characters were degraded to 
 the mummery of musical recitative. The images, 
 in this piece, are sufficiently classical, and the 
 poetry is a little above the ordinary level of such 
 compositions : but, like the Battle of Hastings, it is 
 compounded of shreds and patches, stolen from all 
 sources. These thefts, however, I do not mean to 
 detect, as I have those in the tragedy : it is 
 enough to allude to them : the fact will require no 
 voucher. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 341 
 
 The music to this opera was composed by Mr. 
 Butler, and Cumberland speaks of it with high 
 encomiums: but it was never published. Butler 
 also composed the airs for another opera which 
 Cumberland produced the ensuing season, entitled, 
 The Widow of Delphi^, or the Descent of the Deities, 
 of which, had the author printed it, I question if 
 it would be necessary to say any more than thus 
 to record the period of its performance. They 
 both experienced a very brief existence ; nor can 
 I think that it would be advantageous to the ma- 
 nagers, or agreeable to the public, as the author 
 insinuates, that Calypso should be revived, eminent 
 as the vocal performers on the stage now are. 
 
 Of the Widow of Delphi Cumberland says, 
 " that having had it many years in his hands, by 
 the frequent revisions and corrections which he 
 has had opportunities of giving to the manuscript, 
 he is encouraged to believe that if he, or any after 
 him, shall send it into the world, that drama will 
 be considered as one of his most classical and 
 creditable productions. " With what propriety 
 this opinion is expressed, I am necessarily unable 
 to say ; but from the instances which I have 
 already had of Cumberland's mode of estimating 
 his own productions, I am apprehensive that the 
 publication of this opera would not corroborate the 
 author's notions of its excellence. 
 
 About this period he engaged in a cause ho- 
 nourable to his benevolence. The defence which 
 
342 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 was read at the bar by the unfortunate Perreau 
 was drawn up by Cumberland, and though it failed 
 to preserve his life, the kindness with which he 
 exerted himself in his behalf deserves equally 
 to be commended. Garrick, who was present when 
 this defence was read, spoke with enthusiasm of 
 its excellence in the company of Cumberland, not 
 knowing him to be the writer: the applause of 
 such a man was motive enough for an author's 
 vanity to disclose the secret, but Cumberland was 
 silent, and Garrick, who confidently, though, as 
 the event proved, untruly predicted that it had 
 saved the prisoner's life, discovered afterwards that 
 he had unconsciously extolled its superiority in 
 the presence of the author. 
 
 The impression which this performance had ex- 
 cited was probably the reason why, at a subse- 
 quent period, Cumberland was solicited by Dr. 
 Dodd, to undertake his defence in a similar man- 
 ner: but when he heard that so potent an advo- 
 cate as Dr. Johnson was preparing to step forth in 
 his cause, he prudently retired from the field, 
 " convinced/' says he, " that if the powers of 
 Johnson could not move mercy to reach his la- 
 mentable case, there was no further hope in man." 
 
 During the time that he acted in subordination 
 to Lord George Germain, he was distinguished by 
 that nobleman with peculiar marks of his favour 
 and approbation. He was frequently at his table, 
 and met there, of course, many of the most eminent 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 343 
 
 political characters of the time. Among those 
 who partook of his lordship's hospitality was the 
 gallant Rodney, with whom Cumberland was al- 
 ready intimate, and to whom he had an opportunity, 
 through the interest of his patron, of doing some 
 essential services. The few anecdotes which he 
 has preserved of this distinguished naval com- 
 mander, are highly interesting and characteristic. 
 
 " I had known Sir George Brydges Rodney in 
 early life, and whilst he was residing in France, 
 pending the uneasy state of his affairs at home, 
 had spared no pains to serve his interest and pave 
 the way for his return to his own country, where 
 I was not without hopes, by the recommendation 
 of Lord George Germain, to procure him an em- 
 ployment worthy of his talents and high station in 
 the navy. I drew up from his minutes a memorial 
 of his services, and petitioned for employ: he came 
 home at the risque of his liberty to refute some 
 malicious imputations, that had been glanced at 
 his character : this he effectually and honourably 
 accomplished, and I was furnished with testimo- 
 nials very creditable to him as an officer; his si- 
 tuation in the mean while was very uncomfortable 
 and his exertions circumscribed, yet in this pressure 
 of his affairs, to mark his readiness and zeal for 
 service, he addressed a letter to the king, tendering 
 himself to serve as a volunteer under an admiral, 
 then going out, who if I do not mistake, was his 
 junior on the list. In this forlorn, unfriended 
 
344 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 state, with nothing but exclusion and despair 
 before his eyes, when not a ray of hope beamed 
 upon him from the admiralty, and he dared not set 
 a foot beyond the limits of his privilege, I had 
 the happy fortune to put in train that state- 
 ment of his claim for service and employ, which, 
 through the immediate application of Lord George, 
 taking all the responsibility on himself, obtained for 
 that adventurous and gallant admiral the command 
 of that squadron, which on its passage to the West 
 Indies made capture of the Spanish fleet fitted out 
 for the Caraccas. The degree of gratification, 
 which I then experienced, is not easily to be de- 
 scribed. It was not only that of a triumph gained, 
 but of a terror dismissed, for the West India mer- 
 chants had been alarmed, and clamoured against 
 the appointment, so generally and so decidedly, 
 as to occasion no small uneasiness to my friend 
 and patron, and drew from him something that 
 resembled a remonstrance for the risque I had ex- 
 posed him to. But in the brilliancy of this exploit 
 all was done away, and past alarms were only 
 recollected to contrast the joy which this success 
 diffused. 
 
 " It happened to me to be present, and sitting 
 next to Admiral Rodney at table, when the thought 
 seemed first to occur to him of breaking the French 
 line by passing through it in the heat of the action. 
 It was at Lord George Germain's house, at Stone- 
 land, after dinner, when having asked a number of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 345 
 
 questions about the manoeuvring of columns, and 
 the effect of charging with them on a line of in- 
 fantry, he proceeded to arrange a parcel of cherry 
 stones, which he had collected from the table, and 
 forming them as two fleets drawn up in line and 
 opposed to each other, he at once arrested our at- 
 tention, which had not been very generally engaged 
 by his preparatory enquiries, by declaring he was 
 determined so to pierce the enemy's line of battle, 
 (arranging his manoeuvre at the same time on the 
 table) if ever it was his fortune to bring them into 
 action. I dare say this passed with some as mere 
 rhapsody, and all seemed to regard it as a very 
 perilous and doubtful experiment, but landsmen's 
 doubts and difficulties made no impression on the 
 admiral, who having seized the idea held it fast, 
 and in his eager animated way went on ma- 
 noeuvring his cherry stones, and throwing his ene- 
 my's representatives into such utter confusion, 
 that already possessed of that victory in imagina- 
 tion, which in reality he lived to gain, he concluded 
 his process by swearing he would lay the French 
 admiral's flag at his sovereign's feet ; a promise 
 which he actually pledged to his majesty in his 
 closet, and faithfully and gloriously performed. 
 
 " He was a singular and extraordinary mant 
 there were some prominent and striking eccen- 
 tricities about him, which, on a first acquaintance, 
 might dismiss a cursory observer with inadequate 
 and false impressions of his real character ; for he 
 
346 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 would very commonly indulge himself in a loose 
 and heedless style of talking, which for a time 
 might intercept and screen from observation the 
 sound good sense that he possessed, and the 
 strength and dignity of mind, that were natural to 
 him. Neither ought it to be forgotten that the sea 
 was his element^ and it was there, and not on land, 
 that the standard ought to be planted by which his 
 merits should be measured. We are apt to set 
 that man down as vain-glorious and unwise, who 
 fights battles over the table, and in the ardour of 
 his conversation, though amongst enviers and ene- 
 mies, keeps no watch upon his words, confiding in 
 their candour and believing them his friends. Such 
 a man was Admiral Lord Rodney, whom history 
 will record amongst the foremost of our naval 
 heroes, and whoever doubts his courage might as 
 well dispute against the light of the sun at noon- 
 day. 
 
 " That he carried this projected manoeuvre into 
 operation, and that the effect of it was successfully 
 decisive all the world knows. My friend, Sir 
 Charles Douglas, captain of the fleet, confessed to 
 me that he himself had been adverse to the ex- 
 periment, and in discussing it with the admiral had 
 stated his objections ; to these he got no other 
 answer but that ' his counsel was not called for; 
 he required obedience only, he did not want 
 advice/ Sir Charles also told me that whilst the 
 project was in operation, (the battle then raging) 
 
LIFE OP CUMBERLAND. 347 
 
 his own attention being occupied by the gallant 
 defence made by the French Glorieux against the 
 ships that were pouring their fire into her, upon 
 his crying out — ' Behold, Sir George, the Greeks 
 and Trojans contending for the body of Patroclus]' 
 The admiral, then pacing the quarter deck in great 
 agitation, pending the experiment of his ma- 
 noeuvre, (which in the instance of one ship had 
 unavoidably miscarried) peevishly exclaimed, — 
 6 Damn the Greeks and damn the Trojans; I have 
 other things to think of/ — When in a few minutes 
 after, his supporting ship having led through the 
 French line in a gallant style, turning with a smile 
 of joy to Sir George Douglas, he cried out, — c Now, 
 my dear friend, I am at the service of your Greeks 
 and Trojans, and the whole of Homer's Iliad, or as 
 much of it as you please, for the enemy is in con- 
 fusion, and our victory is secure/ This anecdote, 
 correctly as I relate it, I had from that gallant 
 officer, untimely lost to his country, whose can- 
 dour scorned to rob his admiral of one leaf of his 
 laurels, and who, disclaiming all share in the ma- 
 noeuvre, nay confessing he had objected to it, did, 
 in the most pointed and decided terms, again and 
 again repeat his honourable attestations of the 
 courage and conduct of his commanding officer on 
 that memorable day/' 
 
 It was a maxim with this great man never to 
 embarrass the strict line of his duty by any political 
 considerations of what parties prevailed, or what 
 
348 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 were dismissed; a maxim which might be ad- 
 vantageously adopted by some men now in the 
 service, who confound the duties of their station 
 by mixing in all the petty intrigues of faction. 
 " Our naval officers/' said Rodney, " have nothing 
 to do with parties and politics, being simply bound 
 to carry their instructions into execution, to the 
 best of their abilities, without deliberating about 
 men and measures, which forms no part of their 
 duty, and for which they are in no degree re- 
 sponsible." These are the arguments of a superior 
 mind which clearly conceives its object, and ac- 
 complishes it by open, manly, and direct means. 
 
 With Lord Mansfield, Cumberland was familiarly 
 intimate, and to him he addressed the following- 
 pleasing lines, in allusion to his recal on a change 
 of ministers : — 
 
 To the Earl of Mansfield. 
 Shall merit find no shelter but the grave, 
 And envy still pursue the wise and brave ? 
 Sticks the leech close to life, and only drops 
 When its food fails and the heart's current stops ? 
 Though sculptur'd laurels grace the hero's bust, 
 And tears are mingled with the poet's dust, 
 Review their sad memorials, you will find 
 This fell by faction, that in misery pin'd. 
 
 When France and Spain the subject ocean swept, 
 Whilst Briton's tame inglorious lion slept, 
 Or lashing up his courage now and then, 
 Turn'd out and growl'd, and then turn'd in again, 
 Rodney in that ill-omen'd hour arose, 
 Crush'd his own first and next his country's foes; 
 Though all that fate allovv'd was nobly won, 
 Envy could squint at something still undone ; 
 
llFE OF CUMBERLAND. 349 
 
 Injurious faction stript him of command, 
 
 And snatch'd the helm from his victorious hand, 
 
 Summon'd the nation's brave defender home, 
 
 Prejudg'd his cause and warn'd him to his doom ; 
 
 Whilst hydra-headed malice open'd wide 
 
 Her thousand mouths, and bay'd him till he died. 
 
 The poet's cause comes next — and you my Lord, 
 The Muse's friend, will take a poet's word ; 
 Trust me our province is replete with pain ; 
 They say we're irritable, envious, vain : 
 They say — and Time has varnish'd o'er the lie 
 Till it assumes Truth's venerable dye — 
 That wits, like falcons soaring for their prey, 
 Pounce every wing that flutters in their way, 
 Plunder each rival songster's tuneful breast 
 To deck with others plumes their own dear nest j 
 They say — but 'tis an office I disclaim 
 To brush their cobwebs from the roll of fame, 
 There let the spider hang and work his worst, 
 And spin his flimsy venom till he burst ; 
 Reptiles beneath the holiest shrine may dwell, 
 And toads engender in the purest well. 
 
 Genius must pay its tax like other wares 
 According to the value which it bears ; 
 On sterling worth detraction's stamp is laid, 
 As gold before 'tis current is assay'd. 
 Fame is a debt time present never pays, 
 But leaves it on the score to future days ; 
 And why is restitution thus deferr'd 
 Of long arrears from year to year incurr'd ? 
 Why to posterity this labour given 
 To search out frauds and set defaulters even ? 
 If our sons hear our praise 'tis well, and yet 
 Praise in the father's ear had sounded sweet. 
 
 Still there is one exception we must own, 
 Whom all conspire to praise, and one alone ; 
 One on whose living brow we plant the wreath, 
 And almost deify on this side death : 
 He in the plaudits of the present age 
 Already reads his own historic page, 
 
530 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 And, though preeminence is under heav'n 
 The last of crimes by man to be forgiv'n, 
 Justice her own vice-gerent will defend, 
 The orphan's father and the widow's friend ; 
 Truth, virtue, genius mingle beams so bright, 
 Envy is dazzl'd with excess of light ; 
 Detraction's tongue scarce stammers out a fault, 
 And faction blushes for its own assault. 
 His the happy gift, the nameles grace, 
 That shapes and fits the man to every place^ 
 The gay companion at the social board, 
 The guide of councils, or the senate's lord, 
 Now regulates the law's discordant strife, 
 Now balances the scale of death or life, 
 Sees guilt engendering in the human heart, 
 And strips from falsehood's face the mask of art. 
 Whether, assembled with the wise and great, 
 He stands the pride and pillar of the state, 
 With well-weigh'.d argument distinct and clear 
 Confirms the judgment and delights the ear, 
 Or in the festive circle deigns to sit 
 Attempering wisdom with the charms of wit- 
 Blest talent, form'd to profit and to please, 
 To clothe Instruction in the garb of Ease, 
 Sublime to rise, or graceful to descend, 
 Now save an empire and now cheer a friend. 
 
 More I could add, but you perhaps complain, 
 And call it mere creation of the brain ; 
 Poets you say will flatter — true, they will ; 
 But I nor inclination have nor skill — 
 Where is your model, you will ask me, where ? 
 Search your own breast, my Lord, you'll find it there. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 351 
 
 CHAP. XVII. 
 Cumberland departs upon his Spanish Mission. — 
 A brief recapitulation of that affair. — Its impor- 
 tance now necessarily weakened. — Exalts a gale 
 into a storm. — Fails in his undertaking. — Igno- 
 rance of an ecclesiastic. — Cumberland vain of the 
 notice he received from the royal family of Spain. 
 — The society he kept at Madrid. — Account of 
 Tiranna, the celebrated actress. — Cumberland 
 recalled. — Lord Hillsborough's Letter. — 
 Reflections upon Cumberland's account of this 
 business. — Insincerity of the English government 
 towards him. — Refuses an indemnification from 
 the King of Spain. — The whole transaction in- 
 volved in mystery. — The dangers of a pinch of 
 snuff in Spain. 
 
 The progress of my narrative has now brought 
 me to the most remarkable period of Cumberland's 
 life, that when he accepted the mission to Spain 
 which, in its consequences, so little benefited his 
 condition. His account of this business is written 
 with every appearance of truth ; his sincerity, in- 
 deed, had little to fear from temptation at that pe- 
 riod of his existence when he sat down to compose 
 his Memoirs: and he removed every ground of 
 suspicion by a minute reference to dates and per- 
 sons, by which any falsehood might easily have been 
 detected. He firmly maintains his right to be cre- 
 dited, by the solemn disavowal which he makes of 
 every intention to deceive ; and as his relation 
 
352 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 has remained uncontradicted either by public or 
 private testimony, that right must be willingly 
 acknowledged. 
 
 It appears, that in the year 1780, he possessed 
 some means of secretly knowing the intrigues 
 which were carrying on between the courts of 
 France and Spain, through their confidential agents 
 in this country, who were in correspondence with 
 its avowed enemies. How he acquired this 
 knowledge he does not communicate ; but I am 
 willing to hope it was without any dishonourable 
 practices. When it was obtained, however, he 
 thought it his duty to impart it to the govern- 
 ment, and the result was that a secret negociation 
 might probably be opened with the minister Flo- 
 rida Blanca. With this negociation Cumberland 
 was intrusted, and he soon departed for Lisbon, 
 with his wife and family. Here he was to remain 
 till he ascertained the propriety of going forward 
 to his ultimate destination, or the necessity of 
 returning without accomplishing his errand. He 
 was to be governed in either of these determina- 
 tions by the nature of the advices which he should 
 receive from the Abbe Hussey, chaplain to his 
 Catholic Majesty, who was to proceed to Aran- 
 juez, and to communicate with Cumberland upon 
 the posture of affairs. 
 
 He took his family with him, that his real ob- 
 ject might be the better concealed, and that while 
 ostensibly travelling into Italy upon a passport 
 through the Spanish dominions, he might, in 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 353 
 
 effect, fulfil the object of his journey, whatever it 
 was. 
 
 Having received his necessary papers and in- 
 structions from the Earl of Hillsborough, on the 
 17th of April, 1780, he repaired to Portsmouth, 
 where a frigate was prepared for conveying him to 
 Lisbon ; and on the 28th he set sail. His ad- 
 ventures on the passage he has related with 
 an ostentatious display of nautical terms, and 
 magnified some ordinary occurrences into a tale of 
 terror, very pardonable in a man whose nerves were 
 weak, and whose acquaintance with maritime 
 affairs had hitherto been confined to crossing and 
 recrossing the Irish sea, 
 
 I shall not follow him, however, either through 
 his technical phraseology, or his romantic relation 
 of a brisk gale, which swells into an awful storm, in 
 his description, but inform the reader that he ar- 
 rived very safe at Lisbon on the 16th of May, hav- 
 ing, indeed, had an action with a French frigate, 
 which was captured, and the operations of which 
 must have been sufficiently impressive to one unfa- 
 miliar with them. His account of this matter, how- 
 ever, is very meagre, as if all his powers had been 
 exhausted upon the storm ; but he wrote a song of 
 triumph on the occasion, which was often sung in 
 full chorus by the crew after they arrived at Lis- 
 bon. I shall omit it here ; for it has nothing to 
 recommend it but sea terms, and a style perfectly 
 suitable to those for whom it was intended. 
 
 2 A 
 
354 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 The Abbe Hussey immediately departed for 
 Aranjuez, and soon wrote to Cumberland advis- 
 ing him to proceed on his journey into Spain, to 
 give the negotiation a trials but he did not express 
 himself with much confidence as to its success. 
 How to act, upon such slender motives for pro- 
 ceeding, was what Cumberland could not immedi- 
 ately resolve ; but he finally adopted the advice of 
 Mr, Hussey, and prepared for entering Spain. 
 He communicated his intention to Lord Hillsbo- 
 rough, in a letter, of which it may be said, as of 
 all the despatches preserved in the Memoirs, that 
 it was more the laboured and involved production 
 of a literary man, than the simple, brief, and ex- 
 plicit statement of one possessed with the distinct 
 conceptions of business. It is too verbose, and 
 while it wanders into nice distinctions upon the 
 motives of human action, it tells too little of what 
 the minister would most wish to know. 
 
 Cumberland set forth, however, and soon experi- 
 enced the miseries of travelling in Portugal and 
 Spain. Had Shenstone been of either country he 
 never would have written his well known lines on 
 the comforts and luxuries of an inn, and, least of 
 all, would he have told the melancholy truth which 
 the following stanza contains : 
 
 Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round, 
 Where'er his stages may have been, 
 May sigh to think he stil has found 
 The warmest welcome at an inn- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 355 
 
 The wretched accommodations of the posadas is 
 well known to all who have read the accounts of 
 any travellers into these countries, and Cumber- 
 land seems to have suffered them, at least, with 
 as little patience as any man could do. The details 
 of his journey I shall not recapitulate, but I may 
 observe, that they possess at present, brief as they 
 are, an accidental value from the deplorable condi- 
 tion in which both those nations are now placed 
 by the abhorred ambition of the most detested 
 scourge that ever cursed mankind. There are few 
 of the places mentioned by Cumberland in his pro- 
 gress from Lisbon to Aranjuez, whose names have 
 not been recently familiarised to us by the exploits 
 of our gallant countrymen, of whom itmay be con- 
 fidently predicted, that whatever issue it may 
 please the great Disposer of all events to grant to 
 our endeavours, the memory of their deeds will be 
 revered in after ages with the same enthusiasm that 
 we now mention the plain of Marathon or the field 
 of Cressy. The illustrious hero, too, who guides 
 our armies, and who has hitherto exhibited a 
 combination of skill in projecting his measures, of 
 prudence in conducting them, and of promptitude in 
 the moment of action or of danger, unsurpassed in 
 the annals of our own country, and probably of 
 any other, will be delivered down to posterity in 
 the fair catalogue of those whose greatness was 
 achieved in the path of duty and true glory. 
 
 Shortly after Cumberland's arrival at Aranjuez, 
 2 A 2 
 
356 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 he was admitted to an interview with the minister 
 Count Florida Blanca, and if we may judge of the 
 character of his mission, from the mysterious pre- 
 cautions with which he was received, it must 
 have been one of singular peril. He always vi- 
 sited this minister by night, and was ushered in 
 by his confidential domestic, through a suite of 
 five rooms, the doors of each being immediately 
 locked when he had passed through. Thus impe- 
 netrably closetted,hecommencecl his operations, and 
 with such auspicious beginning that he considered 
 them prosperously advancing to a successful con- 
 clusion, when the riots, which disturbed London 
 in the year 1780, being known at Madrid, (for an 
 account of them was regularly transmitted to the 
 Spanish court by their ambassador at Paris, Count 
 d'Aranda) interposed an obstruction at so critical 
 a juncture, that it was never afterwards possible to 
 bring the matter to a similar point of propitious 
 maturity. The tumults of the British metropolis 
 were magnified into an actual rebellion, and it was 
 thought impolitic at Madrid to enter into any ner 
 gociation with the agents of a government whose 
 overthrow was hourly expected, and was, perhaps, 
 hourly desired. Cumberland did all he could to 
 counteract the unlucky effect of this intelligence, 
 by assuring the ministers that these dissentions 
 would soon be quieted, and that there was no 
 danger to be apprehended in regard to the stability 
 of the government. His predictions had the fate 
 of Cassandra's. They were addressed to men who 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 35J 
 
 were either weak enough to believe what was so 
 improbable, or crafty enough to assume that belief 
 as a pretext for delaying a business they were in 
 no hurry to complete, 
 
 Cumberland had not the good fortune to please 
 his employers, and he enters into a laboured vin- 
 dication of himself, in the second volume of his 
 Memoirs. No question can be justly understood 
 if the testimonies on only one side be given ; but, 
 admitting that what Cumberland states is strictly 
 true, I think there can be no doubt that he was 
 censured by Lord Hillsborough, without sufficient 
 cause. He seems to have acted with caution, 
 when caution was required, and with vigor and 
 promptitude when delay or timidity would have 
 probably precipitated the ruin of his schemes. 
 To excite the captious displeasure of a minister, 
 however, has been the fate of abler negociators 
 than Cumberland. 
 
 No interest can possibly attach, at this moment, 
 to the detail of what Cumberland did, or what he 
 did not do, in the capacity which he filled at the 
 court of Madrid. To himself the recollection of 
 that period must always have had an importance 
 which it would necessarily lose in the eyes of 
 others; nor do I blame him that he dwelled so 
 copiously upon the transaction ; it was the most 
 memorable epoch of his life, and in him it was 
 venial to be diffuse. The reader, however, is wea- 
 ried before he gets through the pages that contain 
 
35§ LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 his despatches to Lord Hillsborough, his confer- 
 ences with Florida Blanca, his arrangements with 
 Mr. Hussey, and his explanations of what should 
 have been done at home, and what omitted. The 
 time is gone by ; the occasion that called him 
 forth is forgotten ; and neither hope nor fear 
 is now excited by the prospects of his success 
 or failure. 
 
 It will be prudent in me, therefore, not to encum- 
 ber my pages with a recapitulation of what exhi- 
 bits little else but tediousness in those of Cum- 
 berland ; and it will suffice to add, that in Febru- 
 ary, 1781, his recall was signified to him by Lord 
 Hillsborough, to which intimation he paid due 
 obedience, and, travelling through Spain and 
 France, in a state of great bodily debility from ill- 
 ness, reached England after an absence of about 
 twelve months, during which nothing had been 
 successfully accomplished. 
 
 But while I thus briefly dismiss the political 
 details of his Spanish journey, I propose to dwell 
 somewhat longer upon other topics connected 
 with it, both as they concern Cumberland himself, 
 and as they may be amusing or interesting to the 
 reader. Wholly to omit these would be as culpa- 
 ble as in a biographer of Milton to relate only that 
 he went to Italy and back again, without telling 
 what befel him personally during his absence. 
 
 It betokens a lamentable state of society when 
 the public teachers of religion have nothing but 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND* 359 
 
 bigotted zeal for their qualification, without that 
 learning which discovers the path of truth, and 
 that persuasion which leads man into it. When 
 Cumberland visited the Escurial, the prior accom- 
 panied him in his examinations of whatever was 
 curious and worthy of notice. Among other 
 things he inquired about a manuscript, which was 
 said to be some original letters of Brutus, written in 
 Greek. These letters both Dr. Bentley and Sir 
 John Dalrymple had mentioned, and Cumberland 
 found them, upon examination, manifestly spuri- 
 ous. The prior thought so too ; but the reasons 
 of his belief were sufficiently curious. They 
 could not be the true letters of Brutus he said, be- 
 cause they professed to be written after the death 
 of Julius Caesar, but it was well known that Bru- 
 tus died before Julius Caesar. Cumberland po- 
 litely endeavoured to rectify this anachronism by 
 hinting that it was generally believed Brutus was 
 one of those conspirators who effected the assassi- 
 nation of Caesar. The prior allowed that such a 
 rumour was rather prevalent, but he hastened into 
 his cell, and produced a large folio volume of 
 chronology, where that idea was fully proved to 
 be erroneous. With such an antagonist Cumber- 
 land forebore to contend ; but what a picture does 
 it exhibit of the keeper of a royal library, and a 
 professor of the learned languages ! 
 
 What little he has said of the Escurial may be 
 passed over in silence. We know enough of this 
 
360 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 singular building from other travellers, who either 
 examined it more leisurely, or had more inclina- 
 tion to describe it. 
 
 He seems to dwell with peculiar complacency 
 upon every mark of attention which he received 
 from the royal family during his residence in Spain. 
 They distinguished him, indeed, in a manner suf- 
 ficiently flattering to his feelings, whether it arose 
 from any personal regard for him, from any considera- 
 tion of his country, or from an urbanity of conduct, 
 natural to those illustrious personages. The king 
 permitted him to select two of the finest chargers 
 from his stud, as a present to his own sovereign, and 
 the Prince of Asturias condescended to change 
 the arrangements of a room which had been fur- 
 nished in the Chinese style, in compliance with 
 his observations. These marks of consideration 
 were sufficient to gratify vanity, and Cumberland 
 tells of them with a minuteness which shews that 
 his vanity was gratified. They were not, indeed, 
 all which he received ; but the reader can dispense 
 with an ampler detail ; they were no less gracious 
 in the donors than pleasing to the receiver. We 
 are told, indeed, that the queen took the pattern of 
 his daughter's riding-habits, and that she " put 
 broad gold lace round the bottom of the skirt," 
 and that " she sent for several other articles of 
 their dress as samples/' 
 
 Of the society which he either found or made 
 in Madrid, he does not say much. He gives an 
 
LtFE OF CUMBERLAND. 36 1 
 
 account how one day was passed, and he repre- 
 sents that as an accurate specimen of all the rest. 
 It was an interchange of ceremonies, I imagine, 
 rather than of friendship or of conversation. 
 
 He relates a pleasing anecdote of Count Kau- 
 nitz (son of the imperial minister)^ who was am- 
 bassador to the court of Spain at the same time 
 that Cumberland was upon his mission there. 
 When Cumberland was at the Spanish theatre one 
 night, shortly after his arrival at Madrid, witness- 
 ing the exhibition of a comedy that " seemed to 
 be grounded upon the story of Richardson's Pa- 
 mela," this nobleman entered the same box, and 
 placed himself at the back seat. There happened 
 to be, in the play, a character which was meant to 
 personate a British naval officer. When he made 
 his appearance on the stage, it was with so little 
 resemblance of the original either in dress or man- 
 ner, that Cumberland could not but smile at the 
 awkward imitation, which Count Kaunitz perceiv- 
 ing, leaned forwards and addressed him in the fol- 
 lowing elegant and courteous manner : " I hope, 
 Sir, you will overlook a small mistake in point of 
 costume, which this gentleman has very naturally 
 fallen into, as I am convinced he would have been 
 proud of presenting himself to you in his proper 
 uniform, could he have found among all his naval 
 acquaintance any one who could have furnished 
 him with a sample of it/' This ingenious remark 
 led to a conversation that terminated in an inti- 
 
362 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 macybetweentheCountandCumberland, which was 
 uninterrupted but by the departure of the latter. 
 
 Among those who used to frequent his evening 
 circle at home Cumberland enumerates, besides 
 Count Kaunitz, (who subsequently formed an 
 attachment to his eldest daughter, but died, soon 
 after, at Barcelona), Signior Giusti, an Italian, se- 
 cretary of the embassy ; General Count Pallavi- 
 cini, the Nuncio Colonna, cardinal elect, the Ve- 
 netian Ambassador, those of Saxony and Denmark, 
 Colonel O'Moore of the Walloons, Signior Nicho- 
 las Marchetti, and some of the heads of religious 
 fraternities. 
 
 In this society he represents himself as passing 
 his time with tolerable ease and gratification ; and 
 he was inclined to estimate it the more highly, 
 perhaps, because he could not weaken the plea- 
 sures which it afforded, by any that could be 
 obtained by external search. Amusements were 
 few in Madrid, and those few not much suited to 
 a foreign taste. The theatre, which is a common 
 centre of attraction in every country, w T as here 
 reduced to a state of meanness which could only ex- 
 cite contempt. It was " small, dark, ill-furnished, 
 and ill attended. " Yet, it had one attraction, and 
 that one powerful beyond what any other theatre 
 in Europe possessed. This was the performances 
 of the celebrated Tiranna, as she was called, a won- 
 derful tragic actress, of whom Cumberland gives 
 the following interesting account : 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 363 
 
 " That extraordinary woman, whose real name 
 I do not remember, and whose real origin cannot 
 be traced, till it is settled from what particular 
 nation or people we are to derive the outcast race 
 of gypsies, was not less formed to strike beholders 
 with the beauty and commandingmajesty of her per- 
 son, than to astonish all that heard her, by the powers 
 that nature and art had combined to give her. My 
 friend Count Pietra Santa, who had honourable 
 access to this great stage-heroine, intimated to her 
 the very high expectation I had formed of her per- 
 formances, and the eager desire I had to see her 
 in one of her capital characters, telling her at the 
 same time that I had been a writer for the stage in 
 my own country ; in consequence of this intima- 
 tion she sent me word that I should have notice 
 from her when she wished me to come to the the- 
 atre, till when she desired I would not present 
 myself in my box upon any night, though her 
 name might be in the bill, for it was only when 
 she liked her part, and was in the humour to play 
 well, that she wished me to be present. 
 
 " In obedience to her message I waited several 
 days, and at last received the looked-for summons; 
 I had not been many minutes in the theatre before 
 she sent a mandate to me to go home, for that she 
 was in no disposition that evening for playing 
 well, and should neither do justice to her own 
 talents, nor to my expectations. I instantly 
 obeyed this whimsical injunction, knowing it to 
 
364 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 be so perfectly in character with the capricious 
 humour of her tribe* When something more than 
 a week had passed, I was again invited to the the- 
 atre, and permitted to sit out the whole represen- 
 tation* I had not then enough of the language to 
 understand much more than the incidents and ac- 
 tion of the play, which was of the deepest cast of 
 tragedy, for in the course of the plot she murdered 
 her infant children, and exhibited them dead on the 
 stage, lying on each side of her, whilst she, sitting 
 on the bare floor between them, (her attitude, ac- 
 tion, features, tones, defying all description), pre- 
 sented such a high-wrought picture of hysteric 
 phrensy, laughing wild amidst severest woe, as 
 placed her in my judgment at the very summit of 
 her art; in fact I have no conception that the 
 powers of acting can be carried higher ; and such 
 was the effect upon the audience, that whilst the 
 spectators in the pit, having caught a kind of sym- 
 pathetic phrensy from the scene, were rising up in 
 a tumultuous manner, the word was given out by 
 authority for letting fall the curtain, and a catas- 
 trophe, probably too strong for exhibition, was not 
 allowed to be completed. 
 
 ■ " A few minutes had passed, when this wonderful 
 creature, led in by Pietra Santa, entered my box ; 
 the artificial paleness of her cheeks, her eyes, 
 which she had dyed of a bright vermillion round 
 the edges of the lids, her fine arms bare to the 
 shoulders, the wild magnificence of her attire, and 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 365 
 
 the profusion of her dishevelled locks, glossy black 
 as the plumage of the raven, gave her the appear- 
 ance of something so more than human, such a Sybil, 
 such an imaginary being, so awful, so impressive, 
 that my blood chilled as she approached me, not to 
 ask but to claim my applause, demanding of me if I 
 had ever seen any actress that could be compared 
 with her in my own, or any other, country. ' I 
 was determined,' she said, ; to exert myself for 
 you this night; and if the sensibility of the audi- 
 ence would have suffered me to have concluded 
 the scene, I should have convinced you that I do 
 not boast of my own performances without rea- 
 son/ 
 
 " The allowances, which the Spanish theatre 
 could afford to make to its performers, were so 
 very moderate, that I should doubt if the whole 
 year's salary of the Tiranna would have more than 
 paid for the magnificent dress, in which she then 
 appeared ; but this and all othercharges appertaining 
 to her establishment were defrayed from the coffers 
 of the Duke of Osuna, a grandee of the first class, 
 and commander of the Spanish guards. This no- 
 ble person found it indispensably necessary for his 
 honour, to have the finest woman in Spain upon 
 his pension, but by no means necessary to be ac- 
 quainted with her, and at the very time, of which 
 I am now speaking, Pietra Santa seriously assured 
 me, that his excellency had indeed paid large sums 
 to her order, but had never once visited, or even 
 
366 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 seen her. He told me, at the same time, that he 
 had very lately taken upon himself to remonstrate 
 upon this want of curiosity, and having suggested 
 to his excellency how possible it was for him to 
 order his equipage to the door, and permit him to 
 introduce him to this fair creature, whom he knew 
 only by report, and the bills she had drawn upon 
 his treasurer, the duke graciously consented to 
 my friend's proposal, and actually set out with 
 him for the gallant purpose of taking a cup of cho- 
 colate with his hitherto invisible mistress, who 
 had notice given her of the intended visit. The 
 distance from the house of the grandee to the 
 apartments of the gypsy was not great, but the 
 lulling motion of the huge state-coach, and the 
 softness of the velvet cushions had rocked his 
 excellency into so sound a nap, that when his 
 equipage stopped at the lady's door, there was not 
 one of his retinue bold enough to undertake the 
 invidious task of troubling his repose. The conse- 
 quence was, that after a proper time was passed 
 upon the halt for this brave commander to have 
 waked, had nature so ordained it, the coach wheel- 
 ed round, and his excellency having slept away his 
 curiosity, had not, at the time when I left Madrid, 
 ever cast his eyes upon the person of the incompa- 
 rable Tiranna. I take for granted, my friend Pietra 
 Santa drank the chocolate, and his excellency en- 
 joyed the nap. I will only add, in confirmation of 
 my anecdote, that the good Abbe Curtis, who had 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 367 
 
 the honour of having educated this illustrious 
 sleeper, verified the fact." 
 
 Time passed on in the alternate amusements of 
 beholding this extraordinary actress, and the com- 
 pany which frequented his evening circle, when 
 the period of his recall arrived, and he prepared to 
 obey the mandate of his sovereign. The letter 
 from Lord Hillsborough, which communicated this 
 command, is an accurate specimen of courtly po- 
 liteness and studied coldness of address to an un- 
 successful agent, and shall be here transcribed : 
 
 " Sir, "St. James's, Feb. 14, 1781, 
 
 " I am sorry to find from your last letter, No. 19, 
 and from that written from Count de Florida Blan- 
 ca to Mr. Hussey, which the latter received at 
 Lisbon, that an entire stop is put to the pleas- 
 ing expectation, which had been formed from your 
 residence in Spain. Had I been as well informed 
 of the intentions of the court of Madrid, when you 
 went abroad, as I now am, you would certainly 
 not have had the trouble and fatigue of so long a 
 voyage and journey. 
 
 " There remains nothing now for me but to ac- 
 quaint you, that I am commanded by the king to 
 signify to you his majesty's pleasure, that you do 
 immediately return to England ; when I say im- 
 mediately, it is not intended that your departure 
 should have the appearance of resentment, or that 
 you should be deprived of the opportunity of ex- 
 
36S LIFE OP CUMBERLAND. 
 
 pressing a just sense of the marks of civility and 
 attention which Mr. Cumberland has received 
 since his arrival in Madrid. 
 
 " I am, with great truth and regard, 
 
 " Sir 
 
 " Your most obedient 
 
 " Humble servant, 
 (Signed) " Hillsborough/' 
 
 Whether the failure of Cumberland's negocia- 
 tion was to be attributed to himself, to the insin- 
 cerity of the ministry, or to whatever other cause, 
 cannot, as I have already observed, be with cer- 
 tainty known, while we have the testimony of only 
 one person. In delivering this opinion I do not 
 mean to infer the slightest suspicion of Cumber- 
 land's veracity ; but there is, as Lord Shaftesbury 
 has justly observed, " more of innocent delusion 
 than voluntary imposture in the world, and they 
 who have most imposed on mankind have been 
 happy in a certain faculty, of imposing first upon 
 themselves." This sort of delusion, it is natural to 
 suppose, every man is in danger of, when he reviews 
 his own conduct, and seeks to justify his proceed- 
 ings against the aspersions or insinuations of others. 
 The operations of self-love are so subtle and so in- 
 cessant, that we are in equal peril of submitting 
 to their influence from their imperceptible and 
 from their habitual action. To silence the voice of 
 reproof within our own bosoms, is an art which we 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 369 
 
 are all willing to practise ; and that conduct which 
 the eye of the world beholds with anger or disdain, 
 we know how to trick forth in our imaginations, 
 so as to make it acceptable to ourselves. 
 
 Every man is conscious that he has sometimes 
 employed this kind of sophistry, and hence, what- 
 ever credibility is due to an individual, in testi- 
 fying facts foreign to himself, the greatest caution 
 may be justly used in receiving those by which 
 his own proceedings are to be pronounced censur- 
 able, or otherwise. All the rough asperities are 
 then softened down with admirable dexterity, 
 and to ourselves we explain how events happened, 
 why they were frustrated, and how they might 
 have succeeded, with a disregard of truth, blameless 
 only so far as it is unintentional. 
 
 Thus, in reading Cumberland's own account of 
 his transactions in Spain, we find him doing every 
 thing that could be done, yet failing, and incurring 
 only the displeasure of his employers. Neither 
 failure, however, nor the disapprobation of those 
 under whom we act, are infallible criteria of right 
 and wrong ; for the best schemes, however skilfully 
 planned and conducted, may end in disappoint- 
 ment, and in the gratitude of the great we have 
 no security for justice towards our actions. It too 
 commonly happens, indeed, that we estimate the 
 value of most things by their degrees of success, 
 not reflecting how much merit may have been 
 
 2 B 
 
3/0 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 displayed on occasions which terminate unfavour- 
 ably. " As the most just and honourable enter-* 
 prises," observes the sagacious Fletcher, ofSal- 
 toun, " when the}^ fail, are accounted in the num- 
 ber of rebellions ; so all attempts, however unjust, 
 if they succeed, always purge themselves of all 
 guilt and suspicion/' 
 
 Though the truth of this maxim, however, may 
 be extended to humbler events than rebellions, it 
 does not hence follow that success alone can jus- 
 tify any measure ; nor, by a parity of reasoning 
 can want of success be always a proof of want of 
 judgment or of merit. We do not, indeed, find 
 mankind uniformly judging so, and therefore, when 
 a man fails in what he undertakes, while they who 
 employed him, knowing the means he had of suc- 
 ceeding, consider his failure as the fit object of 
 reproof, it would be at least rational to conclude, in 
 the absence of all testimony on one side, and with 
 only the unsupported affirmations of the accused 
 on the other, that some grounds for displeasure 
 actually existed familiar enough to those who were 
 best able to know them. 
 
 Thus cautiously I wish to deliver my opinion 
 upon the question of Cumberland's mission to 
 Spain. He has himself discussed it with some 
 degreeof mystery ; its precise object is no where dis- 
 tinctly avowed, though it seems to have had some 
 reference to a separate peace between that country 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 371 
 
 and England. Involved in such obscurity, no- 
 thing can be said of it more than what amounts 
 to conjecture, and with a conjecture I leave it. 
 
 Cumberland was naturallv solicitous to excul- 
 pate himself, but, to have done this effectually, he 
 should have told with more candour what he had 
 to perform, with what means he was provided, how 
 much he actually performed, and how much it 
 was impossible to accomplish. Had he done this, 
 every reader would have been, to a certain degree, 
 a competent judge of his case ; but nothing posi- 
 tive or decisive can be concluded from the vague 
 statements which he makes. 
 
 When Cumberland was preparing to depart from 
 Madrid, he paid his farewell visit to the minister. 
 What passed on that occasion is too honourable 
 both to the Spanish monarch and to Cumberland, 
 to be passed over without notice. He expressed 
 the grateful sense he entertained of all the fa- 
 vours and attentions which his Catholic Majesty 
 had condescended to shew towards him and his 
 family, and Florida Blanca replied to these ac- 
 knowledgments in the following manner, with a 
 solemn and deliberate utterance, " as one who 
 wished that a word should not be lost." 
 
 * Sir, — The king, my sovereign, has been en- 
 tirely satisfied with every part of your conduct 
 during the time you have resided among us. His 
 majesty is convinced that you have done your 
 
 2B/ 
 
372 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 duty to your own court, and exerted yourself with 
 sincere good will to promote that pacification 
 which circumstances, out of your reach to foresee 
 or to controul, seem for the present to have sus- 
 pended. And now, Sir, you will be pleased to 
 take in good part what I have to say to you with 
 regard to your claims for indemnification, on the 
 score of your expences, in which I have reason to 
 apprehend you will find yourself abandoned 
 and deceived by your employers. I have it 
 therefore in command to tell you, that the king 
 my sovereign, has taken this into his gracious 
 consideration, and tenders to you, through me, full 
 and ample compensation for all expences, which 
 you have incurred by your coming into Spain ; 
 being unwilling that a gentleman, who has resorted 
 to his court, and put himself under his immediate 
 protection, without a public character, honestly 
 endeavouring to promote the mutual good and be- 
 nefit of both countries, should suffer, as you 
 surely will do, if you withstand the offer which I 
 have now the honour to make known to you/ 
 
 "What I said in answer to this generous, but in- 
 admissible, offer, I shall make no parade of ; it is 
 enough to say, that I did not accept a single dollar 
 from the King of Spain, or any in authority under 
 him, which, as far as a negative can be proved, was 
 made clear, when upon my journey homewards my 
 bills were stopped, and my credit so completely 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 373 
 
 bankrupt, that I might have gone to prison at 
 Bayonne, if I had not borrowed five hundred 
 pounds of my friendly fellow-traveller Marchetti, 
 which enabled me to pay my way through France, 
 and reach my own country. 
 
 " How it came to pass that my circumstances 
 should be so well known to Count Florida Blanca, 
 is easily accounted for, when the dishonouring of 
 my bills by Mr. Devisme, at Lisbon, through 
 whose hands the Spanish banker passed them, 
 was notorious to more than half Madrid, and 
 could not be unknown to the minister. The fact 
 is, that I had come into Spain without any other 
 security than the good faith of government upon 
 promise, pledged to me through Mr. Robinson, 
 secretary of the treasury, that all bills drawn by 
 me upon my banker in Pall Mall, should be in- 
 stantly replaced to my credit, upon my accompa- 
 nying them with a letter of advice to the said se- 
 cretary Robinson. This letter of advice I regularly 
 attached to every draft I made upon Messrs. Crofts, 
 Devaynes, and Co. but from the day that I left 
 London, to the day that I returned to it, including 
 a period of fourteen months, not a single shilling 
 was replaced to my account with my bankers, who 
 persisted in advancing to my occasions with a li- 
 berality and confidence in my honour, that I must 
 ever reflect upon with the warmest gratitude. If 
 I was improvident in relying upon these assur- 
 ances, they who made them were inexcusable in 
 
374 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 breaking them, and betraying me into unmerited 
 distress. I solemnly aver that I had the positive 
 pledge of the treasury, through Mr. Robinson, for 
 replacing every draught I should make upon my 
 banker, and a very large sum was named, as appli- 
 cable at my discretion, if the service should re- 
 quire it. I could explain this further, but I for- 
 bear. I had one thousand pounds advanced to me 
 upon setting out ; my private credit supplied every 
 farthing beyond that ; for the truth of which I 
 need only to refer the reader to the following 
 letter 
 
 " To John Robinson, Esquire, &c. 
 
 " Sir, " Madrid, Sth of March, 1781, 
 
 " My banker informs me of a difficulty 
 
 which has arisen in replacing the bills, which I 
 
 have had occasion to draw upon him for the ex- 
 
 pences of my commission at this court. 
 
 " As I have not had the honour of hearing from 
 you on this subject, and as it does not appear that 
 he had seen you, when he wrote to me, the alarm 
 which such an event would else have given me, is 
 mitigated by this consideration, as I am sure there 
 can be no intention in government to disgrace me 
 at this cou rt, i n a commission , undertaken on my part 
 without any other stipulation than that of defraying 
 my expences. I flatter myself, therefore, that you 
 have before this done what is needful, in confor- 
 mity to what was settled on our parting. Suffer 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 3J5 
 
 me to add, that by the partition I have made of 
 my office with the gentleman who executes it, by 
 the expences preparatory to my journey, all which 
 I took on myself, and by many others since my 
 departure, which I have not thought proper to put 
 to the public account, I have greatly burthened 
 my private affairs during my attendance on the bu- 
 siness I am engaged in. 
 
 6 That I have regulated my family here for the 
 space of near a twelvemonth, with all possible 
 economy, upon a scale in every respect as private, 
 and void of ostentation, as possible, is notorious 
 to all who know me here ; but a man must also 
 know this court and country, to judge what the 
 current charges of my situation must inevitably 
 be ; what the occasional ones have been can only 
 be explained by myself; and as I can clearly make 
 it appear that I have neither misapplied the money 
 nor abused the trust of government, in any in- 
 stance, I cannot merit, and I am persuaded I shall 
 
 not experience any misunderstanding or unkind- 
 ness. 
 
 ' I have the honour to be, &c. 
 
 < r. c: 
 
 " I might have spared myself the trouble of this 
 humiliating appeal. It produced just what it 
 should produce — nothing; for it was addressed to 
 the feelings of those who had no feelings ; and 
 
376 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 called for justice, where no justice was, no mercy, 
 no compassion, honour or good faith. 
 
 " I wearied the door of Lord North till his very 
 servants drove me from it. I withstood the offer 
 of a benevolent monarch, whose munificence 
 would have rescued me; and I embraced ruin in 
 my own country to preserve my honour as a sub- 
 ject of it ; selling every acre of my hereditary estate, 
 jointured on my wife by marriage settlement, who 
 generously concurred in the sacrifice, which my 
 improvident reliance upon the faith of government 
 compelled me to make. 
 
 " But I ought to speak of these things with 
 more moderation, so many years having passed, 
 and so many of the parties having died, since they 
 took place. In prudence and propriety these 
 pages ought not to have seen the light, till the 
 writer of them was no more ; neither would they, 
 could I have persisted in my resolution for with- 
 holding them, till that event had consigned them 
 into other hands ; but there is something para- 
 mount to prudence and propriety, which wrests 
 them from me — 
 
 My poverty , but not my will, consents." 
 
 I have permitted Cumberland to speak for him- 
 self in this statement, because it is one in which 
 his own testimony should be delivered in his own 
 language. He says that he wrote down the speech 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 377 
 
 of Florida Blanca into his entry book, and rendered 
 it into English as was his invariable practice, from 
 which he transcribed it into his Memoirs. This 
 gives it a character of authenticity greater than if 
 he had ventured to narrate it from recollection 
 after a lapse of four and twenty years. 
 
 With regard to the transaction itself, every one 
 must applaud the dignified motives from which 
 Cumberland acted, and the liberality of that go- 
 vernment which gave him the opportunity of dis- 
 playing such motives. lam not very familiar with 
 the usages of courts on these occasions : but I 
 believe it is not customary for a foreign power 
 to offer an indemnification to the agent of a hostile 
 nation. Something therefore may be justly ascribed 
 to the individual honour, and integrity (in the 
 estimation of the Spanish minister), with which 
 Cumberland had discharged the delicate negociation 
 entrusted to him. 
 
 Why he was suffered to ruin himself in trans- 
 acting the concerns of his own government, cannot 
 perhaps now be known. His case, as he has 
 stated it, was one of singular oppression. Whatever 
 delinquency belonged to Cumberland, if any there 
 was, might have found its due punishment in 
 a regular way : but it does not appear that the 
 refusal to reimburse his expenses arose from any 
 intention of thus signifying displeasure, for the act 
 commenced before any cause for that displeasure ex- 
 isted or could exist : the bills which he drew upon 
 
378 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 his banker were not replaced from the first , which 
 argued a deliberate intention to betray. There 
 was, indeed, no specific declaration on the part of 
 government that it would defray his expenses: but, 
 there was something tantamount to such a declara- 
 tion, the official correspondence between Cumber- 
 land and Lord Hillsborough, and which, by sanc- 
 tioning his mission, virtually pledged it to the due 
 provision for executing that mission. If, indeed, 
 the refusal to pay him arose from any evasion of 
 this sort, language can supply no terms too strong 
 for the reprobation of such political shuffling and 
 insincerity : but the business cannot be defended 
 upon any principle. It is at least the duty of the 
 government to secure its agents from loss and injury 
 in its service : and as no man's patriotism can 
 be supposed greater than his prudence, it cannot 
 be expected that any one will serve his country 
 to his own ruin. Though, therefore, it might be 
 said that Cumberland entered upon the negociation 
 without any previous and distinct stipulation for the 
 provision of his expenses, it was as obviously con- 
 sistent with the common course of life that he 
 shoitld expect such a provision, as that the porter 
 who carries a parcel without first fixing his reward, 
 should wait for his shilling when he has discharged 
 his trust. 
 
 That his frequent application to ministers, that 
 his petitions and his memorials produced no ulti- 
 mate recompense, while it excites our indigna- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 379 
 
 tion may teach us this useful lesson, to act with 
 courtiers as the law acts with every man, deem 
 them knaves till they prove themselves the con- 
 trary. 
 
 When Cumberland received his regular recall 
 and dismission from the station he occupied, he 
 prepared to return to England. This he did, as I 
 have already related, by a different road from what 
 he proceeded in when journeying to Spain. He 
 lengthened his travels by seeing as much of foreign 
 nations as his opportunities would permit. His 
 track he has described with tedious and unnecessary 
 minuteness : he tells of every village he arrives at, 
 and laments, with wearisome repetition, the paltry" 
 and unsatisfying accommodations of Spanish inns. 
 Without seeing any thing worthy of narration, 
 without making anyinquiriesthat led to discoveries 
 which the world miffht wish to know or be better 
 for the knowledge of, he has merely filled forty or 
 fifty pages with a dull recapitulation of what stages 
 he performed, with what celerity the mules moved, 
 or with what obstinacy the muleteers resisted 
 all entreaties to amend their itinerary system. This 
 was information which might well have been 
 spared, to make room for more instructive details 
 of which he gives only occasional and very brief 
 glimpses. 
 
 When he arrived at Bayonne, he found himself 
 so extremely ill with fever that he was compelled 
 to suspend his further progress, and call in medical 
 
380 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 assistance. Here he languished for three weeks, 
 during which time the malady greatly emaciated 
 and enfeebled him, and here, while thus prostrated 
 by disease, he first heard the unwelcome tidings of 
 his bills being stopped, and of his person being con- 
 sequently subjected to arrest. From this impending 
 danger, however, he was relieved by the kindness 
 of a friend, (Marchetti) who lent him five hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 His mind being thus quieted, and co-operating 
 with the healthful qualities of the climate in which 
 he was, he soon found himself in a condition to 
 resume his journey, which he did, travelling 
 through Bourdeaux, Tours, Blois, and Orleans, to 
 Paris, whence he proceeded to Ostend and there 
 embarked for Margate, arriving in his house in 
 Portland-Place, " to experience treatment which 
 he had not merited, and to encounter losses he 
 
 never overcame/' 
 
 The only remarkable event that distinguished 
 this long journey was the following, which I will 
 relate in Cumberland's own words. 
 
 " I will here simply relate," says he, " an in- 
 cident without attempting to draw any conjectures 
 from it, which is, that whilst I laid ill at Bayonne, 
 insensible, and as it was supposed at the point of 
 death, the very monk, who had been so troublesome 
 to me at Elvas,* found his way into my chamber, 
 
 * This was an Irish benedictine, who, when Cumberland was proceeding 
 into Spain, entered his room one morning while at Elvas, vehemently 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 381 
 
 and upon the alarm given by my wife who perfectly 
 recognized his person, was only driven out of it 
 by force. Again when I was in Paris, and about 
 to sit down to dinner, a sallad was brought to me 
 by the lacquey, who waited on me, which was given 
 to him for me by a red-haired Dominican, whose 
 person, according to his description, exactly tallied 
 with that of the aforesaid monk ; I dispatched my 
 servant Camis in pursuit of him, but he had escaped, 
 and my suspicion of the sallad being poisoned was 
 confirmed by experiment on a dog. 
 
 " I shall only add that somewhere in Castile, I 
 forget the place, but it was between Valladolid and 
 Burgos, as I was sitting on a bench at the door of a 
 house, where my Calasseros were giving water to 
 the mules, I tendered my snuff box to a grave 
 elderly man, who seemed of the better sort of 
 Castilians, and who appeared to have thrown him- 
 self in my way, sitting down beside me as one who 
 invited conversation. The stranger looked steadily 
 in my face, and after a pause put his fingers in my 
 box, and, taking a very small portion of my snuff 
 between them, said to me, — e I am not afraid, Sir, 
 of trusting myself to you, whom I know to be an 
 Englishman, and a person, in whose honour I may 
 
 inveighing against England and her government ; and when Cumberland 
 entered his carriage he walked by the side of it, pertinaciously resisting 
 his progress and anathematising the drivers if they dared to move onwards ; 
 nor did he quit his post, or cease from his vociferations, till they had passed 
 through all the outposts and were in sight of Badajoz. 
 
3S2 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 perfectly repose. But there is death concealed in 
 many a man's snuff box, and I would seriously 
 advise you on no account to take a single pinch 
 from the box of any stranger, who may offer it to 
 you ; and if you have done that already, I sincerely 
 hope no such consequences as I allude to will 
 result from your want of caution/ I continued in 
 conversation with this stranger for some time ; I 
 told him I had never before been apprised of the 
 practices he had spoken of, and, being perfectly 
 without suspicion, I might, or might not, have 
 exposed myself to the danger, he was now so kind 
 as to apprize me of, but I observed to him that 
 however prudent it might be to guard myself against 
 such evil practices in other countries, I should not 
 expect to meet them in Castile, where the Spanish 
 point of honour most decidedly prevailed. c Ah, 
 Senor/ he replied, 4 they may not all be Spaniards, 
 whom you have chanced upon, or shall hereafter 
 chance upon, in Castile/ When I asked him how 
 this snuff operated on those who took it, his 
 answer was, as I expected — e On the brain/ I was 
 not curious to enquire who this stranger was, as I 
 paid little attention to his information at the time, 
 though I confess it occurred to me, when after a 
 few days I was seized with such agonies in my 
 head, as deprived me of my senses : I merely give 
 this anecdote, as it occurred ; I draw no inferences 
 from it/' 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 383 
 
 There is enough of agreeable mystery in this 
 account to serve a novel-writer for the basis of a 
 terrible incident. How might he paint an insidious 
 assassin lurking about to snare his victim with a 
 pinch of snufT; and death entering at an avenue 
 hitherto unused in fiction. 
 
384 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 CHAP. XVIII. 
 
 Cumberland's forbearance in relating the treatment, 
 he received from the English government. — His 
 Memorial, addressed to Lord North. — Its 
 failure. — His warm remonstrances to Mr. Secre- 
 tary Robinson. — Retires to Tunbridge . — 
 Celebrates that place in his Memoirs and in 
 Retrospection . — The pleasures of reading. — 
 The family which accompanied him to Tunbridge, 
 — Publishes his Anecdotes of Spanish 
 Painters. — Accused of attaching Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds. — Examination of this charge. — 
 Brief history of painting in Spain.' — His comedy 
 of the W A lloons acted. — His character of Hen- 
 derson. — The sneering scepticism of Da vies 
 reproved. 
 
 I have dwelt much longer upon Cumberland's 
 narrative of what occurred to him in Spain than it 
 was, at first, my intention to do : nor should I 
 have departed from that intention had I not become 
 impressed with the idea that it formed a remarkable 
 era in the life of a literary man, that it was dis- 
 tinguished by circumstances of a peculiar nature, 
 and that Cumberland had been treated with a de- 
 gree of injustice, by his employers, too flagrant to 
 be passed over without some expression of ab- 
 horrence. 
 
 His own recital of this injustice is written with- 
 out any acrimony. He tells of it as of a misfortune 
 which befell him, but he does not vent reproaches 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 3S5 
 
 or insults against those who were the authors of that 
 misfortune. Helaments the loss which he sustained, 
 and the privations which such a loss must force 
 upon a man who means to live honestly in society; 
 but he laments it with the sensibility of a wounded, 
 not with the bitterness of a resentful, heart. This 
 meekness, this charitable oblivion of so violent an 
 injury, of an injury whose consequences extended 
 to the last moment of his life, and under which he 
 bent at the very moment when he wrote, deserves 
 to be recorded with the highest approbation : it 
 adds a lustre to his misfortune, and awakens the 
 pity and veneration of those who contemplate a 
 man nearly in his eightieth year, temperately re- 
 counting the adverse strokes of unmerited misfor- 
 tune by which his proudest hopes of life were 
 blighted. 
 
 With what injustice he seems to have been 
 treated, and what claims he appears to have had 
 upon the government, the following memorial will 
 shew : — 
 
 " To the Right Honourable Lord North, 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 " The humble Memorial of Richard Cumberland 
 " Sheweth, 
 
 " That your Memorialist, in April 
 1730, received his Majesty's most secret and con- 
 fidential orders and instructions to set out for the 
 court of Spain in company with the Abbe Hussey, 
 one of his Catholic Majesty's chaplains, for the 
 
 2C 
 
336 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 purpose of negociating a separate peace with that 
 court. 
 
 " That to render the object of this commission 
 more secret, your Memorialist was directed to take 
 his family with him to Lisbon, under the pretence 
 of recovering the health of one of his daughters, 
 which he accordingly did, and having sent the 
 Abbe Hussey before him to the Court of Spain, 
 agreeably to the King's instructions, your Memo- 
 rialist and his family soon after repaired to Aran- 
 juez, where his Catholic Majesty then kept his 
 court. 
 
 " That your Memorialist upon setting out on 
 this important undertaking received, by the hands 
 of John Robinson, Esquire, one of the secretaries 
 of the Treasury, the sum of one thousand pounds 
 on account, with directions how he should draw, 
 through the channel of Portugal, upon his banker 
 in England for such further sums as might be ne- 
 cessary, (particularly for a large discretionary sum 
 to be employed, as occasion might require, in secret 
 services) and your Memorialist was directed to 
 accompany his drafts by a separate letter to Mr. 
 Secretary Robinson, advising him what sum or 
 sums he had given order for, that the same might 
 be replaced to your Memorialist's credit with the 
 bank of Messieurs Crofts and Co. in Pall-Mali. 
 
 " That your Memorialist, in the execution of 
 this commission, for the space of nearly fourteen 
 months, defrayed the expenses of Abbe Hussey's 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 387 
 
 separate journey into Spain, paid all charges in- 
 curred by him during four months residence there, 
 and supplied him with money for his return to 
 England, no part of which has been repaid to your 
 Memorialist. 
 
 " That your Memorialist, with his family, took 
 two very long and expensive journies, (the one by 
 way of Lisbon, and the other through France) no 
 consideration for which has been granted to him. 
 
 " That your Memorialist, during his residence 
 in Spain, was obliged to follow the removals of the 
 court to Aranjuez, San Ildefonso, the Escurial, and 
 Madrid, besides frequent visits to the Pardo: in 
 all which places, except the Pardo, he was obliged 
 to lodge himself, the expense of which can only be 
 known to those, who in the service of their court 
 have incurred it. 
 
 " That every article of necessary expense, being 
 inordinately high in Madrid, your Memorialist, 
 without assuming any vain appearance of a mi- 
 nister, and with as much domestic frugality as pos- 
 sible, incurred a very heavy charge. 
 
 " That your Memorialist having no courier with 
 him, nor any cypher, was obliged to employ his 
 own servant in that trust, and the servant of Abbe 
 Hussey, at his own proper cost, no part of which 
 has been repaid to him. 
 
 " That your Memorialist did, at considerable 
 charge, obtain papers and documents, containing 
 information of a very important nature, which need 
 
 2 C 2 
 
388 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 not here be enumerated ; of which charge so in- 
 curred no part has been repaid. 
 
 " That upon the capture of the East and West 
 India ships by the enemy, your Memorialist was 
 addressed by many of the British prisoners, some 
 of whom he relieved with money, and in all cases 
 obtained the prayer of their memorials. Your 
 Memorialist also, through the favour of the Bishop 
 of Burgos, took with him out of Spain some va- 
 luable British seamen, and restored them to his 
 Majesty's fleet ; and this also he did at his own cost. 
 
 " That your Memorialist, during his residence 
 in Spain, was indispensibly obliged to cover these 
 his un voidable expenses by several drafts upon his 
 banker to the amount of 4,5001. of which not one 
 single bill has been replaced, nor one farthing issued 
 to his support during fourteen months expensive 
 and laborious duty in the King's immediate and 
 most confidential service ; the consequence of 
 which unparalleled treatment was, that your Me- 
 morialist was stopped and arrested at Bayonne, by 
 order, from his remittancers at Madrid ; in this 
 agonizing situation your Memorialist, being then in 
 the height of a most violent fever, surrounded by a 
 family of helpless women in an enemy's country, 
 and abandoned by his employers, on whose faith 
 he had relied, found himself incapable of proceed- 
 ing on his journey, and destitute of means for sub- 
 sisting where he was : under this accumulated 
 distress he must have sunk and expired, had not 
 
LITE OF CUMBERLAND. SS9 
 
 the generosity of an officer in the Spanish service, 
 who had acompanied him into France, supplied his 
 necessities with the loan of five hundred pounds, 
 and passed the King of Great Britain's bankrupt 
 servant into his own country, for which humane 
 action this friendly officer, (Marchetti by name), 
 was arrested at Paris, and by the Count D'Aranda 
 remanded back to Madrid, there to take his chance 
 for what the influence of France may find occasion 
 to devise against him. 
 
 " Your Memorialist, since his return to England, 
 having, after innumerable attempts, gained one 
 only admittance to your lordship's person, for the 
 space of more than ten months, and not one answer 
 to the frequent and humble suit he has made to 
 you by letter, presumes now, for the last time, to 
 solicit your consideration of his case, and as he is 
 persuaded it is not, and cannot be, in your lordship's 
 heart to devote and abandon to unmerited ruin an 
 old and faithful servant of the crown, who has been 
 the father of four sons, (one of whom has lately 
 died, and three are now carrying arms in the ser- 
 vice of their King), your Memorialist humbly prays, 
 that you will give order for him to be relieved in 
 such manner, as to your lordship's wisdom shall 
 seem meet — 
 
 " All which is humbly submitted by 
 " Your lordship's most obedient 
 " And most humble servant, 
 " Richard Cumberland." 
 
390 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 This memorial, thus simply, perspicuously, and, 
 in some parts, affectingly urged, produced, as the 
 reader may anticipate, no benefit to Cumberland. 
 Lord North, he thought, never read it ; a brief en- 
 comium on his lordship's candour and sincerity ; 
 but, though he did not affect to exonerate him 
 from all culpability, he justly considered Mr. Se- 
 cretary Robinson as the one who had the largest 
 share of obloquy in the business. It was his duty, 
 Cumberland conceived, to solicit the fulfilment 
 of that promise which had been made through him, 
 and it was in his power, he believed, to have 
 obtained that fulfilment, had he chosen to solicit 
 it. To him, therefore, as to one who was more 
 immediately the cause of his misfortune, he ad- 
 dressed several warm remonstrances ; remonstrances, 
 indeed, of such a character, as no man of spirit, in 
 Cumberland^ opinion, " ought to have put up 
 with ;*- he did put up with them, however, either 
 because he wanted spirit to resent them, or be- 
 lieved that he was not bound to view them as 
 personal accusations. 
 
 With Lord North Cumberland eventually be- 
 came intimate, when the awful visitation of blind- 
 ness had reduced him to a state of mortifying help- 
 lessness, and robbed him of all external sources of 
 comfort. It was then, however, that he appeared 
 more truly great than when extrinsic and acci- 
 dental greatness belonged to him ; it was then that 
 the powers of his mind, the resources of his ge- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 39 1 
 
 nius, the stores of his memory, and the brilliancy 
 of his imagination, were displayed with a grace and 
 profusion which seemed to be increased by the ma- 
 lady that oppressed him; or, perhaps, the spectator 
 instinctively drew a comparison between his bodily 
 condition, and the intellectual vigour which he exhi- 
 bited, as we are apt to aggrandise the superiority of 
 whatever is performed under seeming disabilities 
 till the probable at last swells into the marvellous. 
 
 With Lord George Germain also, he continued 
 to live in uninterrupted friendship, both while he 
 presided at the Board of Trade, and after he had 
 resigned that office. He represents himself, in- 
 deed, as having sometimes conducted some delicate 
 transactions for his lordship, and in a manner 
 always satisfactory to him. This was in conse- 
 quence of the great number of American loyalists 
 who, on his levee days, usually resorted to him ; 
 and he mentions one instance, in particular, of a 
 naval officer, who had written a letter to Lord 
 George Germain, containing expressions highly 
 disrespectful to him and to Cumberland, upon 
 whom he immediately waited, and compelled him 
 to write and sign an apology of his own dictating. 
 
 When Lord North's administration was sub- 
 verted, and the Board of Trade was dissolved by 
 the operations of what is commonly called Burke's 
 Bill, Cumberland was dismissed with a compensa- 
 tion which he represents as less than a moiety of 
 what he was deprived of. This diminution of his 
 
392 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 pecuniary resources, concurring with his Spanish 
 losses, which had compelled him to sacrifice the 
 patrimony he was born to, reduced him to the 
 necessity of diminishing his expenditure, and 
 of providing an establishment more suitable to his 
 income. 
 
 London, however, is not the place where a pub- 
 lic man can best pursue plans of economy ; nor, 
 perhaps, is it desirable that any place should be at 
 once the scene of liberal competency, and of sub- 
 sequent embarrassment. A man commonly flies 
 from a spot that has witnessed his prosperity, 
 when he can no longer maintain even the appearance 
 of it ; and it is the surest way, indeed, to avoid the 
 painful retrospections of our own mind, and the 
 suspicious condolence of our friends and acquaint* 
 ance. 
 
 Cumberland, therefore, forsook the metropolis, 
 and, with the remnant of bis shattered fortune, 
 sought peace and health in the retreats of Tun- 
 bridge, nor had he ever afterwards, according to his 
 own declaration, an abiding place in town. The 
 comforts and conveniencies of this spot he has ce- 
 lebrated in his Memoirs, and he had reason to do 
 so, for he says, that " during the whole of his 
 long residence at Tunbridge Wells, he never ex- 
 perienced a single hour's indisposition that con- 
 fined him to his bed," though previously to that 
 period he had undergone as much illness, and 
 fought as hardly for his life with fevers, as most men. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 393 
 
 Of his residence at this place, and of some of 
 the events that befell him there, he thus pleas- 
 ingly speaks in the poem which he published so 
 shortly before his death : 
 
 " Hail to thee, Tunbridge ! Hail, Hygeian fount! - 
 
 Still as thy waters flow, may they dispense 
 
 Health to the sick and comfort to the sad ! 
 
 Sad I came to thee, comfortless and sick 
 
 Of many sorrows : still th' envenom'd shaft 
 
 Of base injustice rankl'd in my breast ; 
 
 Still on my haggard cheek the fever hung— 
 
 ' My only recompense' — Thirty long years 
 
 Have blanch'd my temples since I first was taught 
 
 The painful truth, that I but mock'd my hopes, 
 
 And fool'd my senses, whilst I went astray 
 
 To palaces and courts to search for that, 
 
 Which dwells not in them.— No : to you, my books ! 
 
 To you, the dear companions of my youth, 
 
 Still my best comforters, I turn'd for peace : 
 
 To you at morning break I came, with you 
 
 Again I commun'd o'er the midnight lamp, 
 
 And haply rescu'd from the abyss of time 
 
 Some precious relics of the Grecian muse, 
 
 Which else had perish'd : These were pleasing toils, 
 
 For these some learned men, who knew how deep 
 
 I delv'd to fetch them up, have giv'n me praise, 
 
 And I am largely paid ; of this no court, 
 
 No craft can rob me, and I boldly trust 
 
 The treasure will not perish at my death. 
 
 Here, wrapt in meditation, I enjoy'd 
 My calm retreat ; here in the honest hearts 
 Of a brave peasantry I now repos'd 
 That confidence, which never was betray'd 
 By them, nor from them shall it be withdrawn 
 To the last moment of my life, by me. 
 Four gallant sons, 'twixt land and sea, I shar'd ; 
 My country had them all ; and two had died 
 On distant shores beyond the Atlantic stream. 
 
394} LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 When England call'd her volunteers to arms, 
 And rear'd her beacon on the neighb'ring hill, 
 That overhangs our hamlet : At the call 
 Uprose my brave compatriots, seiz'd their arms, 
 Flock' d to the standard of unconquer'd* Kent, 
 And bade me lead them forth ; I took the sword, 
 Gift of their love, on which they had engrav'd 
 A pledge by them kept sacred through a course 
 Of nine years faithful service, and I trust 
 Till by command I took my last sad leave, 
 My eye was never from them, nor my heart." 
 
 One part of the preceding extract (that where 
 he commemorates the many hours of unalloyed 
 happiness which he derived from his books), will 
 be read by every literary man with a pleasing con- 
 sciousness of its truth. How few reflections upon 
 the employment of time, indeed, can equal those 
 which a scholar feels when he retraces in his ima- 
 gination the hours he has devoted to voluntary 
 and secluded study. The remembrance of past 
 actions, on which virtue has fixed her approving 
 stamp, may equal, but certainly cannot surpass 
 them. In a mind tinctured with the love of 
 knowledge, every pleasing idea is associated, as it 
 contemplates those moments of placid enjoyment 
 when instruction was silently insinuating itself, 
 and when every day opened new stores of intellec- 
 tual wealth which the eager pupil of wisdom 
 panted to possess. Inanimate objects become 
 connected with our progress, and we remember, 
 with delight, the shady walk, the silent grove, 
 or the beauteous landscape, where we first 
 
 * Invicta, the motto to the arms of Kent. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. $9o 
 
 opened some favourite volume, or first dwelt upon 
 some matchless effusion of the muse still che- 
 rished by the memory. These are emotions fami- 
 liar to the bosom of every student, and they are 
 such as ever come with welcome, for they 
 revive the recollection of a period which is 
 endeared to him by the most pleasing images of 
 past felicity. Our advancement in knowledge, or 
 our completion of what we wish to know, is at- 
 tended by few of those gay and inspiriting sensa- 
 tions which accompany our initiation, when all 
 before us is new and untried, and hope promises, 
 with flattering delusion, all that we wish, and 
 more than we find. 
 
 Books are companions which accommodate 
 themselves, with unreproaching willingness, to all 
 our humours. If we are jocund, or if we are sad, 
 if we are studious to learn, or desirous only to be 
 amused, he that has a relish for reading, will find 
 the ready means of supplying all his intellectual 
 w r ants in the silence of his library. They are 
 friends whom no estimation can overvalue ; they 
 are always at our call, and ready to offer their aid 
 and consolation ; nor need we overstrain our de- 
 sires by courtesy, for the moment they cease to be 
 welcome we may dismiss them from our society 
 without fear of reproach or offence. Of what 
 other friends can we say as much ? 
 
 Cumberland, though he retired to them 
 from the tumults of public life, was not des- 
 
396 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 tined, however, to find undisturbed repose. He 
 perceived the health of his wife declining, and 
 he perceived it with an aggravation of sorrow 
 which must have struck deep into a mind possess- 
 ing sensibility. " She was sinking under the 
 effects which her late sufferings and exertions, in 
 attending upon him, had entailed upon her." 
 This was not, indeed, the fault of Cumberland, 
 but surely it was his misfortune ; and dear as must 
 be the recollection of a wife, who sacrifices her 
 own existence in discharging her duty to her hus- 
 band in sickness and affliction, still, the remem- 
 brance that it was a sacrifice weighs heavily upon 
 the heart, and embitters our sorrows with some- 
 thing like remorse. 
 
 Cumberland bears the most unequivocal testi- 
 mony to the virtues and fidelity of his wife, and 
 it is pleasing to contemplate a picture of conjugal 
 harmony, of sincerity, love, and confidence, in 
 marriage, which is so rarely to be found. Some- 
 thing, no doubt, may be attributed to that tender- 
 ness with which we instinctively mention the dead ; 
 but even with that deduction there remains little 
 reason to doubt that he found a degree of connu- 
 bial happiness of which he might justly boast. 
 
 The family which accompanied him to Tun- 
 bridge Wells were, besides his wife, his second 
 daughter Sophia, his infant one Marianne, and his 
 three surviving sons, Richard, Charles, and Wil- 
 liam. His eldest daughter had married Lord 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 397 
 
 Edward Bentjnck, brother to the Duke of Portland ; 
 and his second son, George, had been killed at the 
 siege of Charlestown, the very day after he had 
 been appointed to the command of an armed 
 vessel. 
 
 Shortly after his return from Spain, he published 
 his " Anecdotes of Eminent Painters in Spain," 
 in two small octavo volumes. This was a work of 
 original research, and introduced to the lovers of 
 the art, and to artists, the names and productions 
 of men very little known beyond the limits of their 
 own country. Many of the anecdotes are amusing 
 and interesting. Of the accuracy of his notions, 
 however, with respect to the art itself, I can say 
 nothing, but what would expose my own igno- 
 rance ; but I have heard an artist of some emi- 
 nence acknowledge the general taste and fidelity 
 of Cumberland's opinions. To these anecdotes 
 he afterwards added another publication, " An 
 accurate and descriotive catalogue of the several 
 paintings in the King of Spain's Palace at Madrid, 
 with some account of the pictures in the Buen- 
 Retiro." 
 
 This catalogue was the first that had been made, 
 and was now done by the permission of the king 
 of Spain, at Cumberland's request, being trans- 
 mitted to him after his return to England. 
 
 As if the malice of criticism, however, delighted 
 to vex a man who was so sensible of its power, Cum- 
 berland had no sooner published these Anecdotes 
 
39& LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 than he was accused of having violently and unjustly 
 attacked, in the second volume, the character of 
 his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. Such a charge, 
 living, as he then was, in habits of close intimacy 
 with Reynolds, must have come with aggravated 
 force ; and Cumberland is at some pains, in his 
 Memoirs, to vindicate himself from its truth. The 
 supposed injury was committed in that part of the 
 second volume where he is speaking of Mengs, 
 and as the passage is not long I will extract it. 
 
 " Mengs loved the truth, but he did not always 
 find it out ; under all the disadvantages of a con- 
 tracted education, and soured by the insupport- 
 able severity of his father's discipline, his habit 
 became saturnine and morose, and his manners 
 unsocial and inelegant : he had a great propensity 
 for speaking what are called plain truths, but 
 which oftentimes, in fact, are no truths' at all. His 
 biographer and edifor Azara, has given us an in- 
 stance of this sort!, in a reply he made to Pope 
 Clement XIV. His Holiness had asked Mengs's 
 opinion of some pictures he had collected at Ve- 
 nice. They are good for nothing, said Mengst 
 How so ? rejoined his Holiness, they have been 
 highly commended — naming a certain painter as 
 his authority for their merit. Most Holy Father, 
 replied Mengs, we are both professors of the same 
 art ; he extols what he cannot equal, and I depre- 
 ciate what I am sensible I can excel. N, y. yo 
 somos dos profesores. El uno alaha lo que es supe- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 399 
 
 rior a su esfera ; y el otro vitupera lo que le es supe- 
 rior. I should suspect that Clement thought very 
 little the worse of his pictures, and not much the 
 better of Mengs for his repartee. Whether Mengs 
 really thought with contempt of art which was in- 
 ferior to his own, I will not pretend to decide ; but 
 that he was apt to speak contemptuously of artists 
 superior to himself, I am inclined to believe ; 
 Azara tells us, that he pronounced of the academi- 
 cal lectures of our Reynolds, that they were calcu- 
 lated to mislead young students into error, teach- 
 ing nothing but those superficial principles which he 
 plainly avers are all that the author himself knows 
 of the art he professes. Del libro moderno del Sr. 
 Raynolds, Ingles^ decia que es una obra, que puede 
 conducir los juvenes al error; posque se queda en 
 los principios superjiciales que conoce solamente a 
 quel autor. Azara immediately proceeds to say 
 that Mengs was of a temperament colericoy adusto, 
 and that his bitter and satirical turn created him 
 infinites agraviados y quejosos. When his histo- 
 rian and friend says this there is no occasion for 
 me to repeat the remark. If the genius of Mengs 
 had been capable of producing a composition equal 
 to that of the tragic and pathetic Ugolino, I am 
 persuaded such a sentence as the above would 
 never have passed his lips ; but flattery made him 
 vain, and sickness rendered him peevish ; he 
 found himself at Madrid, in a country without 
 rivals, and because the arts had travelled out of 
 
400 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND* 
 
 his sight, he was disposed to think they existed 
 nowhere but on his own pallet. The time, per- 
 haps, is at hand, when our virtuosi will extend 
 their route to Spain, and of these some one will 
 probably be found, who, regarding with just indig- 
 nation, these dogmatical decrees of Mengs, will 
 take in hand the examination of his paintings, 
 which I have now enumerated ; and we may then be 
 told, with the authority of science, that his Nati- 
 vity, though so splendidly encased, and covered 
 with such care, that the very winds of Heaven are 
 not permitted to visit its face too roughly, would 
 have owed more to the chrystal than it does in 
 some parts, at least, had it been less transparent 
 than it is ; that it discovers an abortive and puisny 
 bambino, which seems copied from a bottle ; that 
 Mengs was an artist who had seen much, and in- 
 vented little ; that he dispenses neither life nor 
 death to his figures, excites no terror, rouses no 
 passions, and risques no flights; that by studying 
 to avoid particular defects, he incurs general ones, 
 and paints with tameness and servility : that the 
 contracted scale and idea of a painter of minia- 
 tures, as which he was brought up, is to be traced 
 in all or most of his compositions, in which a 
 finished delicacy of pencil exhibits the Hand of 
 the Artist, but gives no emanations of the Soul of 
 the Master: if it is beauty, it does not warm; 
 if it is sorrow, it excites no pity. That when 
 the Angel announces the salutation to Mary, 
 it is a messenger that has neither used dis- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 401 
 
 patch in the errand, nor grace in the delivery ; that 
 although Rubens was by one of his oracular sayings 
 condemned to the ignominious dullness of a Dutch 
 translator, Mengs was as capable of painting 
 Rubens's Adoration, as he was of creating the Star 
 in the East that ushered the Magi : but these are 
 questions above my capacity ; I resign Mengs to 
 abler critics, and Reyrtolds to better defenders ; 
 well contented that posterity should admire them 
 both, and well assured that the fame of our coun- 
 tryman is established beyond the reach of envy or 
 detraction/' 
 
 If the reader be ss willingly disposed as I am to 
 acquit Cumberland of all intentional depreciation 
 of his friend's merits, he may still think, however, 
 that it was a needless violation of kindness to dif- 
 fuse the knowledge even of another's opinion when 
 it tended to bring his abilities into question. It 
 was at least in his power to have shewn forbear- 
 ance ; and when he found that so unequivocal a 
 censure had been passed upon his friend ^ by a 
 foreign writer, he might have forborne to give it 
 currency by translating it. It is true he afterwards 
 undertakes his vindication : but is not this like 
 a man who first wounds you and then very assi= 
 duously runs about to procure assistance, and to 
 stanch the blood ? 
 
 Perhaps the reader will not be displeased to find 
 here the brief history of painting in Spain, with 
 which Cumberland has preceded his Anecdotes, 
 , 2D 
 
402 LIFE OF CUMBEPwLAND. 
 
 The work is not very commonly to be met with, 
 and the topic is one not yet rendered worthless by 
 familiarity. 
 
 " Spain has given birth to so many eminent 
 painters, of whom there is no memorial in the rest 
 of Europe, and abounds with so many admirable 
 examples of their art, dispersed in churches, con- 
 vents, and palaces, where the curiosity of modern 
 travellers rarely carries them, that I persuade my- 
 self it will not be unacceptable to the public to 
 have some account of men and works so little 
 known and yet so highly worthy to be recorded. 
 I am not aware that this has been professedly at- 
 tempted by any Spanish writer, except by Palo~ 
 mino ; who in an elaborate treatise on the Art of 
 Fainting, in two folio volumes, has inserted the 
 lives of two hundred and thirty-three painters 
 and sculptors, who flourished in Spain from the 
 time of Ferdinand the Catholic to the conclusion of 
 the reign of Philip the Fourth; of these materials I 
 have principally availed myself in the following 
 sheets, but not without due attention to other 
 authorities, that interpose accounts differing from 
 his, or extend to particulars, which he has failed 
 to enumerate. He is said to have written with a 
 competent knowledge of his subject, as an art, of 
 which he was himself a professor; and in rules for 
 the practice of painting he is very diffusive: if he 
 had been more communicative or entertaining in 
 those matters, for which I chiefly consulted him, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 403 
 
 I might have needed less apology for the present 
 publication : many particulars however have been 
 furnished to me from tradition, which help out the 
 sterility and dryness of his catalogue ; and I must 
 not omit to acknowledge the assistance I drew 
 from the treatise of Pacheco, a book now become 
 extremely rare and hardly to be obtained. I know 
 there was an English abridgement of Palomino's 
 Painters published in the year 1739, but the ori- 
 ginal is in very few hands ; so that, unless some 
 Spanish biographer shall speedily be found with 
 public spirit to engage in the task of rescuing the 
 fame of his ingenious countrymen from approaching 
 extinction, their histories at least will soon be lost, 
 whatever may be the fate of their works. The world 
 is in possession of many memoirs of the artists of 
 Italy, France, and Flanders ; and the painters, who 
 distinguished themselves in England, have by happy 
 fortune found a biographer, whose entertaining ta- 
 lents will secure to them a reception with posterity; 
 whilst of all the painters, to whose memory I have 
 dedicated this slight attempt, scarce a name is 
 heard without the limits of Spain, except those of 
 Velasquez, Murillo, and Ribeira: the paintings of 
 the latter it is true are very generally known, many 
 excellent performances of his being dispersed 
 through Europe : some respectable remains of 
 Velasquez are to be found in Italy, but the principal 
 exertions of his pencil were reserved for his own 
 country, and the sovereign, who entertained him 
 
 2 D2 
 
404? LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 in his service; these, we may naturally suppose, 
 can never be extracted : and as for Murillo, al- 
 though some pieces of his have in time past been 
 extracted from Seville, yet I think I may venture 
 to say, that not many of them, which pass under 
 his name, are legitimate ; and in a less proportion 
 can we find amongst such, as are true pictures, any 
 of so capital a rank, as to impart a competent idea 
 of his extraordinary merit. 
 
 " The candid reader will observe, that I do not 
 profess to give the Lives of the Painters, who are 
 treated of in this catalogue, for which my materials 
 do not suffice ; nor shall I hazard many criticisms 
 upon their respective works, for which more sci- 
 ence would be requisite than I can pretend to ; 
 still I hope there will be found sufficient novelty 
 to amuse such of my readers, as can endure to 
 hear of paintings, as they strike the feelings of an 
 ordinary observer, without presuming to dissect 
 tftem in the learned jargon of a Virtuoso. It will 
 be remembered, therefore, that I offer nothing more 
 to the public than Anecdotes of the Eminent 
 Painters, who have flourished in Spain during the 
 two centuries last past ; and in this description I 
 include all such illustrious foreigners, as have re- 
 sorted to Spain for the display of their talents 
 under protection of the princes or nobles of that 
 kingdom ; these are a pretty numerous class, and 
 in treating of them I shall study to avoid repeating 
 what may have been better told by others ; but 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 40o 
 
 even of these perhaps some local anecdotes will 
 occur, which may at least be supplementary to the 
 accounts already in existence. My residence in 
 Spain, and some advantages incident to my pe- 
 culiar situation there, gave me repeated access to 
 every thing I wished to see; almost every religious 
 foundation throughout the kingdom contains a 
 magazine of art ; in resorting to these nothing will 
 be found, of which a stranger can complain, unless 
 of the gloominess of some of the edifices, and the 
 unfavourable lights, in which many capital paint- 
 ings are disposed: in private houses it is not un- 
 usual to discover very fine pictures in neglect and 
 decay ; thrown aside amongst the rubbish of cast-* 
 off furniture; whether it be, that the possessor has 
 no knowledge of their excellence, or thinks it below 
 his notice to attend to their preservation ; but 
 how much soever the Spaniards have declined from 
 their former taste and passion for the elegant arts, 
 I am persuaded they have in no degree fallen off 
 from their national character for generosity, which 
 is still so prevalent amongst them, that a stranger, 
 who is interestedly disposed to avail himself of 
 their munificence, may in a great measure obtain 
 whatever is the object of his praise and admiration : 
 as for the royal collections at Madrid, the Escurial, 
 and elsewhere, he will meet a condescension so 
 accommodated to his curiosity, that the one is as 
 little likely to be exhausted as the other; the 
 facility of access to every palace in possession of 
 
406 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 his Catholic Majesty is only to be equalled by the 
 gratification it produces." 
 
 Before Cumberland had settled himself at Tun- 
 bridge, he produced his comedy of the Walloons in 
 1782. The character of Father Sullivan (in which 
 it was thought, by many, that the author intended 
 an adumbration of his late colleague in the Spanish 
 mission, the Abbe Hussey), was written expressly 
 for Henderson, who wished to have him drawn 
 " a fine bold-faced villain," (to use his own lan- 
 guage) " the direst and deepest in nature, so he 
 had but motives strong enough to bear him out, 
 and such a prominency of natural character, as 
 should secure him from the contempt of his au- 
 dience." In obedience to these injunctions Cum- 
 berland drew the character : but the play was not 
 very successful. 
 
 Of Henderson so much less is known than must 
 be wished by every inquirer into dramatic history, 
 that 1 am tempted to conclude this chapter by 
 inserting what little Cumberland has told of him. 
 He knew him well, and seems to have had much 
 regard for his character, and sufficient admiration 
 of his talents, though he was not successful in pro- 
 curing an engagement for him with Garrick. 
 
 " He was an actor," says he, " of uncommon 
 powers, and a man of the brightest intellect, formed 
 to be the delight of society, and few indeed are 
 those men oi distinguished talents, who have been 
 more prematurely lost to the world, or more lastingly 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 407 
 
 regretted. What he was on the stage, those who 
 recollect his FalstarT, Shylock, Sir Giles Overreach, 
 and many other parts of the strong cast, can fully 
 testify; what he was at his own fire-side and in 
 his social hours, all, who were within the circle of 
 his intimates, will not easily forget. He had an 
 unceasing flow of spirits, and a boundless fund of 
 humour, irresistibly amusing; he also had wit, pro- 
 perly so distinguished, and from the specimens, 
 which I have seen of his sallies in verse, levelled 
 at a certain editor of a public print, who had an- 
 noyed him with his paragraphs, I am satisfied he 
 had talents at his command to have established a 
 very high reputation as a poet. I was with him 
 one morning, when he was indisposed, and his 
 physician, Sir John Eliot, paid him a visit. The 
 doctor, as is well known, was a merry little being, 
 who talked pretty much at random, and oftentimes 
 with no great reverence for the subjects, which he 
 talked upon ; upon the present occasion, however, 
 he came professionally to enquire how his medi- 
 cines had succeeded, and in his northern accent 
 demanded of his patient — c Had he taken the palls 
 that he sent him* — c He had* — 'Well ! and how 
 did they agree ? What had they done ?'-**' Won* 
 ders, replied Henderson ; I survived them' — ' To 
 be sure you did, said the doctor, and you must 
 take more of 'em, and live for ever : I make all my 
 patients immortal' — ' That is exactly what I am 
 afraid of, doctor, rejoined the patient. I met a 
 
408 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 lady of my acquaintance yesterday : you know 
 her very well : she was in bitter affliction, crying 
 and bewailing herself in a most piteous fashion : I 
 asked what had happened; a melancholy event; 
 her dearest friend was at death's door'-^-' What is 
 her disease, cried the doctor ?' — 4 That is the very 
 question 1 asked, replied Henderson ; but she was 
 in no danger from her disease ; *twas very slight ; 
 a mere excuse for calling in a physician' — ' Why, 
 what the devil are you talking about, rejoined the 
 doctor, if she had called in a physician, and there 
 was no danger in the disease, how could she be 
 said to be at death's door ?' — ' Because, said Hen- 
 derson, she had called in you : every body calls 
 you in ; you dispatch a world of business, and, if 
 you come but once to each, your practice must 
 have made you very rich'—' Nay, nay, quoth Sir 
 John, I am not rich in this world ; I lay up my 
 treasure in heaven' — ' Then you may take leave of 
 it for ever, rejoined the other, for you have laid it 
 up where you will never find it.* 
 
 " Henderson's memory was so prodigious, that 
 I dare not risque the instance which 1 could give 
 of it, not thinking myself entitled to demand more 
 credit than I should probably be disposed to give. 
 In his private character, many good and amiable 
 qualities might be traced, particularly in his con- 
 duct towards an aged mother, to whom he bore a 
 truly filial attachment ; and in laying up a provision 
 for his wife and daughter he was at least sufficiently 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 409 
 
 careful and ceconomical. He was concerned with 
 the elder Sheridan in a course of public readings: 
 there could not be a higher treat than to hear his 
 recitations from parts and passages in Tristram 
 Shandy: let him broil his dish of sprats, seasoned 
 with the sauce of his pleasantry, and succeeded by 
 a desert of Trim and my uncle Toby, it was an 
 entertainment worthy to be enrolled amongst the 
 nodes ccenasque Divum. I once heard him read 
 part of a tragedy, and but once ; it was in his own 
 parlour, and he ranted most outrageously : he was 
 conscious how ill he did it, and laid it aside before 
 he had finished it. It was clear he had not studied 
 that most excellent property of pitching his voice 
 to the size of the room he was in ; an art, which so 
 few readers have, but which Lord Mansfield was 
 allowed to possess in perfection. He was an ad- 
 mirable mimic, and in his sallies of this sort he 
 invented speeches and dialogues, so perfectly ap- 
 propriate to the characters he was displaying, that 
 I don't doubt but many good sayings have been 
 given to the persons he made free with, which 
 being fastened on them by him in a frolic, have 
 stuck to them ever since, and perhaps gone down 
 to posterity amongst their memorabilia. If there 
 w T as any body now qualified to draw a parallel be- 
 tween the characters of Foote and Henderson, I 
 don't pretend to say how the men of wit and hu- 
 mour might divide the laurel between them, but in 
 this all men would agree that poor Foote attached 
 
410 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 to himself very few true friends, and Henderson 
 very many, and those highly respectable, men 
 virtuous in their lives, and enlightened in their 
 understandings. Foote, vain, extravagant, embar- 
 rassed, led a wild and thoughtless course of life, 
 yet when death approached him, he shrunk back 
 into himself, saw and confessed his errors, and I 
 have reason to believe was truly penitent. Hen- 
 derson's conduct through life was uniformly de- 
 corous, and in the concluding stage of it exemplarily 
 devout." 
 
 This is a high character, but I am willing to 
 hope not an undeserved one. The reference to 
 the last moments of Foote has probably some con- 
 nection with his own efforts for his amendment : 
 for I remember that Davies alludes, (with a sort of 
 sneering scepticism, which does him little credit) 
 to his endeavours. " Good Christians," says he, 
 *' are not perhaps acquainted with the obligations 
 they owe Mr. Cumberland. By the power of his 
 eloquence, and the strength of his arguments he 
 almost converted, some time before his death, that 
 wicked unbeliever, Samuel Foote, to Christianity : 
 he assured his friends, that if he had lived a little 
 longer, he did not doubt but he should have com- 
 pleted his work, and made a good man of him." 
 
 There is a levity in this statement which ill be- 
 comes the subject. If Foote needed conversion, 
 if his belief required strengthening, and if Cum- 
 berland really laboured to effect that conversion 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 41 1 
 
 and to give that strength, let it be recorded among 
 those actions of his life which most adorn and 
 dignify his memory : but if the fact were other- 
 wise, and assistance was neither required nor given, 
 it would be no justification of the irreverence with 
 which the allusion to a thing so solemn, as a 
 preparation for eternity, is here treated. Surely 
 his friend Johnson would have frowned upon such 
 indecorous and insipid pertness had it come be- 
 neath his notice. 
 
412 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 CHAP. XLX. 
 
 Cum her land produces the M Y s t e r i o u s H u s b a n d , 
 a tragedy. -^-The excellence of its plot. — Exami- 
 nation of its characters. — Epilogue to the Arab. 
 — Cumberland writes the Observer. — Compa- 
 rison of this with the Essays of Johnson, Ad- 
 dison, and STEKhE. — Exa?nination of some 
 particular papers in this work. — Cumberland ar- 
 gues against female acquirements. — The folly of 
 this, and the absurdity of his exemplification. — 
 His religious papers commended.— Cumberland* s 
 notions of political liberty. -*— His character of 
 Abraham Abrahams. — Anticipated in one of 
 Itis papers by Mr. Pinkerton. — An instance of 
 that icriters ineffable absurdity .—Cumberland* s 
 mock criticism upon Othello defective. — Ge- 
 neral character of the Observer.— Cumberland 
 says that the style of it is "■ simple, clear, mnd 
 harmonious!* — Examination of this claim.— In* 
 stances cited to prove that his style has neither of 
 these qualities. — The style of Goldsmith exa- 
 mined and praised.-^The iniquitous proceedings 
 of those who publish trials for adultery. — Some 
 advice to the Society for the suppression 
 of Vice. — An example how Cumberland* s style 
 might be improved. — Examined with the greater 
 rigour because of his gratuitous assumption of its 
 superior merits. — His Observer that work which 
 will most probably convey his name down to pos« 
 terity. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 418 
 
 The next dramatic production of Cumberland was 
 the Mysterious Husband ', a tragedy, in which he 
 also pourtrayed a character (Lord Davenant,) ex- 
 pressly for the display of Henderson's peculiar 
 powers, and he performed it, according to the au- 
 thor's testimony, with conspicuous excellence. 
 
 He who has been accustomed to associate with 
 his ideas of tragedy a uniform pomp of diction and 
 elevation of sentiment, will be disappointed when 
 he takes up the Mysterious Husband, which is 
 written in prose, and approaches, in some places, 
 to the easy levity of comedy. The situations, 
 however, are truly tragic, and the catastrophe is one 
 as solemn and affecting as can well be devised. 
 
 Of tragedies, founded upon domestic incidents, 
 and composed without any stateliness of language, 
 there were examples upon the English stage be- 
 fore Cumberland produced this. Lillo had written 
 his George Barnwell and Fatal Curiosity, and 
 Moore had produced his Gamester, all of them 
 devoid of these great and magnificent events, and 
 of that laboured dignity of style, which had been 
 supposed to belong as necessarily to tragedy as the 
 divine right was once thought essential to regal 
 dominion. 
 
 Without staying to inquire whether as much 
 might not be reasonably urged in defence of fami- 
 liar tragedy as of sentimental comedy, I shall 
 proceed to examine the one before me, and discri- 
 minate its merits and defects. It partakes of both, 
 but certainly more largely of the former. 
 
414* LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 The plot is contrived with exquisite felicity ; 
 and though Cumberland has made it subservient 
 to a drama which arrests the feelings in the most 
 powerful mariner, I will not conceal my regret 
 that it never fell into better hands. Had the ima- 
 gination of Otway teemed with such a fiction, 
 of what a tragedy might not the British stage now 
 be possessed ? It is one so probably connected, so 
 heart-rending, and so morally instructive, that I 
 question if any play of modern times can be op- 
 posed to it as superior. 
 
 Great praise, indeed, is due to Cumberland. I 
 know not whether he invented it, by a lucky 
 effort of his own fancy, or whether he compounded 
 its chief characteristics from the suggestions of 
 other writers : but he has so skilfully supported it, 
 involved it in so much pleasing intricacy, and, 
 (what is very unusual in him) forborne its deve- 
 lopement so thoroughly till the concluding scenes 
 of the play, that he merits every commendation 
 which such excellence can receive. 
 
 The language of this drama is to be tried by the 
 standard neither of tragedy nor comedy, for it be- 
 longs to neither. I prefer it, however, to his dic- 
 tion when he labours to construct it according to 
 the received forms of tragic composition. It is 
 animated, expressive, and occasionally elevated, 
 but very seldom turgid, a fault which Cumber- 
 land seems to have been incapable of avoiding 
 when he strove to be dignified. Sometimes, in- 
 deed, he lapses into unnatural tumor in the present 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 415' 
 
 play, but beseems to have aimed rather at an even 
 tenor of polished discourse, and has generally at- 
 tained what he wished. 
 
 The first interview between Captain Dormer 
 and Lord Davenant is managed with great success. 
 Nothing could be devised more calculated to 
 heighten the infamy of Davenant, or to display the 
 grateful and unsuspecting confidence of Dormer, 
 than the propositions made by the latter respect- 
 ing his sister. The same praise may be given to 
 the interposition of Marianne, when Dormer and 
 Sir Harry Harlow are fighting, by which the 
 innocence of the latter is unequivocally esta- 
 blished by an event apparently so accidental and 
 yet natural. 
 
 Of the characters, Lord Davenant* s is the most 
 prominent. This was written by Cumberland for 
 Henderson, and eminently he supported it. But 
 he failed to give it what Henderson required, such 
 a display of natural character as might secure it 
 from contempt. Lord Davenant is a villain of so 
 black a die, with a mind so lost to all elevated, 
 generous, or tender sensations, that he excites 
 nothing but unmingled abhorrence. His treatment 
 of his wife is gloomily ferocious : there is no touch 
 of pity in his disposition ; and the sullen apathy 
 with which he dismisses the question of his son's 
 promotion, proves that the father had as little do- 
 minion in his heart as the husband. The atrocity 
 of his conduct towards Marianne, has been too 
 often equalled^ I am afraid, and without the in- 
 
416 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 fliction of such penalties as are produced in this 
 tragedy. The seducer of female innocence tri- 
 umphs in his guilt, while the deluded victim of 
 his artifices is left to, pine in hopeless misery, an 
 outcast from society, with no friend to admonish, 
 no gentle hand to soothe the wounds which vil- 
 lainy has given* and which the unfeeling cruelty 
 of a sordid policy aggravates and inflames. 
 
 The next character which excites attention is 
 Lady Davenant, She of course is contrasted with 
 her husband ; and meekness, forbearance, and vir- 
 tue, are given to her, that they may the more 
 glaringly exhibit the arrogance, resentment, and 
 vice of her husband. She is, however, made a 
 very interesting personage. The dignity of her 
 sentiments, the nobleness of her nature, and the 
 generous loftiness of her behaviour towards the 
 tyrant who had wedded her, command, and pre- 
 serve the admiration and applause of the reader. — 
 This admiration and applause she forfeits only 
 once, and that is when she incautiously admits her 
 former lover to embrace and caress her. Had Cum- 
 berland duly considered the character which he 
 gave Lady Davenant to support, he would have 
 forborne to place her in a situation quite derogatory 
 from what she is obviously intended to appear. 
 
 I do not, however, accord in opinion with Cum- 
 berland, that " Lady Davenant is the best female 
 part he ever tendered to the stage/' That praise, 
 perhaps, belongs rather to the character of 
 Lady Paragon, in the Natural Son, the peculiar 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 417 
 
 merits of which I shall discuss when I examine 
 that play. 
 
 Little applause can be given to any other of the 
 characters in this tragedy. Charles Davenant is 
 merely a gentleman ; Captain Dormer has some 
 qualities about him which interest, but they are 
 not adequately developed. Sir Harry Harlow is too 
 flippant for tragedy; and yet he has not sufficient 
 vivacity for comedy. He is a dramatic abortion. 
 
 But worse than an abortion is the character of 
 Sir Edmund Travers ; nor can I conceive for what 
 purpose the author introduced him. He neither 
 accelerates nor retards the progress of the action. 
 He is disgustingly odious. His meanness is with- 
 out humour to make it ridiculous, and his fatuity 
 without virtue to make it respectable. His per- 
 tinacious belief of his niece's happiness against 
 every outward appearance is mere folly : yet it is 
 a folly in which Cumberland seems to have de- 
 lighted, for he has made a similar exhibition of it 
 in his comedy of First Love. 
 
 Cumberland wrote one more part for Hender- 
 son, and that was the character of the Arab in the 
 play of that name. It was acted only once, for his 
 benefit, and was never published. The epilogue 
 to it has been thought worthy of preservation by 
 the author, and, as it is short, may be transcribed 
 here. It was spoken by Miss Young. 
 
 Yes, 'tis as I predicted — there you sit 
 
 Expecting some smart relishes of -wit. 
 
 Why, 'tis a delicacy out of season — 
 
 Sirs, have some conscience — ladies, hear some reason ! 
 
 2E 
 
41S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 With your accustom'd grace you come to share 
 
 Your humble actor's annual bill of fare : 
 
 But for wit, take it how you will, I tell you, 
 
 All have not Falstaff 's brains that have his belly ! 
 
 Wit is not all men's money : when you've bought it 
 
 Look at your lot— you're trick' d— who could have thought it ? 
 
 Read it, 'tis folly : court it, a coquette : 
 
 Wed it, a libertine — you're fairly met. 
 
 No sex, age, country, character, nor clime, 
 
 No rank commands it : it obeys no time : 
 
 Fear'd, lov'd, and hated ; prais'd, ador'd, and curs'd j 
 
 The very best of all things, and the worst : 
 
 From this extreme to that for ever hurl'd, 
 
 The idol and the outlaw of the world. 
 
 In France, Spain, England, Italy, and Greece, 
 
 The joy, plague, pride, and foot-ball of caprice. 
 
 Is it in that man's face, who looks so wise, 
 With lips half-open'd, and with half-shut eyes ? 
 Silent grimace ! Flows it from this man's tongue, 
 With quaint conceits and punning quibbles hung ? 
 A nauseous counterfeit I Hark '. now I hear it- 
 Rank infidelity ! I cannot bear it. 
 See where her tea-table Vanessa spreads ! 
 A motley groupe of heterogeneous heads 
 Gathers around : the goddess in a cloud 
 Of incense sits amidst the adoring crowd, 
 So many smiles, nods, whispers, she dispenses, 
 Instead of five, you'd think she'd fifteen senses j 
 Alike impatient all at once to shine, 
 Eager they plunge in wit's unfathom'd mine ; 
 Deep underneath the stubborn ore remains 
 The paltry tin breaks up, and mocks their pains. 
 
 Ask wit of me ! Oh, monstrous ! I declare, 
 You might as well ask it of my Lord Mayor : 
 Require it in an Epilogue ! a road 
 As track'd and trodden as a birth-day ode ; 
 Oh '. rather turn to those malicious elves, 
 Who see it in no mortal but themselves ; 
 Our gratitude is all we have to give, 
 And what we trust your candour will receive. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 419 
 
 There is some vivacity in these lines, but they 
 •are inferior to what Cumberland probably thought 
 them by his admitting them into the pages of his 
 Memoirs. The play to which they belonged was 
 the last office of friendship he had any opportu- 
 nity of performing towards Henderson, who died 
 soon after in the full vigour of his talents and the 
 meridian of his fame. 
 
 It was during his abode at Tunbridge Wells that 
 Gumberland gradually composed and progres- 
 sively published his Observer, a body of Essays 
 which, though it will never rank his name upon an 
 equality with Steele, Addison, and Johnson, con- 
 fers upon him a fair title to take his station by 
 the side of Colman, Lloyd, Cambridge, Moore, 
 Hawkes worth, and Chesterfield. These papers 
 were not published as those of his predecessors 
 were, in daily or weekly numbers, but in volumes 
 successively brought forth as a sufficient number 
 of Essays had accumulated to form them. They 
 have lately been incorporated into a complete edi- 
 tion of the British Essayists, and may therefore, 
 as Cumberland justly observes, be regarded " as 
 fairly enrolled amongst the standard classics of our 
 native language." 
 
 Johnson produced his Ramblers with very little 
 assistance from contemporary wits ; but Cumber- 
 land wrote his Observer without any. The dif- 
 ferent powers of the two writers, however, may 
 be easily ascertained from a very slight inspection 
 
 2 E2 
 
4 C 20 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 of their topics. Johnson drew solely from the 
 stores of his own mind. His imagination quick- 
 ened into perpetual growth objects of discussion ; 
 he seized upon an ordinary subject, and by the 
 energy of his language, the richness of his fancy, 
 the fertility of his allusions, and, above all, by the 
 deep insight into human nature which he pos- 
 sessed, he so decorated and enforced it, that had 
 novelty lent her aid, she could scarcely have added 
 another attraction. He derived little help from 
 books, and seldom extended his essays by quota- 
 tion. They were short also, and it did not often 
 happen that the topic was pursued through suc- 
 cessive numbers, for the quickness of his inven- 
 tion was such that he seldom needed to protract a 
 disquisition by a languid iteration of ideas. His 
 Rambler consists of two hundred and eight, papers, 
 and he discharges all the favours he received by 
 the acknowledgement of six out of this number. 
 
 Cumberland's Observer contains as great, if not 
 a greater, quantity of matter, and it comprises 
 only one hundred and fifty-two papers. Of these, 
 more than one-third is compiled from other books. 
 They consist of critical researches into ancient 
 writers, accompanied with copious extracts ; of 
 brief accounts of philosophers and poets derived 
 from sources familiar to the learned ; and of his- 
 torical relations which require little other labour 
 than that of writing down the facts retained in the 
 memory. Those papers which are original are 
 expanded into unusual copiousness, and are some- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 421 
 
 times pursued through several successive essays. 
 They were written too at distant intervals of 
 time, while Johnson's were produced by the ne- 
 cessity of stated and periodical labour within the 
 space of two years. 
 
 From this comparison (honourable indeed to 
 Cumberland, for with him alone can it be made, 
 all our other essayists having been associated to- 
 gether in their respective labours,) two conclusions 
 may be inferred ; one, that Johnson possessed an 
 extraordinary rapidity of conception, accompanied 
 with a rapidity of execution as extraordinary : the 
 other, that Cumberland, though he had, perhaps, no 
 less rapidity of execution than Johnson, was far 
 beneath him in that intellectual fruitfulness by 
 which topics are not only elicited but afterwards 
 pursued, and embellished with all the brightest 
 ornaments of fancy, or enforced with all the weigh- 
 tiest arguments of reason. 
 
 The most conspicuous part of these papers, and 
 that which Cumberland seems to have regarded as 
 his happiest effort, is the inquiry instituted into 
 the history of the Greek writers, particularly of the 
 comic poets now lost. " I am vain enough," says 
 he, " to believe no such collection of the scattered 
 extracts, anecdotes, and remains of those drama- 
 tists is any where else to be found ;" and in an- 
 other part of his Memoirs, he quotes, with mani- 
 fest exultation, the following panegyric from the 
 pen of Mr. Walpole, of Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
422 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 66 Aliunde quoque hand exiguum ornamentum 
 huic volumini accessit, siquidem Cumberlandius 
 nostras amice benevoleque permisit, ut versiones 
 suas quorundam fragmentorum, exquisitas sane 
 illaS) mint que elegantid conditas et commendatas 
 hue transfer rem." 
 
 In writing these erudite papers, he was greatly 
 assisted by the marginal annotations upon the au- 
 thors by his grandfather Bentley, some of whose 
 books he received from his uncle (Dr. Richard 
 Bentley) and among them many of the writers 
 whose works he afterwards illustrated in the Ob- 
 server. That these essays, indeed, deserve every 
 praise which so much diligence, learning, and 
 skilful criticism can obtain, I will not deny ; but 
 they will oftener be commended than read. 
 
 It is deemed unlucky to stumble on the thresh- 
 hold, but Cumberland has done so. I do not be- 
 lieve, indeed, that it would be-possible to produce, 
 from any writer of the last century, a paragraph so 
 feebly involved as that with which the first num- 
 ber of the Observer commences. The reader 
 wanders through it as in a maze ; he finds himself 
 at the end, at last, but wonders how he came 
 there; he attempts to look back and disentangle 
 the path he pursued, and beholds only inextrica- 
 ble confusion. I know nothing that resembles 
 this initial paragraph, except it be some of the 
 prolixly concatenated sentences of Gauden ; but 
 his involutions are amply redeemed by a richness 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 423 
 
 of imagination which scatters the brightest flowers 
 over the palpable confusion. 
 
 The purport of his undertaking was, as he in- 
 forms us, " to tell his readers what he had ob- 
 served of men and books in the most amusing 
 manner he was able." This, indeed, was an un- 
 ambitious claim, and to which I think he esta- 
 blished a sufficient right in the progress of his 
 labours. 
 
 Before delivering a general opinion upon this 
 work, I wish to make some desultory observations 
 upon particular passages, and in which I shall 
 hope to consult the reader's pleasure and advan- 
 tage. 
 
 Cumberland knew and had felt the advantages 
 of being educated by a mother of more than ordi- 
 nary literature ; and it may therefore justly excite 
 our wonder to find him ridiculing the possession, 
 as well as the affectation, of knowledge in a female. 
 Numbers five, six, and seven, are devoted to this 
 purpose, and with as much success as the under- 
 taking deserved. In Calliope it is the abuse of 
 reading and intellectual pleasures which is exhi- 
 bited, though the author's intention was evidently 
 to render odious every female acquirement which 
 aspired beyond those of domestic utility. 
 
 I have already animadverted, in the forty-first 
 page of this work, upon that narrow policy which 
 would exclude, from the fair regions of knowledge, 
 one half of the rational creation, by reducing it to 
 
424 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 such abject insignificance, that nothing but the 
 instinctive appetites of the other half could rescue 
 it from merited contempt and ignominy. By 
 what fatality it is that men, who know the enjoy- 
 ments of intellect, who know how much our 
 moral nature is refined by the refinement of our 
 minds, and who know, also, that mental superi- 
 ority is the final scale of admeasurement by which 
 all human excellence is adjusted, should be found 
 so willing to depreciate that quality in the female 
 sex which they so justly vaunt in themselves, I 
 am unable to conjecture. Perhaps, indeed, it is 
 the jealousy of dominion that influences them; 
 and like some modern statesmen, who argue that 
 men, to be governed, should be kept in salutary 
 ignorance, they think they could not act the 
 tyrant's part so easily as they now do, if their vic- 
 tims, with increased knowledge, had an increased 
 consciousness of their own rights and privileges. 
 From some such debased maxim they probably 
 act, and the consequence is, that they are the first 
 and most lamentable objects of their own oppres- 
 sion ; upon them it recoils with that certainty of 
 evil which it were well for mankind if every op- 
 pression produced upon its author. 
 
 It may justly provoke our indignation, however* 
 to see Cumberland, who owed so much to the 
 early tuition of a mother, distinguished above her 
 sex by her intellectual attainments, and without 
 which attainments her son must have wanted 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 425 
 
 those benefits he so feelingly commemorates in 
 his Memoirs, striving, though ineffectually, to 
 deride all intellectual pre-eminence in woman. 
 His father was a bishop. Should we not feel 
 something more than wonder if he had endea- 
 voured, in any part of his writings, to traduce the 
 dignities of the church, by exhibiting an episcopal 
 coxcomb, and making the possession of a mitre 
 the impediment to future kindness? Yet, what does 
 he better, than tacitly traduce the acquirements of 
 his mother, when he introduces a female pedant, 
 with the intention to ridicule all learning in women, 
 and exhibits her as forfeiting the hand of an intended 
 husband, unless she burns her books, and engages 
 never to quote a line of poetry while she lives 1 
 
 The letter from this enlightened lover, where 
 he disclaims his mistress because she reads, is 
 written with a coarseness of argument which does 
 not much assist the cause of ignorance. " No, 
 no," he exclaims, in one part, " heaven defend 
 me from a learned wife V' and in another he asks, 
 " For God's sake what have women to do with 
 learning ?." 
 
 I will not waste my own and my reader's time, 
 however, by combating such compendious argu« 
 ments as these ; but I will dismiss the subject 
 with recounting the particulars of the lady's refor- 
 mation. Finding she must either forego her hus- 
 band or her books, she is made to renounce the 
 latter, and after she is married, she gives the follow- 
 
426 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 ing proof of her complete recantation of the dread- 
 ful heresy into which she had fallen. It is the 
 concluding paragraph of a supposed letter from 
 her to the Observer : 
 
 " I had almost forgot to mention to you a cir- 
 cumstance," says she, " that passed as we were 
 sitting at table after dinner, and by which our 
 good friend, the vicar, undesignedly threw me into 
 confusion that was exceedingly distressing, by re- 
 peating some verses from Pope's Essay on Man, 
 in which he applied to me to help him out in 
 his quotation ; I certainly remembered the pas- 
 sage, and could have supplied his memory with 
 the words ; but Henry being present, and the 
 recollection of what had passed on the subject of 
 poetry, rushing on my mind, at the same time 
 that I thought I saw him glance a significant look 
 at me, threw me into such embarrassment on 
 the sudden, that in vain endeavouring to evade the 
 subject, and being pressed a little unseasonably by 
 the vicar, my spirits also being greatly fluttered by 
 the events of the morning, I could no longer com- 
 mand myself, but burst into tears, and very nar- 
 rowly escaped falling into a second hysteric. No- 
 thing ever equalled the tenderness of Henry on 
 this occasion ; nay, I thought I could discover 
 that he was secretly pleased with the event, as it 
 betrayed a consciousness of former vanities, and 
 seemed to prove that I repented of them ; what- 
 ever interpretation he might put upon it, still I 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 427 
 
 could not bring myself to repeat the verses ; and I 
 believe I shall never utter another couplet whilst 
 1 live." 
 
 With this extract I may safely abandon the sub- 
 ject. Nothing that I can say could render it more 
 contemptible, for absurdity is carried beyond all 
 power of exaggeration. Surely such dreadful con- 
 sequences never before followed from the bare 
 thoughts of reciting a few lines of poetry. 
 
 Let the weight of this censure, however, be 
 counterbalanced by a praise much higher than 
 could have been bestowed upon the best exertions 
 of Cumberland in defence of female learning. His 
 papers on Christianity shew that he was sincerely 
 impressed with those great truths which he la- 
 bours, and not unsuccessfully, to support and 
 illustrate. He does not, indeed, penetrate into 
 the obscurities of the solemn question, nor does 
 he dazzle by a subtlety of argument which more 
 frequently belongs to the pride of thinking acutely 
 than to the wish of thinking well ; but he reasons 
 solrdly and perspicuously upon some of the most 
 important parts of the divine dispensation, and en- 
 deavours to fix the belief of his readers in funda- 
 mental truths, by such arguments as nothing but 
 determined scepticism can reject. I have been 
 very deeply gratified in reading these papers, and 
 I am happy in having this opportunity of testifying 
 my gratification. Could I hope also, that my re- 
 commendation would have any weight, I would 
 
'128 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 earnestly persuade every one to peruse them who 
 requires either to have his doubts satisfied, or his 
 faith quickened by the satisfaction of his reason. 
 
 Cumberland, indeed, like Johnson, has every 
 right to be regarded as a Christian moralist. He 
 missed no incidental occasion, in any of his writ- 
 ings, to uphold •the interests of religion, and he 
 employed his pen specifically for the same purpose. 
 Besides the papers to which I have just alluded, 
 he produced his pamphlet entitled " A few plain 
 reasons why we should believe in Christ, and ad- 
 here to his religion " he wrote also many sermons 
 which were preached, and he sometimes employed 
 his leisure hours in versifying the psalms. These 
 things should be remembered, and remembered to 
 his honour. 
 
 I know not what were Cumberland's notions of 
 political liberty ; he seems, indeed, to have had 
 none that were very precise. In No. 21, of the 
 Observer, he regards as " one of the greatest evils 
 of the time, ,> and " as replete with foreign and 
 domestic mischief," the right of publishing parlia- 
 mentary debates. And why does he think so r 
 Because " our orators speak pamphlets, and the 
 senate is turned into a theatre/* An admirable 
 reason it must be confessed. If, however, he had 
 duly reflected upon the nature of the English con- 
 stitution, and upon that reciprocity of understanding 
 which ought to exist between the people and their 
 representatives, he would have perceived that no 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 429 
 
 mode could be devised better calculated to secure 
 that end, than the publicity of parliamentary pro- 
 ceedings. The nation delegates a trust, a most 
 important trust ; and shall it not know how that 
 trust has been exercised ? The principles and 
 conduct of a member are now examined and un- 
 derstood by every man in the kingdom ; and when, 
 by a dissolution of the parliament, he is sent back 
 to his constituents, they have the power of with- 
 holding their votes if he has betrayed their interest, 
 and of electing another in whose integrity they 
 can better confide. 
 
 But this could seldom be done, if there were no 
 direct channel by which the course of his proceed- 
 ings might be manifested. They could act only 
 from vague reports, and would always be liable to 
 act with injustice. What is the consequence also 
 of this public scrutiny which is thus exercised 
 over every member of parliament ? That which 
 must ever be productive of the greatest welfare to 
 the nation. The members discharge their high 
 office with that consciousness of being watched, 
 which often makes a man honest in practice whose 
 principles are dishonest. If he have any ambition 
 to retain his station, if he glory in the rank it con- 
 fers upon him, and fear to lose it, he will act with 
 that circumspection, with that effective integrity, 
 (knowing that he acts in the observance of his 
 constituents), which, by testifying his value and 
 fitness, may secure to him a continuance of his 
 
430 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 post. All this he will be more likely to do, while 
 the proceedings of parliament are open to the in- 
 spection of the country, than if they were hidden 
 from it. Let us not believe that every man has 
 that stubborn fidelity of soul which can resist all 
 the attacks of temptation, disguised under the 
 seducing forms of titles, influence, and wealth, or 
 that he will retire uncorrupted from a contest, with 
 no other compensation than the gratulations of an 
 approving conscience. 
 
 Cumberkind^ perhaps, wished that the members 
 of parliament should enjoy the same political im- 
 munity, the same freedom from controul, the same 
 security from reproach and ridicule, which he 
 would willingly have claimed for the members of 
 Parnassus, and especially for himself; but, in my 
 opinion, whenever the day comes that the British 
 legislature deliberates with closed doors, that day 
 will be the signal for the extinction of British li- 
 berty. The great moral engine of public opinion, 
 that tribunal to which every public man should 
 be amenable, will be destroyed, and on its ruins 
 will be erected a mysterious tyranny, which will 
 bow down the necks of my countrymen to the 
 dust, without, perhaps, perpetrating any overt act 
 of despotism, flagrant enough to rouse them to 
 resistance. The most dangerous, indeed, of all 
 attacks on freedom, are those which imperceptibly 
 sap its foundations; where nothing is seen to fall 
 till the last support is silently undermined, and 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 431 
 
 the whole fabric rushes to instantaneous destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 Among the narrations which are included in 
 this work, that of Melissa (Nos. 23 and 24), may 
 be distinguished. It is well written, and contains 
 some natural display of character ; but many parts 
 of it seem to have been suggested by Moliere's 
 Precieuses Ridicules. 
 
 How easy it is to deliver maxims of prudence, 
 but how difficult, sometimes, to adopt them. It 
 is amusing, indeed, to observe with what philoso- 
 phical apathy, Cumberland councils the actors 
 (in No. 29) 5 to endure the attacks incident to their 
 profession, while we remember with how little 
 apathy he bore the attacks incident to his own. 
 The whole paper may be pronounced a severe com- 
 ment upon his own practice. Why did not he use 
 that dignified forbearance which he so vehemently 
 recommends ? Why did not he practise that 
 principle which he quotes from Tacitus in these 
 words : Spreta exolescunt si irascare^ agnita viden- 
 tur? and why did he not adopt the judicious ob- 
 servation of Addison, as the rule of his own con- 
 duct ? The cause may be found in the well known 
 replication of the Grecian sage, who, when asked 
 what was the easiest thing to do, answered, " To 
 give advice' 9 
 
 In conformity with that benevolence of princi- 
 ple which led Cumberland to cast a radiance 
 round the dramatic characters of an Irishman and 
 a Scotchman, he has endeavoured, in the Ob- 
 
432 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 server, to exalt the depressed and persecuted Jews, 
 though he once (as I have instanced) concurred to 
 support the degradation in which they were sunk. 
 To this object he devotes nine papers, and in the 
 character of Abraham Abrahams, has exhibited 
 an individual endowed with the most amiable and 
 attractive qualities. I willingly hope that they 
 are not imaginary ; but the conclusion of the 
 following paragraph from his Memoirs, seems to 
 imply that Cumberland found them less deserv- 
 ing of his philanthropy than he had fancied them 
 to be. 
 
 " I take credit to myself/' says he " for 
 the character of Abraham Abrahams-, I wrote 
 it upon principle, thinking it high time that 
 something should be done for a persecuted 
 race. I seconded my appeal to the charity of 
 mankind by the character of Sheva, which I co- 
 pied from this of Abrahams. The public prints 
 gave the Jews credit for their sensibility, in ac- 
 knowledging my well-intended services ; my 
 friends gave me joy of honorary presents, and 
 some even accused me of ingratitude for not mak- 
 ing public my thanks of their munificence. I will 
 speak plainly on this point ; I do most heartily 
 wish they had flattered me with some token, how- 
 ever small, of which I might have said, this is a 
 tribute to my philanthropy, and delivered it down 
 to my children, as my beloved father did to me 
 his badge of favour from the citizens of Dublin ; 
 but not a word from the lips, not a line did I 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 433 
 
 ever receive from the pen of any Jew, though 
 I have found myself in company, with many of 
 their nation ; and in this, perhaps, the gentlemen 
 are quite right, whilst I had formed expectations 
 that were quite wrong; for if I have said for them 
 only what they deserve, why should I be thanked 
 for it ? But if I said more, much more, than they 
 deserve, can they do a wiser thing than hold their 
 tongues ?" 
 
 There is at least as much asperity as candour in 
 the conclusion of this paragraph, and Cumberland 
 evidently thought the Jews were bound, by com- 
 mon gratitude, to reward their voluntary champion. 
 In No. 50, there is an attempt to illustrate 
 the modern mode of theatrical criticism, by an 
 imaginary inquiry into the tragedy of Othello, sup- 
 posed to be written the day after its first perform- 
 ance. The idea is ingenious, but the merit of 
 invention does not belong to Cumberland ; at least, 
 a similar conception occurred to another writer, 
 aud was reduced to practice some years before the 
 appearance of his Observer. 
 
 This writer was Mr. Pinkerton, who published 
 some verses in 1782, called " Rimes/' and which 
 he believed to be poetry. The critics thought 
 otherwise, however, and told him so ; but he was 
 as little qualified to remain tranquil beneath the 
 lash as Cumberland could be. By some accident, 
 the volume arrived at a second edition, and Mr. 
 Pinkerton appeared armed for encounter with his 
 
 9F 
 
434 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 opponents. In his advertisement he calls them 
 all dunces, but makes no attempt to prove them 
 so ; he utters the filthiest abuse, and deems it hu- 
 mour; he dwells with the most offensive egotism 
 upon his own praises, and calls it a vindication of 
 himself. He does more also. To shame his ene- 
 mies, and to convince mankind that they are a race 
 of hopeless blockheads, he gives a translation from 
 a presumed Greek MS. " reposited in a leaden 
 box, and found in an ancient dunghill," which 
 proves to be a critique upon the first Pythian ode 
 of Pindar, and is written with as much vulgarity 
 and silliness as Mr. Pinkerton could devise; this 
 was to assure the world that modern critics 
 wrote with vulgarity and silliness; he supposes, 
 also, another critique to have been found (in the 
 ruins of Herculaneum, and forming the cover to 
 a pie), upon some of Horace's odes written just 
 after their production, and distinguished only 
 for feeble malice and abortive wit; nay, he 
 makes a third discovery, of some critical remarks 
 upon Dryden's ode, which surpass, in all that 
 is despicable and insignificant, either of the pre- 
 ceding artificial antiquities. If the reader will for- 
 give me for polluting my pages with such ineffable 
 nonsense, he may be satisfied of what I say by 
 reading the following paragraphs, which comprise 
 the whole of this bastard progeny of resentment 
 and dullness. It is supposed to be copied from 
 a MS. dated May 16, 1701. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 435 
 
 u Cryticall Remarques upon Mr. Dry den s Odd 
 called Alexandre 1 s Feast. By Burneby Barman, 
 Clarke off" the Parishe of Cammerwell, A.M. A.S.S. 
 
 " Abracadabra. De profundis clamavi. Poete 
 nascitur non Jit. Orator Jit non nascitur. Quae 
 masculis tribuuntur mascula sunto (copied from 
 bookes, so am share they are richt spelt J. I quot 
 these verses of the Greeke poette, Curteous Reder, to 
 shew thee thet I ame not unquallifyed for the tasque 
 I have taken in hande, but on the contrarie am em- 
 bued with pulite leaminge. 
 
 " This poeme beginneth thus : c Twas at the royal 
 feste, 6fc. 9 Hon wulgar is this! It resembleth a 
 drinking songe. The author seemeth not to knotve 
 the difference betwixt an Odd and a Songe, which 
 is as followethe, viz. A long Odd is a short Songe, 
 ty a long Songe is a short Odd. Now an Odd should 
 never be in a common stoile, but as we say in an odd 
 stoile. Q. E. D. 
 
 " That lyne, ' so should desert in arms be 
 crowned, 9 is off verie bad example. If desertors be 
 crowned, trew sou Idlers must be whipt in their place. 
 So what is sauce for a guse is sauce for a gaunder. 
 
 " Happy, happy, happy paire, might have been 
 spaired thus, Happy 3 pair, which icould have saved 
 wry ting the word happy thryce over. Qu. If it 
 should not be nappy ? 
 
 " • Timotheus placed on high, 9 read perched 
 on high. For l flying fingers,' we ought surely to 
 rede ' frying fingers. 9 Annie Jly in g Jin gers I never 
 
 9 F 2 
 
436 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 chaunced to see; Frying fingers are common in 
 flaying on a wind instrument such as the ancient 
 harpe was. 
 
 " ' A dragon s Fiery form belyed the God* If 
 a dragon gave a God the lye he ocht to have hadde 
 his nose pulled, fiery as he ivas. 
 
 " In the IV handsaw we reade of slaying the 
 slain thrice, a thing in my judgment not altogether 
 posibil. We likewise rede the word * fallen five 
 times over. An egregious absurditie! For if a man 
 is once fallen he cannot fall again till he has got 
 on his legges. Now legges are not once mentioned. 
 
 " In No. VI. we meet with ghosts, fJesu protect 
 mee,for as I lyve 1 saw a ghost last nyght at Peter 
 Haynes s harne door), 6 that in battle were slayne! 
 A ghost slayne! O heaven, what nonsense! The 
 conclusion is mighty pretiie. But upon the whole, 
 this piece is not equal to anie of the noble produc- 
 tions of a Mr. Thomas Dur fey . Amen." 
 
 If the reader's disgust do not overpower his be- 
 nevolence he will perhaps smile at this harmless 
 and inefficient nonsense: but nothing else can save 
 it from utter contempt. Many who are acquainted 
 with Mr. Pinkerton's present respectability in 
 literature, may be surprised that he was ever ca- 
 pable of writing any thing so absurd ; the book 
 which contains it is deservedly scarce, and I am 
 willing to believe, therefore, that as a curiosity, my 
 insertion of it in these pages will be forgiven. 
 It is evident, however, that when Cumberland 
 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 4-37 
 
 employeda similar mode of ridiculing the illiberality 
 of modern critics, he had either adopted it from Mr. 
 Pinkerton, or fallen into an accidental coincidence 
 of idea with him. Which was the case is not 
 worth inquiring : for though he has succeeded 
 better than his predecessor, he has left much to be 
 done by any ingenious follower. 
 
 The true mode, as it seems to me, in which this 
 topic might be humorously enforced, would be to 
 select any composition of acknowledged general 
 merit, but containing some real deficiencies ; to 
 specify these deficiencies only, without adverting 
 to the superior passages; to dwell upon them with 
 every aggravation of ridicule and severky ; to ex- 
 hibit them as the character of the whole production, 
 and from them to pronounce a general opinion of 
 the work itself. This would be an accurate picture 
 of the common process of contemporary periodical 
 criticism: but instead of this Cumberland has ani- 
 madverted upon those things which are not faulty, 
 and on which censure is bestowed therefore with 
 manifest injustice. 
 
 As I have not scrupled to quote from Mr. Pin- 
 kerton, it will be but justice to Cumberland that 
 his treatment of a similar subject should be opposed 
 to that writer's: 
 
 " Let us suppose/' says he, " for a moment, 
 that Shakspeare was now an untried poet, and 
 opened his career with any one of his best plays ; 
 
438 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 the next morning ushers into the world the fol- 
 lowing, or something like the following critique. 
 
 " ' Last night was presented, for the first time, 
 a tragedy called Othello ^ or the Moor of Venice, 
 avowedly the production of Mr. William Shak- 
 speare the actor. This gentleman's reputation in 
 his profession is of the mediocre sort, and we pre- 
 dict that his present tragedy will not add much to 
 it in any way. Mediocribus esse poetis, the reader 
 can supply the rest, — verb. sap. As we profess 
 ourselves to be friendly to the players in general, 
 we shall reserve our fuller critique of this piece, 
 till after its third night ; for we hold it very stuff of 
 the conscience, (to use Mr. Shakspeare's own words) 
 not to war against the poet's muse : though we 
 might apply the author's quaint conceit to him- 
 self— 
 
 * Who steals his purse, steals trash : 'tis something ; nothing.' 
 
 " 6 In this last reply we agree with Mr. Shak- 
 speare that 'tis nothing, and our philosophy tells 
 us ex nihilo, nihil Jit. 
 
 " c For the plot of this tragedy the most we can 
 say is, that it is certainly of the moving sort, for it 
 is here and there and every where ; a kind of the- 
 atrical hocus pocus; a creature of the pye-ball 
 breed, like Jacob's muttons, between a black ram 
 and a white ewe. It brought to our mind the 
 children's game of I love my love with an A — with 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 439 
 
 this difference only, that the young lady in this 
 play loves her love with a B — because he is black. 
 — Risum teneatis? 
 
 " 6 There is one Iago, a bloody-minded fellow, 
 who stabs men in the dark behind their backs ; 
 now this is a thing we hold to be most vile and 
 ever to be abhorred. Othello smothers his white 
 wife in bed ; our readers may think this a shabby 
 kind of an action for a general of his high calling ; 
 but we beg leave to observe that it shews some 
 spirit at least in Othello to attack the enemy in her 
 strong quarters at once. There was an incident of 
 a pocket handkerchief, which Othello called out 
 for most lustily, and we were rather sorry that his 
 lady could not produce it, as we might then have 
 seen one handkerchief at least employed in the 
 tragedy. There was some vernacular phrases, 
 which caught our ear, such as where the black 
 damns his wife twice in a breath — Oh damn her — 
 damn her ! which we thought savoured more of 
 the language spoken at the door than within the 
 doors of the theatre : but when we recollect that 
 the author used to amuse a leisure hour with 
 calling up gentlemen's coaches after the play was 
 over, before he was promoted to take a part in it, 
 we could readily account for old habits. Though 
 we have seen many gentlemen and ladies kill them- 
 selves on the stage, yet we must give the author 
 credit for the new way in which his hero puts 
 himself out of the world : Othello having smothered 
 
440 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 his wife, and being taken up by the officers of the 
 state, prepares to despatch himself and escape from 
 the hands of justice ; to bring this about he begins 
 a story about his killing a man in Aleppo, which he 
 illustrates, par example, by stabbing himself, and so 
 winds up his story and his life in the same mo- 
 ment. The author made his appearance in the 
 person of one Brabantio, an old man, who makes 
 his first entry from a window ; this occasioned 
 some risibility in the audience: the part is of 
 art inferior kind, and Mr. Shakspeare was 
 more indebted to the exertions of his brethren, 
 than to his own, for carrying the play through. 
 Upon the whole we do not think the passion of 
 jealousy : on which the plot turns, so proper for 
 tragedy as comedy, and we would recommend to 
 the author, if his piece survives its nine nights, to 
 cut it down to a farce, and serve it up to the 
 public, mic cumd salts, in that shape. After this 
 specimen of Mr. William Shakspeare's tragic 
 powers, we cannot encourage him to pursue his 
 attempts upon Melpomene; for there is a good 
 old proverb which we would advise him to bear in 
 mind — ne suior ultra crepidam. If he applies to 
 his friend Ben, he will turn it into English for 
 him/ ".. 
 
 Though this as far surpasses Mr. Pinkerton's 
 wit and humour, as Mr. Pinkerton surpasses most 
 m< n in the power of patient and laborious appli- 
 cation, it is yet very inferior to what may be done. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 411 
 
 We have no just exhibition in it of what is really the 
 practice of modern criticism, for no newspaper 
 writer would discuss the merits of such a tragedy 
 as Othello (supposing it to be now first produced), 
 in this manner. But Cumberland remembered 
 what had been said of his tragedies, and in the 
 tumult of resentment forgot that he was not a 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Some of the incidental narratives in the Observer 
 are pleasingly written ; and Cumberland was ac- 
 cused of having taken many of them from Spanish 
 authors. The charge, however, he solemnly de- 
 nies, and asserts his entire and undiminished claim 
 to every thing in the volumes which is not an 
 avowed quotation. 
 
 If the Observer be considered as a body of 
 Essays, upon life, upon manners, and upon litera- 
 ture, it will shrink in comparison with those pro- 
 duced by Steele, by Addison, and by Johnson. 
 Cumberland was capable of imagining characters ; 
 but he does not seem to have had much power of 
 observing those qualities in individuals of which 
 character is compounded. That which was ob- 
 trusively visible in a man, he could seize and pour- 
 tray ; but the less obvious modes of thought, the 
 secret bias, the prevailing but obscure motives to 
 conduct, were seldom within his reach. He could 
 invent, and give the invention an air of reality : 
 upon a slender basis of truth he could engraft an 
 agreeable fiction, in which, however, the traces 
 
442 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 of fancy would still be so discernible that the 
 reader never mistook them. 
 
 In this respect, therefore, he was greatly inferior 
 to either Steele, Addison, or Johnson. They had 
 a quick perception of the follies of mankind, and 
 exhibited, without exaggeration, such a picture 
 of them as none could mistake, and none could 
 view without conviction of its truth. They looked 
 abroad upon life, and observed all its various com- 
 binations : they studied man and knew the arti- 
 fices by which his conduct was obscured. They 
 penetrated through that veil which necessity some- 
 times, and custom always, impels us to throw round 
 our actions, and they disclosed those hidden qua- 
 lities which escape the notice of ordinary observa- 
 tion, but which are recognised with instantaneous 
 acquiescence When displayed. 
 
 The want of this power in Cumberland is greatly 
 felt by him who reads his essays consecutively ; 
 for, being restricted in the limits of his excursions, 
 by inability to avail himself of what wider research 
 would have offered, he is too diffuse upon single 
 incidents and characters, as a man who has not 
 many guineas applies one to its utmost variety of 
 purposes. 
 
 In his literary disquisitions, though always in- 
 ferior to Johnson as a critic, he is often very 
 pleasing and often equal to Addison. His learn- 
 ing, perhaps, sometimes degenerates into pedantry, 
 but he who is rich is apt to display his wealth. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 443 
 
 His critical papers are among the most amusing, 
 and he has instituted an ingenious comparison be- 
 tween Massinger's Fatal Dowry and Rowe's Fair 
 Penitent, in which the brief opinions of Mr. M. 
 Mason (Massinger's editor) are enforced by ex- 
 amples pertinently selected. I wish, however, that 
 his admiration of Cowper had not excited him to 
 an imitation of that nervous and original writer. 
 
 In his characters he sometimes exhibited living 
 individuals. I have already alluded to his in- 
 troduction of Johnson ; and in the same number, 
 I imagine his actress to be Mrs. Siddons. Gorgon, 
 the self-conceited painter of the deformed and 
 terrible, (No. 93), was probably meant for Fuseli : 
 but if so, there is more willingness to wound than 
 power. 
 
 There is nothing in these papers by which the 
 most delicate reader can be displeased, which is a 
 praise that cannot be wholly given either to the 
 Spectator or Guardian, whose zeal to reform cer- 
 tain exposures of the female person often led them 
 to illustrations not exactly within the limits of 
 decency. This commendation I bestow the more 
 willingly upon Cumberland, because the practice 
 of such decorum was not habitual in him, for in 
 some of his writings he only needed to employ a 
 corresponding licentiousness of expression to rank 
 with the corrupters of public morals. 
 
 I regret that he has asserted his claim to purity 
 of style, with so much confidence as the following 
 
444 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 sentence implies. " If my critics," says he, " be 
 not too candid I am encouraged to believe, that in 
 these volumes of Henry and in those of the Ob- 
 server^ I have succeeded in what I laboured to 
 effect with all my care, a simple, clear, harmonious 
 style; which, taken as a model, may be followed 
 without leading the noviciate either into turgidity 
 or obscurity, holding a middle tone of period, nei- 
 ther swelling into high flown metaphor, nor sinking 
 into inelegant and unclassical rusticity. Whether 
 or not I have succeeded, 1 certainly have at- 
 tempted to reform and purify my native language 
 from certain false pedantic pre valencies, which 
 were much in fashion when I first became a writer: 
 I dare not say with those, whose flattery might 
 mislead me, that I have accomplished what I aimed 
 at, but if I have done something towards it, I may 
 say with Pliny, — " Posteris an aliqua cur a nostri, 
 nescio. Nos certe meremur ut sit aliqua; non dicam 
 ingenio; id enim superbum; sed studio, sed labore, 
 sed r ever entia poster orum" 
 
 The secret consciousness of success is concealed 
 with too little artifice in this passage. He affects 
 to doubt, what he strongly believed, and his modest 
 humility is no other than a gentle invitation to the 
 world to force upon him the truth which he seems 
 to question with so much simplicity and candour. 
 I confess I should have preferred an open and un- 
 equivocal declaration of what I think his real senti- 
 ments were, to this prudish coquetry, this coy 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 445 
 
 frisking about thesubject,like a young girl who pro- 
 tests that nobody shall kiss her, and struggles against 
 the attempt only that it may be urged with greater 
 briskness. The obvious import of the paragraph 
 is this ; that Cumberland reformed our style, by 
 writing, himself, in a " simple, clear, and harmo- 
 
 nious" manner, 
 
 But, I have already observed, that in aim- 
 ing at simplicity and ease, he too commonly fell 
 into meanness and imbecility : and as he has chosen 
 to refer to the Observer as the criterion of his own 
 assumption, from the Observer I will select the 
 proofs of mine. 
 
 A style that is clear, simple, and harmonious, 
 must neither be debased by colloquial phrases not- 
 involved in its sentences tillan inextricable confusion 
 pervades them. Its clearness or perspicuity will 
 depend upon a skilful use of precise and definite. 
 terms judiciously collocated. The writer must 
 fully comprehend himself before he can be com- 
 prehended by others, and he must distinctly weigh 
 the import of the words he employs. He will then 
 be intelligible. 
 
 Simplicity arises from many of those cir- 
 cumstances which constitute perspicuity, but in 
 addition to what exclusively belongs to the latter, 
 must be added a lucid construction of the sen- 
 tences and of each subordinate member. AH ex- 
 pletives must be rejected, all implication of distinct 
 propositions, and all endeavours at point, antithesis 
 
446 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 or specious glitter. The words should be verna- 
 cular, as far as possible, and seldom such as are 
 removed from familiar use, yet not degenerating 
 into those that are colloquial. The employment 
 of all figurative modes of composition is hostile 
 to simplicity, which aims, or should aim, at com- 
 municating ideas with easy and unconstrained 
 elegance. 
 
 Harmony in writing results partly from the prac- 
 tice of these methods, and partly from the influ- 
 ence of a correct ear, to which the slightest disso- 
 nance is offensive. To effect an harmonious style, 
 much attention must be paid to the disposition of 
 the sentences : they must neither be broken with 
 uniform brevity, nor expanded into tedious pro- 
 lixity ; a skilful intermixture is what should be 
 attempted. Nor, if we would write harmoniously, 
 must we disdain to watch the position even of sin- 
 gle words, according to which it will greatly de- 
 pend whether a sentence reads with graceful flu- 
 ency, or halts upon the tongue with an irregula- 
 rity of cadence. Minute as these things may ap- 
 pear, they must not be beneath his attention who 
 aims at producing an harmonious style. 
 
 In all these requisites, I know no English writer 
 who has approached nearer to the perfection of 
 them than Goldsmith. Of him alone, perhaps, it 
 may be said, that his style is harmonious without 
 affectation, easy without weakness, and perspi- 
 cuous without vulgarity. My opinion of his die- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 447 
 
 tion I have given on a recent occasion*, and will 
 repeat it here, if an author may be allowed to 
 quote from himself ; of which, however, the prac- 
 tice of the age gives precedent. 
 
 " In the structure of his sentences he has greater 
 harmony, and greater variety than Addison. In 
 his language he is more scrupulous. He does not 
 offend so often by colloquial phrases or obsolete 
 combinations. His prose is not so feeble, nor so 
 coldly regular. In felicity of expression, when in- 
 tended to convey a plain and simple idea, or a 
 natural emotion of common minds, he is, perhaps, 
 unequalled. 
 
 " A very conspicuous merit of Goldsmith's 
 prose is the lucid arrangement of his sentences. — 
 Every word and every period appear to be just 
 where they ought to be. We have no evidence 
 that he composed slowly, or that he laboured much 
 to correct what he had once written : and such 
 perspicuity of arrangement is, therefore, the more 
 remarkable in a man whose ideas in conversation 
 were so perplexed and so confused. 
 
 " Harmony, simplicity, clearness, and propri- 
 ety, in relation to the matter, are the predominant 
 qualities of Goldsmith's general style; but as he 
 was also capable of elevation, I may add to the 
 above, occasional dignity and energy of language. 
 
 * In " The Contemplatist : a series of Essaj'S upon Moral* and Litera- 
 ture." 1810. 
 
448 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 As a model to be studied, I should prefer it to 
 Addison's, for it is more pure/' 
 
 How remote Cumberland's practice was from 
 his own opinion, let me now proceed to shew. I 
 shall not enter into minute illustrations of his 
 errors, but select such as will testify for them- 
 selves. 
 
 I have already mentioned the singularly involved 
 paragraph with which the Observer commences, 
 and which certainly ought not to have been found 
 in the pages of a writer who aspired to harmony 
 and perspicuity of style. Nor ought the following 
 to belong to him who believed that he wrote with 
 purity and simplicity. 
 
 " I am anxious that I may neither make my 
 first advances with the stiff grimace of a dancing- 
 master, nor with the too familiar air of a self-im- 
 portant." (No. 1.) 
 
 To the introduction of new terms, when unne- 
 cessary, every lover of the language should oppose 
 himself. If all writers are to be allowed that ca- 
 pricious innovation, where will the influx stop, 
 and when will the language be fixed ? Our dic- 
 tionaries, like our almanacks, must be annual, 
 while this laxity is tolerated. 
 
 " Several of our diurnal essayists have contrived, 
 under the veil of fiction, to hook in something re- 
 commendatory of themselves. " (No. 3.) 
 
 " I was the more disgusted, when I perceived 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 449 
 
 that by the nonsensical zigzaggery of the road, 
 &c." (No. 4.) 
 
 Are these the phrases of a man distinguished for 
 simplicity and harmony of style ? 
 
 In the following sentence the word tawdry is 
 employed as synonimous with meretricious ; a 
 sense which it has not in any writer whom I should 
 regard as an authority, but one in which Cumber- 
 land frequently employs it. 
 
 " I mean trials for adultery, the publishers of 
 which are not content with setting down every 
 thing verbatim from their short-hand records, which 
 the scrutinizing necessity of law draws out by 
 pointed interrogatory, but they are also made to 
 allure the curiosity of the passenger by tawdry en- 
 gravings, in which the heroine of the tale is dis- 
 played in effigy, and the most indecent scene of 
 her amours selected as an eye-trap to attract the 
 youth of both sexes ; and by debauching the mo- 
 rals of the rising generation, keep up the stock in 
 trade, and feed the market with fresh cases for the 
 commons, and fresh supplies for the retailers of 
 indecency ." 
 
 I have extracted the whole of this passage, be- 
 cause the censure which it conveys is as applica- 
 ble now, as it could possibly have been when 
 Cumberland wrote it. I fear, indeed, it is more 
 so. No man can walk the streets of this metropo- 
 lis without shuddering as he beholds the violation 
 of public decency and morals in those wretches 
 
 2G 
 
450 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 who earn a disgraceful livelihood by publishing 
 circumstantial accounts of all trials that relate to 
 the most abhorred of human crimes. Nay, they 
 are not satisfied with such opportunities as the 
 present guilt of individuals affords ; they rummage 
 into the records of adultery and vice — they drag to 
 light the forgotten memorials of past infamy — they 
 decorate them with flagitious ornaments — and they 
 expose them to sale with a daring contempt of all 
 decorum. Their transgressions continue without 
 reproof or punishment, and our wives and daugh- 
 ters are polluted by the readiest channel of conta- 
 mination, as they walk along the public streets ; 
 the ignorant are initiated into depravity ; and the 
 unwary are seduced to the consciousness of of- 
 fences which, from knowing, they soon learn per- 
 haps to perpetrate. 
 
 O proceres censore opus est, an haruspice nobis ? 
 
 We have among us a self-constituted society, 
 who have distinguished themselves by many en- 
 croachments upon the humbler comforts of the 
 poor, without daring to attack the strong holds of 
 the rich : they have excited very general indigna- 
 tion and contempt by the fanatic zeal with which 
 they seek to oppress the unresisting, and drag 
 petty delinquents to the bar of justice, while their 
 sanctity of heart does not rouse them to arrest the 
 career of haughty and patrician vice ; they have 
 visited, with their terrors, the barber's shop and the 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 451 
 
 apple-stalls of defenceless old women; nay, they 
 have fulminated their anathemas against the inde- 
 cencies of sculpture, and have commanded the na- 
 kedness ©f chubby boys at the door of a snuff-shop 
 to be cloathed. These things they have done with 
 an acrimonious perseverance which a better- cause 
 might have dignified, if indeed any cause can dig- 
 nify the use of hired spies, who fawn about their 
 victims only to betray them. I have long wished 
 them a better office, after having first wished 
 them extinct, as I ever must every species of in- 
 quisitorial tyranny ; and now I propose one to 
 them. There is no one who would not rejoice if 
 they exerted their power to suppress these most 
 offensive nuisances; if they shielded, from conta- 
 mination, the minds of youth and the innocency of 
 virtue; and if they punished with deserved seve- 
 rity beings whose conduct no punishment, per- 
 haps, can adequately reach. Let them do this, 
 and merit the applause of every good man ; let them 
 continue their petty vexations, and receive the 
 contempt of every liberal one. 
 
 In returning to my illustration of Cumber- 
 land's verbal inaccuracies, I must observe that I 
 have omitted to specify those negligences which I 
 had already animadverted on in examining the 
 West Indian, as the repetition would be useless ; 
 and I have also omitted the enumeration of many 
 others, because I do not wish to load my pages 
 with the easiest, and perhaps the meanest, of ail 
 2 G3 
 
4j2 life of Cumberland. 
 
 critical exertion. Yet, having entered upon the 
 office, I must discharge it with what brevity and 
 propriety I can. 
 
 In Number SI, I find another innovation (the 
 verb to locate,) which Cumberland has employed 
 oil various occasions in the course of his writings. 
 We do not want it, however ; and I reckon it there- 
 fore a superfluous violation of the standard terms 
 of the language, 
 
 " An arch fellow brought & furious large fir ap- 
 ple to the famous lawyer, &c." (No. 52.) 
 
 Cumberland could not have supported this 
 vulgar use of the epithet furious, by any autho- 
 rity : but I will not say as much of the follow- 
 ing term, though it is unequivocally mean and 
 colloquial. 
 
 " He began to turn over all the resources of his 
 invention for some happy fetch." (No. 88.) 
 
 I find so few of Cumberland's sentences con- 
 structed with harmony or perspicuity, that in se- 
 lecting one or two in support of my assertion, I 
 need be at no other trouble than to open the vo- 
 lume, and copy the first that presents itself. The 
 fact is, that to me his style appears remarkable for 
 a peculiar looseness and obscurity ; and he seems, 
 when he began a sentence, never to have known how 
 he should end it, but to have continued writing till 
 he found himself at the conclusion of a paragraph, 
 or of an idea. They certainly are not artificially 
 composed ; they resemble rather the desultory in- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 453 
 
 coherence of conversation, where a man chats at 
 his ease, excogitates an opinion and tells it, with 
 what periphrasis, and pauses, and tautologies, indo- 
 lence or necessity may force upon him. But how 
 different from this were the polished periods of 
 Goldsmith, and how preferable the energetic ones 
 of Johnson. 
 
 In the following paragraph (actually selected 
 without any seeking,) the reader will have a com- 
 plete exemplification of every thing that I have 
 said. I shall put in italics all that is superfluous, 
 or otherwise liable to censure. 
 
 " I must not omit to tell yo?£, that to my infinite 
 comfort it turned out, that my precautions after the 
 death of the Monk were effectual for prevent- 
 ing any mischief to the head of my family, who 
 still preserves his rank, title, and estate, unsus- 
 pected ; and although I was outlawed by name, 
 time hath now wrought such a change in my per- 
 son, and the affair hath so died away in mens me- 
 mories, that I trust I am in security from any fu- 
 ture machinations in that quarter: still I hold it 
 just to my family, and prudent towards myself, to 
 continue my precautions ; upon the little fortune 
 I raised in Smyrna, with some aids I have occa- 
 sionally received from the head of our house, who 
 is my nephew, and several profitable commissions 
 for the sale of Spanish wool, I live contentedly, 
 though humbly, as you see, and I have besides 
 wherewithal (blessed be God!) to be of some use 
 
454 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 use and assistance to my fellow-creatures."— 
 (No. 44.) 
 
 All the words which are in italics, might have 
 been omitted, without any injury to the meaning 
 of the author, as he wrote the paragraph. Its fee- 
 ble protraction, its involution of clauses, and un- 
 skilful construction, are sufficiently evident : but, 
 to make it more so, (as I do not hold it a very daring 
 undertaking to attempt a verbal improvement of 
 Cumberland,) I will now shew with what brevity 
 and force the same ideas might have been commu- 
 nicated. This will be the true test, both of the 
 thing itself, and of my competency to dispute that 
 excellence in writing which Cumberland assumed 
 to himself. 
 
 " I must not omit to tell, that, to my infinite 
 comfort, my precautions, after the monk's death, 
 effectually prevented any mischief to the head of 
 my family, who still preserves, unsuspected, his 
 rank, title, and estate. I was outlawed; but time 
 has wrought such a change in my person, and the 
 affair has so died away, that I trust I need fear no 
 future machinations from that quarter ; but I hold 
 it just to my family, and prudent towards myself, 
 to continue my precautions. Upon the little for- 
 tune which I raised in Smyrna, with some aids I 
 have occasionally received from my nephew, who 
 is the head of our house, and several profitable 
 commissions for the sale of Spanish wool, I live 
 contentedly, though, as you see, humbly. I have 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 4:55 
 
 enough however (and blessed be God !) to be of 
 some assistance to my fellow-creatures/' 
 
 Let the reader judge. I have not censured 
 with vague and general accusation : I have sub- 
 stantiated my affirmations. I have done more: 
 I have endeavoured to shew how the errors I con- 
 demn might have been avoided : I have provoked 
 a comparison, in which I do not expect success, 
 because I have put it in every man's power to de- 
 prive me of it by a simple denial, without the ne- 
 cessity of supporting it by evidence. 
 
 One more example of a sentence expanded to a 
 paragraph, and I have done. 
 
 " I must, therefore, again and again, insist 
 upon it, that there are two sides to every argu- 
 ment, and that it is the natural and unalienable 
 right of man to be heard in support of his opinion, 
 he having first lent a patient ear to the speaker, 
 who maintains sentiments that oppose that opinion: 
 I do humbly apprehend that an overbearing voice, 
 and noisy volubility of tongue, are prqofs of a very 
 underbred* fellow ; and it is with regret I see so- 
 ciety too frequently disturbed in its most delecta- 
 ble enjoyments, by this odious character: I do 
 not see that any man hath a right, by obligation or 
 otherwise, to lay me under a necessity of think- 
 ing exactly as he thinks ; though I admit that 
 c from the fulness of the heart the tongue speak - 
 
 * Where could Cumberland have found this term ? Not in any writer 
 of acknowledged authority. 
 
4o6 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 eth/ I do not admit any superior pretensions it 
 hath to be Sir Oracle from the fulness of the poc- 
 ket." (No. 84.) 
 
 I have forborne here to put in italics the same 
 circumlocutions and defects which I noticed in 
 the former extract ; nor shall I weary the reader 
 by recapitulating it in what I may consider a bet- 
 ter mode of construction. Such minuteness is not 
 now necessary. It is- evident, however, that to a 
 sentence thus copiously diffused, there seems no 
 necessary limit, except the termination of the pa- 
 per itself, or the accidental division of a paragraph. 
 It may be amusing to see how some of the writers, 
 of the seventeenth century, excelled in this kind 
 of harmony and clearness of style. The following 
 example is from a man, of no mean note in his own 
 or the present age. 
 
 " A second defect, much contributing to the 
 public detriment, by the non-improvement of scho- 
 lars when they are well trained in the university, 
 and fit to be transplanted out of those nurseries, 
 (that being set thinner they may spread wider, 
 grow bigger, and bear much more fruit,) is the 
 want of public care and patrociny to prefer and 
 dispose of them so as may be most agreeable to 
 their abilities; many times their modesty much 
 curbs their activity, (like ears of corn and boughs 
 of trees, the more loaden, the more hidden and 
 dejected,) and being wholly destitute of such 
 friends and relations as might put them forward, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 457 
 
 they have this to answer any that ask why they 
 stand still till the ninth hour of the day, because 
 no man hath hired them, or set them on work, or 
 preferred them ; besides this, the swarms or les- 
 ser fray of other meaner scholars, who have but a 
 little tincture of learning in comparison, and who, 
 like barnacles or Solerne geese, too soon drop off 
 from the university, betaking themselves to coun- 
 try cures, according as their necessities compel 
 them; these so forestal the markets of parochial 
 livings and church preferments, gaining by their 
 obsequiousness and adherencies, the favour and 
 friendship of such patrons as have any thing worth 
 acceptance in their dispose, that many other good 
 scholars are left to superannuate in their solitudes, 
 to be confined to their muses everlastingly, as if 
 their ears had been bored through and fixed to the 
 college gates or study doors: as Democritus, ju- 
 nior, most elegantly and pathetically deplores this 
 dereliction of rare men in the university, which 
 makes the muses melancholy, and depriving both 
 merit and reward, and the public of that good 
 which these men might do as master builders 
 in God's temple." (Bishop Gaudens Life of 
 Hooker.) 
 
 When a man gets to the end of a sentence like 
 this, he takes time to breathe, and consider whe- 
 ther he comprehends what he has been reading ; 
 he retraces the intricate confusion, and finds no- 
 thing to compensate for its obscurity, but the flow- 
 
458 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 ersof a rich imagination, which, though scattered 
 about in quaint devices, refresh the mind and gra- 
 tify the eye. No one, however, ever thought of 
 praising such a style for its harmony or per- 
 spicuity. 
 
 I should not have pursued this inquiry into the 
 defects of Cumberland's diction, had he not in- 
 cautiously intimated his belief that it was faultless. 
 When he expressed his opinion that it was a mo- 
 del which could not mislead ; that it was simple, 
 clear, and harmonious ; and that it was neither in- 
 elegant nor unclassical, I thought it my duty to 
 examine his pretensions, and to ascertain their va- 
 lidity. I have done so : and though I have found 
 his practice greatly beneath his own opinion of its 
 excellence, I am willing to believe him sincere, 
 when he professed that his object had been, all his 
 life, to " reform and purify his native language/' 
 The task, however, was beyond his power. He 
 has met the common fate of those who labour 
 to effect simplicity of style : he is too often mean 
 and colloquial, when he thinks he is writing with 
 simplicity and elegance. The happy medium 
 between that and turgidity is seldom attained. — 
 Cumberland certainly missed it. 
 
 Yet, though I should never venture to propose 
 his compositions as a model for imitation, I am not 
 unconscious that he has written, in general, with 
 fluency and plainness. He seldom endeavours 
 after ornaments ; and I imagine it was because he 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 459 
 
 knew he could not reach them, for when he does 
 strive, it is rarely with success. His prose is 
 equable and familiar, and seldom rises beyond a 
 very ordinary level. I have examined it with a 
 minuteness of verbal criticism to which I should 
 have been tempted by no other motive than his as- 
 sumption of such perfection as I knew it did not 
 possess: and I now close my remarks upon the 
 Observer, with observing, that it has a fair claim 
 to maintain its station among the embodied essay- 
 ists of the country, and that the name of its au- 
 thor will be known to posterity rather by this than 
 by any other of his productions, 
 
460 £I*E OF CUMBERLAND 
 
 CHAP. XX. 
 
 Cumberland's inconsistency in his own statements 
 about himself. — An apt quotation from La Fon- 
 taine.— Observations upon the controversy be- 
 tween Mr. Hayley and Cumberland respecting 
 the life of Romney. — Produces the tragedy of 
 the Carmelite. — Mrs. Siddons and Mr. 
 Kemble. — Examination of the Carmelite. — 
 Cumberland commemorates his friendship for 
 Sir James Bland Rurges, Mr. Sharp, and 
 Mr. Rogers. — ~Some advice to the latter gen- 
 tleman on his poetical powers. — Cumberland' s 
 daughter declines the interference of these three 
 gentlemen in arranging her fathers posthumous 
 papers. 
 
 The inconsistencies into which Cumberland is 
 sometimes betrayed, in speaking of himself, shew 
 with how little certainty any man can hope to 
 preserve the truth even with the most reve- 
 rential regard for its sanctity. When we write 
 of others, we are in danger of listening too wil- 
 lingly to the voice of envy which whispers in our 
 ears, that censure is but justice ; when we write 
 of ourselves, we are exposed to the attacks of every 
 passion, that can obscure the perception of truth 
 and mislead the judgment. La Fontaine has intro- 
 duced one of his tales with some lines of profound 
 sagacity on this topic : 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 46l 
 
 Je soupconne fort une histone, 
 CJuand le heros en est l'auteur ; 
 L' amour propre et la vaine gloire 
 Rendent souvent l'homme vanteur. 
 On fait toujours si bien son compte 
 Qu'on tire de l'honneur detout ce qu'on raconte. 
 
 At page 188 of this work, the reader will find 
 that I have adverted to a contradiction in Cumber- 
 land's statement of his mode of study. I have 
 there quoted his words, in which he says, " that 
 in all his hours of study, it had been his object, 
 through life, so to locate himself as to have little or 
 nothing to distract his attention;" and I con- 
 trasted this declaration with the manner in which 
 he confesses that he wrote his comedy of The 
 Brothers. But the confusion is still increased in 
 the second volume of his Memoirs, p. 204, where, 
 speaking of the ease with which he composed at 
 any hour, or in any place, he affirms that " he had 
 never been accustomed to retire to his study for 
 silence and meditation ; in fact, his book room, at 
 Tunbridge Wells, was occupied as a bed room, 
 and what books he had occasion to consult he 
 brought down to the common sitting room, where, 
 in company with his wife and family, (neither in- 
 terrupting them, nor interrupted by them), he 
 wrote the Observer, or whatever else he had in 
 hand." 
 
 Let the reader reconcile this contrariety of rela- 
 tion as he can ; to me it seems the effect either of 
 negligence, of defective memory, or of a momen- 
 
462 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 tary desire, at one time, to assume all the solem- 
 nity of studious retirement, and at another, to 
 affect that easy fertility of thought which nothing 
 can obstruct. 
 
 Some little controversy having existed between 
 Mr. Hayley and Cumberland, respecting the life 
 of Romney, I shall here briefly advert to it. 
 
 In his Memoirs, Cumberland has given a short 
 character of Romney, and has drawn a parallel be- 
 tween him and Reynolds. His opinion of him 
 seems to have been something less than Mr. Hay- 
 ley's, who appears to have contemplated his 
 friend with an enthusiasm approaching to venera- 
 tion. In his life of Romney, recently published, 
 he enters into a laboured defence of him, and 
 omits no opportunity, in the progress of his narra- 
 tive, to shield him from what he considers as the 
 injurious aspersions of Cumberland. Where the 
 truth lies I cannot determine ; but Mr. Hayley 
 seems to me to be too often the apologist rather 
 than the biographer of Romney. His failings 
 were in his memory, and the great effort of his 
 pen seems to have been to cover them from 
 public inspection. 
 
 Cumberland, who probably loved the man as 
 well as Mr. Hayley could do, wrote with 
 less reserve, told what he thought, and told, per- 
 haps, the truth. When Romney died he gave a 
 brief sketch of his life and character in the Euro- 
 pean Magazine. To this Mr. Hayley frequently 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 465 
 
 alludes in his late publication, but it is seldom for 
 any other purpose than to dispute its veracity. 
 He does it, however, without any offensive aspe- 
 rity of language or insinuation, which indeed 
 would have been ill-bestowed upon a man who 
 had proved one of Romney's earliest friends, by 
 endeavouring to bring him before the public at 
 a time when his own diffidence made him shrink 
 from all attempts to force himself into popularity. 
 
 Mr. Hayley sometimes quibbles, however, in his 
 friend's defence. Cumberland had said that Rom- 
 ney's was an " inglorious grave/' because he died 
 and was buried in a remote part of England. To this 
 epithet Mr. Hayley objects. " Surely," says he, 
 " the talents and the virtues of our departed friend 
 were sufficient to dignify any sepulchre, in which 
 it could be his destiny to rest." There may be 
 much subtlety in this position ; but if the ashes 
 of a great man confer dignity upon the spot that 
 contains them, all monumental honours are but 
 superfluous violations of that dignity. Had Alex- 
 ander been entombed in a dunghill, or Shakspeare 
 quietly inurned beneath a common sewer, man- 
 kind would have consented to hold both places in 
 veneration ; but their dignity would have existed 
 only in the minds of those who, like Mr. Hayley, 
 confound two notions essentially distinct. 
 
 I have already mentioned that Cumberland dedi- 
 cated his two u Odes" to Romney, which were 
 an unequivocal testimony of his friendship for the 
 
464 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 man, and his admiration of the artist. Nor was 
 this the only proof he gave. The following lines 
 contain an elegant tribute to both : 
 
 et When Gothic rage had put the arts to flight, 
 
 And wrapt the world in universal night, 
 
 When the dire northern swarm with seas of blood, 
 
 Had drown'd creation in a second flood, 
 
 When all was void, disconsolate and dark, 
 
 Rome in her ashes found one latent spark, 
 
 She, not unmindful of her ancient name, 
 
 Nurs'd her last hope, and fed the sacred flame ; 
 
 Still as it grew, new streams of orient light 
 
 Beam'd on the world, and cheer'd the fainting sight ; 
 
 Rous'd from the tombs of the illustrious dead, 
 
 Immortal science rear'd her mournful head ; 
 
 And mourn she shall, to time's extremest hour, 
 
 The dire effects of Omar's savage power, 
 
 When rigid Amrou's too obedient hand 
 
 Made Alexandria blaze at his command ; 
 
 Six months he fed the sacrilegious flame 
 
 With the stor'd volumes of recorded fame : 
 
 There died all memory of the great and good, 
 
 Then Greece and Rome were finally subdu'd. 
 
 Yet monkish ignorance had not quite effac'd 
 All that the chissel wrought, the pencil trac'd ; 
 
 Some precious reliques of the ancient hoard, 
 Or happy chance, or curious search restor'd j 
 The wond'ring artist kindled as he gaz'd, 
 And caught perfection from the work he prais'd. 
 
 Of painters, then the celebrated race, 
 Rose into fame with each attendant grace ; 
 Still, as it spread, the wonder-dealing art . . 
 
 Improv'd the manners and reformed the heart : 
 Darkness dispers'd, and Italy became 
 Once more the seat of elegance and fame. 
 Late, very late, on this sequester'd isle, 
 The heav'n descended art was seen to smile ; 
 Seldom she came to this storm-beaten coast, 
 And short her stay, just seen, admir'd, and lost . 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 46.5 
 
 Reynolds at length, her favourite suitor, bore 
 
 The blushing stranger to his native shore ; 
 
 He by no mean, no selfish motives sway'd 
 
 To public view held forth the liberal maid, 
 
 Call'd his admiring countrymen around, 
 
 Freely declar'd what raptures he had found ; 
 
 Told them that merit would alike impart 
 
 To him or them a passage to her heart. 
 
 Rous'd at the call, all came to view her charms, 
 
 All press'd, all strove to clasp her in their arms ; 
 
 See Coats, and Dance, and Gainsborough seize the spoil ; 
 
 And ready Mortimer that laughs at toil ; 
 
 Crown'd with fresh roses graceful Humphry stands, 
 
 While beauty grows immortal from his hands ; 
 
 Stubbs, like a lion, springs upon his prey, 
 
 With bold eccentric Wright, that hates the day \ 
 
 Familiar Zoffany, with comic art, 
 
 And West, great painter of the human heart. 
 
 These, and yet more unnam'd, that to our eyes 
 
 Bid lawns, and groves, andtow'ring mountains rise, 
 
 Point the bold rock, or stretch the bursting sail, 
 
 Smooth the calm sea, or drive th' impetuous gale : 
 
 Some hunt 'midst fruit and flowery wreaths for fame, 
 And Elmer springs it in the feather'd game. 
 Apart, and bending o'er the the azure tide, 
 With heavenly Contemplation by his side, 
 A pensive artist stands — in thoughtful mood, 
 With downcast looks he eyes the ebbing flood : 
 No wild ambition swells his temperate heart, 
 Himself as pure, as patient as his art, 
 Nor sullen sorrow, nor intemperate joy, 
 The even tenour of his thoughts destroy, 
 An undistinguish'd candidate for fame, 
 At once his country's glory and its shame; 
 Rouse, then, at length, with honest pride inspir'd, 
 Romney, advance! be known, and be admir'd.' 5 
 
 In 1784 Cumberland produced his tragedy of 
 the Carmelite, This drama, when published, he 
 dedicated to Mrs. Sicldons, and in his Memoirs 
 
 2 H 
 
466 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 he repeats the obligations he was under to that 
 matchless actress, then in the day-spring of her 
 fame, and the full bloom of all her talents ; now, 
 no less excellent, but shortly to withdraw from 
 the eyes of applauding multitudes. He men- 
 tions, likewise, the assistance which her brother, 
 Mr. Kemble, gave to the performance, who was, 
 at that time, says he, " in the full stature and 
 complete maturity of one of the finest forms that 
 probably was ever exhibited upon a public stage." 
 He too is still among us, nor is there any promise 
 of a successor when he shall see fit to retire. He 
 has trod the stage for many years, during which he 
 has gone beyond all rivalry ; nor do I know the 
 actor now living, whom I could wish to see in any 
 of those characters which I have hitherto seen in 
 Mr. Kemble's hands. His range is not so wide as 
 Garrick's, and they who remember that performer, 
 may think, perhaps, that he does not always reach 
 the same perfection in the same characters, but 
 this is an invidious comparison. Compare Mr. 
 Kemble with his theatrical contemporaries, and 
 who among them can match him at all points ? 
 
 I pay this tribute to his excellence very wil- 
 lingly, for I have often been delighted with the 
 display of it. Once> such a testimony might have 
 been liable to the imputation of friendly partiality: 
 but Mr. Kemble knows that no such imputation 
 can now exist ; and / hope he knows why it can- 
 not. For me to tell the cause would seem too 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 467 
 
 much like offering an opportunity for its re- 
 moval. 
 
 It was a natural transition in Cumberland, after 
 commemorating the talents of such an actress and 
 such an actor, to turn, with some asperity, to that 
 degrading folly which once led countless crowds 
 to gaze upon, and applaud, the boyish exhibitions 
 of an unformed youth. Him too, I saw, but never 
 with satisfaction. I could have endured him as a 
 child of very commendable acquirements, but 
 when I saw the ideas and language of Shakspeare 
 committed to his charge, when I heard him whin- 
 ing out the accents of love, without passion, or 
 vociferating the boisterousness of rage, without 
 the capability of feeling what he uttered ; when I 
 beheld him vainly striving to pourtray the inmost 
 workings of the heart, by cold and artificial mi- 
 micry, I turned disgusted from the profanation, 
 and lamented that degeneracy of public taste, or 
 that voracious appetite for novelty, which could 
 patiently endure any thing so preposterous. The 
 delusion, however, is gone by ; but it was one that 
 fully justified the sarcastic acrimony of Cumber- 
 land, of a man who had lived through the brightest 
 period of our theatrical history, and had seen and 
 was still seeing those performers whom taste 
 and nature had fashioned to a high degree of 
 excellence. 
 
 It is amusing to observe the pertinacity with 
 which Cumberland told his literarv sorrows and 
 
 2 H 2 
 
468 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 afflictions. In the prologue to the Carmelite^ I 
 find him again lamenting the hardships he endured 
 in the following lines : 
 
 *' Yet bold the bard, to mount ambition's wave, 
 And launch his wit upon a watery grave ; 
 Sharp critic rocks beneath him lie in wait, 
 And envious quicksands bar the muses' straight ; 
 Wild o'er his head Detraction's billows break; 
 Doubt chills his heart, and terror pales his cheek ; 
 Hungry and faint what cordials can he bring 
 From the cold nymph of the Pierian spring ? 
 What stores collect from bare Parnassus' head, 
 Where blooms no vineyard, where no beeves are fed ! 
 And great Apollo's laurels, which impart 
 Fame to his head, are famine to his heart." 
 
 Did he believe that his lot would be softened by 
 this querulousness; or that his enemies would aim 
 a weaker blow because he smarted from the 
 wound ? 
 
 Of this tragedy it gives me pleasure to speak 
 with more commendation than I could bestow 
 upon the Battle of Hastings. The language is 
 commonly chaste, the images often poetical, and 
 the sentiments dignified and pathetic. He seems 
 to have rectified his notions of tragic composition, 
 and to have discovered that Melpomene does not 
 always strut, but sometimes walks with graceful 
 ease and sober dignity. There is an even tenor in 
 the diction : it rarely rises into bombast, or sinks 
 into meanness and imbecility. Perhaps the only 
 exception to this opinion may be found in the fol- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 469 
 
 lowing sentence, in which I find both rant and 
 anti-climax : 
 
 " Then, then the moon, by whose pale light you struck, 
 
 Turn'd fiery red, and from her angry orb 
 
 Darted contagious sickness on the earth ; 
 
 The planets in their courses shriek'd for horror ; 
 
 Heav'n dropt maternal tears— Oh ! art thou come ?" 
 
 The action of tragedy is one that sufficiently 
 interests the spectator, but it is conducted with 
 too little art. Had St. Valori concealed his secret 
 till the last, (and his premature disclosure of it 
 has no influence upon the events), the surprise 
 had been greater, and the mind would have sympa- 
 thised more intensely with the feelings of Matilda. 
 It is the general defect of Cumberland in his plays, 
 that he does not preserve the developement of the 
 plot sufficiently, without anticipation ; he affords 
 too many occasional glimpses in the progress of the 
 action, of how it is to terminate ; and as his dra- 
 mas have little else but intrigue to support or 
 recommend them, for he rarely aims at the delinea- 
 tion of character, or the exhibition of prevailing- 
 follies, it may be pronounced eminently injudicious 
 in him to rob them of that interest which the ob- 
 scurity of an intricate fable artfully maintained 
 infallibly creates. 
 
 The characters in this play, which require any 
 notice, are those of St Valori, Matilda, and Mont- 
 gomery St. Valori is drawn with many pleasing 
 qualities ; but Matilda is the person who chiefly 
 
^470 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 occupies our attention. Cumberland formed this 
 character entirely for the display of Mrs. Sid- 
 dons' powers, as he has avowed, in his dedication 
 to that actress ; and he gave her all that dignity, 
 pathos, heroic honour, and commanding virtue, 
 which she was so eminently qualified to exhibit. 
 Montgomeri is invested with all that can excite 
 esteem; he is brave, generous, noble, and pious. 
 The mystery of his birth increases the interest of 
 his character, and affords a happy opportunity for 
 the display of maternal feelings in Matilda. 
 
 Hildebrand is pourtrayed merely as a guilty 
 assassin, and neither the discovery which absolves 
 him from the heaviest part of his crime, nor his 
 repentant death awakens much emotion in the 
 mind. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons spoke the epilogue to this tragedy. 
 It was written by Cumberland, and the last six 
 lines are made to express her own gratitude in- 
 stead of the author's. They were these : 
 
 " But let no satyrist touch ray lips with gall, 
 Lips from which none but grateful words shall fall. 
 ' Can I forget ?— But I must here be dumb, 
 So vast my debt, I cannot count the sum ; 
 Words would but fail me, and I claim no art, 
 I boast no eloquence— but of the heart. 
 
 About the time when the Carmelite (certainly 
 the best of his tragedies) was performed, Cumber- 
 land again took up the arms of controversy, and 
 encountered with them the Bishop of LlandafT, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 4? 1 
 
 i: one of the ablest scholars/' says he, "and finest 
 writers in the kingdom/' The bishop had pub- 
 lished a proposal for equalising the revenues of the 
 hierarchy and dignitaries of the church established. 
 This proposal Cumberland opposed, and he 
 thought " he had the best of the argument/' I 
 doubt, however, if any man could have the best of 
 an argument which gainsayed a proposition so 
 equitable and beneficial. He adds also, with 
 somewhat more arrogance than could become 
 him, that he thought " his lordship did a wiser 
 thing in declining the controversy, than in throw- 
 ing out the proposal." His lordship's wisdom, in 
 declining the controversy, many will admit, per- 
 haps, as well as Cumberland, though probably 
 not exactly with the same sort of conviction. 
 
 Another temporary thing of controversy, which 
 Cumberland wrote, was a pamphlet, entitled, Cur- 
 tins rescued from the Gulph. This was directed 
 against Dr. Parr, who " had hit an unoffending 
 gentleman too hard, by launching a huge fragment 
 of Greek at his defenceless head." The under- 
 taking was suggested at one of Dilty's literary din- 
 ners, and was soon executed ; I have never 
 heard, however, that the doctor deigned any re- 
 ply, and I suppose Cumberland thought his wis- 
 dom no less conspicuous than the Bishop of 
 LlandafPs. 
 
 In commemorating the many pleasing hours 
 which he passed at the table of Mr. Dilly, he ad- 
 
4?2 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 verts to the names of those friends who seem to 
 have been the dearest of his latter years. Among 
 these he mentions Mr. Rogers, and praises his 
 elegance of manners, as well as his excellence of 
 heart. How justly this commendation is be- 
 stowed, let those who know Mr. Rogers best, 
 decide ; but when his departed friend tells him 
 that he possesses " the brightest genius/' and 
 that he is the author of " one of the most beauti- 
 ful and harmonious poems in our language," I 
 would entreat him accurately to weigh the im- 
 port of these words before he believes in their ap- 
 plication. Perhaps, however, this caution is un- 
 necessary ; perhaps he knows, as well as I do, that 
 weakness which his friend had, of praising those 
 he loved, with an exuberance of adulation which 
 not even the tenderness of regard could justify ; and 
 he receives, perhaps, this tribute to his " genius," 
 as the benevolent effusion of a man who wrote 
 from his heart rather than from his head. 
 
 I have read Mr. Rogers' poem on the " Plea- 
 sures of Memory," but found few things in it that 
 gave me pleasure to remember. It is smoothly 
 versified, and contains, occasionally, some pleasing 
 reflections ; but this is all ; and I do not think that 
 even the influence of his u elegance of manners," 
 or " excellence of heart," were I within the 
 sphere of their operation, could induce me to con- 
 sider it as one of the " most beautiful and harmo- 
 nious poems in our language," while I retained 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 473 
 
 those pleasures of memory which the recollection 
 of Milton, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Goldsmith, 
 and Akenside's works are so apt to produce. 
 
 I should be happy, however, to see the fantasti- 
 cal citation of Cumberland duly answered by Mr. 
 Rogers. Let him " stand forth in the title page 
 of some future work that shall be in substance 
 greater, indignity of subject more sublime, and in 
 purity of versification, " superior to his poem 
 already mentioned, and I would be among the first 
 to confess his " genius," and extend the know- 
 ledge of it as far as my praise could have any 
 influence. 
 
 Another gentleman, to whom Cumberland pays 
 a tribute of affection, is Mr. Sharpe, of Mark-lane. 
 To him it seems the public are indebted for the 
 suggestion of writing those Memoirs of which so 
 much is already known. The original intention, 
 however, was to have withheld them till after the 
 death of Cumberland : but the embarrassment of 
 his circumstances rendered it necessary to depart 
 from this resolution ; and he sold the copy-right of 
 them to his publishers for 500/. The truth of this 
 statement Cumberland attests upon the authority 
 of the following lines, which he addressed to Mr. 
 Sharpe, and which contain so honourable and 
 affectionate a testimony of his worth and virtue, 
 that I should not hold myself blameless if I sup- 
 pressed them here. 
 
474 ' LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 " To Richard Sharpe, Esq. of Mark Lane. 
 " If rime e'er spoke the language of the heart, 
 Or truth employ'd the measur'd phrase of art, 
 Believe me, Sharpe, this verse, which smoothly flow: 
 Hath all the rough sincerity of prose. 
 False flattering words from eager lips may fly, 
 But who can pause to harmonise a lie ? 
 Or e'er he made the jingling couplet chime, 
 Conscience would start and reprobate the rhyme. 
 If then 'twere merely to entrap your ear 
 I call'd you friend, and pledg'd myself sincere, 
 Genius would shudder at the base design, 
 And my hand tremble as I shap'd the line. 
 Poets oft times are tickled with a word, 
 That gaily glitters at the festive board, 
 And many a man, my j udgment can't approve, 
 Hath trick'd my foolish fancy of its love ; 
 For every foible natural to my race 
 Finds for a time with me some fleeting place ; 
 But occupants so weak have no controul, 
 No fix'd and legal tenure in my soul, 
 Nor will my reason quit the faithful clue, 
 That points to truth, to virtue, and to you. 
 
 In the vicissitudes of life we find ' 
 Strange turns and twinings in the human mind, 
 And he, who seeks consistency of plan, 
 Is little vers'd in the great map of man ; 
 The wider still the sphere in which we live, 
 The more our calls to suffer and forgive : 
 But from the hour (and many years are past) 
 From the first hour I knew you to the last, 
 Through every scene, self-center'd, and at rest, 
 Your steady character hath stood the test, 
 No rash conceits divert your solid thought, 
 By patience foster'd and with candour fraught ; 
 Mild in opinion, but of soul sincere, 
 And only to the foes of truth severe, 
 So unobtrusive is your wisdom's tone, 
 Your converts hear, and fancy it their own, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. ±7$ 
 
 With hand so fine you probe the festering mind, 
 You heal our wounds, and leave no sore behind. 
 Now say, my friend — but e'er you touch the task 
 Weigh well the burden of the boon I ask— < 
 Say, when the pulses of this heart shall cease, 
 And my soul quits her cares to seek her peace, 
 Will your zeal prompt you to protect the name 
 Of one not totally unknown to fame ? 
 Will you, who only can the place supply 
 
 Of a lost son, befriend my progeny ? 
 
 For when the wreck goes down there will be found 
 
 Some remnants of the freight to float around, 
 
 Some that long time hath almost snatch'd from sight, 
 
 And more unseen, that struggle for the light ; 
 
 And sure I am the stage will not refuse, 
 
 To lift her curtain for my widow'd Muse, 
 
 Nor will her hearers less indulgent be, 
 
 When that last curtain shall be dropt on me." 
 
 There are some good couplets in this extract, 
 besides its general value as an authentic reference 
 to a transaction intimately connected with the life 
 of Cumberland. 
 
 To the melancholy request contained in these 
 lines, Mr. Sharpe acceded, and to him were after- 
 wards added, as co-adjutors in the office, Mr. Ro- 
 gers and Sir James Bland Burges. The latter gen- 
 tleman is very warmly commended by Mr. Cum- 
 berland, and his talents are eulogised with a degree 
 of fervor amounting to enthusiasm. He was after- 
 wards associated with his deceased friend, in the 
 composition of the Exodiad, an epic poem. 
 
 " To these three friends," says Cumberland, 
 " I devote this task, and upon their judgment I 
 rely for the publication or suppression of what 
 
476 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 they may find among my literary relics ; they are 
 all much younger men than I am, and I pray God, 
 that death, who cannot long spare me, will not 
 draw those arrows from his quiver which fate has 
 destined to extinguish them, till they have com- 
 pleted a career equal, at least in length to mine, 
 crowned with more fame, and graced with much 
 more fortune and prosperity. I know that they 
 will do what they have said, and faithfully protect 
 my posthumous reputation, as 1 have been a 
 faithful friend to them and to their living works." 
 The reader will surely learn with wonder, that 
 this bequest thus solemnly, thus publicly made, has 
 been frustrated, by the intervention of Cumber- 
 land^ youngest daughter, Mrs. Jansen, his Mari- 
 anne, to whom he so tenderly dedicates his Me- 
 moirs. She has declined, I have been informed, 
 the interference of those friends ; but from what 
 motive I do not know ; a powerful one it ought to 
 be, to justify her departure from a scheme which 
 seems to have been so pleasing, in anticipation, to 
 her father, and of whose propriety and importance 
 he must have been the most competent judge. I 
 hope, very sincerely, that no capricious feeling has 
 guided her in this determination. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 477 
 
 CHAP. XXI. 
 
 The Natural Son is produced. — Cumberland's 
 excellence in prologues and epilogues asserted. — 
 The character of Lady Paragon , the best female 
 part he ever drew. — Examination of the other 
 characters, and of the language and sentiments. 
 — Anecdotes of Lord S A ckville. — His death, 
 and his solemn declaration respecting the affair 
 of Minden. 
 
 In 1784 Cumberland produced his comedy of the 
 Natural Son, the principal incident of which 
 seems to be slightly derived from Fielding's Tom 
 Jones. The prologue is a good one, and shall be 
 transcribed. I do not think, indeed, that Cum- 
 berland's merit in this species of writing has 
 been sufficiently acknowledged. After Dryden 
 and Garrick, he may be allowed to surpass 
 all others. The single excellence of Pope, and 
 the not much more than single excellence of John- 
 son, must not be produced in comparison with the 
 various degrees of excellence which Cumberland 
 has exhibited in his prologues and epilogues. — 
 They often contain some very happy couplets, and 
 
478 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 occasional displays of wit and humour, not depend- 
 ing upon any allusion to the play to which they 
 belong, but general and abstracted. The following 
 will exemplify this : 
 
 The comic muse as Cyprian records prove 
 Was Comus' daughter by the Queen of Love, 
 A left hand lineage— whilst the tragic dame 
 From legal loins of father Vulcan came ; 
 Therefore that muse loves frolic, fun, and joke, 
 This bellows blowing, blustering, puff and smoke : 
 Hence mother nature's bye-begotten stock 
 Are all but chips of the old comic block ; 
 For all derive their pedigrees in tail, 
 From fathers frolicksom« and mothers frail. 
 Therefore, if in this brat of ours you trace 
 Some feature of his merry mother's face, 
 Sure, sons of Comus, sure you'll let him in 
 To your gay brotherhood, as founder's kin. 
 
 A married Muse ! no ; pluses are too wise 
 To take a poet's jointure in the skies, 
 Th' anticipation of an unborn play, 
 Or star sown acres in the milky way : 
 So each lives single, like a cloister'd nun, 
 But does sometimes as other nuns have done — 
 Prays with grave authors— with the giddy prates, 
 Or ogles a young poet through the grates. 
 
 Therefore, our rule is, never to inquire 
 Who begat whom, what dam, or which the sire ; 
 But, soon as e'er the babe breathes vital air 
 Take him, and never ask how he got there. 
 Some are still born : some sent to mother earth, 
 Strangled by critic midwives in their birth ; 
 And many an unacknowledg'd foundling lies 
 Without a parent's hand to close its eyes ; 
 Thus are our bills with deaths dramatic cramm'd, 
 And, what is worse,— -to die, is to be damn'd. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 479 
 
 You, the Humane Society, who sit, 
 
 To mitigate the casualties of wit, 
 
 Save a frail Muse's Natural Son from death ! 
 
 He lives on fame, and fame lives on your breath. 
 
 The action of this comedy is not very intricate 
 nor very interesting. Its deficiency in interest, 
 however, may be attributed to the author's un- 
 skilful management of the materials which he pos- 
 sessed. With his accustomed negligence he tells 
 that in the middle of his play which should have 
 been reserved for the end. The disclosure of 
 Blushenly's birth by O' Flaherty, and the discovery 
 of his relationship to Rueful diminish that plea- 
 sure which the spectator would have felt in be-* 
 holding Lady Paragon s love for him, founded on 
 no other basis then his personal merits. To have 
 accepted him as a poor and nameless foundling, 
 would have exalted her passion upon the purest 
 foundation: but before she can actually do this, 
 she knows him as a wealthy heir, and as the off- 
 spring of a distinguished family. 
 
 Lady Paragon s character, however, is eminently 
 agreeable. I have already said that I consider it 
 as the best female part Cumberland ever drew, 
 though he was inclined to claim that distinction 
 for Lady Davenant in the Mysterious Husband. 
 Lady Paragon must have shone with peculiar 
 lustre in the performance of Miss Farren. She is 
 volatile yet dignified, playful yet discreet, and 
 tender and affectionate without a maudlin affecta- 
 
480 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 tion of sensibility. She is just that interesting- 
 female in whose company no man could find him- 
 self without finding something else, perhaps, which 
 would not conduce to his happiness. That un- 
 constrained gaiety of manners, which invites a 
 lover forward, and that tempered chastity of heart 
 which makes him stop before he proceeds too far, 
 that arch vivacity which teases without displeasing, 
 that unsuspecting frankness which, disdaining 
 artifice itself, believes it not in others, and that 
 secure confidence in the power of beauty, loveli- 
 ness, and virtue, which tempts their possessor to 
 play with her prize almost to losing because she 
 knows how to lure it back again, as the wanton 
 srirl gives mimic freedom to her favourite lin- 
 net, but lets it not fly beyond the length of the 
 silken cord that holds it, are all displayed with fas- 
 cinating skill by Cumberland in the character of 
 Lady Paragon; and I can well believe that when 
 such an actress as Miss Farren undertook to adorn 
 these attributes with living grace and action, the 
 effect must have been irresistible. 
 
 Nor is the character of Blushenly without much 
 that excites the spectator's pleasure. I could 
 wish, however, that his name had not been indi- 
 catory of his qualities. It is a paltry resource, and 
 one to which Cumberland does not often conde- 
 scend. It is a cheap species of wit to call a fearful 
 man Mr. Timid, or a passionate one Sir Furious 
 Frenzy, ox a languishing love sick girl, Mite Wanton. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 481 
 
 Such compel lations destroy, in some degree, the 
 effect of character, by awakening an anticipation of 
 what it is to be. 
 
 Rueful and his servant Dumps excited some 
 merriment perhaps in representation, but they have 
 no power to do it in perusal. Major 0' Flaherty I 
 (in which name Cumberland seems to have de- 
 lighted) is worse than his predecessor. Mrs. 
 Phcebe Latimer, though not new to the stage, 
 is amusing in many of her capricious notions. — 
 If literature, in a woman, always produced such 
 absurdities as are given to this lady, I should 
 be among the first to wish that our wives and 
 daughters were never allowed to open a book un- 
 less it were the Bible or Prayer Book, or perhaps 
 honest John Bunyan, with two or three manuals 
 of piety. Nay, I should hope some patriotic 
 legislator would propose a law to make it a 
 high misdemeanour and punishable accordingly, 
 for any woman to be seen with a book in her hand, 
 save and except, some such as those already men- 
 tioned : or perhaps it would be wiser to prohibit 
 altogether the instruction of girls in reading: for if 
 we entrust the key of a treasure, how can we be 
 secure of its application ? Luckily, however, the 
 exaggerations of writers have no foundation but the 
 chimerical one in their own fancies. 
 
 Cumberland's benevolence led him to make ano- 
 ther effort in behalf of the suffering Irish Catholics. 
 
 2 I 
 
4S2 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 when he put the following sentence into the mouth 
 of O* Flaherty : 
 
 " I'll tell you what, Sir Jeffrey, you need not 
 be surprised at finding a poor Catholic, like myself, 
 an honest man ; you take a ready way to keep us so, 
 by shutting us out of your service." 
 
 Cumberland was evidently one who would have 
 granted complete civil as well as religious tolera- 
 tion to this portion of our fellow subjects. The 
 question is involved in difficulties, and this is not 
 the place to discuss them. Great names appear in 
 behalf of emancipation ; as great are arrayed against 
 it : and the time, perhaps, is not now very far 
 distant when the final decision can no longer be 
 protracted. 
 
 The language of this comedy is supported 
 throughout wi th easy elegance. The characters are 
 placed in high life, and for such characters Cum- 
 berland could never be at a loss to find sentiments 
 and expressions. The dialogue is spritely and 
 animated beyond his usual tenor ; and some of the 
 scenes between Lady Paragon and Blushenly are 
 written with a very high degree of comic excel- 
 lence. The same may be said of those between 
 Mrs. Phcebe Latimer and Blushenly. 
 
 I have noticed but few exceptions to this general 
 praise ; yet some there are. I wonder, indeed, 
 that Cumberland should have given such phrases 
 to Lady Paragon as these : " may I be further" — 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 483 
 
 * 6 Sentiment in the country is clear another thing 
 from sentiment in town" — " I can take is as glibly 
 as a dish of tea." This may have been the cant 
 of fashionable life when Cumberland wrote, and 
 may be so still : but Lady Paragon was not the 
 representative of that class of fashionable females 
 who would have used such a jargon, and therefore 
 in her it was improper. 
 
 In attempting to be witty he is sometimes ex- 
 tremely dull. When Dumps, who has quoted a fami- 
 liar scrap of Latin, says afterwards that he was once 
 employed to shew the monuments in Westminster 
 Abbey, 0' Flaherty replies, " Oho! you come out 
 of the tombs, 'tis no wonder you speak the dead 
 languages." The whole scene, indeed, where 
 Dumps is first introduced, is far removed from 
 legitimate comedy ; it is mere farce. The same 
 may be said of the absurd incident of Rueful t s 
 being bled by Jack Hustings, and his consequent 
 conduct. 
 
 Had Cumberland paused for a moment, I think 
 he might have invented a dialogue more amusing 
 than the following between Lady Paragon and 
 Blushenly. 
 
 Lady P. Well, I protest you are insufferably vain. 
 Blush. And I swear you are insupportably handsome. 
 
 Could such unnatural trifling provoke anything 
 but contempt in the audience ? 
 
 This comedy was acted the same season as 
 ■9 I 2 
 
284 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the Carmelite, and Cumberland speaks of the hos- 
 tility with which he was pursued by the newspaper 
 writers, as if his celerity in producing were the 
 result of avarice and a mean desire to exclude 
 all competitors. The ascription of such motives, 
 however, could incur disgrace only on the in- 
 ventor; though it seems to have had some effect 
 upon the success of the play. 
 
 His old friend and patron, Lord Sackville, in 
 whose vicinity Cumberland lived, was visibly de- 
 clining, about this time, in his health. Of this 
 nobleman Cumberland has given an account longer, 
 perhaps, than was necessary, for he confounded 
 what his own feelings were in remembering a man 
 with whom he had so intimately passed a part of 
 his life, with what might be the curiosity of the 
 reader. The following anecdotes, however, have 
 that abstracted interest in them which may justify 
 their insertion here, as the production of Cumber- 
 land's pen, and as relating to one who had dis- 
 tinguished himself as Cumberland's friend. 
 
 " It was too evident that the constitution of 
 Lord Sackville, long harassed by the painful visi- 
 tation of that dreadful malady the stone, was de- 
 cidedly giving way. There was in him so gene- 
 rous a repugnance against troubling his friends with 
 any complaints, that it was from external evidence 
 only, never from confession, that his sufferings 
 could be guessed at. Attacks, that would have 
 confined most people to their beds, never moved 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 485 
 
 him from his habitual punctuality. It was curious, 
 and probably in some men's eyes would from its 
 extreme precision have appeared ridiculously mi- 
 nute and formal, yet in the movements of a do- 
 mestic establishment so large as his, it had its uses 
 and comforts, which his guests and family could 
 not fail to partake of. As sure as the hand of the 
 clock pointed to the half-hour after nine, neither 
 a minute before nor a minute after, so sure did the 
 good lord of the castle step into his breakfast room, 
 accoutred at all points according to his own in- 
 variable costuma, with a complacent countenance, 
 that prefaced his good-morning to each person 
 there asembled ; and now whilst I recal these 
 scenes to my remembrance, I feel gratified by the 
 reflection, that I never passed a night beneath his 
 roof, but that his morning's salutation met me at 
 my post. He allowed an hour and a half for 
 breakfast, and regularly at eleven took his morning's 
 circuit on horseback at a foot's-pace, for his in- 
 firmity would not admit of any strong gestation ; 
 he had an old groom, who had grown grey in his 
 service, that was his constant pilot upon these ex- 
 cursions, and his general custom was to make the 
 tour of his cottages to reconnoitre the condition 
 they were in, whether their roofs were in repair, 
 their windows whole, and the gardens well cropped 
 and neatly kept; all this it was their interest to be 
 attentive to, for he bought the produce of their fruit 
 trees, and I have heard him say with great satisfaction 
 
486 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 that he has paid thirty shillings in a season fop 
 strawberries only to a poor cottager, who paid him 
 one shilling annual rent for his tenement and gar- 
 den ; this was the constant rate, at which he let 
 them to his labourers, and he made them pay it 
 his steward at his yearly audit, that they might 
 feel themselves in the class of regular tenants, and 
 sit down at table to the good cheer provided for 
 them on the audit-day. He never rode out without 
 preparing himself with a store of sixpences in his 
 waistcoat pocket for the children of the poor, who 
 opened gates and drew out sliding bars for him in his 
 passage through the enclosures: these barriers were 
 well watched, and there was rarely any employ- 
 ment for a servant ; but these sixpences were not 
 indiscriminately bestowed, for as he kept a charity 
 school upon his own endowment, he knew to 
 whom he gave them, and generally held a short 
 parley with the gate-opener as he paid his toll for 
 passing. Upon the very first report of illness or 
 accident relief was instantly sent, and they were 
 put upon the sick list, regularly visited, and con- 
 stantly supplied with the best medicines admi- 
 nistered upon the best advice : if the poor man 
 lost his cow, or his pig, or his poultry, the loss was 
 never made up in money, but in stock. It was 
 his custom to buy the cast-oif liveries of his own 
 Servants as constantly as the day of cloathing came 
 about, and these he distributed to the old and 
 worn-out labourers, who turned out daily on the 
 
LIFE OP CUMBERLAND. 487 
 
 lawn and padtloc in the Sackville livery to pick 
 up boughs and sweep up leaves, and, in short, do 
 just as much work as serve to keep them whole- 
 some and alive. 
 
 " To his religious duties this good man was not 
 only regularly but respectfully attentive ; on the 
 Sunday morning he appeared in gala, as if he was 
 dressed for a drawing room ; he marched out his 
 whole family in grand cavalcade to his parish 
 church, leaving only a centinel to watch the fires 
 at home, and mount guard upon the spits. His 
 deportment in the house of prayer was exemplary, 
 and more in character of times past than of time 
 present : he had a way of standing up in sermon- 
 time for the purpose of reviewing the congregation, 
 and awing the idlers into decorum, that never 
 failed to remind me of Sir Roger de Coverly at 
 church; sometimes, when he has been struck with 
 passages in the discourse, which he wished to point 
 out to the audience as rules for moral practice 
 worthy to be noticed, he would mark his appro- 
 bation of them with such cheering nods and signals 
 of assent to the preacher, as were often more than 
 my muscles could withstand ; but when to the 
 total overthrow of all gravity, in his zeal to en- 
 courage the efforts of a very young declaimer in 
 the pulpit, I heard him cry out to the Reverend 
 Mr. Henry Eatoff in the middle of his sermon, — 
 ' Well done, Harry !' It was irresistible ; sup- 
 pression was out of my power: what made it more 
 
488 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 intolerably comic was, the unmoved sincerity of 
 his manner, and his surprise to find that any thing 
 had passed, that could provoke a laugh so out of 
 time and place. He had nursed up with no small 
 care and cost, in each of his parish churches, a corps 
 of rustic psalm-singers, to whose performances he 
 paid the greatest attention, rising up, and with 
 his eyes directed to the singing gallery, marking 
 time, which was not always rigidly adhered to, 
 and once, when his ear, which was very correct, 
 had been tortured by a tone most glaringly dis- 
 cordant, he set his mark upon the culprit by 
 calling out to him by name, and loudly saying, 
 4 Out of tune, Tom Baker V Now this faulty mu- 
 sician, Tom Baker, happened to be his lordship's 
 butcher, but then in order to set names and trades 
 upon a par, Tom Butcher was his lordship's baker ; 
 which I observed to him was much such a recon- 
 cilement of cross partners as my illustrious friend 
 George Faulkner hit upon, when in his Dublin 
 Journal he printed — 4 Erratum in our last — For 
 His Grace the Duchess of Dorset read Her Grace 
 the Duke of Dorset." 5 
 
 The display of these peculiarities in great men 
 afford us that insight into human nature which 
 is, perhaps, the most valuable result of all inquiry. 
 If the position be true, that man is our proper 
 study, (and I believe no reach of general argument 
 can disprove it), then it will follow that every 
 thing which facilitates that study, or which in- 
 

 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 489 
 
 creases our consequent knowledge, deserves to be 
 held in a degree of estimation in proportion to its 
 power of producing such effects. 
 
 With Lord Sackville Cumberland was present 
 when the last awful preparation for a future state 
 was administered, and he communicated with him. 
 A short time previously to his death, also, he had 
 an interesting conversation touching the affair of 
 Minden, from which, and from what he said in his 
 last moments, Cumberland deduces this opinion, 
 " that if he did not from his heart, and upon the 
 most entire conviction of his reason and under- 
 standing, solemnly acquit that injured man, (now 
 gone to his account) of the opprobrious and 
 false imputations deposed against him at his trial, 
 he must be either brutally ignorant or wilfully 
 obstinate against the truth/" 
 
 This is a solemn declaration springing from a 
 solemn evidence, and though the immediate in- 
 terest of the transaction is gone by, I feel a plea- 
 sure in repeating it in this work. That which 
 tends to exculpate innocence from foul and un- 
 merited aspersion, can never be too often told nor 
 too widely diffused. It is a mutual debt which 
 man owes to man : and I wish I could add that 
 it is a debt which every man willingly pays. 
 
490 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 CHAP. XXIL 
 
 Rapidity of production not always consistent with 
 excellence, — The comedy of the Impostors very 
 inferior to the other plays of Cumberland. — The 
 novel of Arundel.— The degraded name of a 
 novel. — The eminent merit of this one. — Argu- 
 ments in favour of duelling. — Opposed by an 
 extract from Nubilia. — The characters drawn 
 with great felicity. — Love exhibited by Cumber- 
 land superior to any other English writer of 
 novels. — Sometimes trespasses on delicacy. — His 
 excuse for this, and its futility. 
 
 No one, who has contemplated the list of Cum- 
 berland's productions, or whose business it has 
 been, like mine, to examine them all with critical 
 attention, will doubt the accuracy of his assertion, 
 " that he never did nothing ;" but every one, who 
 is solicitous for his fame, will be tempted to wish 
 that he had never done so much. Perpetual efforts 
 to please are possible ; perpetual success is not. — 
 The teeming earth is impoverished by too copi- 
 ous production, and requires to lie fallow till it 
 recover its former vigour and fecundity ; the mind 
 too demands those intervals of rest, during which 
 it may acquire fresh power to throw forth, and 
 fresh materials for combination. The writer, who 
 is more desirous to shew his fertility than his 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 491 
 
 strength amuses his imagination with a fanciful 
 rather than a real value ; as a man may be pro- 
 nounced numerically richer who has a hundred 
 pounds in sixpences, than he who has thrice the 
 actual worth in one solid wedge of gold. It is not 
 by diffusing our powers that we give them the 
 strongest operation, though we do the widest; 
 concentrated energies produce the greatest and 
 the most permanent effects. 
 
 Had Cumberland been duly aware of this truth, 
 (and a most important one it is to every author 
 who hopes to labour for immortality), he would 
 have had less occasion to boast the ceaseless rapi- 
 dity with which he wrote, and less, perhaps, to 
 claim from the indulgence of criticism. It is a 
 mortifying panegyric to admit the merits of an in- 
 dividual, with the qualifying clause, that he has 
 done well, considering he has done so much. 
 
 I have been led into these observations from con- 
 sidering the Impostors, a comedy, which Cumber- 
 land produced in 1789, aad the plot of which has 
 some general resemblance to that of the Beaux 
 Stratagem. But there all resemblance ceases. 
 The dialogue is dull and insipid, the characters 
 either vapid or preposterous, and the language 
 destitute of all animation. Nature is violated 
 in every scene ; and in none more than where 
 Eleanor avows her love for Sir Charles Free- 
 mantle. Let the reader imagine the absurdity of 
 a young lady being rescued in the morning from 
 
492 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the peril of an unruly horse, by a stranger to whom 
 she very kindly gives her hand in marriage before 
 night. 
 
 Quodcunque ostendis mi'hi sic, incredulus odi. 
 
 Eleanor seems to have been formed upon 
 Wycherly's Country Girl, or rather Country Wife, 
 for Garrick gave it the present name when he 
 altered and adapted it for representation ; but in- 
 stead of artlessness and simplicity, instead of the 
 amusing sincerity of unsuspecting innocence, she 
 has nothing but rustic coarseness at first, and flip- 
 pant openness afterwards. She is, in every thing, 
 inconsistent, and to waste more notice upon her 
 would be inconsistency in me. 
 
 The general character of this play, indeed, is dull- 
 ness in the incidents, imbecility in the dialogue, 
 and extravagance in the characters. I have never 
 heard its success ; and I should unwillingly believe 
 that it had any. 
 
 About the same time that the Impostors appeared, 
 Cumberland attempted a new species of writing, 
 and produced his novel of Arundel. This degraded 
 branch of composition few men of talent are will- 
 ing to cultivate, because they fear to be confounded 
 with that herd of scribblers whose effusions of 
 folly or obscenity rank under the general denomi- 
 nation of novels. Yet, while such an abuse of 
 fiction is to be lamented, the philosopher and the 
 moralist see, by one intuitive glance of thought, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 493 
 
 how noble and powerful an instrument is remain- 
 ing inert and unoperative, because its name is 
 vileness, and its uses, hitherto, have been too often 
 foolish, or disgraceful. Some of our greatest men, 
 however, have not disdained to employ imagi- 
 nary narratives, as vehicles for conveying to the 
 world their opinions upon life ; and the practice 
 of such writers as Sir Thomas More, of Bacon, of 
 Harrington, Swift, Johnson, and Voltaire, not to 
 mention those who have written works of fiction 
 for less exalted purposes, might dignify any thing 
 beyond the power of subsequent depreciation. 
 An epic is, in modern times, a thing no less de- 
 graded than a novel ; yet, were there now a man 
 living, with genius capable of success, would he 
 hesitate to tread in the steps of Homer, Virgil, 
 Tasso, Camoens, and Milton, because inferior 
 writers have prostituted the appellation ? 
 
 I rejoice that Cumberland was influenced by 
 no such motives, or we had never seen Arun~ 
 del, and I had lost one pleasure, which is more 
 than man can afford to lose, I consider this novel 
 as entitled to hold a very distinguished place, and 
 as a production possessing a more than usual por- 
 tion of fancy, elegance, and interest. It was writ- 
 ten under some disadvantages while Cumberland 
 was at Brighthelmstone, and sent to the press as 
 fast as it was composed. He seems, however, to 
 have had an accurate notion of its merits, and de« 
 clares that notion without much reserve. 
 
494 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 The character of Arundel is drawn with a degree 
 of chivalrous refinement and loftiness of honour, 
 which, without carrying him beyond nature, makes 
 him such a being as we behold with delight, and 
 long to imitate. His dignity of feeling never de- 
 generates into arrogance, nor his graceful and be- 
 coming pride into haughtiness. His conduct is 
 that of a perfect gentleman, undebased by any 
 affectation. 
 
 His introduction into the family of Lord G. 
 coincides, in some particulars, so strongly with 
 Cumberland's own introduction into the family of 
 Lord Halifax, that, as I have already observed, it 
 always appeared to me intended to allude to that 
 circumstance. I do not, indeed, mean to infer 
 that Cumberland was an Arundel^ for the resem- 
 blance soon ceases ; but in all those regrets which 
 Arundel pours forth, at being torn from his college 
 solitude, from his favourite studies, and from his 
 academical friends, to submit to political duties, 
 and to the unvarying ones of a secretary's office, 
 I think Cumberland intended an adumbration of 
 his own early condition. This idea is strength- 
 ened in me, too, when I remember that he owed 
 his promotion to his father's services during an 
 election, and that Arundel is patronised by Lord 
 G. for the very same reason. (See Letter H). 
 
 But, whatever affinity there may be between 
 Arundel and Cumberland, there is none between 
 the father of Arundel and his own venerable sire ; 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 495 
 
 nor can I conjecture why he delighted to draw that 
 character with such qualities as could excite only 
 unmingled detestation. The reader hardly believes 
 that such a son as Arundel could have sprung 
 from so degenerate a stock, and the contrast, so far 
 from heightening the virtues of the descendant, 
 tends rather to diminish our admiration of them, 
 from the operation of that prejudice so common in 
 life, by which we extend, more or less, the ignominy 
 of a single member to all the branches of a family. 
 There seems to have been no sufficient motive for 
 assigning to Dr. Arundel so much meanness ; it has 
 no influence upon the narrative, and might, there- 
 fore, have been spared with great advantage to 
 the reader's feelings. 
 
 In the character of Lady G. Cumberland has 
 certainly " set virtue upon ice/' to use his own 
 words ; but so far from falling, I hardly think that 
 she slips. Her husband treats her with scorn, 
 and she indemnifies herself for his neglect, in the 
 respectful and consoling attentions of another. 
 These attentions lead to nothing that is criminal, 
 and shall it be denied to a wounded heart to repose 
 upon the bosom that would shelter, but which 
 harbours no thought that would wrong it ? In the 
 letters of the Honourable Mrs. Dormer to Lady G. 
 there are many arguments justificatory of her 
 friend's conduct, and which, whether Cumberland 
 meant them to be so, or not, are absolutely unan- 
 swerable. 
 
496 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 But as much cannot be said, perhaps, of those 
 which Arundel employs in defence of duelling, and 
 which are derived rather from the practice itself, 
 than from any abstract consideration of its neces- 
 sity and propriety. In the person of Arundel, 
 Cumberland employs that mode of reasoning 
 which men, who adopt the system, must always 
 use in their own vindication, nor will I deny 
 that it is plausible, and apparently conclusive ; 
 but, the reply of Mortlake embraces the more ra- 
 tional view of the question ; and though it may be 
 true that the world will act with Arundel, while 
 they think with his friend, nothing more is proved 
 by the fact, than that error is more powerful than 
 truth. The subject is one, however, that has been, 
 amply discussed, and little can be said upon it 
 which has not been said already. It has had its' 
 opponents and defenders, nor does it appear 
 that the practice has been much influenced by 
 either. Attempts have been made, in some coun- 
 tries, to supercede the supposed necessity of duel- 
 ing by the institution of a court of honour, to 
 which individuals should be amenable for those 
 offences that are now beyond the cognizance of law ; 
 but there was so little that could be definitely 
 ascertained, so little of positive injury that could be 
 established, in actions which operated on theimagi* 
 nation rather than on the reason, and so difficult it 
 proved to apportion punishments for misdemea- 
 nors, where so much depended upon local and 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 497 
 
 temporary circumstances, that the schemes have 
 generally failed. In France, such a plan was once 
 matured* and reduced to practice, by the Marquis 
 of Fenelon, uncle to the archbishop of Cambrai; 
 but though supported by Louis XIV. by the prince 
 of Conde, and by most of the great generals of 
 the age, men whose motives nobody could sus- 
 pect, the undertaking languished only for a short 
 time, and gradually sunk into oblivion. 
 
 It is but justice* however, to say, that Cum- 
 berland has advanced more plausible arguments in 
 defence of this practice^ than any that I have else- 
 where met with. They have a shew of solidity in 
 them, and in some respects an actual authority, 
 arising from the want of any other legitimate and 
 acknowledged mode of redress for particular in- 
 sults. Yet I would hope something as conclusive 
 might be urged in support of a dignified forbear- 
 ance ; at least I thought so, when I wrote the fol- 
 lowing paragraph in Nubilia. 
 
 " It is to be regretted/ ' I have there observed^ 
 " that the invention of man has yet discovered no 
 milder composition for offence than the destruc- 
 tion of life, or at least the risk of that destruction ; 
 and especially when we consider the insignificance 
 of the causes that too frequently lead to the dis- 
 graceful practice of duelling. I do not know how 
 a man, who is a father, a husband, a son, or a bro- 
 ther, acquits himself to his own conscience when 
 he enters the field for such a purpose : nor, if his 
 2K 
 
49S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 antagonist fall, how he soothes that conscience into 
 the belief that he has not committed murder. The 
 plea of personal defence is futile ; for in this coun- 
 try personal safety is not so wholly at the mercy 
 of individual rancour. There are laws, and vi- 
 gorous ones, if we choose to fly to them. As to 
 the justification of honour, I tremble to think how 
 that will avail them at the judgment seat of God. 
 For, what is this honour ? Its most bigotted fol- 
 lowers cannot solve the question. They will tell 
 you, that if they do not challenge, or accept a chal- 
 lenge, under certain circumstances, they will not 
 be held as men of honour; that is, they will be 
 disowned by a few profligate, vain, and immoral 
 beings, for whose good opinion they are to risk 
 their life. What an absurdity ! Why, it is an 
 emancipation— it is a freedom — it is a glorious li- 
 berty, to throw off the yoke of their opinion. No 
 good, no wise, no virtuous man* will despise them ; 
 and, what is of infinitely greater importance, their 
 God will not despise them. 
 
 " If I am challenged I have but two things to 
 consider : have I given offence ? have I acted 
 wrong ? If I have, it becomes me, as a rational 
 being, and it is my duty as a christian, to acknow- 
 ledge my offence, and to repair the wrong I have 
 committed. If he, whom I have offended or in- 
 jured, be not satisfied with this, I have no more to 
 do : I have done towards him all that would be 
 required of me by my Creator ; and shall I dare to 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 499 
 
 shed my blood, to appease man's proud and in- 
 temperate passions ? On the other hand, if I am 
 offended or injured, let me, if I can, practise the 
 sublime virtue of forgiveness ; if I cannot, let me 
 demand that concession which I feel I would my- 
 self make; if this be denied, let me not seek for 
 blood. These should be the arguments of a wise 
 man ; these should be the reflections of a christian. 
 Is it the part of wisdom to ascertain guilt or inno- 
 cence by an ordeal scarcely less absurd than the 
 burning plough-shares ? No matter how much I 
 am in the wrong ; if I have more skill than my 
 adversary, or if a lucky chance should aid me, and 
 I wound or kill him, I am immediately transformed 
 into a man of honour ! Nay, if w T e both retire 
 without any personal injury, provided we have, 
 each of us, fired off a loaded pistol, why then we 
 are both men of honour ! What a despicable so- 
 phistry it is I'* 
 
 What my opinion was when I wrote this, it still 
 is : I still think that a man might reject a chal- 
 lenge upon such motives, which, if distinctly, 
 calmly, and fearlessly avowed, would secure him 
 from every imputation on his honour, except, per- 
 haps, among those whose opinions it is no honour 
 to value.— -I now return to Arundel. 
 
 The character of Lady Louisa G. is drawn in 
 glowing colours. She has much of that sensibility, 
 nobleness, and candour, of that ardent fire of 
 youth, and that fervent enthusiasm of love, which 
 
 2 K 2 
 
500 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Rousseau has given to Heloise. She is sprightly 
 and enthusiastic ; above disguise and above vice. 
 She trembles once, indeed, upon the brink of it, 
 when she offers to elope with Arundel ; but even 
 then she preserves the esteem of the reader, from 
 the ingenuousness with which she acts, and the 
 motives that influence her. 
 
 Her friend and companion, Lady Jane S. has 
 equal sensibility of heart, with somewhat more 
 solidity of mind. Her playful vivacity and arch- 
 ness of raillery are very pleasingly exhibited, and 
 the energy of virtue with which she dismisses her 
 brother to the field of battle is highly interesting. 
 I could wish, however, that Cumberland had made 
 her less communicative upon her love for Mort- 
 lake. The description of their amorous moments, 
 of their solitary rambles, when passion sometimes 
 mastered prudence, and when the future husband 
 dwelt with ardour upon joys to come, of all their 
 little anticipations of expected bliss, and all the fond 
 murmurings of requited affection, are topics which a 
 woman should hardly expatiate upon even to a wo- 
 man. With all Lady Jane's imputed frankness of 
 character, I cannot but deem this display of it be- 
 yond the limits of female propriety. 
 
 In Captain John Arundel, Cumberland has 
 very successfully depicted a frank, rough, and 
 manly sea-officer, a character in which he totally 
 failed in his comedy of The Brothers. He has 
 done this too without any profusion of technical 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 501 
 
 language, like Smollett, to which, indeed, I should 
 not suppose him adequate. He has preserved all 
 the spirit of the resemblance, without copying its 
 blemishes. 
 
 Mortlake is a very interesting personage. Less 
 ardent, less enthusiastic than Arundel^ he has 
 more sobriety of judgment, and more piety of con- 
 duct. The moderation of his wishes makes him 
 worthy of the prosperity he encounters, and the 
 humility with which he receives it is a pleasing as* 
 surance that he will not abuse it, 
 
 I question if any writer ever disposed of his cha* 
 racters at the conclusion of a work, in a manner 
 that more completely satisfies the reader, than Cum- 
 berland has done in this novel. The union of the 
 two friends with their respective mistresses, who 
 are also the friends of each other, their residence 
 in the same neighbourhood, and their mutual af- 
 fection, present such a picture of conjugal and 
 domestic felicity, that the mind reposes upon the 
 most pleasing association of ideas, while there is 
 such an air of probability pervades the whole, that 
 we are hardly conscious of the fiction. 
 
 The passion of love is exhibited in this work 
 with nearer approaches to reality than has been 
 done by any of our novel writers, if Richardson 
 perhaps be excepted. In Fielding it is combined 
 with too much pedantry, and in Smollett with too 
 much licentiousness. The antiquated raptures of 
 the heroes of former times, though probably nof 
 
502 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 wholly unlike the practice of the age in which the 
 authors lived, have very little in them to attract a 
 modern reader. Their adoring rants, or their un- 
 awed boldness, disgust rather than amuse : while 
 their affectation of ceremonious courtesy provokes 
 only ridicule. They have no love 2 they have only 
 gallantry: < c qui ri est point I 'amour" says Montes- 
 quieu*, " mais le delicate mais le leger, mais le 
 perpetuel mensonge de I s amour." 
 
 Cumberland has certainly avoided this frigid 
 counterfeit in ArundeL He has given to the most 
 endearing, the most powerful, and the most ele- 
 vated passion of the human heart, all that dignity, 
 fervour, and elegance, which truly belong to it, 
 but which as few are capable of feeling as of de- 
 scribing. Nor does he deviate into the other ex- 
 treme of romantic extravagance. He has happily 
 caught the graceful medium, and displayed a pic- 
 ture the most agreeable and fascinating of any 
 novelist in the language. 
 
 I deliver this opinion at some peril, for my ac- 
 quaintance with English novels, except with those 
 which are admitted into every library for their ex- 
 cellence, is very limited. They are books into which 
 I seldom look, unless recommended by some one in 
 whose judgment I can securely confide : nor had I 
 read even Cumberland's novels till my present un- 
 dertaking rendered it necessary. Perhaps, therefore, 
 
 * Esprit des Loix. Tom. III. liv. xxviii. ch. 22. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 503 
 
 there may be others qualified to dispute this pecu- 
 liar praise which I have bestowed upon Arundel. 
 
 I wish, however, that Cumberland had always 
 regulated his imagination with the same sobriety 
 that he exercised in his Observer. There are some 
 parts of this work which, though not obscene, are 
 certainly indelicate, if not indecent. I shall not 
 specify them, for it would only serve as an index 
 to what might better be expunged ; but Cumber- 
 land knew the transgression, and endeavoured to 
 mitigate it in an advertisement prefixed to the third 
 edition of the book. His justification, however, 
 is but the last resource of a man who will not plead 
 guilty, and must therefore say something. 
 
 " Let them reflect," he observes, " upon the 
 habits of an author, who has been long in the 
 practice of writing for the stage, which is a pro- 
 vince of the art that naturally requires a strong 
 cast of characters, and a striking relief of light and 
 shade. Accustomed to compress his energies 
 within a stated compass, the dramatic writer must 
 not let his fable slumber, or his language creep : 
 that tantalizing and minute precision in developing 
 the passions, which the French novelists are so 
 expert in, he will neither have the leisure, nor 
 perhaps the talents, to pursue ; and in his hand 
 the pencil, whether it traces the adventures of a 
 novel, or the incidents of a play, will colour highly, 
 without attention to those fine and delicate grada- 
 
504 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 tions, that a more laborious finisher would be stu- 
 dious to excel in." 
 
 What vindication there is in this paragraph, I 
 will leave the reader to discover. Some such so- 
 phistry might be urged in defence of any delin- 
 quency. A thief-taker might commit a robbery, 
 and afterwards plead in extenuation, that he had 
 been so long accustomed, in his profession, to all 
 the details of stealing, that some excuse must be 
 made for him. But Cumberland's appeal is refuted 
 by his own practice. In his plays he rarely tres- 
 passes upon decency : why then in his novels ? — 
 Because the act could not be censured with that 
 immediate disapprobation which is exercised in a 
 theatre when the audience is displeased. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 505 
 
 CHAP. XXIII, 
 
 Emboldened by the success of Arundel, Cum- 
 berland writes his novel of Henry. — His adver- 
 tisement to it. — Borrows the initial chapters from 
 Fielding. — The characters examined. — Susan 
 May, a mere wanton. — Severe censure of Cum- 
 berland for his indelicacy. — Possessed no powers 
 of humour. — Exemplified. — A minute examina* 
 tion of the characters, sentiments, and incidents 
 of this novel. — Cumberland very successful in 
 delineating the pdssion of love. — Brief account 
 of John de Lancaster. — Inferior both to 
 Arundel awe? Henry. 
 
 Emboldened by the success of Arundel, Cum- 
 berland sat down to the composition of Henry, a 
 work more extensive in its scope, and apparently 
 laboured with more assiduity. The incidents are 
 more numerous, the characters more contrasted 
 and developed, and the whole work is evidently 
 the result of a belief that the author was qualified 
 to contest, with the highest names in our language, 
 for the palm of supremacy in the construction of a 
 novel. The existence of this belief is, to me, 
 sufficiently manifested in the short Advertisement 
 to the Reader. Cumberland did not usually as- 
 sume a lofty tone, though he was never without a 
 
506 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 due consciousness of his own merits : but in the 
 following paragraph he talks with the confidence 
 of a man who exacts, rather than solicits, appro- 
 bation. 
 
 " It is a custom," says he, " with some authors, 
 to introduce their works by a prefatory appeal to 
 the candour of the reader, and circumstances may 
 undoubtedly combine to justify the measure ; but 
 when a man acts from his own free motives in re- 
 sorting to the press, how can he be warranted for 
 intruding on the public without a proper confi- 
 dence in his powers for entertaining them ? True 
 respect to the reader refers itself to his judgment, 
 and makes no attempts upon his pity. The pur- 
 chaser of these volumes would have just reason to 
 complain of his bargain, if he were to find nothing 
 in them but a sample of my modesty in the pre- 
 face, and a long dull story at the end of it ; and I 
 should only prove that I thought more meanly of 
 his taste than of my own talents, were I to presume 
 that he could be well pleased with a production of 
 which my own opinion was so very humble, as to 
 stand in need of an apology for presenting it to 
 him. I therefore hold it as fair dealing to premise, 
 that if these volumes do not merit his approbation, 
 they have small claim upon his candour, forasmuch 
 as they have been carefully and deliberately writ- 
 ten, some years having passed since the first hand 
 was put to them; during which no diligence has 
 been spared to make them worthy, both in style 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 507 
 
 and matter, of that generous public, who are so 
 justly entitled to every grateful exertion on my 
 part, and to whose future favours it is my best am- 
 bition to aspire." 
 
 There is an amusing mixture of diffidence and 
 presumption in this address. The author thinks 
 he has no right to insult the public by doubting 
 the merit of his offering: and yet he makes an ap- 
 peal to their generosity. Justice, however, was 
 all he should have loftily demanded, secure in his 
 right to it. It is only the feeble and the erring 
 who need ask from generosity what they cannot 
 hope from equity. 
 
 The novel of Henry bears internal evidence of 
 having been " carefully and deliberately written," 
 though it is doubtful whether its excellence be in 
 proportion to that care and deliberation. Assidu- 
 ous application may sometimes bestow upon a pro- 
 duction a cold freedom from error, without giving 
 it that vigorous animation which works of imagi- 
 nation frequently derive from a lucky rapidity of 
 execution. That which is glowingly struck off 
 " at a heat," (to use the phrase employed by Dry- 
 den in characterizing the celerity with which he 
 composed his matchless ode,) possesses commonly 
 a fervour of execution which more than redeems 
 those minute inaccuracies that patient labour might 
 have escaped. 
 
 Cumberland has borrowed, in this work, the 
 initial chapters from Fielding; and he has bor- 
 
3QS LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 rowed them only to disfigure his production. In 
 Fielding himself, they have always appeared to me 
 as blemishes : they interrupt the course of the nar- 
 ration, and give an air of pedantry to the whole. 
 
 But Cumberland, who wanted humour to make 
 them tolerable, seems to have adopted the prac- 
 tice only because it was Fielding's, and because 
 they supplied him with opportunities of talking 
 about himself and his opinions. Sometimes, in- 
 deed, he has made them injudiciously subservient 
 to the anticipation of the story, by telling the reader 
 what the subsequent book is to contain. 
 
 What may be called the action or fable of this 
 novel, is contrived with considerable ingenuity; 
 and it was to this skilful concatenation of the in- 
 cidents, I suppose, that Cumberland devoted that 
 care and deliberation he so emphatically announces 
 in his advertisement. In Arundel there is very 
 little plot, but a great deal of sentiment. Here 
 there is much bustle and intrigue, and little senti- 
 ment. 
 
 It must be acknowledged, however, that the 
 interest of the narrative is so equably maintained, 
 that it never slumbers in the imagination. An 
 agreeable degree of suspense is excited from the 
 first to the last, and such a diversity of incidents 
 is embraced in the work, that as soon as one event 
 is dismissed, another is brought forward to provoke 
 attention. 
 
 The hero is introduced to the reader's notice in 
 
LIFfc OF CUMBERLAND. 509 
 
 a manner very unlike the ordinary plan of ordi- 
 nary writers, and truly illustrative of the precept 
 of Horace : 
 
 Nonfumum exfidgore, sed exfumo dare lucem. 
 
 He appears upon the lowest step of human life, 
 and gradually ascends to the highest, by a course 
 of events, all of which are transacted under our 
 inspection. 
 
 One striking defect, however, in the manage- 
 ment of the story, is the discloure oi Henry's birth 
 to the reader, while it still remains a mystery to 
 himself; and the consequence of w r hich is, that 
 we have no longer any sympathy with those hopes 
 and fears that agitate his bosom as often as his ori- 
 gin becomes the object of his thoughts. 
 
 Henry , however, is a very interesting cha- 
 racter. He has, of course, all those attributes be- 
 stowed upon him which are to be found rather in 
 the writer's fancy than in the scenes of actual life, 
 as concentered in one person ; but as they are ju- 
 diciously brought into action, no extraordinary 
 occasions being invented merely for the display of 
 extraordinary virtues, their exhibition in him 
 awakens only a pleasing enthusiasm in the mind, 
 a generous desire, and wish, that we knew such a 
 man among our own friends or acquaintance. 
 
 Susan May is a mere wanton, decorated with 
 more alluring colours than anv author should have 
 employed who wishes not to confound the distinc- 
 
$\0 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 tions between vice and virtue. I have said, at 
 p. 443 of this volume, that Cumberland, in some 
 of his writings, " needed only to employ a cor- 
 responding licentiousness of expression to rank 
 with the corrupters of public morals ;" and it was 
 chiefly in allusion to some of the scenes between 
 Henri/ and Susan that I delivered so severe an opi- 
 nion. Every reader of Henry, however, will tes- 
 tify its truth ; and I am sorry that it is so. The 
 licentiousness of Fielding and Smollett has been 
 justly inveighed against ; but Cumberland exceeds 
 them both. He seems to have delighted in a stu- 
 died and insidious embellishment of ideas and si- 
 tuations, which, by being robbed of some of their 
 grossness, become so much the more dangerous : 
 and he has laboured to invest the person, who is 
 most immoral in these scenes, with a general love- 
 liness of character, a softness, benevolence, and 
 sensibility of heart, which wins upon our affections, 
 and soothes our reason into acquiescence. Susan 
 May is, indeed, the most interesting female in the 
 work ; not perhaps the most guilty, for Fanny 
 Claypole is made to share that pre-eminence with 
 her; but she unites to her libidinous appetites 
 other qualities of so disgusting a character, that we 
 feelonlyunmingleddetestation,while^2/6rtwis hardly 
 hated even when the full extent of her criminality 
 is developed before us. This perversion of the 
 power of fiction is, perhaps, one of the most dan- 
 gerous that can be employed ; for while it can be 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 511 
 
 believed that wanton profligacy may exist in con- 
 junction with every virtue but its own opposite, 
 many will be found to practise the vice, who have 
 no other claims to the endearing moral qualities, 
 but what are to be found in the illusions of their 
 own bosoms. 
 
 It will not be necessary to examine this novel 
 with much minuteness. Its copiousness of cha- 
 racter and incident, indeed, would render such an 
 undertaking tediously prolix. I shall dismiss it, 
 therefore, with a few general observations upon 
 particular parts. 
 
 Cumberland had no powers of humour, and as 
 often as he attempt it, so often he inevitably 
 fails. In Henry he has frequently sought to imU 
 tate the quaintness of Fielding, but the endeavour 
 always leads to disappointment. "Where can be 
 found more pedantry and affectation, for example, 
 than in the following paragraph from the first 
 chapter? 
 
 " There is a voice, a look, a tone* in truth and 
 innocence, which holds a sympathy with the hearts 
 of those, on whom their evidences light, irresist- 
 ibly impressive . What honest Zachary wore in 
 his bosom, under his left ribs, was fairly made by 
 nature of real flesh and blood, and not of flint or 
 adamant, or any such impenetrable substance as 
 she sometimes puts in the place of better work- 
 manship and softer materials, whereby the owners 
 become, as it were, casemated and bomb proof 
 
512 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 against all besiegers, of which number pity and 
 compassion, though in appearance the most gen- 
 tle, are in fact among the most importunate and 
 persevering; insomuch that the said Zachary had no 
 sooner heard these words* and reconnoitered the 
 signs and symbols of truth and innocence, which 
 accompanied them, than he felt something like a 
 string or chord vibrating and tingling in the aforesaid 
 region under his ribs, which running along the ducts 
 and channels that communicated with his tongue, 
 put that little member into motion, and produced 
 the following words:" — 
 
 Surely this is beneath contempt; but if the au- 
 thor thought it humour, who, that could have pa- 
 tience to write so, might not produce volumes of 
 humour ? The reader will remember also* that 
 Henry is coupled with the Observer^ by Cumberland, 
 as one of those works in which his harmony and 
 perspicuity of style was so conspicuous : let him 
 therefore examine the preceding paragraph, and 
 when he has enumerated the insomuches and the 
 whereby % with which its several clauses are con- 
 nected ; when he has observed that the whole is 
 but one period, and that the idea is confusedly 
 protracted from member to member, then let hi in 
 decide in which part of it harmony or clearness is 
 most distinctly visible. 
 
 Let me, indeed, finally declare, that no man ever 
 formed a notion more erroneous than Cumberland 
 did, when he believed that he had written a style 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5\3 
 
 of such excellence in his Observer and in this work. 
 Were it necessary to my purpose I could produce 
 innumerable instances to disprove this belief: in- 
 stances more numerous than any reader would 
 have patience to peruse. My own opinion is, that 
 his diction is remarkable for obscurity, and I have 
 often hopelessly relinquished all attempts to detect 
 his meaning beneath the cumbrous weight of words 
 and the perplexing involution of sentences with 
 which he has oppressed it. I would be understood 
 to say this, however, only of his Observer and of 
 Henry. In his plays, and in Arundel, his diction is 
 very often elegant, harmonious, and perspicuous. 
 
 I will exhibit one more instance of Cumberland's 
 abortive efforts to be humorous. The following is 
 the description of Zacharys immersion in a mill 
 pond, in consequence of his horse being frightened 
 by the clamour of a duck. 
 
 " The duck, who had a friend at home, took her 
 flight towards the mill, vociferating most incon- 
 tinently by the way, till she had called out the 
 miller's dog, who sallied forth in her defence with 
 all possible alacrity, bristling every hair with ardour 
 for revenge, and rushing to the ford, where the 
 flouncing and dashing of the waters directed him to 
 the scene of action. Without a moment's hesi- 
 tation, this amphibious animal plunged into the 
 stream, at the very moment when Zachary's fate 
 hung upon the balance, and the nymph of the 
 brook was preparing to receive him in her arms. 
 
 2L 
 
514 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 His head, according the principles of action and 
 re-action of elastic bodies, had taken a tour through 
 the segment of a parabola, and was now in its de- 
 clination towards the crupper of old Betty, when 
 the avenger of the duck seized the skirt of his 
 coat, and spite of all impediments, which staytape 
 and buckram could oppose to his gripe, took so 
 fast a hold, and gave the luckless accoucheur so 
 hearty a tug in the crisis of vacillation, that he 
 came backwards into the pool, and terrible was 
 the fall thereof/' 
 
 I commit this to the reader's judgment. If he 
 can possibly require conviction of its futility, no 
 arguments of mine can reach him. 
 
 Cumberland seldom succeeds when he has to 
 frame a diction for characters in low life ; he had 
 seen little of it, and knew nothing of its peculiarities 
 of manner and language. Hence the deficiency 
 in such scenes in Henry, and hence the excellence 
 of Arundel, the incidents of which being uniformly 
 placed in elevated society, the ideas and phrase- 
 ology are elegantly appropriate. 
 
 A disregard of probability in producing events, 
 is the common reproach of novel writers, and Cum- 
 berland is not free from it. Fielding was usually 
 very scrupulous in avoiding this fault, especially 
 in Tom Jones, though even he sometimes committed 
 it; butCumberland never hesitates, whenever there 
 is occasion, to produce a most miraculous concur- 
 rence of circumstances, very useful to himself, but 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 615 
 
 very offensive to his readers. Such is the meeting 
 between Henry and Delapoer at sea, and the in- 
 troduction of Bowsey at the same time. 
 
 From Fielding, who was his model, he has bor- 
 rowed many defects. Among others we find in 
 him that universal ascription of all excellence to 
 his characters when the existence of that excel- 
 lence is requisite for the occasion. The finest ; 
 the bravest, the noblest, the most generous, the 
 most elegant, the most graceful, &c. are epithets 
 lavished with so little discrimination that they 
 become at last ridiculous. They are attributes 
 which the author never seems to bestow till some 
 occurrence happens in which they must be asserted 
 or the plot deranged. 
 
 In supporting the consistency of his characters 
 Cumberland often fails. Jemima and Susan both 
 speak a language, occasionally, which might be 
 uttered in the senate without impropriety: but 
 neither Susan nor Jemima are presumed to have 
 had that education, or to have moved in that sphere 
 of life which could qualify them for such elegance 
 of diction. The one is a rural wanton, and the 
 other a bestial drunkard. 
 
 There is one excellence which I think belongs 
 peculiarly to Cumberland, and that is in support- 
 ing a scene of courtly and refined altercation. I 
 know no writer who can be compared to him in 
 this respect. If he had to exhibit a quarrel be- 
 tween two porters he would infallibly display only 
 
 2 L 2 
 
516 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 an impotent endeavour to succeed : but when he 
 represents two gentlemen contentiously engaged he 
 gives them at once, dignity, acrimony, and a chi- 
 valrous tone of sentiment supported by an exquisite 
 felicity of style. His plays have many scenes that 
 support this opinion : and the tenth chapter of 
 the fourth book of Henry, is an admirable instance 
 of this power which he possessed. 
 
 Cumberland excels, also, both Fielding and 
 Smollett, and sometimes even Richardson, in his 
 descriptions of female grace and beauty. Fielding 
 and Smollett describe their women like voluptua- 
 ries ; Cumberland like a lover. In them wefind only 
 the common enumeration of charms which may 
 inflame desire, in Cumberland such as may awaken 
 sentiment and respectful feeling, for he usually 
 combines them with some moral excellence of 
 which they are made only the visible effects or 
 the pleasing associates. He utters no hyperbolical 
 raptures at the imaginary contemplation of his 
 females, nor exalts them to divinities by giving 
 them charms which mere mortals never possessed : 
 he soberly and dispassionately celebrates such cor* 
 poreal qualities as may be found in any accidental 
 assemblage of the sex, and which, having all the 
 weight of truth, they please as beauties but do not 
 strike as wonders. 
 
 In the character of Ezekiel Daw, Cumberland 
 made a fresh exertion of his benevolence, and 
 strove to excite the reader's good will for an itine- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 517 
 
 rant methodist preacher ; an individual whom it 
 has long been the custom to regard with a mixture 
 of ridicule and contempt. By giving him active 
 and essential piety, by making him humane, zea- 
 lous in doing good, and respectable in conduct, he 
 has certainly succeeded in displaying one methodist 
 whom it is possible to esteem. His quotations 
 from scripture are copious and appropriate : but I 
 am afraid they are sometimes irreverent. 
 
 Lady Crowbery is a very pleasingly drawn. Her 
 husband is a wretch whose end no one pities. 
 Isabella, as the heroine of the tale, has received 
 all the author's most elaborate touches and is, in 
 many parts, pourtrayed with great felicity. But her 
 filial piety exalts her moral character I fear beyond 
 what it is capable of attaining when attained in 
 opposition to vehement and resistless love. She has 
 many fascinating qualities, though I should not 
 think her so dangerous to the peace of an admirer as 
 Lady Louisa G. or her friend Lady Jane in Arundel. 
 
 Of Zachary Cawdle I probably think less fa- 
 vourably than the author, for he says, in his Me- 
 moivs, that he drew him con amove. He is only 
 one of a species : he will never constitute a dis- 
 tinct genus. He sometimes amuses, but when he 
 does, it is rather by exaggeration than by any dis- 
 play of nature. His wife, Jemima, might have 
 been omitted, and the narrative had proceeded just 
 as regularly. If she was introduced only to shew 
 
518 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 that faith without good works, is merely a holy 
 cheat, a sanctimonious covering to hide innate de- 
 pravity and to cloke the basest actions, the labour 
 was superfluous. Every one knew that who knew 
 how to join two propositions. 
 
 Fanny Claypole is drawn with some skill. The 
 unbridled fury of her passions leads her, on all 
 occasions, to violent excesses, and whether she 
 loves or hates she is equally the object of our 
 terror and aversion. Her father is another in- 
 stance of Cumberland's willingness to degrade the 
 established clergy by every meanness that can sully 
 without destroying the man. Like Joseph Arundel^ 
 he is a despicable sycophant, who fawns, crawls, 
 and licks the dust to obtain some paltry, mercenary 
 end. But is it necessary, is it prudent or patriotic, 
 to exhibit such vices in the character of a clergy- 
 man ? I do not say they are not to be found in the 
 members of the church: but when it is considered 
 how potent opinion is and how much of our re- 
 verence for the most sacred institutions is founded 
 upon that frail and fickle basis, it may be justly 
 questioned whether much political evil may not 
 eventually result from the too great freedom of 
 satire in holding up the established ministers of 
 religion to insult and derision. AYithout being 
 fastidious, also, I may be permitted to hint that 
 such willingness to this kind of freedom is some- 
 what remarkable in the son and great-grandson of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 519 
 
 a bishop, and in a man who often employed his 
 pen to combat the enemies of the church, or to 
 promote the duties of its members. 
 
 The episode of Blackford is well conducted, 
 and is made subservient to a moral purpose. 
 Henry, also, is displayed to great advantage in his 
 conduct on the occasion. He does not do more, in- 
 deed, than many, i t is to be hoped,would have done ; 
 but what he does is so much beyond the reach of 
 common integrity that the display of it seems to 
 give a nevvimpulse to virtue. 
 
 Cumberland appears to have been aware of his 
 superiority in depicting the passion of love. In 
 the initial chapter to the first book he says, " one 
 thing however, there is for me to do, that cannot 
 be dispensed with though I shall probably hold it 
 off as long as I can. I must make love, and I am 
 far from sure, I shall make it in a style to please 
 my readers. I wish to my heart I knew what 
 sort of love they best like ; for there are so many 
 patterns, I am puzzled how to choose what may 
 please them. I have been sometimes told that the 
 author of Arundel was not far from the butt: if so, 
 I hope I am as good a marksman as he is/' 
 
 This, indeed, is playful raillery, but truth is at 
 the bottom : and Cumberland might confidently 
 have assumed to himself that excellence which he 
 seems only to surmise. Yet, he could sometimes 
 degenerate into rant, as when a gentleman ex- 
 claims, who is listening to Isabella^ " What voice 
 
,520 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 do I hear ? What vision do I behold ? She 
 breathes through rows of pearls over beds of roses. 
 'Tis an enchantment ! She will vanish presently, 
 and I shall start out of ray trance/' 
 
 Surely the author was in a trance when he wrote 
 such unnatural bombast. He rarely, however, 
 offends in this way. 
 
 Cumberland's opinion, as to his excellence of 
 style, was settled long before he wrote his Me- 
 moirs. In the first chapter of the twelfth book of 
 Henri/, he hints that the critic will not find much 
 to reprehend in his diction, but begs, that if a blow 
 be struck, it may be struck with justice. It would 
 be idle repetition to dispute this opinion with the 
 same minuteness as I have done in the Observer; 
 the reader must candidly believe my power to do 
 it, or remove his doubts by looking into the vo- 
 lumes himself. I will only instance one error. 
 The ninth chapter of the last book has this inter- 
 rogatory at the head of it, 
 
 " Why is earth and ashes proud?'* 
 
 In dismissing this novel from my notice, I would 
 finally observe, that it is one which must always 
 be read with pleasure; that the contexture of the 
 fable is artfully woven ; that the characters are, 
 most of them, skilfully drawn ; that the situations 
 are often pathetic and interesting ; that the atten- 
 tion of the reader is never suffered to lapse into 
 indifference, and that the sentiments which it con- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 691 
 
 tains are commonly friendly to virtue and social 
 happiness. Its impurities I have already stigma- 
 tised : and Cumberland himself does not disdain 
 to acknowledge his transgressions in his Memoirs, 
 where he says, " if, in my zeal to exhibit virtue 
 triumphant over the most tempting allurements, I 
 have painted those allurements in too vivid co- 
 lours, I am sorry, and ask pardon of all those who 
 thought the moral did not heal the mischief." 
 
 Let me anticipate the progress of my narrative 
 here, and close this chapter with some brief obser- 
 vations upon the last novel that Cumberland wrote, 
 his John De Lancaster, in three volumes, and 
 published in 1809. This work he announced 
 with some degree of pomp in his Memoirs, but 
 when it appeared the public received it with cool- 
 ness. It was not only inferior to both his preced- 
 ing productions, but inferior also, to many similar 
 compositions of inferior writers. 
 
 *It deserves, indeed, to be distinguished from 
 the common herd of novels, for it has more learn- 
 ing than an ordinary novelist can display ; and 
 Cumberland seems to have relied upon that learn- 
 ing, and upon his name, for its success. 
 
 The plot is very simple, and not very interest- 
 ing. Events are too easily anticipated. There is 
 no art, no dexterity, in the developement of the 
 
 * Some of the opinions here delivered upon John de Lancaster, are 
 copied from an account which I had occasion to give of it, in a periodical 
 publication, when it first appeared. I have added a few others upon a recent 
 perusal. 
 
692 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 catastrophe, or in the texture of the incidents. Nor 
 is this radical deficiency of fable compensated by 
 any elegance of diction, by any elevation of sen- 
 timent, or by any accuracy in the delineation of the 
 characters. None of them are consistently drawn, 
 though several are well sketched. Philip de Lan- 
 caster is, perhaps, the best. Robert de Lancaster 
 is learned, vapid, and digressive, in the first vo- 
 lume ; in the second and third he loses some of 
 these qualities, and becomes more natural and 
 more interesting. 
 
 I am sorry to find Cumberland, at a much later 
 period of his life, again violating decorum in some 
 of his descriptions. He does not, indeed, offend 
 so much, as in Henry, but he offends more 
 than can be justified. There is something pecu- 
 liarly disgusting in the indelicacy of an old man. 
 The exhausted pruriency of imagination, which it 
 betrays, is highly offensive. I will not specify the 
 instances that are in my memory, but will dismiss 
 the subject with observing, that the entire account 
 of the hero's birth is narrated with a studied coarse- 
 ness of delineation. 
 
 This work exhibits evident tokens of mental 
 decay. In Arundel, and in Henry, the love scenes 
 were described with an ardent and impressive glow 
 of composition ; but here they are coldly and 
 affectedly wrought up. Cumberland knew it. " I 
 am ill at these descriptions," says he ; "I confess 
 it. Seventy years and seven, with clouds that 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 523 
 
 hang upon my setting sun, will chill the brain, 
 that should devise scenes and descriptions warm 
 with youthful love/' This is true ; and Cumber- 
 land, doubtless, believed the following no less so. 
 " Still, the chaste maiden/' he continues, " and the 
 prudent wife, shall turn these leaves over with no 
 revolting hand, nor blush for having read them." 
 To this I answer, that she who can read these vo- 
 lumes through, and not blush, or feel cause for 
 blushing, has lost all true modesty. Let me not 
 be thought fastidiously nice. It is only when a 
 man tells me he is immaculate that I am provoked 
 to point out the spot which I would else have shut 
 my eyes upon ; and I willingly confess that, com- 
 pared to some passages in Henry, John de Lan- 
 caster is purity itself. Yet, there are certain allu- 
 sions in it which no really modest female would 
 venture to read aloud in the presence of a man, and 
 that is the true test. 
 
 In the phlegmatic character of Philip de Lan- 
 caster, Cumberland seems only to have expanded 
 the sketch which he gave, in the Observer, of Ned 
 Drowsy. 
 
 There is an affecting appeal in the third volume 
 to the feelings of the reader. He speaks of the 
 death of his grandson, a midshipman, and who, he 
 thought, had been the victim of ill-usage. The 
 question was referred to some of our tribunals as I 
 remember, but their decision did not corroborate 
 the opinion of Cumberland. From this subject he 
 
524 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 makes a transition to his " beloved daughter," to 
 whom he dedicated his Memoirs, and to whom he 
 also dedicates this work ; " for these repeated tes- 
 timonies of my -love," he pathetically adds, " are 
 all the inheritance I can bequeath her, all my hard 
 fortune hath not wrested from me." 
 
 His diction was not much improved when he 
 wrote John de Lancaster. It is often vulgar, 
 sometimes ungrammatical, and sometimes obscure. 
 His attempts at wit or humour are as unsuccessful 
 as in his happiest days of mental vigour. I will 
 adduce one instance : 
 
 " We^may literally say, that it (a morning visit) 
 was made upon the spur of the occasion, and this 
 we hope will be an apology for our introducing 
 the baronet in boots." 
 
 It is amusing to see with what unwearied assi- 
 duity Cumberland sought to propitiate the critics. 
 In the outset of his career he dared them with a 
 proud defiance ; but he soon discovered who suf- 
 fered most in the contest, and then he strove to 
 soothe them by blandishments and courtesy. In 
 John de Lancaster he openly solicits them to be- 
 friend his book and to promote its sale. "As I know 
 some of them," he says, " to be fair and honour- 
 able gentlemen, I hope they will recollect how 
 often I have been useful to them, in the sale of 
 their publications, and assist me now with their 
 good word in the circulation of De Lancaster." 
 
 I am afraid this request was not very cordially 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 525 
 
 attended to, or that Cumberland believed them 
 to possess a power they do not. His book lan- 
 guished to a second edition, and there, I imagine, 
 it will remain. It is, in many parts, too erudite for 
 the unlearned without being deep enough for the 
 learned, and its familiar scenes which might please 
 the common reader, want spriteliness and anima- 
 tion. The lethargic influence of age seems to have 
 impeded his faculties while he wrote; and if he 
 wrote from necessity, who but must deplore the 
 embarrassments that obscured the closing hours of 
 a life so assiduously employed in the labours of 
 literature ? 
 
 Necessitas, cujus cursus transversi impetum 
 Voluerunt multi effugere, pauci potuerunt, 
 Quo me detrusit poene extremis sensibus? 
 
>26 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 
 
 CHAP. XXIV. 
 
 Cumberland writes the poem of Calvary. — Dr. 
 Drake injudiciously endeavours to rank it with 
 the Paradise Lost. — Examination of this 
 claim, and a further examination of Dr. Drake's 
 competency as a critic. — The merits of the poem 
 briefly stated. — Cumberland? s account of its com- 
 position. — Writes a tract upon Christianity, which 
 commences with too much levity; but the other 
 parts good. — The conclusion of it extracted for 
 its animation. 
 
 Cumberland had now appeared in various de- 
 partments of literature, and in most of them with 
 success. He had distinguished himself as a dra- 
 matist, as an essayist, and as a novelist, and he 
 had displayed powers of very respectable quality 
 in other paths of exertion. But his ambition led 
 him to take a bolder flight, and he attempted the 
 arduous composition of an epic poem. Arduous it 
 certainly was, in him, for it forced him into imme- 
 diate and unavoidable comparison with Milton ; a 
 comparison from which few can expect to retire 
 but with discomfiture. 
 
 The Calvary of Cumberland is a poem which 
 no judicious critic will venture to place on an 
 equality, either as a whole, or in any of its parts, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5%J 
 
 with the Paradise Lost of Milton. This is a pre* 
 eminence it can never merit, nor ever will obtain. 
 A mighty chasm separated the genius of the one 
 from the other ; nor do I hesitate to pronounce, 
 that the highest flights of Cumberland's muse 
 barely excel the lowest of Milton's. I will not 
 institute a comparison between them, for it would 
 be tacitly acknowledging a parallelism, of whose 
 existence I can never be persuaded. I would as 
 willingly compare him with Shakspeare as a dra- 
 matist, as with Milton as an epic poet. 
 
 In this opinion, however, I differ from a gentle- 
 man who has highly praised Cumberland's Cal- 
 vary, and whom Cumberland has highly praised 
 in return. These are literary courtesies very custo- 
 mary, but without any weight in deciding an ab- 
 stract point of criticism. 
 
 Dr. Drake, in his Literary Hours, a work quali- 
 fied to afford some amusement in a vacant mo- 
 ment, has entered upon an elaborate and diffuse 
 examination of this poem, and with as much 
 solemnity and circumstantial inquiry, as Addison 
 bestowed upon the Paradise Lost. He considers 
 it under all the usual properties of an epic poem, 
 and very gravely pronounces that it is complete in 
 its fable, m its characters, and in its sentiments. 
 Aristotle himself could not have decided the ques- 
 tion with a greater assumption of infallibility. 
 
 Dr. Drake, after some introductory observations 
 upon Milton, Klopstock, and Young, whom ha 
 
,528 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 calls " three divine bards/' though it appears he 
 understands nothing of the German poet's divi- 
 nity, but what the imperfect glimpses of a transla- 
 tion afford, proceeds to inform his readers that 
 the " Calvary of Mr. Cumberland is a work imbued 
 with the genuine spirit of Milton, and destined, 
 therefore, most probably, to immortality/' To 
 this induction, indeed, no one will object, who 
 admits the premiss, but as I do not admit the pre- 
 miss I must be permitted to doubt whether pos- 
 terity will know much of Calvary, except as it 
 may be remembered among the collected produc- 
 tions of the author. 
 
 Encomiastic criticism, however pleasing to a 
 candid mind, is not always the positive evidence 
 of a strong one. To praise is easy, because it is 
 generally received without examination ; and be- 
 cause it is less difficult to find pleasure in medio- 
 crity, than to shew in what mediocrity consists. 
 Whoever has been attentive to the history of mo- 
 dern literature, will have observed numerous in- 
 stances of boundless panegyric, bestowed, by con- 
 temporary writers, upon works which are now 
 consigned to merited oblivion. Cumberland is 
 not the first who has been told by a good-natured 
 friend, or by an incompetent critic, that he wrote 
 with air the fire of Milton and Shakspeare ; nor 
 is he the last who will find that the voice of kind- 
 ness, and the voice of justice, pronounce two dif- 
 ferent j udgments. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 52§. 
 
 It is certainly possible, nay, I am willing to 
 think it probable, that Dr. Drake believed, and 
 does still believe, that the poem of Calvary has in 
 it many qualities which entitle it to be compared 
 with Paradise Lost. There is nothing extraordi- 
 nary in this, because we are familiar with para- 
 doxes just as extraordinary. The decisions of 
 taste are reducible to no demonstration, and Dr. 
 Drake may at least justify his by the example of 
 Johnson, who thought Dryden's Ode to Mrs. Anne 
 Killigrew, the noblest* that our language has ever 
 produced. If, therefore, a critic of Johnson's saga- 
 city, could be seduced into an opinion like this, 
 why may not Dr. Drake say that Cumberland 
 writes like Milton ? 
 
 To say it, however, is not to prove it, and I 
 wish Dr. Drake could have done more than say 
 it. He does, indeed, attempt to do more, for he 
 quotes, with profusion, those passages from Cal- 
 vary which he deems not inferior to any in Para- 
 dise Lost. Nor is this all. He opposes Cumber- 
 land to Milton in parallel cases, where they both, 
 exhibit the same character, and he avows that, on. 
 some occasions, Cumberland excels Milton. I need 
 not tell the reader, that my opinion is contrary to 
 this ; and if he requires to have his own settled on 
 the same basis, he has nothing to do but to inspect 
 the selections of Dr. Drake. I doubt, indeed, if 
 any one ever concurred with him in this decision, 
 except Cumberland himself. 
 
 I'M 
 
53Q LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Dr. Drake is fond of figurative language and un- 
 meaning epithets. Not contented with elevating 
 Cumberland to an equality with Milton, he takes 
 another flight, and raises him to a level with 
 Shakspeare. " The speeches of the demons, in 
 the first book/' says he, " and those of Mammon 
 and Iscariot in the second and third, are woven in 
 the loom of Shakspeare, and have imbibed much of 
 his colouring and spirit/' This is surely too much. 
 I am as willing, however, that Cumberland should 
 bte the corrivaj of Shakspeare as of Milton ; but I 
 am afraid Dr. Drake has unintentionally proved 
 the only way in which he can be said to have 
 woven in the loom of Shakspeare, by selecting the 
 passages which he has adopted, almost literally^ 
 from that writer. 
 
 Dr. Drake has devoted nearly a hundred pages 
 to the task of proving Cumberland's affinity to 
 Milton and Shakspeare, and of displaying his own 
 powers as a critic. How successfully he has at- 
 tained the first object I have already declared my 
 opinion : and I fear he has succeeded no better, in 
 the second. I do not wish to speak disrespectfully 
 of Dr. Drake, for I have heard that his private 
 character is amiable; but I must freely own, that 
 I think him wholly incompetent to the office of 
 general and abstract criticism. His papers upon 
 Cumberland's Calvary are written with that quiet 
 mediocrity of talent, with that easy accuracy of 
 familiar truths, and with that tone of insipid talk 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 531 
 
 which might be endured by a young man yet new 
 to critical disquisition, or by any man with a head 
 capable only of reading without thinking. There 
 are, in his Literary Hours, however, some pleasing 
 tales, sometimes pleasingly told, but they are more 
 frequently disfigured by a finical affectation of 
 style ; by a diction oppressed and obscured by 
 metaphorical confusion, unmeaning epithets, and 
 superlative phrases of rapture. 
 
 His papers on Cumberland, however, are not 
 without their utility. The selections which he 
 has made from Calvary^ though they do not 
 prove what they are intended to prove, comprise, 
 perhaps, the very best passages in the poem, 
 and he who has not read it, but wishes to know r 
 by what excellences Cumberland is entitled to be 
 regarded as the rival of Milton, may better satisfy 
 that curiosity by perusing these concentrated 
 efforts of his genius, than by perusing the whole 
 poem. 
 
 Calvary is certainly a very pleasing production. 
 The versification is harmonious, the images are 
 often poetical, and the action is one of unfailing 
 interest. A general air of easy elegance pervades 
 the whole, an unconstrained fluency of language 
 which is very agreeable to the ear, but which 
 makes very little impression on the mind. Some 
 parts too are laboured into dignity and animation, 
 but the reader is always unmoved. He lays down 
 the book without a desire to resume it, and when he 
 
 2 M9 
 
532 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 does resume it, his interest in the narrative is 
 never so strong that he is unwilling to quit it. 
 
 This defect may be partly attributed, perhaps, 
 to the nature of the subject. No curiosity is ex- 
 cited because we know what is to be told ; we are 
 familiar with all the principal events, and antici- 
 pate the catastrophe. This inherent defect of 
 plan could be compensated only by the highest 
 efforts of poetry, by the introduction of all those 
 striking descriptions, those sublime flights, and 
 those exquisite moral touches of sentiment, with 
 which Milton has relieved the radical imperfection 
 of his fable, but which were wholly beyond the 
 attainment of Cumberland. His action proceeds 
 with an even tenor of narration ; and the utmost 
 effect, which I believe the poem capable of pro- 
 ducing, is that of a pleasing apathy of mind, a gen- 
 tle acquiescence, undisturbed either by any tumul- 
 tuous throes of delight, or by any harsh provoca- 
 tions of disgust. 
 
 Such is my opinion of Calvary, delivered from 
 unfeigned conviction, and without any anxiety as 
 to its reception. They who differ from me may 
 probably think it a vain or a foolish one, as I perhaps 
 should theirs, if I knew it as explicitly ; Dr. Drake 
 must think it so, for he thinks the poem embued 
 with the genuine spirit of Milton ;^but as I have 
 always been unwilling to form my notions upon 
 those of others, without the conviction of my rea- 
 son, I shall be contented to bear any interpretation 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5%3>, 
 
 which can be put upon this judgment, till I feel a 
 sufficient motive to alter it. 
 
 In the Supplement^ which Cumberland pub- 
 lished to his Memoirs , he very naturally takes an 
 opportunity of thanking Dr. Drake, whom he 
 justly calls his " kind reviewer," for the praises 
 he bestowed upon Calvary ; but I believe he con- 
 ceded, in the warmth of his judgment, a power to 
 that critic's commendation, which no one but the 
 object of it will be willing to allow, when he says 
 that he obtained for his poem, " a place amongst 
 our British Classics/' Let the event decide. 
 
 Cumberland seems to have regarded this work with 
 so much affection, and has detailed its origin and 
 progress with so much minuteness, that the reader 
 would hardly consider me excuseable if I omitted 
 to insert the account here : 
 
 " The mental gratification which the exercise of 
 fancy, in the act of composition, gives me, has, 
 (with the exception only of the task I am at pre- 
 sent engaged in), led me to that inordinate con- 
 sumption of paper, of which much has been profit- 
 less, much unseen, and very much of that which 
 has been seen, would have been more worthy of 
 the world, had I bestowed more blotting upon it 
 before 1 committed it to the press ; yet I am now 
 about to mention a poem not the most imper- 
 fect of my various productions, of which the first 
 manuscript copy was the only one, and that, per- 
 haps, the fairest I had ever put out of my hands. — ■ 
 
534 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Heroic verse has been always more familiar to me, 
 and more easy in point of composition, than prose ; 
 my thoughts flow more freely in metre, and I can 
 oftentimes fill a page with less labour and less 
 time in verse of that description, than it costs 
 me to adjust and harmonise a single period in 
 prose, to my entire satisfaction. 
 
 " The work I now allude to is my poem of Cal- 
 vary, and the gratification, of which I have been 
 speaking, mixed, as I trust, with worthier and 
 more serious motives, led me to that undertaking. 
 It had never been my hard lot to write, as 
 many of my superiors have been forced to do, 
 task-work for a bookseller, it was therefore my 
 custom, as it is with voluptuaries of another 
 description, to fly from one pursuit to another for 
 the greater zest which change and contrast gave to 
 my intellectual pleasures. I had, as yet, done 
 nothing in the epic way, except my juvenile 
 attempt, of which I have given an extract, and I 
 applied myself to the composition of Calvary, with 
 uncommon ardour; I began it in the winter, and, 
 rising every morning some hours before day-light, 
 soon dispatched the whole poem of eight books, at 
 the average of full fifty lines in a day, of which I 
 kept a regular account, marking each day's work 
 upon my manuscript. I mention this because it is 
 a fact; but I am not so mistaken as to suppose 
 that any author can be entitled to take credit to 
 himself for the little care he has bestowed upon his 
 compositions. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. . 535 
 
 " It was not till I had taken up Milton's immortal 
 poem of Paradise Lost, and read it studiously and 
 completely through, that I brought the plan of 
 Calvary to a consistency, and resolved to venture 
 on the attempt. I saw such aids, in point of cha- 
 racter, incident, and diction, such facilities, held 
 out by the sacred historians, as encouraged me to 
 hope I might aspire to introduce my humble 
 Muse upon that hallowed ground without pro- 
 faning it. 
 
 " As for the difficulties, which, by the nature of 
 his subject Milton had to encounter, I perceived 
 them to be such as nothing but the genius of Mil- 
 ton could surmount ; that he has failed in some 
 instances cannot be denied, but it is matter of 
 wonder and admiration, that he has miscarried in 
 so few. The noble structure he has contrived to 
 raise with the co-operation of two human beings 
 only, and those the first created of the human 
 race, strikes us with astonishment ; but at the 
 same time it forces him upon such frequent 
 flights beyond the bounds of nature, and obliges 
 him in so great a degree to depend upon the 
 agency of supernatural beings, of whose persons 
 we have no prototype, and of whose operations, 
 offices, and intellectual powers, we are incompe- 
 tent to form any adequate conception, that it is 
 not to be wondered at, if there are parts and pas- 
 sages in that divine poem, that we either pass 
 over by choice, or cannot read without regret. 
 
536 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 " Upon a single text in scripture he has described 
 ■a Battle in Heaven, in most respects tremendously 
 sublime, in others painfully reminding us how 
 impossible it is for man's limited imagination to 
 find weapons for immortal spirits, or conceive an 
 army of rebellious angels employing instruments of 
 human invention upon the vain impossible idea, 
 that their material artillery could shake the imma- 
 terial throne of the One Supreme Being, the Al- 
 mighty Creator and Disposer of them and the uni- 
 verse. Accordingly, when we are presented with 
 the description of Christ, the meek Redeemer of 
 mankind, going forth in a chariot to the battle, 
 brilliant although the picture is, it dazzles, and we 
 start from it revolted by the blaze. But when the 
 poet, deeming himself competent to find words for 
 the Almighty, contrives a conference between the 
 First and Second Persons in the Trinity, we are 
 compelled to say with Pope — . 
 
 That Gbd the Father turns a school-divine. 
 
 " I must entreat my readers not so to misconceive 
 my meaning as to suppose me vain enough to 
 think, that by noticing these spots in Milton's 
 glorious sun, I am advancing my dim lamp to any 
 the most distant competition with it. I have no 
 other motive for mentioning them, but to convince 
 the patrons of these memoirs, that I did not at- 
 tempt the composition of a sacred epic, where he 
 must for ever stand so decidedly pre-eminent, till 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5*37 
 
 by comparing the facilities of my subject with the 
 amazing difficulties of his, I had found a bow pro- 
 portioned to my strength, and (lid not presume to 
 bend it till I was certified of its flexibility. 
 
 " It could not possibly be overlooked by me, 
 that in taking -the Death of Christ for my subject, 
 I had the advantage of dating my poem at a point 
 of time, the most awful in the whole history of the 
 world, the most pregnant with sublime events, and 
 the most fully fraught with grand and interesting 
 characters ; that I had those characters, and those 
 events, so pointedly delineated and so impressiveLy 
 described by the inspired historians, as to leave 
 little else for me to do, but to restrain invention, 
 and religiously to follow in the path that was 
 chalked out to me. Accordingly, I trust there 
 will be found very little of the audacity of fancy in 
 the composition of Calvary, and few sentiments or 
 expressions ascribed to the Saviour, which have 
 not the sanction and authority of the sacred records. 
 When he descends into Hades, I have endeavoured 
 to avail myself of what has been revealed to us for 
 those conjectural descriptions, and I hope I have 
 not far outstepped discretion, or heedlessly in- 
 dulged a wild imagination ; for though I venture- 
 upon untouched ground, presuming to unfold a 
 scene, which mystery has involved in darkness, 
 yet I have the visions of the Saint at Fatmos to 
 hold up a light to me, and assist me in my efforts 
 to pervade futurity. 
 
3S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 " My first publication of Calvary, in quarto, 
 had so languid a sale, that it left me with the in- 
 convenient loss of at least one hundred pounds, 
 and the discouraging conviction, that the public 
 did not concern itself about the poem, or the 
 poem maker. I felt at the same time a proud indig- 
 nant consciousness, that it claimed a better treat- 
 ment: and whilst I called to mind the true and 
 brotherly devotion I had ever borne to the fame of 
 my contemporaries, I was stung by their neglect ; 
 and having laid my poem on the Death of my Re- 
 4eemer at the feet of my Sovereign, which, for 
 aught that ever reached my knowledge, he might 
 or might not have received by the hand of his li- 
 brarian, I had nothing to console me but the re- 
 flection, that there would, perhaps, be a tribu- 
 nal that would deal out justice to me, when I 
 could not be a gainer by it, and speak favourably 
 of my performance, when I could not hear their 
 praises/' 
 
 The conclusion of this extract shows what was 
 Cumberland's secret opinion of his poem ; and he 
 probably thought (at least Dr. Drake would have 
 whispered it to him,) that, like the Paradise Lost, 
 it was destined to languish for awhile in obscurity, 
 only to burst forth, afterwards, with greater lustre, 
 and to acquire a more splendid destiny. 
 
 When Burke published his pamphlet on the 
 French revolution, Cumberland was one among 
 the many who considered it with admiration. He 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 539 
 
 was not content with silently approving, however ; 
 he wrote a letter to Burke, communicating his high 
 sense of its merit, to which an answer was politely 
 returned. In this answer Burke expresses his sa- 
 tisfaction at being applauded by a man so distin- 
 guished in literature as Cumberland, and " in so 
 great a variety of its branches/' 
 
 To this last expression Cumberland afterwards 
 alludes with a just consciousness of its truth, and 
 proceeds to exemplify it, dwelling with a pleasing 
 remembrance on that division of his labours which 
 he had appropriated to the services of religion. — 
 He mentions the composition of as many sermons 
 as would make a large volume, some of which have 
 been delivered from the pulpit. He rendered also 
 fifty of the psalms of David into English metre; 
 and he wrote a religious and argumentative Tract, 
 which I have already alluded to, entitled, " A few 
 plain Reasons why we should believe in Christ, 
 and adhere to his Religion ; addressed to the Pa- 
 trons and Professors of the New Philosophy." 
 
 There is in this pamphlet much solidity of argu- 
 ment, and a becoming warmth of persuasion. — 
 Novelty, either in the opinions expressed, or in 
 the mode of enforcing or illustrating them, could 
 hardly be hoped ; and the good to be expected 
 was that which might result from concentrating 
 the popular opinions on the subjects discussed,'and 
 urging them upon the attention by a forcible bre- 
 vity of application. This object Cumberland seems 
 
340 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 very steadily to have kept in view ; but I could 
 wish that the introductory paragraphs had been 
 written with less levity. In a serious, argumenta- 
 tive address, which professes to defend the great 
 cause of Christianity, and to convert infidelity by 
 the weight and importance of its reasonings, it is 
 unbefitting the subject to indulge in a playful irony 
 of language, which may amuse men indeed, but 
 will never convince them. The Tract commences 
 with this sort of buffoonery : 
 
 THE NEW PHILOSOPHY ! 
 
 " Though I doubt not but your illuminated un- 
 derstandings are stored with many exquisitely in- 
 genious reasons, why this our country should no 
 longer retain the character of a christian country, 
 yet I hope you will in candour be pleased to let a 
 plain man offer you a few plain reasons why he 
 conceives it should. Old fashioned folks have 
 thought that men are not found to be worse sub- 
 jects to their king, worse friends to their country, 
 or worse members of society, for having some sense 
 of religion ; and the same old fashioned folks have 
 habituated themselves to believe, that, anfongst 
 all the religions in the world, a better could not 
 be taken up than that which we already possess/' 
 
 This is bad enough ; but the following is worse, 
 because it is intended for argument, while it is, in 
 fact, nothing but banter and burlesque : 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. .541 
 
 *f I declare to you, gentlemen, without going 
 out of my way to compliment you, I consider your 
 word to be altogether as good as you r oath, for 
 your honour is at least as good as your religion ; 
 and, as human judges and juries are all you stand 
 in awe of, so long as you can keep out of the ca- 
 lendar, you can have nothing to apprehend from 
 your consciences, having put those active thief- 
 catchers to complete silence, and made their office 
 a perfect sinecure. You can have no solicitude 
 about your country, your friends, or your poste- 
 rity, &c." 
 
 I do not think that the cause of truth was likely 
 to be much advanced by such arguments as these. 
 
 With the exception of these passages, however, 
 the address is written with great propriety, and 
 with a due sense of its importance. The conclud- 
 ing paragraphs I will extract, for they have much 
 energy, and have perhaps the most eloquence of 
 any thing Cumberland ever wrote. 
 
 " Being now near the end of my days, I implore 
 God to endow my beloved countrymen with a right 
 understanding of his mercy; and I conjure them, 
 as they value their happiness, their dignity, their 
 freedom, their comforts in this life, and their hopes 
 of eternal blessedness in the life to come, to beware 
 of those ensnaring principles which the enemies of 
 their peace are assiduously employed to propagate. 
 Stand for your God, my friends, and he will stand 
 for you ; put faith into your souls to protect your 
 
5^% LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 altars, and God will put courage into your hearts 
 to defend your coasts. Be steady to your faith, be 
 true to your country, be loyal to your king ; he is 
 stedfast in his duty, let us be firm in ours ; he has 
 never broke faith with us, we will not break faith 
 with him. 
 
 " We will rally round his throne, our laws, our 
 liberties, and constitution, if the enemy shall in- 
 vade us ; we will rally round our altars, our reli- 
 gion, and our God, if they send their incendiaries 
 amongst us ; and we will hold in sovereign con- 
 tempt those frenchified fops in philosophy, who 
 would undermine our principles, and when they 
 have degraded our understandings to the despica- 
 ble level of their own, would deliver us over to be 
 slaves and abjects to the domineering tyranny of a 
 republic, who, having washed their hands in the 
 blood of their earthly sovereign, have filled up the 
 measure of their iniquity by renouncing their God. 
 All those wretches, unworthy of the name of Bri- 
 tons, who, like footpads in the cloaks of philoso- 
 phers, lurk about the outskirts of society, that from 
 their hiding holes they may come forth, and give 
 the stab to the religion of their rejected Saviour, 
 are the sneaking emissaries, the insidious cowardly 
 abettors of our inveterate and envious enemy. — 
 Again I conjure you ; I implore you to beware of 
 them; they will civilly, circuitously, cunningly 
 attempt to circumvent you ; they will write no- 
 vels, histories, dramas, to corrupt you ; they will 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 543 
 
 dress up vicious characters in the borrowed clothes 
 of virtue, paint adultresses in amiable but false 
 colours, to engage your pity, and exhibit seduc- 
 tion, intemperance, impurity, profaneness, even 
 atheism itself, in lights so fallaciously attractive, 
 as may surprise your passions, and in the unguarded 
 moments of weakness insinuate their own diabolical 
 principles into your incautious hearts. Once more 
 I beseech you to beware of them, and sum up my 
 most earnest wishes for your prosperity in the fol- 
 lowing prayer: 
 
 " O God, all gracious and all good, on whose 
 protecting providence we rest our hope, now in this 
 evil time save us we most humbly beseech thee, 
 and amidst the terrors of thy judgments, when tri- 
 bulation is come upon the earth, send down thy 
 Holy Spirit upon us, that turning from the wick- 
 edness of our ways, and seeking Thee, in whom 
 alone there is salvation, we may obtain remission 
 of our sins, and be received, as hitherto we have 
 been, into thy most merciful favour and protec- 
 tion. Spare us, O Lord, spare us ; And if it be 
 thy will to send upon the earth thy three sore evils, 
 the sword, the pestilence, and the famine, pour 
 not the full vial of thy wrath upon us ; correct us, 
 Lord, but not in thine anger, lest thou bring us to 
 nothing. We acknowledge and bewail our offences ; 
 we lament the influence of those principles, which, 
 setting all authority divine and human at defiance, 
 are spreading infidelity over the whole christian 
 
3|& LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 world ; and with horror we confess, that even in 
 this our soil those poisonous seeds have taken root. 
 Purify our hearts, O God, we beseech thee ; send 
 the health of thy saving grace amongst us, and 
 enable us to escape that plague, more terrible than 
 all which can afflict the body, that great offence 
 which can destroy the soul. Direct the councils, 
 O Lord, we pray thee, and prosper the endeavours 
 of our gracious Sovereign, and those who are in 
 authority under him, for the welfare of these king- 
 doms ; and keep alive in the hearts of thy faithful 
 people that sense of thy true religion, that zeal for 
 thy worship, and respect for the church established, 
 as may for ever frustrate the devices, and disap- 
 point the malice of all such, who either openly re- 
 vile thy name, or secretly conspire to ensnare the 
 understandings and pervert the minds of weak and 
 unstable men. And, O Lord God omnipotent, in 
 whose hands are the issues of war and peace, we 
 do not presume to search into thy unfathomable 
 councils, nor dare to ask how long thou wilt per- 
 mit the impious and ungodly men, who are a sword 
 of thine, to triumph and lay waste the nations; 
 but fight thou for us, O God, who are armed ia 
 thy defence, and duly conscious from whom alone 
 cometh all victory, are ever prepared to give, not 
 unto ourselves, but unto Thee the glory : Save us, 
 therefore, we beseech thee, from the hands of our 
 enemies : and whilst we praise and magnify thy 
 holy name, for thy past mercies vouchsafed to us, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 545 
 
 withdraw not from us thy help, O God, but send 
 us forth with hearts confirmed in thy faith, and 
 strengthen us for the battle ; so shall the high 
 thoughts of the proud be brought low, and the 
 enemy, who now boasteth himself in his strength, 
 be taught to confess, that in thy name alone there is 
 salvation, and that whoso dwelleth under the de- 
 fence of the Most High, shall abide under the sha- 
 dow of the Almighty/' 
 
 When Cumberland published this tract, he 
 sent a copy of it to the Bishop of London, and to 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Bishop of 
 London politely acknowledged the present : the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury did not. Perhaps his 
 Grace looked first at the introductory paragraph, 
 was displeased with its flippancy, and read no far- 
 ther : the only excuse which can be surmised for 
 such an omission of common courtesy. 
 
 2N 
 
»46 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND 
 
 CHAP. XXV. 
 
 Enumeration of Cumberland* s various plays, pro- 
 duced between 1790 and 1808. — Of these only 
 three deserve to be remembered, the Jew, the 
 Wheel of Fortune, and First Love.— 
 Examination of each of these dramas. — Sheva 
 not skilfully drawn. — Mrs. Inchbald's saga- 
 city.— Penruddock an interesting character. — 
 A lesson for married people recommended by Mrs 4 
 Inch bald. — Cumberland* s great defect as a 
 dramatic writer stated. — The forwardness of his 
 females. 
 
 In enumerating the multifarious literary produc- 
 tions of Cumberland it will not be necessary dis- 
 tinctly to examine each. Many of them have 
 quietly passed into oblivion, and it would be fri- 
 volous to drag them from their quiet slumbers 
 in forgetfulness, to subject them to an ordeal 
 which they are not calculated to encounter, and 
 from which no benefit could be derived. This is 
 particularly true of his numerous dramas, few of 
 which now keep possession of the stage, though it 
 must be confessed that many which are now laid 
 by, might be performed with greater advantage to 
 public taste and morals than those can which are 
 occasionally brought forward. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 547 
 
 These I have noticed with a degree of minuteness 
 in proportion to what I conceived to be their me- 
 rits, and according to the degree in which I ima- 
 gined them to be illustrative of Cumberland's ta- 
 lents. In the great mass of his plays, however, 
 written between the years 1790 and 1808, I know 
 but three that can deserve examination : the Wheel 
 of Fortune, the Jew, and First Love. Of these, 
 the first is frequently performed, the second some- 
 times, and the last never. 
 
 Before I pass to the consideration of these 
 dramas, I will enumerate the names of all that 
 he produced between the periods already men- 
 tioned. 
 
 At the Haymarket theatre was acted the comic 
 opera of Wat Tyler, afterwards altered in conse- 
 quence of some objections by the Lord Chamber- 
 lain, and produced under the name of the Armourer. 
 After this the comedies of the Country Attorney, 
 and the Box Lobby Challenge, and the drama of 
 Don Pedro. For the Box Lobby Challenge a hu- 
 morous epilogue was written by George Colman. 
 
 At Drury-Lane were performed the Jew, the 
 Wheel of Fortune, First Love, the Last of the 
 Family, the Word for Nature, the Dependant, the 
 Eccentric Lover, and the Sailor's Daughter. Also, 
 (in 1808) after the publication of his Memoirs, a 
 comic opera called the Jew of Mogadore, which 
 seemed to be intended as another attempt to 
 awaken kindness and good will towards the in- 
 
 2 N 9 
 
548 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 dividualsof that race. The piece failed, however, 
 and deservedly, for it had neither mirth, wit, nor 
 humour to recommend it. The songs, indeed, 
 were somewhat above the ordinary level of such 
 compositions, but the dullness of the whole hurried 
 it into oblivion. 
 
 At Covent-Garden were acted, The Days of 
 Yore j False Impressions, A Hint to Husbands, and 
 Joanna of Montfaucon. This last piece I do not 
 find any where mentioned by Cumberland ; pro- 
 bably he did not regard it as his own, being only 
 adapted by him for the stage from one of Kotze- 
 bue's dramas. It was acted in 1800, and was 
 published with a prologue and a long preface by 
 Cumberland. In the prologue he alludes to the 
 difficulty of working upon the ideas of another man 
 in the following lines : 
 
 The scenes that soon will open to your view, 
 In their first sketch a foreign author drew j 
 If merely tracing his inventive thought, 
 We set translation's servile task at nought, 
 All who can judge our labour must confess, 
 Originality had made it less. 
 
 The difficulty, indeed, must have been greatly 
 increased to Cumberland, because he was unac- 
 quainted with the German language, and had to 
 trust therefore to the imperfect conceptions of 
 another. It was a task, however, unworthy of his 
 talents, and the success of the undertaking was 
 equal to its merits. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 549 
 
 The comedy of the Jew was the first new piece 
 exhibited on the stage of the late Drury-Lane 
 theatre, after it had splendidly risen from that ruin 
 to which it has been recently devoted a second 
 time, and from which it is now a second time likely 
 to emerge. Its chief object is distinctly avowed 
 by Cumberland to have been the benevolent one 
 of rescuing a persecuted race of beings from that 
 hereditary contempt and degradation which had 
 for ages belonged to them ; and though I do not 
 believe that the notions of my countrymen have 
 been much softened by this comedy, or by the 
 character of Abraham Abrahams in the Observer ^ 
 yet every praise must be conceded to the author's 
 intention. He has, at least, made three Jews 
 amiable and interesting, which might be deemed 
 an extraordinary effort, did we not remember that 
 Gay has done as much for a highway-man. 
 
 Sheva, however, does not exclusively obtain our 
 regard: he is sometimes ridiculous, and sometimes 
 contemptible. When he relieves the distresses of 
 others with a noble disdain of publicity, nay, 
 with a patient endurance of insults as the conse- 
 quence, we admire his virtues; but, in making 
 him penurious with all the absurd excesses of a 
 miser, he too often excites our laughter without 
 improving our good will. He is still exhibited 
 with some of the presumed attributes of his race, 
 but charity is given to him to counterbalance their 
 obloquy. Would not Cumberland have done 
 
550 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 better, however, as his intention really was to 
 exalt that people, had he pourtrayed him such as, 
 I believe, he might have found him in society, 
 liberal, hospitable, kind, and generous, with no 
 other difference in his conduct than what a differ- 
 ence of religious faith must produce ? To make 
 him a miser was to make him despicable : and to 
 make, him a miser only that he might have enough 
 to assist others was to make him unnatural. No 
 man thinks much of his fellow creatures who has 
 learned to forget himself,. and it is in a communion 
 of interests, pleasures, and feelings that one part, 
 and perhaps the greater part, of virtue's delights 
 consists. He who has persuaded himself that he 
 may starve his servants and his own body, to hoard 
 up money for benevolent uses, will soon discover 
 that what he wants himself others may want* and 
 he will keep his gold untouched. By such conduct, 
 too, he fails in the first duty of every man, that to- 
 wards himself and to those under him, and how can 
 he suppose it more worthy to befriend the stranger 
 or the profligate than these ? 
 
 In making Sheva, therefore, a penurious miser, 
 that by such self-denial, he might do more good, 
 Cumberland violated nature ; and in endeavouring 
 to astonish by a combination of characters hitherto 
 known to be immiscible, he weakened the effect 
 of that union, (the jew and the philanthropist) 
 which every man must wish to be not only pro- 
 bable but common. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 55l 
 
 Mrs Inchbald, in her prefatory strictures upon this 
 comedy ;ventures,however,tocommendCumberland 
 for having attained a double purpose in Sheva, that 
 of exhibiting a virtuous Jew and a virtuous miser. 
 A virtuous Jew he has certainly displayed : but a 
 virtuous miser is what no man can display. I 
 wish Mrs. Inchbald had duly weighed the import 
 of this word before she used it. A miser cannot 
 be virtuous : if he be virtuous he is not a miser. 
 A miser is a wretch whose whole soul is centered 
 in the accumulation of wealth, and who would 
 sooner yield the blood from his veins than the gold 
 from his coffers. He has but one idea, one wish, 
 one enjoyment, and that is to hoard : to give is 
 beyond his comprehension. Can such a being be 
 virtuous ? No. But if he is virtuous, if he bestows 
 as freely as he gathers, if he knows " the luxury 
 of doing good," then he cannot be the wretch I 
 have described : he cannot be a miser either to 
 himself or toothers. Cumberland, however, for- 
 getful of this truth, has absurdly endeavoured to 
 depict a contradiction, and Mrs. Inchbald, drawing 
 her notions from the character instead of from life, 
 has applauded it with a contradiction of terms no 
 less absurd. 
 
 Her praise of avarice and her condemnation of 
 poverty in poets, as the result of their own ex- 
 travagance, may be passed over without any reply : 
 but the following positions are new in the phi- 
 losophy of man, and deserve to be transcribed, 
 
559 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 " Indiscriminate profusion has been the dra- 
 matic hero's virtue in every comedy till Cumber- 
 land shewed to the long blinded world, that — the 
 less a man gives to himself, the more, it is probable, 
 he bestows upon his neighbour. This conclusion is 
 deriyed from the certainty that — the less a man loves 
 himself, the more he is affectionate to others." 
 
 The beautiful novelty as well as obscurity of 
 these sentiments, leaves me no hope that I can de- 
 monstrate to the reader their peculiar acuteness : 
 and I shall dismiss them therefore with simply 
 observing, that all social love springs from self- 
 love, and that when a man has lost all self-regard, 
 all self-reverence, he will soon degenerate into 
 misanthropy. It is only while we believe that 
 mankind can be useful or pleasing to ourselves that 
 we are disposed, as by a mutual obligation, to be 
 useful or pleasing to them : but, if we cease to 
 care for ourselves, our dependence upon others is 
 diminished in proportion, and finding that we can 
 do without their aid, we feel no disposition to 
 awaken or uphold their benevolence towards us by 
 bestowing our aid upon them. 
 
 The other characters of this corned}' seem to 
 have been drawn merely as subsidiary to that of 
 Sheva. They serve to fill up the scenes and to 
 carry on the action ; but they leave no trace upon 
 the mind. Jubal is sometimes humorous, indeed, 
 but it is the humour of farce rather than of comedv. 
 The plot is pleasing, and though not intricate, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 553 
 
 sufficiently perplexed to keep the attention awake. 
 
 The Wheel of Fortune was the next drama that 
 Cumberland produced, and its present popularity 
 is the best proof of its excellence. There can be 
 no doubt, indeed, that Mr. Kemble's performance 
 of Penruddock has contributed largely to this 
 popularity, and Cumberland justly observes, that 
 " when so much belongs to the actor, the author 
 must be careful how he arrogates too much to him- 
 self:" but still great merit must be allowed 
 to the writer. 
 
 It has been very commonly believed that Cum- 
 berland derived the general outline of his plot 
 from Kotzeb ue's Misanthropy and Repentance^ a 
 manuscript translation of which was lying in the 
 manager's hands at the time when the Wheel of 
 Fortune was produced. The striking similarity 
 between the chief incidents of the two plays, jus- 
 tified, indeed, this suspicion, and the author of the 
 translation from Kotzebue openly accused Cum- 
 berland of having unfairly pirated from his work. 
 This charge Cumberland as openly denied, and 
 professed, I believe, that he took the hint of his 
 own play from a review of the German one which 
 he accidentally saw. 
 
 Whether, however, he invented or whether he 
 borrowed the plot, it is sufficiently certain that it 
 is one of peculiar interest, and one which no re- 
 petition of performance can hardly rob of its power 
 to please. The chief character, (Penruddock) is 
 
0»54 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 dmwn with some master-stroks of art. That no- 
 bleness of nature which misfortune might obscure 
 but could not subdue, and that sensibility of heart 
 which defied the power of time to eradicate its 
 sorrows, are two features in the composition of 
 this part which Cumberland has pourtrayed with 
 happy skill. Nor ought less praise to be bestowed 
 upon him for the judgment and intimate knowledge 
 of effect which he has displayed in selecting the 
 most interesting situations for the operation of 
 these tw r o feelings, without which their exist- 
 ence would have impressed the mind but faintly. 
 I do not know, indeed, any scene of any modern 
 drama, which is conducted with more dexterity 
 than the interview between Penruddock and young 
 Woodville^ when the former details to the son all 
 the baseness of his father. It is wrought up with 
 consummate skill. 
 
 The misanthropy of Penruddock consists rather 
 in his feelings, than in his practice, towards man- 
 kind. He shuns his fellow-creatures, but he does 
 not hate them. He seeks solitude as the balm of 
 a wounded heart, not as the retirement of a sple- 
 netic one. He hides his sorrows from those whom 
 he does not think can participate them, but to the 
 sorrows of others he is not insensible. A mo- 
 mentary gleam of anticipated revenge draws him 
 from his seclusion, but the native benevolence and 
 kindness of his heart soon subdue all the rough 
 asperities of his disposition, and he who came forth 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND, 556 
 
 into society only to punish and destroy, remains 
 to do good and to enjoy the satisfaction of it. Such 
 is the character of Penruddock, and it must be 
 confessed that it required no ordinary powers to 
 discriminate its qualities as Cumberland has done; 
 for this praise is his alone, Kotzebue's recluse 
 being wholly distinct from Penruddock in its com- 
 ponent parts. 
 
 Mrs. Inchbald, whom to praise is more pleasing 
 than to censure, has written some very sensible 
 observations upon this drama, and paid a due 
 tribute to the excellence of the actor whose per- 
 formance of Penruddock I have already mentioned. 
 " Old men in love/' she truly observes, " have 
 caused more laughter and derision on the stage, 
 than, perhaps, any other common occurrence which 
 the dramatist has copied. Here, astonishing re- 
 verse ! love, in the decline of life, constitutes a 
 character deeply pathetic/' 
 
 All the interest of the play is concentered in this 
 character, and Cumberland seems to have been so 
 well aware of it, that the other personages of the 
 drama are permitted to appear and disappear with- 
 out much concern either in the spectator or reader. 
 Some attempt to relieve this uniform mediocrity 
 has been made, indeed, in the characters of Go- 
 vernor Tempest and Sir David Daw ; but though 
 they amuse on the stage they lose all power of 
 doing it in the closet. Penruddock is the fixed 
 star of this comedy, and the rest of the characters 
 
556 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 are only satellites that move round him with di- 
 minished splendor. They are all drawn, indeed, 
 with chastity of colouring, but they want boldness 
 of expression and design to give them permanent 
 effect. 
 
 The language, throughout, is elegant, and in 
 Penruddock sometimes elevated ; but the senti- 
 ments which he is made to utter are not always 
 without inflation and obscurity. The following 
 reply to Weazle, who reminds him that money can 
 purchase female attractions, has always appeared 
 to me ineffably absurd : 
 
 " I keep a woman," says he : " she visits me 
 every day, makes my bed, sweeps my house, cooks 
 my dinner, and is seventy years of age, — yet I 
 resist her." 
 
 It is remarkable that Cumberland did not enter- 
 tain the same notion of the merit of this drama as 
 the public. To a gentleman who seized an op- 
 portunity of thanking him for the delight he had 
 experienced in reading it, he replied, with some 
 chagrin, " Sir, that is not the best thing I ever 
 
 wrote." 
 
 Such was his opinion ; yet, if I were called upon 
 to pronounce which of his dramas I considered as 
 the best, upon a general estimation of general ex- 
 cellence, I think I should not hesitate to say the 
 Wheel of Fortune, There are, in other of his plays, 
 particular scenes, perhaps, equal to any that may 
 be found in this ; but none of his dramas maintain 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 557 
 
 such a commanding interest in the mind during 
 the whole progress off the action, nor is there, in 
 any of them, any character so felicitously supported 
 throughout as Penruddock. 
 
 The comedy of First Love is greatly inferior 
 either to the Jew or the Wheel of Fortune. The 
 plot is confused rather than artfully intricate: 
 though it is sometimes interesting. The dialogue 
 is dull ; it has neither wit, nor any quick recipro- 
 cation of lively sentiments. The situations are 
 seldom comic ; it approaches decidedly to senti- 
 mental comedy in all the worst features of that 
 species of composition, and which, if it were 
 not redeemed by better instances, I should be 
 tempted to condemn with as much severity as 
 Voltaire. " Je souscris entierement," says he, 
 in a letter to the dramatist, Sumorokof, " a tout 
 ce que vous dites de Moliere et de la comedie lar- 
 moyante, qui, a la honte de la nation, a succede au 
 seul vrai genre comique porte a perfection par 
 T inimitable Moliere.' ■ 
 
 Of the characters of this play Sabina's is the 
 most interesting, and Billy Bustle's the most con- 
 temptible. David Mowbray is well supported in 
 some parts. The broken and disfigured language 
 of Sabina is badly constructed. It is not the im- 
 perfect diction of a foreigner, labouring to express 
 herself in a strange tongue, but the blundering 
 efforts of one who seems to know no language. 
 
 The characters of Mr. and Mrs. Wrangle are 
 
JOS LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 absurdly imagined and absurdly supported. They 
 quarrel without motive, and are kind again without 
 reconciliation. Marriage is embayed with multi- 
 tudinous evils, but I do not think that it contains 
 such frivolous rancour as this. Domestic wrang- 
 lings are common enough in those whom necessity 
 compels to live together, but whom nature has 
 disjoined in every quality of mind and body : yet, 
 there is commonly a cause for bickering, and they 
 do not contend as he-cats do only because they 
 happen to meet. 
 
 I am sorry that Mrs. Inchbald, whose general 
 observations on this play I willingly approve, 
 should have singled out these very characters as 
 the only objects of her applause. 
 
 " Some excellent instruction to the married," 
 says she, " will be found in the connubial conduct 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Wrangle, particularly at the con- 
 clusion of the fourth act." 
 
 Unfortunate in her praise of the conjugal in- 
 structions, she is more than unfortunate in the 
 example which she has cited. If there be a scene 
 in the whole compass of the English drama, dis- 
 tinguished for its unnatural absurdity, it is this 
 one, where the contentious couple are suddenly 
 converted, at the writer's will, into a loving and 
 affectionate pair, by the operation of the following 
 dialogue, which I am tempted to copy, only as an 
 irresistible proof of my assertions: — - 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 559 
 
 Mr. TV. (after a pause,) Mrs, Wrangle — Love! 
 Mrs. TV. Mr. Wrangle — My dear 1 
 
 Mr. TF. I begin to think 
 
 Mrs. TV. What do you begin to think ? 
 Mr. TV. That we have exposed ourselves very sufficiently. 
 Mrs. W. Quite enough in all conscience. — Why would you complain 
 to my father ? 
 
 Mr. TV. Why would you complain to your brother ? 
 Mrs. TV. We were both to blame : complaints are very foolish. 
 Mr. TV. Then away with them at once, say J. 
 
 Mrs. W. For ever ! Let us forbear to gratify our friends by never 
 publishing our disagreements. 
 
 Mr. TV. And cure the world of its contempt, by never calling upon 
 it for its pity. 
 
 Mrs. TV. Agreed ! here's my hand upon it. 
 
 Mr. TV. And here's my heart, to which I press you with the warm 
 affection of a husband that will never cool. 
 
 Mrs. TV. And I return it with the love and duty of a wife, who will 
 never create a murmur nor utter one again. 
 
 Mr. TV. Why this is happiness without hypocrisy. 
 Mrs. TV. Perfect felicity unfeigned. , 
 
 Mr. TV. Oh ! joyous husband ! 
 Mrs. TV. Oh ! transported wife ! (Exeunt) . 
 
 And, let me exclaim, Oh ! ineffable nonsense ! 
 Yet I would praise it more than Mrs. Inchbald 
 has even done, and I am sure as sincerely, if I 
 could believe that matrimonial quarrels ever ter- 
 minated with such a cordial resolution in the 
 parties never to renew them. Alas ! if conjugal 
 felicity could be purchased by a few exclamatory 
 sentences, and a shake of the hand, who would be 
 unhappy ? And we are to suppose, from Mrs. 
 Inchbald's observations, that they may be so pur- 
 chased, or how could we find that " particularly 
 excellent instruction to the married," which she 
 ascribes to this very scene? Had Cumberland 
 
660 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 wished to make the reformation of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Wrangle morally beneficial, he should have made 
 it gradual and probable, so that the spectator 
 might acknowledge its verisimilitude and be 
 tempted to hope a similar result from the employ- 
 ment of similar means. This is the only way in 
 which fiction can ever promote the welfare of man- 
 kind: for when we see events produced by no 
 apparent influence of causes, but by the magic 
 decree of the author's will, we feel too intensely 
 that they are imaginary, and neither hope to 
 produce them in ourselves nor expect to find 
 them in others. 
 
 This, however, is the great defect of Cumber- 
 land as a dramatic writer: he hastens what he 
 wishes to produce with too much rapidity. He 
 does not leave it possible for the spectator to sup- 
 ply what is wanting, because he has no art in 
 making the deficiency appear just what must be 
 omitted in the brief scenes of a drama. He seems 
 to have regarded himself as a first cause to whom 
 all things were possible, without remembering that 
 his appeal was to be to finite beings who can admit 
 as true only what they can comprehend as such. 
 
 In no comedy of Cumberland's is this defect 
 more unpleasantly obvious, perhaps, than in his 
 Hint to Husbands, which was acted at Covent- 
 Garden in 1806. Here the scenes are hurried on 
 with a degree of despatch and a disregard of the 
 spectator's right to understand what he is to 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 56\ 
 
 believe, which may be very commodious for the 
 indolence of a dramatic writer, but which will be 
 surely injurious to his fame. No time is allowed 
 for the developement of the passions, but every 
 thing happens just as the author requires. The 
 play indeed was deservedly unsuccessful, for be- 
 sides this prominent deficiency, it wanted every 
 requisite of a good comedy. The character of 
 Lady Transit is pleasing : but nothing can be more 
 frivolously inefficient than the attempts at humour 
 in Dogherty. This was his last effort to delineate 
 the Irish character, and I think it the last, in 
 merit, that has yet been made by any. 
 
 In an address to the Reader^ which is prefixed 
 to this play, Cumberland reiterates his boast of 
 having " written more for the stage than any one 
 of his nation ever did." Of this numeral renown 
 he seems to have been proud, for he frequently 
 alludes to it : but had his hopes been raised to the 
 acquisition of posthumous fame, I think he would 
 have wished he had written less. Most of his 
 plays exhibit evident marks of rapidity in com- 
 position : they want that skilful distribution of the 
 incidents, and that nice observance of probability 
 in their production, which he had ability enough 
 to devise, but had not leisure enough to practise. 
 
 Before I dismiss, from my consideration, the 
 dramas of Cumberland, I wish to advert to a 
 peculiarity which has been much forced upon 
 ray attention by a regular perusal of them. His 
 
 2 O 
 
->62 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 female characters are all drawn with a degree of 
 frankness in love-affairs which a fastidious critic 
 might pronounce to be wantonness. Nor does 
 this peculiarity belong merely to his plays. In 
 his novels it equally prevails. The task of making 
 love, as it is termed, he generally throws upon the 
 lady, by providing bashful and timid suitors who 
 require encouragement to declare their passion. 
 It must be allowed that this is unseemly, though 
 Cumberland probably thought it natural. If the 
 reader require to be convinced of this predilec- 
 tion in him for candour and simplicity in females, 
 let him examine many of the interviews between 
 Arundel and Lady Louisa G. ; between Mortlake 
 and Lady Jane; between Henry and Isabella; 
 between Charlotte Eusport, in the West Indian, 
 and Belcour ; between Sophia, in the Brothers, and 
 Belfield, and between Emily in the Wheel of For- 
 tune, and Captain Woodville. A very cursory in- 
 spection of these scenes will shew him that little 
 is left to the lover but silent acquiescence : and 
 if he extend his view through all the plays of 
 Cumberland he will, perhaps, think with me, that 
 what he so uniformly exhibited he practically ap- 
 proved of. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 563 
 
 CHAP. XXVI. 
 
 Examination of Cumberland's remaining produc- 
 tions. — His Memoirs. — Writes the Exodiad 
 in conjunction with Sir J. B. Burges. — Its me- 
 diocrity. — Quotation from Moliere applicable 
 to Cumberland. — Becomes the editor of the 
 Select British Drama. — Engaged in a news- 
 paper which fails. — Establishes the London 
 Review. — The absurdity of its principle de- 
 monstrated. — Its particular defects. — Cumber- 
 land's ridiculous praise of Mr. Townsend's 
 Armageddon. — Patronises Mr. Stothard's 
 painting of Chaucer's Pilgrims. — Publishes 
 his poem of Retrospection a few days before 
 his death. — Examination of it. 
 
 As I have thus anticipated the literary progress of 
 Cumberland, I shall devote this chapter to an exa- 
 mination of his remaining productions, and then 
 conclude the volume with such a detail of his per- 
 sonal history, during the period in which he wrote 
 them, as I can procure. 
 
 Of his Memoirs which hold a distinguished 
 place among his writings, I can have nothing to 
 say here, having had so many occasions of express- 
 ing, incidentally, my opinion of them. They will 
 always be regarded as an authentic history of his 
 private and public life, as far as he has thought it 
 9 O 2 
 
364 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 proper to disclose the particulars of either ; and 
 they will always be esteemed for that fund of 
 literary anecdote which they contain, and in the 
 detail of which Cumberland peculiarly excels. A 
 great chasm, however, they must leave in every 
 thing relating to his writings, except the simple 
 statement of their production, or of the events 
 connected with their success or failure : and this 
 chasm it has been my object to fill up in the pre- 
 sent work. With what success I have done it, 
 must be decided by others. 
 
 In 1S07 Cumberland associated himself with Sir 
 James Bland Burges, in the task of composing the 
 Exodiad) another sacred epic, founded upon that 
 portion of scriptural history which comprises the 
 history of Moses from the time of his leading the 
 Israelites out of Egypt, to his death upon Mount 
 Horeb. This poem is divided into two parts, and 
 subdivided into eight books. No means are af- 
 forded by which to discriminate the respective 
 efforts of the respective writers, and praise or 
 blame, therefore, cannot be distinctly appropriated. 
 This partnership in applause and censure, seems 
 to have been studiously sought by the authors, for 
 they acknowledge, that though they may fail " to 
 leave a monument of their fame, they have suc- 
 ceeded in bequeathing a memorial of their friend- 
 ship." 
 
 Whoever considers the nature of intellectual 
 labour, will be immediately sensible that it is im- 
 possible for two men so to exercise their fancy and 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 565 
 
 judgment, in conjunction, upon any single topic, 
 as to produce a regular and harmonious whole. 
 There will necessarily be a diversity of style, of 
 sentiments, and of language ; and if, in any part, 
 they endeavour to incorporate their distinct pro- 
 ductions by a thorough intermixture of sentences, 
 the most discordant effect must be produced. Al! 
 that can be done by such joint manufacturers is, for 
 each to take his single book or division, and when 
 the whole is written, to unite them with as much 
 dexterity as they can. This was the plan com- 
 monly pursued by Beaumont and Fletcher, by 
 Massinger and Decker, and by Dryden and Lee ; 
 and it is the only one by which any probability of 
 success can be entertained. But even then, a 
 general discrepancy will be sufficiently obvious, 
 for, in any extensive work embracing many cir- 
 cumstances and descriptions, and much diversity 
 of incident, it requires all the vigilance of a single 
 author to avoid inconsistencies and contradiction, 
 and how difficult, therefore, if not impossible, 
 it must be for two men to commingle their ideas 
 without confusion or perplexity. 
 
 If I would deliver an opinion upon this work, 
 which I might afterwards support by evidence, if 
 required, I should say, that it is inferior, in many 
 parts, to Calvary, while, perhaps, it equals that 
 poem in others. The versification is fluent, but 
 seldom vigorous or animated. The observance of 
 scriptural facts is carefully maintained, but they 
 
566 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 are too little diversified by poetical imagery. The 
 general character of the work is, I am afraid, 
 languid mediocrity when tried by the test of an 
 epic poem, which, to be any thing, must be great. 
 
 Mediocribus esse poetis, 
 Non dii, non homines, non concessere columnae. 
 
 It is with regret that I deliver this opinion upon 
 the production of a gentleman (Sir James Bland 
 Burges), from whom I once expected some assist- 
 ance in the present volume, in consequence of a 
 voluntary and polite offer on his part, to which 
 I shall probably have occasion to advert yet more 
 minutely. My undertaking, however, imposed 
 upon me the necessity of telling what I thought, 
 and the reader who has perused these pages will 
 willingly acknowledge, I believe, that I have done 
 so hitherto with fearless sincerity and candour. I 
 must confess, indeed, I have yet to learn that art 
 which Cumberland eminently possessed, of finding 
 prodigies where other men would have found no- 
 thing. Yet, far be it from me to accuse him of 
 hypocrisy. I have already said, that I believe it 
 sprung from a warm benevolence of character, an 
 eager desire to think mankind as amiable as he 
 wished them, and their achievements as splendid 
 as he thought them. It was an error, however, 
 and a sickening one, when practised to excess, as 
 Cumberland too commonly did. For myself, I 
 would say with Moliere's Misanthrope : 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 56? 
 
 Non, je ne puis souffrir cette laehe metbode, 
 
 Qu' afFectent la plupart de vos gens a la mode : 
 
 Et je ne hais rien tant que les contorsions 
 
 De tous ces grands faiseurs de protestations, 
 
 Ces affables donneurs d'embrassades frivoles, 
 
 Ces obligeans diseurs d'inutiles paroles, 
 
 Qui de civilites avec tous font combat, 
 
 Et traitent du raeme air l'honnete homme et le fat, 
 
 Quel avantage a-t-on qu'un bomme vous caresse, 
 
 Vous jure amitie, foi, zele, estime, tendresse, 
 
 Et vous fasse de vous un eloge eclatant, 
 
 Lorsqu'au premier faquin il court en faire autant ? 
 
 Non, non ; il n'est point d'ame un pen bien situee, 
 
 Qui veuille d'une estime ainsi prostituee ; 
 
 Et la plus glorieuse a des regals peu cbers, 
 
 Des qu'on voit qu'on nous mele avec tout l'univers: 
 
 Sur quelque preference une estime sefonde, 
 
 Et c'est rCestimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde. 
 
 It appears to me that the last couplet of this 
 extract applies with singular propriety to that pli- 
 ancy of commendation by which Cumberland was 
 distinguished, and which he bestowed upon all 
 who applied for it in the right way. The praise 
 he gave, however, he was equally willing to re- 
 ceive ; and I have been told, by one who knew 
 him intimately, that no adulation could be too 
 exuberant for his acceptance. 
 
 Dr. Drake, perhaps, in some future edition of 
 his Literary Hours, may discover that the Exodiad, 
 as well as Calvary, is embued with the genuine 
 spirit of Milton, and his eulogy would easily out- 
 weigh my censure. In me it may be defect of 
 taste or judgment, that I do not estimate this 
 poem more highly: and from a presumption so 
 
«56S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 extremely probable, I can conceive that every con- 
 solation maybe derived. 
 
 Cumberland, in the latter years of his life, la- 
 boured for the booksellers, sometimes anony- 
 mously, and sometimes not. Among many 
 schemes to which this sort of employment gave 
 rise, may be reckoned his edition of the Select 
 British Drama, in which he undertook to publish 
 a series of those plays, which still take their turn 
 upon the stage, and to preface them with lives of 
 the authors, and a critical examination of each 
 drama. To this task he was perfectly competent; 
 but I have never heard what success attended the 
 plan. In the first number, which contained Evert/ 
 Man in his Humour, he has given a succinct his- 
 tory of the rise and progress of the stage; and in his 
 strictures upon Congreve's Love for Love, he is 
 justly indignant at his grossness and obscenity. 
 
 I should have mentioned that he was associated, 
 in 1803, with Mr. Peltier, Sir James Bland Burges, 
 and some other gentlemen, in projecting and esta- 
 blishing a weekly newspaper, Nvhich was intended 
 to maintain a higher literary character than com- 
 monly belongs to our daily journals. But it main- 
 tained no character at all, and soon fell. Its name 
 I have forgotten. 
 
 In 1809 he published the first number of the 
 London Review, with the chimerical idea that 
 contemporary criticism could derive advantage 
 from robbing it of its anonymous importance. 
 When the proposals for this work were first issued, 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 569 
 
 I was forcibly struck with the absurdity of its prin- 
 ciple, and communicated my opinions to the pub- 
 lic through the medium of a respectable periodical 
 publication. These opinions were confirmed by 
 the destiny of the London Review, and the result 
 which I presumed to augur speedily ensued. 
 
 The abuses of anonymous criticism have, indeed, 
 been long and loudly complained of, nor is it likely 
 that any remonstrances will diminish the evil. As 
 long as men can attack, secure from retalia- 
 tion, they will do it; for the leaven of malignity 
 and envy is too intimately incorporated with our 
 nature, not to ferment into action when it may be 
 done with impunity. 
 
 It has been thought, however, that an effectual 
 remedy for this evil, would be the certain know- 
 ledge of those who propagate it ; and that if every 
 man who condemned another were known as the 
 condemned he would feel the influence of certain 
 moral considerations which now operate but laxly 
 while his deeds are deeds of darkness. That this 
 reasoning is right, as far as the abuse of criticism 
 is considered, must be confessed. There can be 
 no doubt, that he who affixes his name to what he 
 writes, will write more circumspectly than he who 
 does not; but, when it is recollected that the 
 misuse of the critical function is not so flagrant as 
 is commonly believed, it will hardly be thought 
 that every thing would be gained if that misuse 
 were diminished. 
 
^70 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 In reading an anonymous criticism we read it 
 without any undue bias or partiality ; if it have 
 merit, that merit is allowed to have its fair influ- 
 ence upon our minds. We judge of it by itself 
 without any reference to the presumed qualifica- 
 tions of the author ; we are not subdued by the 
 authority of a name. 
 
 If we could suppose that the most eminent 
 names in modern* literature would be found in the 
 pages of a review, established upon a principle si- 
 milar to Cumberland's, I do not think that any 
 advantage would be gained beyond the abolition of 
 some practices in anonymous criticism, which are 
 disgraceful to letters. The rigid integrity of a 
 Brutus or a Cato must not be expected. Lite- 
 rary men constitute a sort of fraternity : they are 
 usually acquainted with each other, or likely to be 
 so ; and the feelings of friendship and esteem 
 would be perpetually clashing with the duties of 
 the critic. Will the man, who has dined at my 
 table to day, and partaken of my hospitality and 
 kindness, sit down to-morrow and avowedly endea- 
 vour to sink my character in the public estimation? 
 No : unless he would be hunted from society he 
 cannot do this ; if he would be received as a 
 member of it, he must conform to its duties ; and 
 though the book I have published may be bad, or 
 vicious, or erroneous, yet, the condemnation of it 
 .must not come publicly from the hand of my friend. 
 The cause of sound literature would, therefore, be 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 57 1 
 
 injured by such a scheme, and criticism would 
 sink into a mere interchange of civilities and 
 courtesies. 
 
 Let it be imagined that such a plan had been 
 projected fifty years ago, and that Johnson, Gold- 
 smith, Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, and other emi- 
 nent men, had consented to lend it the authority 
 of their names, would it have been possible for 
 them to exercise their judgments with real im- 
 partiality ? I can conceive that they might, 
 perhaps, have imitated other critical professors in 
 merciless severity towards the humble, the obscure, 
 and the unassuming delinquent, but we should 
 surely have found them sufficiently polite, cere- 
 monious, and affable towards each other. 
 
 Nor could it be otherwise, living, as they did, in 
 splendid intimacy together ; and the influence of 
 this feeling would have extended beyond them- 
 selves and their respective productions. It would 
 have taken in the circle of each man's acquaint- 
 ance, and embraced, consequently, in its wide 
 circumference, every writer who had risen only 
 to such comparative distinction as might entitle 
 him to their friendship and notice. What then 
 would have been their situation ? Between Scylla 
 and Charybdis. If they praised, the world would 
 have accused them of adulation ; if they censured, 
 an outcry would have been raised against them for 
 envy and malignity. They could not have avoided 
 self-condemnation on the one hand, or the world's 
 
5?2 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 condemnation on the other. And would they 
 have found an adequate reward for such persecu- 
 tion and trial, in the pecuniary remunerations of a 
 bookseller ? The answer is obvious. They would 
 have spurned at the illusion which would mislead 
 them under the guise of candour and honesty, and 
 they would have left to venal and obdurate minds 
 what only venal and obdurate minds could per- 
 form. 
 
 To such objections the scheme of Cumberland's 
 Review was abstractedly liable : but it exhibited 
 some particular deficiences, when it made its ap- 
 pearance. Of the names that appeared, and whose 
 authority was to overwhelm, as with a torrent, the 
 feeble defences of anonymous criticism, there were 
 not more than two or three that had yet been heard 
 of, and not even the illusion^ therefore, of signa- 
 tures respectable in literature was^preserved. What 
 then was gained by this nominal review ? A disclo- 
 sure which rather weakened than enforced authority: 
 a declaration which destroyed the effect it was in- 
 tended to produce. Could it, indeed-, be imagined 
 that the mere knowledge of the critic was to operate 
 as a charm, and that in consideration of know- 
 ing who he was, the public would be indifferent 
 about what he was ? Was it to be supposed that 
 they would prefer acknowledged dullness, insipidity, 
 or adulation, to unacknowledged wit, learning, and 
 genius ? Omne igno turn pro magniftco. The very 
 obscurity which belongs to anonymous criticism 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5J3 
 
 increases its power, because, without knowing 
 specifically who writes a particular article, we know, 
 generally, that many of the first literary characters 
 lend their pens to this office, and in the ambiguity 
 which envelopes the question there is room enough 
 for the imagination to act upon a rational basis of 
 credibility. 
 
 The fate of the London Review will deter all 
 future projectors from any similar undertaking, to 
 which a moral impossibility of success seems to be 
 inevitably attached. Some of Cumberland's co- 
 adjutors proved themselves men of talents ; and 
 many of the articles were superior to the ordinary 
 compositions of periodical critics. Yet it soon 
 perished : and though this early fate may be partly 
 ascribed, perhaps, to the impression produced by 
 some criticisms of extraordinary imbecility, no dis- 
 play of excellence could have secured it from 
 ultimate failure. 
 
 In Cumberland I have no doubt that the under- 
 taking was suggested by a sincere wish to see 
 criticism stripped of that insidious covering beneath 
 which she now aims her assassin blows unseen 
 and unknown. Such was his wish, and it is one 
 in which every man must concur, though every 
 man will feel, perhaps, that the only remedy is one 
 which would entail greater evils than those it 
 amended. Cumberland's opinion with regard to 
 anonymous censure was not hastily adopted. In 
 the twenty-second number of the Observer he says, 
 
57-h LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 " I cannot state a case in which a man can be 
 justified in treating another's name with freedom, 
 and concealing his own/' Some part of his zeal 
 may perhaps be attributed to the recollection of 
 his own sufferings : and if he believed that every 
 other author partook of his sensibility, it was only 
 a common act of benevolence to endeavour at the 
 extinction of a power beneath which so many 
 writhed. 
 
 Of the articles which Cumberland himself wrote 
 for his Review, only one deserves to be remem- 
 bered, and that is the first in the third number, 
 which contains admirable sketches of those per- 
 formers with whose merits he had been familiar in 
 his youth. 
 
 He seems to have felt the unenviable situation 
 in which an acknowledged critic places himself, 
 by selecting, for his own labours, the productions of 
 recently deceased writers, whom to blame would 
 lead to no future embarrassments. He has de- 
 parted from this plan only in two or three instances, 
 and one of them provided him with an opportunity 
 of renewing his controversy with Mr. Hayley. 
 
 Every one who has inspected the Londan Re- 
 view must have turned away displeased from the 
 absurd examination of a poem, (Mr. Townsend's 
 Armageddon) then only in embrio and not yet in 
 existence ; and more than displeasure must have 
 been excited by that strain of servile adulation 
 and that sort of amorous fondness with which the 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5J5 
 
 young man's literary and personal accomplishments 
 are celebrated. The motive was not sufficiently 
 powerful to justify so irregular a proceeding, and 
 I have been told that two of his friends, who fully 
 appreciated the folly he was about to commit, 
 exhausted, but in vain, all their powers of persua- 
 sion to induce him to relinquish the idea. What 
 this " super-human" work will be, when it comes 
 forth, if it ever does come forth, is yet to be dis- 
 covered: but that " fermentation of genius," which 
 was so visible in Mr. Townsend's u expressive 
 countenance," has produced nothing hitherto 
 which candour can commend. It is his misfortune, 
 I am afraid, that Cumberland was his patron. His 
 work is nobly conceived : I have read the argu- 
 ments of each book with delight : and nothing 
 diminished the satisfaction which I felt, but the 
 mortifying reflection that it is easy to project what 
 it is not easy to perform. The deliberative and 
 executive powers of man are frequently disjoined 
 by an infinite space : the unbodied conceptions of 
 the mind often soar beyond our own powers of 
 adequate delineation. In this condition I imagine 
 Mr. Townsend to be ; and I form the opinion from 
 the specimens of his composition produced by 
 Cumberland, which do not contain any of that 
 power of language, that loftiness of imagery, or that 
 metrical skill which must belong to a successful 
 candidate for epic fame. I have looked also into 
 a volume of poems recently published by Mr. 
 
576 LIFE OP CUMBERLAND. 
 
 Townsend, and find in them nothing beyond tune- 
 ful mediocrity. 
 
 Cumberland's admiration of him, however, I be- 
 lieve to have been sincere : and I wish the event may 
 prove that it was rational. A natural benevolence 
 of character led him to befriend talent wherever he 
 found it, and though his zeal to serve sometimes 
 degenerated into an erroneous appreciation of its 
 object, his heart must be unenviably obdurate 
 who does not honour the principle. One of the 
 latest efforts which he made to assist the progress 
 of genius, was his unsolicited exertion in behalf of 
 my friend Mr. Cromek's picture of Chaucer s 
 Pilgrims. He was struck with the admirable exe- 
 cution of the artist, Mr. Stothard,and prevailed upon 
 Mr. Hoppner to give his opinion of its merits in a 
 letter to him, the use of which was granted to Mr. 
 Cromek, to whom the picture belonged, and who 
 had issued proposals for having it engraved by the 
 late ingenious Schiavonetti. In all that Cumber- 
 land did on this occasion, he acted purely from a 
 desire to befriend the progress of the fine arts ; 
 and as it was no less unexpected than unasked, 
 the grace and value of it were enhanced in pro- 
 portion. 
 
 The last work which he produced, and which 
 was published only a few days before his death, 
 was his poem of Retrospection, which commences 
 with apathetic solemnity heightened by the fulfil- 
 ment of the prophecy. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 577 
 
 World, I have known thee long, and now the hour 
 When I must part from thee is near at hand : 
 I bore thee much good will, and many a time 
 In thy fair promises repos'd more trust 
 Than wiser heads and colder hearts would risque. 
 
 The greater part of this poem is devoted to the 
 commemoration of the same persons and events as 
 had already been exhibited and discussed in his 
 Memoirs \ and as it frequently creeps with all 
 the languor of measured prose, the reader some- 
 times forgets that he has exchanged one production 
 for the other* It is sufficiently querulous, and yet 
 it is full of declarations why the writer should be 
 contented. Many passages from it I have extracted 
 into this volume, where they related to the topics 
 I was upon, and from them a very adequate notion 
 may be formed of the whole. It is written with 
 an easy flow of versification, and contains some 
 pleasant talk about past times : but poetry it has 
 none. Cumberland, indeed, seems to have justly 
 appreciated its character by the motto which he has 
 prefixed. 
 
 Neque si quis scihat uti nos 
 Sermoni propriora, putes hunc esse poetam.— — Hor. 
 
 The domestic retrospections form, perhaps, the 
 most pleasing portions of this work ; for it is in 
 them that feeling predominates, and which, by 
 awakening the sympathy of the reader, lulls his 
 judgment into silent acquiescence. Who, for in- 
 stance, reading the following lines, could forget the 
 
 2 P 
 
57S LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 afflictions of an old man broken down by sorrows 
 and infirmities, while he stopped to pick out a 
 fault or two ? He that could, may claim praise for 
 that which speaks better for his head than his 
 heart : — 
 
 Well it beseems that hoary head should bow 
 In resignation to th' Almighty will. 
 No fear but time will furnish griefs enough : 
 We need not fabricate them for ourselves. 
 Dwell where we will, earth will not always show 
 A smooth and smiling surface to our view : 
 Our eyes will still be wand' ring where the turf 
 Swells into hillocks to denote the spot 
 Where some dead friend has tenanted the soil. 
 A few brief flowers may form a summer fence 
 Around our habitation, but, without, 
 The dreary Golgotha of death will lodge 
 The great majority of those we lov'd. 
 If still the giver of my life delay 
 Th' exterminating stroke, and lengthen out 
 The date of my mortality, shall I 
 Insult his patience with profane complaint, 
 When, homeward as I bend my weary way, 
 I meet a widowed daughter pale and wan 
 With anxious watchings o'er the nightly couch 
 Of her dead husband ? What a monitor 
 Art thou, O Death, to me, whom thou hast spar'd 
 Longer by half a century of years 
 Than that young warrior " fest'ring in his shroud !" 
 I take his hand : 'tis clench'd and cold as stone : 
 Dark are the eyes and clos'd, which late I saw 
 All bright and beaming with heroic fire- 
 Such we must be — so shall we all appear. — 
 
 This " widow'd daughter" is still his Marianne, 
 whom he seems never weary of celebrating. She 
 had been recently married to a German officer of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 579 
 
 the name ofJansen, who accompanied our ill-fated 
 expedition to Walcheren, and was one of the many 
 that fell victims to the malignant influence of the 
 climate. 
 
 I have thus gone through my examination of 
 Cumberland's principal works, apportioning my 
 remarks to the comparative importance of the 
 subjects. He wrote upon whatever suggested 
 itself to his mind, and though it may easily be 
 conjectured, therefore, that he did not write with 
 uniformity of excellence, yet, if a list of his pro- 
 ductions were made, it would not only be a long 
 one, but an honourable testimony of his talents 
 and industry. When, however, Dr. Drake, in 
 reference to these numerous labours, asserted that, 
 " to no author of the eighteenth century, in polite 
 literature, are we under greater obligations," I 
 presume he forgot both the numerical and intrinsic 
 value of Johnson's writings. 
 
 2 P 9 
 
530 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 CHAP. XXVII. 
 
 Cumberland loses his wife. — Appointed colonel of a 
 volunteer regiment. — His controversy with Mr. 
 Hayley. — His meanness of adulation towards 
 his friends.- — Exemplified in his praise of Sir 
 James Bland Burges, whom he calls a Homer ! 
 • — His antipathy to Gray. — Liter es ted himself in 
 the success of a third theatre. — His benevolence 
 instanced by an amusing anecdote. — His death.— - 
 Buried in YYestminster Abbey. — An oration 
 pronounced over his grave by the Dean of West- 
 minster. — The erroneous praise contained in 
 it. — A character of Cumberland* s colloquial abU 
 lities. — His posthumous pieces. — His family. — 
 His will. — Some observations on Mrs. Jansen's 
 proceedings respecting one of its provisions. 
 
 Nothing now remains for me to do but to relate 
 the personal occurrences of Cumberland's life 
 during the period in which those productions, al- 
 ready enumerated, were given to the world. They 
 are but few, indeed, and not very interesting ; yet 
 they must be told. 
 
 At what time he lost his wife he has not speci- 
 fied, but says it was " some time after the death 
 of his eldest son, who died in Tobago/' She was 
 so lamentably reduced by illness, in her latter days, 
 that Cumberland's house was inaccessible even 
 to his nearest friends and neighbours : " her nerves 
 being utterly destroyed, and even her recollection 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5S\ 
 
 impaired, by the effects of the breaking of a blood 
 vessel, which no art could heal, every step that 
 approached her, threw her into tremours, and it 
 required careful preparation to enable her to sup- 
 port an interview with any of her children, who 
 came at times to pay their duty to her/' To a 
 being thus debilitated by disease, death must have 
 been a welcome event ; nor could it be much 
 otherwise than welcome to those whose duty it 
 was to endure all the peevish and wearisome ca- 
 prices of a mind broken down by infirmities. 
 
 During his abode at Tunbridge he was in the 
 practice of paying annual visits to a Mrs. Blud- 
 worth, of Holt, near Winchester, and while there 
 he sometimes amused himself with slight and trivial 
 efforts of composition. These he has preserved 
 in his Memoirs, but they have little merit. That 
 entitled Affectation is the best. 
 
 When the terror of invasion was in its highest 
 state of aggrandisement, and the people of England, 
 with a promptitude of patriotism which did them 
 immortal honour, rallied round their king and con- 
 stitution, Cumberland Avas solicited by the inha- 
 bitants of Tunbridge to head them as volunteers, 
 and to which solicitation he acceded. This situa- 
 tion he discharged with such general applause 
 that when the volunteer system was discounte- 
 nanced, and his corps dismissed, they voted him 
 a sword by the hand of their Serjeant Major, u as 
 a tribute of their esteem for their beloved com- 
 ma nder/" 
 
6Sf LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 In the supplement to his Memoirs, which he 
 published in 1806, to supply that barrenness of 
 contemporary history which the tedious details of 
 his Spanish mission had occasioned, he remon- 
 strates with Mr. Hayley, who, in his life of Cow- 
 per, had attacked Cumberland for professing too 
 great an admiration of Bentley's character. That 
 Cumberland should have contemplated, with some 
 enthusiasm, an ancestor so eminently endowed as 
 Bentley, may surely be forgiven, for, of all errors, if 
 it were one, it was the most venial. Upon this 
 ground, therefore, Cumberland might have stood, 
 and proudly maintained his right : but, when he 
 censured Mr. Hayley for expressing his opinion of 
 Bentley's qualities as a scholar and critic, he only 
 made himself ridiculous, by shewing that he 
 thought every man was to think of his grandfather 
 with the same excess of fondness that he did. 
 
 This is as much as need be said of the matter, 
 adding only that Cumberland is certainly superior 
 to his antagonist in the elegance and mildness of 
 his rebuke, and in the suavity of his language. I 
 wish, however, that he had not confounded Cowper 
 with his biographer, nor strove, while he was com- 
 bating the one, to cast a shade of opprobrium 
 upon the memory of the other. This was frivolous 
 resentment. 
 
 There is, in this supplement to his Memoirs, a 
 pleasing accession of anecdote, but it is disfigured, 
 like its preceding pages, by a prostitution of praise. 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. oS3 
 
 Cumberland knew not how to employ the language 
 of commendation when speaking of his friends : 
 every man who wrote a verse was a Milton, and 
 every composer of a play was a Shakspeare. The 
 lulling strains of his adulation soothe all alike ; and 
 to him might have been said what Dr. Johnson once 
 replied to a lady who was servilely harrassing him 
 with eulogies, " Madam, before you praise me, 
 consider what your praise is worth." Manly com- 
 mendation, directed to manly attainments, is ho- 
 nourable to the giver and the receiver: but the 
 friskings of a fawning applauder excite only con- 
 tempt when interested, and only pity when the 
 result of imbecility. 
 
 It is curious, too, to remark upon what grounds 
 Cumberland sometimes builds the foundations of 
 his applause. He is absolutely convulsed with 
 admiration when he tells that his friend, Sir James 
 Bland B urges, wrote his poem of Richard Cceur 
 de Lion, with more rapidity than Pope translated 
 Homer : but I am afraid they who have formed 
 the most accurate opinion of Sir James* genius 
 will easily believe that he might have written it 
 all in just that time which was requisite to commit 
 it to paper. Yet Cumberland tells him that he 
 writes like Homer : and then naturally wonders that 
 the world has not estimated the merit of his " ex- 
 traordinary poem." I have no objection, however, 
 that he should be a second Homer, for Dr. Drake 
 has told us that Cumberland was a second Milton. 
 
584 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 To the real merits of Sir James Bland Burges, I 
 hope I am as sensible as any man need be : but I 
 feel more sorrow than offence when I see a respect- 
 able writer in danger of being transformed into a 
 literary fop by the malignant influence of unde- 
 served praise. Sir James will think he knows the 
 origin of this opinion, and may wander into error 
 perhaps : if he would know the true one, he may 
 wander through his own works. I hope I am 
 incapable of visiting the offences of the man upon 
 the author, as I know I am incapable of praising 
 any man whom I do not think deserving of it : but 
 I will own, that tenderness for a friend would teach 
 me to suppress the opinion whose disclosure would 
 hurt his feelings. Nay, an obligation less solemn 
 than friendship, the remembrance of past courtesies, 
 would impel me to the same forbearance: and Sir 
 James may, therefore, guess why I have now told 
 what I think. Had Johnson been my contempo- 
 rary, and had he conducted himself towards me 
 with an insincerity which a gentleman might blush 
 at, I might have accused him of it, but I could not, 
 without the charge of impotent malignity, have 
 retaliated, by telling him of his imbecility as a 
 writer. — I now return to Cumberland. 
 
 It would be tedious to follow him through all 
 the discursive pages of his supplement, for who 
 wishes to know that Mr. Sharon Turner wrote a 
 letter to him full of compliments, and that he is 
 consequently " one of the best writers, one of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 585 
 
 the most learned antiquarians, and most enlight- 
 ened scholars of his time," that the Earl of Dor- 
 chester flattered him with another letter, and that 
 Lord Erskine refused to write him any letter? 
 These things, and many like them, may surely be 
 passed over, without any loss to the reader, or any 
 reproach to myself. It may be mentioned, how- 
 ever, that for the melo-dramatic piece, which was 
 represented at Drury-Lane theatre in commemo- 
 ration of the illustrious Nelson's death, he received 
 the present of a gold snuff-box ; — and that the Lord 
 Chamberlain refused his license to a more matured 
 effort for the same purpose, which was to have 
 been acted at Co vent-Garden on the evening after 
 his public funeral. 
 
 Cumberland seems to have shared, with John- 
 son, an antipathy to Gray. He calls him, in the 
 first volume of his Memoirs, by no very cleanly 
 metaphor, " the most costive of poets/' alluding, 
 I suppose, to the paucity of his production ; 
 and in his poem of Retrospection, he mentions 
 him with a sort of contumelious pertness, where 
 he parallels his ode on the death of Walpole's 
 cat with the puny effusions of youthful wit- 
 lings, whom injudicious admiration would cocker 
 into great poets as Cumberland himself would 
 some of his friends. This prejudice, however, 
 against a man whose writings breathe all the 
 genuine inspiration of poetry, is entitled to very 
 little respect : for it seems to have been enter- 
 
5S6 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 tainecl by him without any precise conviction of 
 its propriety. 
 
 There is some good dramatic criticism in this 
 supplement, and I think the observations of Cum- 
 berland, upon the illiberal mode in which theatrical 
 managers or their deputies dismiss the manuscripts 
 of those who unsuccessfully offer them for accept- 
 ance, entitled to very great applause. They are 
 evidently the opinions of a man who well knew 
 the subject; and the spirit of candour and tender- 
 ness which is displayed in them does honour to 
 his character. 
 
 Cumberland passed much of his time at Rams- 
 gate, where he rented a furnished house, and where 
 he wrote the greater part of his Memoirs, literally, 
 as he says, c< provided with nothing but the mere 
 materials for writing, having left his books and 
 papers in their packages at Tunbridge Wells," 
 where they remained in 1807? when he added his 
 supplement to that work. In occasional visits to 
 this place, to Tunbridge, and to London, he passed 
 the short period that elapsed between the publica- 
 tion of his Memoirs and his death. 
 
 When the project for erecting a third theatre 
 was vehemently pursued, Cumberland lent it the 
 assistance of his name and talents. Most, if not 
 all, of the addresses, statements, and advertise- 
 ments, which appeared, were by him. He interested 
 himself in the success of the undertaking with 
 great ardour ; and w r as frequently heard to say that 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5B 
 
 he only wished to live till its completion, when 
 he could resign his last breath without a desire un- 
 gratified. 
 
 He had much benevolence of disposition and 
 urbanity of temper. I have heard an anecdote of 
 him which illustrates both. A bookseller, with 
 whom he afterwards had some literary connection, 
 found himself in the Tunbridge stage with an old 
 gentleman and two ladies. The conversation was 
 desultory, and among other topics one of the ladies 
 mentioned that she had been, the preceding even- 
 ing, to see the comedy of the West Indian, and 
 was much delighted with it. " Aye," observed 
 the sagacious bibliopolist, " it is a very good co- 
 medy to be sure ; a very good one : Mr. Cumber- 
 land, the author of it, was once a very great man ; 
 a very celebrated man: wrote a great deal, and was 
 much thought of; but, poor man, he has quite 
 written himself down ; he is out of date now ; he 
 is too old to produce any thing worth reading ; I 
 am sorry he does not know this, and keep from 
 tiring the public with his drivellings: it's a great 
 pity." — " Sir," rejoined one of the ladies, inter- 
 rupting this critical volubility, " that gentleman 
 opposite to you is Mr. Cumberland." — " Ma'am ! 
 — Sir! — I beg pardon. — I did not mean to say 
 any thing disrespectful. — I did not think I had the 
 honour of sitting in the same vehicle with so 
 celebrated a man. — I am very sorry. — I merely 
 meant " " My dear Sir," said Cumberland 
 
5S8 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 to the affrighted and confounded bookseller, " no 
 apologies ; your opinion is, I dare say, a very 
 correct one ; I will not dispute it." This cour- 
 tesy only heightened the embarrassment of the 
 offender, and he continued in no enviable situation 
 till the coach arrived at its destination, when 
 Cumberland politely requested his company to a 
 dish of coffee, as a final proof that he was un- 
 touched by his censures. The bookseller assented, 
 and he so soon altered his notions, that he after- 
 wards undertook a very expensive work, to be 
 produced by the man whom he had so recently 
 pronounced to have written himself down. 
 
 Cumberland's death was not preceded by any 
 tedious or painful illness. The uniform temper- 
 ance of his life was such that he might justly hope 
 a calm and gentle dismission to another state ; that 
 euthanasia for which Arbuthnot so tenderly sighed, 
 for which every man must devoutly wish, and which, 
 indeed, as I have heard, was vouchsafed to Cumber- 
 land. He was indisposed only a few days previ- 
 ously, and quietly resigned his soul to its maker, 
 at the house of his friend, Mr. Henry Fry, in Bed- 
 ford Place, Russell Square, a gentleman whom he 
 mentions with great kindness in his Memoirs. 
 This melancholy event took place on the 7th of 
 May, 1311. 
 
 When his death was known, it excited a very 
 general sensation in the literary world. He had, 
 indeed, lived through so long a period, had written 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5$9 
 
 so much, had acquired so general a repu- 
 tation as an elegant scholar and author, and had 
 been connected so intimately with the most emi- 
 nent men of the last half century, that his loss 
 seemed to dissever from us the only remaining 
 link of that illustrious circle by which the indivi- 
 duals who composed it were still held to us. 
 
 He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 
 14th of May. His remains were interred in 
 Poet's Corner, near the shrine of his friend Gar- 
 rick. The funeral was attended by a numerous 
 procession, which reached the abbey about one 
 o'clock, where they were met by Dr. Vincent, 
 Dean of Westminster, the long-remembered friend 
 and early school-fellow of Cumberland. His office 
 must, therefore, have been an affecting one. When 
 the body was placed in the grave, he pronounced 
 the following oration : 
 
 " Good People : the person you see now depo- 
 sited, is Richard Cumberland, an author of no 
 small merit ; his writings were chiefly for the 
 stage, but of strict moral tendency ; they were not 
 without faults, but they were not gross, abounding 
 w T ith oaths and libidinous expressions, as I am 
 shocked to observe is the case of many of the pre- 
 sent day. He wrote as much as any one ; few 
 wrote better ; and his works will be held in the 
 highest estimation as long as the English language 
 will be understood. He considered the theatre a 
 school for moral improvement, and his remains are 
 
.590 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 truly worthy of mingling with the illustrious dead 
 which surround us. Read his prose subjects on 
 divinity! there you will find the true christian 
 spirit of the man who trusted in our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ : May God forgive him his 
 sins, and at the resurrection of the just receive 
 him into everlasting glory !" 
 
 To this affectionate testimony, thus solemnly 
 delivered, I would not willingly object, for I reve- 
 rence the sacredness of friendship, and acknow- 
 ledge the influence of tenderness at so pathetic a 
 moment. But when the venerable survivor of 
 Cumberland pronounced of his writings collectively, 
 for so I apprehend the sentence, that they were 
 " of strict moral tendency," he surely forgot, or 
 he never read, his novels; and when he specifi- 
 cally praised his plays, as being free from " oaths," 
 I must attribute the assertion to the same cause. 
 I will acknowledge, indeed, that Cumberland's 
 offences of this nature were much fewer than those 
 either of his predecessors, contemporaries, or suc- 
 cessors ; but they were too frequent, notwith- 
 standing, to justify the unqualified eulogy of Dr. 
 Vincent. I am aware that a catalogue, disproving 
 this commendation, mav seem irreverent and 
 indecorous ; but I am so unwilling to be thought 
 an accuser without proof, (a practice too com- 
 mon in modern criticism), that I will venture to 
 substantiate mine by such evidence as cannot 
 be gainsayed. I will select, not all, by many of 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 5§7 
 
 the instances in which Cumberland has employed 
 unmeaning and unnecessary oaths : 
 
 " What a damnd queer old figure Frampton 
 makes of himself." (Choleric Man, Act I. Sc. I.) 
 
 " Death and the Devil! how shall I break pas- 
 ture without his seeing me !" (lb. Act IV. Sell.) 
 
 " A rascally scaramouch winds me, a damned 
 blast on his post-horn." — " The cask gave a cursed 
 crack/' &c. (Ibid, Act IV. Sc. II.) 
 
 " Death and the Devil! a chambermaid f" (lb. 
 Act V. Sc. II.) 
 
 " Hoot ! fellows, haud your bonds ; pack up 
 your damned clarinets," Sec. (Fashionable Lover, 
 Act I. Sc. I.) 
 
 " There's bonds, and blanks, and bargains, and 
 promissory notes, and a damned sight of rogueries." 
 (Ibid, Act II. Sc. I.) 
 
 " Where's your religion and be damned to you ?" 
 (The Brothers, Act I. Sc. I.) 
 
 " Never put up with an affront damme." — 
 64 An antiquated goddess of fifty : Damme I'll make 
 up to her." — " Damme if I would not as soon 
 comb out the tower lions," &c. — " That damn d 
 old quiz of a coat you're dusting." — " Damnd 
 old quiz of a coat ! Damme how you barbers 
 swear !" (Box Lobby Challenge, Act I. Sc. I. 
 and II. the last four uttered in little more than as 
 many lines). 
 
 " Damn you for a dunce, what are you think- 
 
592 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 ing of?" — ■" Married to your son of a bitch of a 
 bear leader." (Ibid, Act IF. Sc. II J 
 
 " Father is damn* d close in the lockers." (First 
 Love, Act I. Sc. I J 
 
 " Damnation! then there are more repairs on 
 my hands than a broken carriage/' (Ibid, Act II. 
 Sc. II ) 
 
 " For damme if you don't tread upon your 
 grave/' — " Damnation ! does the world contain 
 such villainy ?" (Ibid, Act IV. Sc. II) 
 
 " Damn it, do you think I would stand by and 
 hear my master abused ?" (Jew, Act IV. Sell) 
 
 " She's a damn d slippery jade," &c. (The 
 West Indian, Act II. Sc. IV.) 
 
 " Damn them! I would there was not such a 
 bauble in nature/' — " Hell and vexation! get out 
 of the room." (Ibid, Act III. Sc. II.) 
 
 " Damn it ! never while you live draw your 
 sword before a woman." (Ibid, Act IV. Sc. II )\ 
 
 " There's a damnd deal of mischief brewing 
 between this hyena and her lawyer." (Ibid, 
 Act IV. Sc. II) 
 
 " He began to blast her at a furious rate/' 
 (Observer, No. 88.) 
 
 The reader will willingly believe, I trust, that I 
 could have been tempted to this partial enume- 
 ration of oaths, employed by Cumberland in his 
 dramatic writings, only as it was calculated to refute 
 a very positive and a very important praise be- 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. .593 
 
 stowed upon him by a man, whose praise is too 
 valuable to be lavished with impropriety. 
 
 For the following sketch of Cumberland's collo- 
 quial talents I am indebted to the obliging kind- 
 ness of Mr. Hewson Clarke, a gentleman asso 
 ciated with him in the London Review , and to 
 whom, as he has told me, Cumberland intended 
 to confide some private documents and papers for 
 publication after his death. This scheme, how- 
 ever^ his sudden decease frustrated. 
 
 " The colloquial efforts of Mr. Cumberland 
 were in no degree above the ordinary level. He 
 was not peculiarly distinguished for the profundity 
 of his detached observations, or the brilliancy of 
 his occasional repartees ; to warm or extended 
 argument he had an invincible aversion, and na- 
 ture had denied him the polished fluency of his 
 friend Sir James Bland Burges. He never led the 
 conversation of his social circle, or sustained its 
 vigour by the animation of his influence. Yetj 
 his casual remarks, when they were not distin- 
 guished by acuteness or brilliance, were charac- 
 terised by that terse felicity of expression which 
 constitutes the chief excellence of his Memoirs; if 
 he did not predominate in conversation, he gave 
 relief to the colloquial contests of more ambitious 
 speakers, and if he seldom poured forth the treasures 
 *>f his own intellectual stores, he displayed pecu- 
 liar dexterity in the formation of hints, and the 
 
 2Q 
 
394 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 application of questions, that might call into dis- 
 play the natural or acquired endowments of his 
 friends. 
 
 " It may account, in some degree, for the ex- 
 tent of his colloquial reputation, that his deport- 
 ment was in the highest degree impressive and 
 engaging. The smile that played upon his lip 
 embellished many a common-place sentiment, and 
 the graceful, yet dignified elegance of his address, 
 gave weight to opinions that from a less favoured 
 speaker would have been received with contemp- 
 tuous silence or acquiescent indifference. Though 
 a Johnson might, in the presence of Cumberland, 
 have felt his own superiority, he would not have 
 ventured to display it: even while he unconsci- 
 ously unveiled the less amiable features of his 
 character, he averted the resentment of his audi- 
 tors, or softened their dislike by the fascination of 
 his manner, and those who could not but acknow- 
 ledge his susceptibility to the minor vices, were 
 astonished, on reflection, at the coldness of their 
 dislike, and the reluctance of their condemnation. 
 
 " He was so fond of flattery himself that he sup- 
 posed it to be acceptable to his friends, even in 
 the most disgusting form, or in the most exuberant 
 proportions. He was the easy and delighted dupe 
 of every juvenile parasite, who found it convenient 
 to barter adulation for patronage ; and the firsj 
 number of the London Review bears melancholy 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 595 
 
 "evidence, that his own fame, and the gratification 
 of the public, were not of sufficient importance to 
 outweigh the grateful drivelling, or the fawning 
 meanness of a youthful protege, ' who melted the 
 last guinea into a picture-frame for his honoured 
 portrait, to be hung as a reverential monitor above 
 his chimney-piece/ " 
 
 My opinions upon Cumberland's literary cha- 
 racter have been so fully delivered in the course of 
 this work, that any general expression of them is 
 rendered superfluous. His writings were numer- 
 ous, but unequal, and a very small portion of 
 them will be required by posterity. What he 
 published, however, was only a part of what he 
 actually composed, and we may expect, from his 
 daughter, some of his posthumous pieces. Before 
 he died he solicited, in an humble address on the 
 cover of the European Magazine^ the subscrip- 
 tions of his friends and the public, to a quarto 
 edition of his unpublished dramas, and I have 
 been told that the present Lord Lonsdale and Sir 
 James Graham, generously answered the appeal, 
 by sending, each of them, a hundred pound bank 
 note, as the amount of their subscription, politely 
 expressing, at the same time, their regret that 
 Cumberland should have been compelled to so great 
 a humiliation. This munificence deserves to be 
 recorded, and I feel a pleasure in doing it. Some 
 
 2Q2 
 
596 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 progress in the printing of these plays has been 
 madej for they are announced, at the end of the 
 poem of Retrospection, as being in the press ; and 
 I am informed it is Mrs. Jansen's intention shortly 
 to give them to the world. 
 
 Cumberland's family consisted, at his death, of 
 two sons and three daughters. Both the sons are 
 in the service of their king and country. The 
 one, Charles, who married the daughter of General 
 Matthew, is in the army, and the other, William, 
 a post-captain in the navy. His first and second 
 sons, Richard and George, died abroad ; Richard, 
 (who married the eldest daughter of the late Earl 
 of Buckinghamshire), at Tobago, and George, in 
 America, where he was killed at the siege of 
 Charlestown. His eldest daughter, Elizabeth y 
 married Lord Edward Bentinck, brother to the late 
 Duke of Portland ; his second, Sophia, married 
 William Badcock^ Esq. a gentleman of whom Cum- 
 berland speaks in no manner calculated to excite 
 esteem. Of his third daughter, Frances Marianne, 
 I need not repeat what has been already told. 
 Besides this immediate posterity, he numbered 
 nineteen grandchildren, " some of whom," he says, 
 u have already lived to crown my warmest wishes, 
 and I see a promise in the rest, that flatters my 
 most sanguine hopes/' 
 
 By his will he bequeathed the whole of his pro- 
 perty to his- youngest daughter; and as the reader 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 597 
 
 may wish to peruse this document, I have trans- 
 cribed it : 
 
 " Will of Richard Cumberland. 
 
 11 In the name of God, Amen. Conscious that 
 I am of sound mind, I declare myself to be com- 
 petent in all intellectual qualifications for making 
 this my last Will and Testament. Whereas my 
 first cousin, George Ashby, of Haselbeach, in the 
 county of Northampton, Esquire, did solemnly 
 promise and assure me, that he would by will 
 provide for my youngest daughter, Frances Mari- 
 anne, which promise and solemn assurance he gave 
 to me, when last I was at his house, upon the death 
 of my sister, Mrs. Mary Alcock ; and whereas the 
 said George Ashby, Esquire, has since deceased 
 without fulfilling that his solemn promise and 
 assurance given in behalf of my daughter, I do 
 hereby give and devise to her Frances Marianne, 
 my daughter, all my real and personal estates, 
 property, goods, chattels, books, manuscripts, or 
 by whatever other designation the law may inter- 
 pret them, to her sole use and behoof, subject, 
 however, to the payment of my debts. 
 
 " And whereas I am intitled, by my mission to 
 Spain, to expect some compensation or pension to 
 my relict or relicts, after my decease, I do hereby 
 direct my said daughter Marianne, to make appli- 
 cation to the proper office for the same, through 
 
598 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 the means of such friend or friends as she can in- 
 tercede with and prevail upon to undertake that 
 friendly task, for the sake of her deceased father, 
 and may God in his mercy reward the generous 
 friend, whoever it shall be, who gives her that be- 
 nevolent assistance ! 
 
 " Now with respect to my manuscripts, 1 re- 
 commend her to consult and advise with the three 
 following friends of me, whilst living, and who I 
 trust will not desert my interest with posterity 
 when I am dead ; these are Sir James Bland Sur- 
 ges, Baronet, Richard Sharpe, Esquire, of Mark- 
 lane, merchant, and Samuel Rogers, Esquire, of 
 Park-place, banker ; — I pray and entreat of them 
 to select, arrange, collect, compile, and put toge- 
 ther, in form and order, as to their judgments shall 
 seem best, my works, which are unpublished ; my 
 manuscripts, which they may deem worthy to be 
 published, either by subscription, or how else, for 
 her use and benefit ; imploring the Almighty God 
 to bless them for the charitable work, the assurance 
 of which even now gives peace and comfort to my 
 soul. 
 
 " I pray my children and grandchildren not to 
 take in ill part this my will in favour of an unmar- 
 ried child, who has not, like them, a profession to 
 resort to, but would be left to the wide world un- 
 friended and forlorn, without the little I may have 
 to bequeath to her, deserted as she now is by the 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 599 
 
 relation on whose word I confidently built my 
 hopes. I desire her, at her own discretion, to give 
 from my personal effects or pictures, or whatever 
 else she may have in possession, some token or 
 tokens, to every one of my sons, my daugh- 
 ters, and my grandson, Richard Cumberland, on 
 whom 1 devoutly invoke the protection and favour 
 of my all-merciful God. 
 
 " I have lived in charity with all men; I have 
 met unkindness, but never relented it ; I know 
 not what revenge is. Such talents as God gave 
 me I have devoted to his service, and the moral 
 and religious edification of my fellow-creatures. I 
 have loved my God, my Country, and my Friend. 
 When Mr. Ashby deceived me, it wounded my 
 heart, but it has not shaken my confidence in 
 others. 
 
 " In my faith as a Christian I am firm. I have 
 published my sentiments ; I am sincere in them ;- 
 I am no hypocrite. 
 
 Cfc 1 declare this to be my last will and testament, 
 signed and witnessed as below, and God forbid any 
 who inherit one drop of my blood should litigate 
 or dispute it. Take notice, I interlined Frances 
 twice with my own hand, having overlooked it. 
 
 " In witness whereof I have hereunto set my 
 hand and seal, this fourth day of April, in the year 
 of our Lord, eighteen hundred and two. 
 
 (L.S.) " Richard Cumberland.. 
 
600 LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 
 
 " Signed and sealed, published and declared, by 
 the said testator, as and for his last will and testa- 
 ment, in the presence of us, who, in his presence, 
 and at his request, have hereunto set our names 
 as witnesses thereunto, 
 
 " Henry Fry, Solicitor, Tunbridge Wells, 
 " Thomas Camis, Tunbridge Wells, 
 *' James Camis, Tunbridge Wells." 
 
 The above was proved in the Consistorial and 
 Episcopal Court of the Lord Bishop of London, 
 the 22d day of October, IS 11, by Frances Mari- 
 anne Jansen, widow (formerly Cumberland), the 
 daughter of the said deceased ; the sole executrix 
 according to the tenor of the said will. 
 
 Property sworn under <£4>50. 
 
 When I animadverted at p. 476, of this work, 
 upon the seeming impropriety of disregarding Cum- 
 berland's particular and public request, that the 
 protection of his posthumous papers should be 
 confided to his three friends, Sir James Bland 
 B urges, Mr. Sharpe, and Mr. Rogers, I had not 
 seen his will : and I will freely own that my asto- 
 nishment was greatly heightened when I found in 
 it that request not only repeated, but solemnly 
 enforced by the pathetic declaration, that the anti- 
 cipation of their kind offices " gave peace and 
 
LIFE OF CUMBERLAND. 601 
 
 comfort to his soul." When, however, after reading 
 this declaration, I remember that the daughter to 
 whom he has entrusted the fulfilment of all his 
 other bequests, has declined the interference of 
 those friends, I can only hope that some private 
 motive, powerful beyond what I can easily con- 
 ceive, and into which I have no right to examine, 
 has influenced her decision. I should be happy, 
 indeed, to hear that it is so ; for the wishes of the 
 dead are too sacred, too impressive, and too impor- 
 tant sometimes, not to make every man desirous that 
 they should be reverentially obeyed by the living; 
 and it is from the operation of this feeling alone 
 that I have expressed my opinion upon so delicate 
 a topic. 
 
 INDEX, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 JrLDDlSON, remarks on Tickell's elegy on his death, 86, 87. 
 
 Adultery, iniquitous proceedings of those who publish trials for, 449. 
 
 Affectation, lines upon, by Cumberland, notice of, 581. 
 
 Ancestors of Cumberland, See Bentley and Cumberland. 
 
 Anecdotes of Spanish Painters, by Cumberland, notice of, 397. 
 
 Anecdotes, remarkable, of the thief who stole Dr. Bentley's plate, 19. Of 
 Dr Bentley, not generally known, 23. Of Dr. Thompson, Dodington's 
 body-physician, 111,112. Of Dr. Goldsmith, 263—269. Of Count Kau- 
 nitz, 361. Of Lord Sackville, 484—489. Of Cumberland and a book- 
 seller, 586. 
 
 Anonymous Criticism, remarks on its abuses, 569 — 573. 
 
 Armageddon, a poem by Mr.Townsend, absurd examination of, by Cum- 
 berland, 574, 575. 
 
 Armourer, a comic opera, by Cumberland, See Wat Tyler. 
 
 Arundel, a novel by Cumberland, remarks on, 493 — 504. Holds a distin- 
 guished place among his writings, 493. Character in, 494 — 497, 499 
 —501. Parts of this work indelicate, if not indecent, 503. Justifi- 
 cation of, by Cumberland, ib. 
 
 Ashhy, Edmund, receives Cumberland to board with him in Peter Street, 
 Westminster, 54. 
 
 Atterbury, Bishop, anecdote of, 38. 
 
 B. 
 
 Badcock, William, Esq. marries Cumberland's second daughter, Sophia, 
 596. Not well spoken of by Cumberland, ib. 
 
 Banishment of Cicero, a tragedy by Cumberland, 124. Remarks on, 124, 
 125. Complimentary letter from Bishop Warburton on, 125, 126. Ex- 
 tracts from, 127, 128. Presented to Garrick by Lord Halifax, 129. 
 Rejected by him, 129. 
 
 Barnes, Joshua, Dr. Bentley's opinion of, 37. 
 
 Battle of Hastings, remarks on Cumberland's tragedy of, 322 — 334. Imi- 
 tations of Shakspeare in, 325 — 328. 
 
'604 INDEX. 
 
 Beckford, Mr. Alderman, character of, 118. 
 
 Bentinch, Lord Edward, son to the late Duke of Portland, marries Cum- 
 berland's eldest daughter, Elizabeth, 596. 
 Bentley, Dr. Richard, an illustrious ancestor of Cumberland, 11. His 
 vast erudition, arrogance, and controversial ability, ib. His skill in 
 verbal criticism consigned to contempt, by Pope, ib. His sagacity as a 
 critic, ib. Preposterous emendations of Milton, ib. Sublime discoveries 
 in science, ib. His domestic character placed in an amiable light, 12. 
 His hat of formidable dimensions, 13. The promoter of the childish 
 sports of Cumberland and bis sister, 14. His gentle rebuke for making 
 a noise over his library, 16. Observation upon the argument of Cum- 
 berland, that he never slept, 17. Bishop Lowth's appellation of him, ib. 
 His ordinary style of conversation, ib. His conduct to candidates, 
 while holding examinations for fellowships, 17, 18. Anecdote of the 
 thief who stole his plate, 19. His liberal assistance to Collins, the in- 
 fidel, 20. Acquainted with Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Mead, Dr. Wallis, 
 Baron Spanheim, Roger Cotes, &c. ib. Particularly amused with the 
 character of Sir Roger de Coverley, in the Spectator, 21 . His curious 
 apology for devoting his time to criticism, 21, 22. Took no account of 
 pecuniary matters, 22. His controversy with the Bishop of Ely, 23. 
 Curious plagiarism of Pope, in his Essay on Man, from a sermon of Dr. 
 Bentley's, 24, 26. His youngest daughter Joanna, the Phcebe of Byron's 
 Pastoral, 30. Reply to Arthur Kinsman, 36. Death of, lamented by 
 Cumberland, 37. His opinion of Joshua Barnes, ib, ; of Pope's Homer, 
 38, 39 ; of Warburton, 38. 
 Bentley, Mrs. wife of Dr. Richard Bentley, 22. Daughter of Sir John 
 Bernard, ib. Related to the Cromwells and Saint Johns, ib. Her 
 manners tinctured with hereditary reserve, ib. Piety of her life — 
 death, ib. 
 Betty, Master, remarks on his acting, 467. 
 Bickerstaf, Cumberland's controversy with, 159, 160. 
 Blackmore, opinion of, by Locke, 89. 
 
 Bland Surges, Sir James, warmly commended by Cumberland, 475. As- 
 sociated with him, in the composition of the Exodiad, ib., 564, 565. 
 Assistance expected from, in this Life of Cumberland, 566. His poem of 
 Richard Coeur de Lion, written with more rapidity than Pope translated 
 Homer, 583. His reputation as an author considered, 583, 584. Cum- 
 berland's posthumous papers bequeathed to him, Mr. Sharpe, and Mr. 
 Rogers, 598. 
 Blank verse, remarks on, 57. 
 v Box Lobby Challenge, a play by Cumberland, notice of, 547. A humorous 
 ^ epilogue written for, by George Colman, 547. 
 
INDEX. 605 
 
 Brothers, 7%e, a play by Cumberland, account of, and remarks on its cha- 
 racters, 169 — 177. Original characters in, 171. Mrs. Inchbald's opi- 
 nion of, 172. Controverted, ib. Cumberland's opinion of, 173. Deli- 
 cate flattery of Garrick in the epilogue, 175. The prologue makes many 
 enemies, 176. 
 
 Buckinghamshire, Earl of, his eldest daughter married to Cumberland's 
 son, Richard, 596. 
 
 Burges, Sir James Bland, See Bland Burges. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, comparison between him and Dr. Johnson, in the 
 
 - poem of Retrospection, 247—249. Observations on his style, 251, 252. 
 Warburton's opinion of, 252. His pamphlet on the Revolution admired 
 by Cumberland, 538. 
 
 Burleigh, Lord, his opinion of Spenser, 89. 
 
 C. 
 
 Calvary, a poem by Cumberland, remarks and critique on, 526—- -539. 
 Ranked by Dr. Drake with Paradise Lost, 527, 528. Examination of 
 the claim, 528, 529. Cumberland's opinion of, 523. 
 
 Calypso, remarks on Cumberland's opera of, 340, 341. 
 
 Camoens' Lusiad, and Mickle's translation, remarks upon, 103. Poem of 
 Cumberland's on the same subject, 104 — 107. 
 
 Caractacus, by Mason, remarks on, 72 — 74. A drama of this name, 
 written by Cumberland, 77. 
 
 Carmelite, remarks on Cumberland's tragedy of, 468 — 470* Extract from 
 the prologue to, 468. Dedicated to Mrs. Siddoas, 466. Extract from 
 the epilogue, spoken by Mrs. Siddons, 470. 
 
 Chatham, Earl of, command to his son, 61. 
 
 Choleric Man, observations on Cumberland's drama of, 306 — 312. Exami- 
 nation of the dramatis personce, 307 — 3 1 1 . Dedicated to Detraction, 311, 
 
 Chorus, Greek, remarks on, 73—77. 
 
 Oiristian Revelation, tract on, by Cumberland, noticed, 540, 541. Con- 
 clusion of, 541 — 545. 
 
 Clare, Lord, his criticism upon the West Indian, 207. 
 
 Clarke, Mr. Hew son, sketch of Cumberland's colloquial talents, 593. 
 
 Clergyman, political, not a consistent character, 79. 
 
 Clonfert, Cumberland's father promoted to the see of, 142. Episcopal 
 residence described, 165—168. Fairies prevalent at, 196. Catholic priest 
 of, 197. 
 
 Coats, Mr., tribute to, 465. 
 
 Collins, the infidel, Dr. Beatley's liberal assistance to, 20. 
 
 Colman, tries how far he of scenic effect might contribute to the adop- 
 tion of Elfrida, 76, 
 
606 INDEX. 
 
 Colman, George, writes a humourous epilogue for the Box Lohby Chal- 
 lenge, 547. 
 
 Comedy, sentimental, a defence of, 281. 
 
 Contemplatist, a series of essays, extract from, 447, 448. 
 
 Cotes, Roger, a friend of Dr.Bentley, 20. 
 
 Country Attorney, a comedy by Cumberland, notice of, 547. 
 
 Crane, Reverend Mr., an inmate in Lord Halifax's family, 92. Formerly 
 his lordship's tutor, ib. His opinions listened to with submissive de- 
 ference, ib. Rejects the offer of Elphin bishopric, 137. 
 
 Criticism, anonymous, remarks on, 569 — 573. 
 
 Cro?nek, Mr., Cumberland's unsolicited exertions in behalf of his picture 
 of Chaucer's Pilgrims, 576. 
 
 Cumberland, Bishop, paternal great-grandfather of the subject of these 
 memoirs, 2. A man of conscientious feelings, primeval integrity, and 
 eminent for his acquirements as a scholar, ib. Son of a citizen of Lon- 
 don; educated at St. Paul's school ; takes his degree at Cambridge, ib. 
 First intention to study physic, ib. Directs his views to the church, 3. 
 obtains a living at Stamford ; loved and respected for the unaffected 
 piety of his manners, 4. Publishes his work, De Legibus Nature;, &c. 
 ib. This work recommended by Johnson, ib. Nominated Bishop of 
 Peterborough, 5. First intelligence of this nomination conveyed to him 
 by a paragraph in the newspapers, ib. Hesitates to accept it, ib. 
 Prevailed on by his friends, 5, 6. Finds leisure to prosecute his literary 
 studies, 6. Spends much time in examining Sanchoniatho's Phoenician 
 
 - History, 7. A zealous supporter of the established religion, ib. His 
 bookseller refuses to publish Sanchoniatho's Fragment, 8. Published 
 by his son-in-law, after his death, 9. Lives to an advanced age, ib. 
 His death gentle, ib. Character by his grandson, 9 — 11. 
 
 Cumberland, Richard, Esq. descended from a literary stock, 1 . Improved 
 the possession bequeathed to him by his ancestors, 1 , 2. Proud of the 
 literary honours of his family, 2. His ancestors, ib. Literary world 
 indebted to, for anecdotes of Dr. Bentley, 12. How far his Memoirs are 
 used in the present work, 27, 28. A pleasing accumulation of literary 
 anecdote, 28. -The circumspection, with which he alludes to his own 
 conduct, 29. Could not write his own life, so as to preclude the present 
 attempt, 30. Born Feb. "1732, in the Master's Lodge of Trinity Col- 
 lege, ib. His account of his parents, 31, 32. His mother quick in ap- 
 prehension, 31. Fond of ridicule, ib. Never passed a day, without 
 reading a portion of her Bible, ib. Her son's declaration concerning 
 her, 32. His father educated at Westminster School, 34. Admitted 
 ;Fellow- commoner of Trinity-College, Cambridge, ib. Married at the age 
 of twenty-two, ib. Prevailed upon to take the rectory of Stanwick, ib. 
 
INDEX. 607 
 
 His character, 34. Cumberland, inferior in years and knowledge, to 
 his sister Joanna, 35. His confusion of ideas on reading the 115th 
 Psalm, ib. Sent to the School of Bury St. Edmund's, in his sixth year, 
 kept by Arthur Kinsman, ib. His inauspicious progress, ib. Produces 
 his first attempt in English verse, 40. Spends his vacations at Stan- 
 wick, with his father, 40, 41. Partakes the dangerous and unmanly 
 sport of hunting with him, 41. Reads poetry to his mother, by which 
 his ear was formed to poetical harmony, 43. These readings, chiefly 
 from Shakspcare, 44. Writes a piece, called Shakspeare in the Shades, 
 44. Description of, and extracts from, 44 — 50. Removed to West- 
 minster School, 50. His contemporaries there, 50, 51. Labours with 
 unremitting assiduity at his studies, 52. Boards with Edmund Ashby, 
 Esq. in Peter-street, Westminster, 54. First witnesses the acting of 
 Gajrick, 55. Attempts a translation from Virgil's Georgics, 56. Ex- 
 tract from, 58. His sister, Joanna, dies of the small-pox, 59. Her loss 
 severely felt, ib. He is sent to Trinity- College, Cambridge, ib. Names 
 of his tutors, 60. Idleness, no part of his character, ib. Writes some 
 elegiac verses on the death of the Prince of Wales, 63. Keeps an act, 
 ib. Sleeps only six hours, lives chiefly on a milk diet, and uses the cold 
 bath, ib. Attacked by a rheumatic fever, which keeps him six months 
 hovering between life and death, 64. Is gratified by hearing from Cam- 
 bridge of the high station adjudged him, among the Wranglers of his 
 year, ib. Changes his undergraduate's gown, and obtains his degree of 
 Bachelor of Arts, with honours hardly earned, 64. His remarks upon 
 this species of academical education, 64—70. Conceives himself des- 
 tined for the church, 70. Meditates upon a plan for a Universal His- 
 tory, 71 . The plan abandoned, ib. Mason's Elfrida praised by him, 72. 
 Visits a relation in Yorkshire, 80, 81. Attempts an imitation of Spen- 
 ser's Fairy Queen, 81. Replies in a poem, of quatrains, to one written 
 by Lady Susan, daughter of the Earl of Galloway, ib. The poem, 82-— 
 84. Imitates Hammond, 84. Specimen of, 84, 85. Reprimanded by 
 his mother for the practice of imitation, 85. Returns to Cambridge, 90. 
 An alteration of the existing statutes of Trinity College, agreed upon in 
 his favour, ib. Appointed confidential Secretary to Lord Halifax, 9L 
 Hastens to London, and enters upon his new office, 93. Lodgings pro- 
 vided for him in Downing-street, near Mr. Pownall's, ib. Pownall 
 appointed to instruct Cumberland in the details of business, ib. A mere 
 .man of office, ib. Cumberland, a mere collegian, ib. His vexation and 
 disappointment, 94. Advised to inform himself respecting the colonies, 
 95. Travels through volumes of useless knowledge, which told every 
 thing, but what he wanted to know, ib. Various facts which he re- 
 collected, employed as plots for his dramatic pieces, ib. Accompanies 
 
60S INDEX. 
 
 his patron to Cambridge, ib. Has hopes of a fellowship, ib. His 
 election opposed by Dr. Mason, ib. Obtains his fellowship, 96. Re- 
 turns home, ib. Again immersed in the duties of his official situation, 
 ib. Writes an elegy on St. Mark's Eve, published by Dodsley, ib. This 
 passes into oblivion, ib. Excites the notice of Charles Townshend, by 
 solving an enigma, which required a geometrical process, 97. A report 
 submitted to him, by Townshend, ib; His poetical version of a passage 
 in the Troades of Seneca, 98. Remarks on the continued strain of 
 eulogy in Cumberland's Memoirs, IOC — 102. His intimacy with the 
 grandson of Bishop Reynolds, 103. Affair of gallantry with his friend's 
 sister, ibi Projects an epic poem on the discovery of India by the Por- 
 tuguese, ib. Fragment of, 104 — 107. His grief for the death of Lord 
 Halifax's wife, 108. Her character, ib. Attends Lord Halifax to Lon- 
 don, ib* Visited by Mr. Higgs, ib. Visits Bishop Sherlock, 109. Be- 
 comes a frequent guest at La Trappe, 112. Divides his leisure time 
 between Fulham and La Trappe, ib. Visits Eastbury, the seat of Mr. 
 Dodington j 113. Gains a lay-fellowship, 1 22> 1 23 . Writes the Banish- 
 ment of Cicero, 124. Marries Miss Ridge, 130. Takes the rank of 
 Ulster Secretary, 132. Has an offer of a baronetcy, 135. Rejects it, 
 135, 136. His father promoted to the See of Clonfert, 143. Applies 
 for the office of Under Secretary to Lord Halifax, 147. Rejected, ib. 
 Reasons for it, ib. Retires from the employment of Lord Halifax, ib. 
 Accepts the situation vacated by Mr. Sedgwicke, ib. His intercourse 
 with Lord Halifax at an end, 149. Reflections on, ib. His felicity in 
 being independent of booksellers, 158. Has a controversy with Bicker- 
 staff, 159, 160. Roused to a pursuit of the legitimate drama, by the 
 remonstrance of Smith, 161. Visits Ireland, accompanied by his wife, 
 and part of his family, 162. Studies the Irish character, 164. Returns 
 from Ireland, and brings out the comedy of the Brothers, 169. Some 
 delicate flattery of Garrick in the epilogue, the cause of his acquaint- 
 ance with this actor, 175, 176. The origin of Sir Fretful Plagiary, 178 
 — 180. Visits his father, and projects the comedy of the West Indian^ 
 187. Account of adventures which happened to him in Ireland, 191— 
 201. Returns to England, and offers his West Indian to Garrick, 202. 
 Enters the path of controversy, 218. Writes against Bishop Lowth, 
 218, 219. Title of the pamphlet, 220. Loses a present sent to his 
 uncle, as the presumed author of the tract, 222. Writes to the donor, 
 222, 223. Made the heir of a distant relation, but ultimately disap- 
 pointed, 223, 224. Cumberland's own account of this curious trans- 
 action, 224 — 230. His celebrity from the performance of the West 
 Indian, 235. Obtains him the society of Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, 
 Reynolds, &e. ib. His temperate, but discriminate censure of Mr. 
 
INDEX. 609 
 
 Walter Scott, 273—278. Produces the Fashionable Lover, 280. His. 
 literary enterprises, suspended for a time by the death of his parents, 
 301. His account of that event, 302—306. Produces his Choleric 
 Man, 306. Writes two odes, one to the Sun, and one to Dr. James, 312, 
 313. Alters and spoils Shakspeare's Timon of Athens, 313. Specimen 
 of, 314. Writes the Note of Hand, a farce, 318. Fecundity of his 
 muse, 319. Produces the Battle of Hastings, 320; An imitator of 
 Shakspeare, 325 — 328. Introduced to Lord George Germain, 334, 335. 
 Visits him at Stoneland, 337. Produces the opera of Calypso, 340. 
 The Widow of Delphi, or the Descent of the Deities, 341. Writes 
 the defence of Perreau, 342. Solicited to take the defence of Dr. 
 Dodd, 342. Declines it, ib. Intimate with Lord Mansfield, 348. 
 Addresses some lines to him, 348-— 351. Departs upon his Spanish 
 mission, 352. A brief recapitulation of that affair, ib. Arrives at 
 Aranjuez, 355. Fails in his undertaking, 357. Ignorance of an 
 Ecclesiastic, 359. Vain of the notice he received from the Royal 
 Family of Spain, 360. The society he kept at Madrid, 360, 361. Pe- 
 riod of his recall, 367. Reflections upon Cumberland's account of this 
 business, 369. The dangers of a pinch of snuff in Spain, 380 — 383. 
 His forbearance in relating the treatment he received from the English 
 government, 384. Addresses a memorial to Lord North, 385. . Its 
 failure, 390. His remonstrance with Mr. Secretary Robinson, ib. Re- 
 tires to Tunbridge, 392. Family that accompanied him, 396. Publishes 
 his Anecdotes of Eminent Painters in Spain, $97. Accused of attacking 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, 398. Produces his comedy of the Walloons, 406. 
 Produces* the Mysterious Husband, 413. Writes the Observer, 419. 
 Argues against female acquirements, 423. His " few plain reasons 
 for being a Christian," 428. His notions of Political Liberty, ib. Takes 
 credit for the character of Abraham Abrahams in the Observer, 432. 
 Example how his style might be improved, 451. The Observer will 
 convey his name to posterity, 459. His inconsistency in his own state- 
 ments about himself, 460. An apt quotation from La Fontaine, on this 
 subject, 461. Controversy with Mr. Kayley, respecting the Life of 
 Romney, 462. Publishes the tragedy of the Carmelite, 465. Enters 
 into controversy with the Bishop of Landaff, 471. Publishes his pam- 
 phlet of Curtius rescued from the Gulph y ib. Pleasing hours passed at 
 Mr. Dilly's, ib. Becomes acquainted with Mr. Rogers there, 472. Sells 
 the copyright of his Memoirs for <£500, 473. Leaves his unpublished 
 papers to the care of Mr. Sharpe, Mr. Rogers, and Sir James Bland 
 Burges, 475. This bequest frustrated by his daughter, Mrs. Janscn, 
 476. Produces his Natural Son, 447. His excellence in prologues and 
 
 2R 
 
610 INDEX, 
 
 epilogues, 477. His rapidity of production, not inconsistent with ex- 
 cellence, 490. Produces the comedy of the Impostors, 491. His novel 
 of Arundel, 492. Of Henry, 505. His superiority in depicting the 
 passion of Love, 519. Writes the novel of John de Lancaster, 521. 
 The poem of Calvary, 526'. Renders 'fifty of the Psalms of David into 
 English verse, 539. Publishes his few plain reasons, why we should 
 believe in Christ, &c. ib. Enumeration of plays produced by him be- 
 tween 1790 and 1808, 547. Three only deserve notice, ib. Peculiarity 
 in his dramas, 561, 562. Writes his Memoirs, 563. Writes the Exo- 
 diad, in conjunction with Sir J. B. Surges, 564. Edits the Select Bri- 
 tish Drama, 568. Projects a weekly newspaper, ib. Publishes the 
 London Review, 563. His absurd examination of Mr. Townsend's 
 Armageddon, 574. His exertion in behalf of Mr. Cromek, 576. Writes 
 his last work, the Retrospection, published a few days before his 
 death, ib. Personal occurrences of his life enumerated, 580. Heads 
 the Tunbridge volunteers, 581. Remonstrates with Mr. Hayley, 582. 
 His adulation of Sir James Bland Burges, 583. Has an antipathy to 
 Gray, 585. Passes much of his time at Ramsgate, 586. Writes his 
 Memoirs there, ib. Anecdote of him and a bookseller, 587. His death, 
 588. Buried in Westminster Abbey, 589. Address of Dr. Vincent on 
 this occasion, ib. Objections to, 590. Instances of unmeaning and 
 unnecessary oaths, used in Cumberland's works, 591, 592. Sketch of 
 his colloquial talents, by Mr. Hewson Clarke, 593—595. Opinion of" 
 his literary character, 595. Solicited, before he died, a subscription 
 to a quarto edition of his unpublished dramas, ib. Shortly to be given 
 to the world, 596. His family at his death, ib. Bequeaths his pro- 
 perty to his youngest daughter, ib. His will, 597 — 600. His property 
 sworn under ,£450, 600. The impropriety of disregarding his particular 
 and public request, that his posthumous papers should be committed to 
 the care of Sir James Bland Burges, Mr. Sharpe, and Mr. Rogers, con- 
 sidered, ib. Concluding remarks, 601. 
 
 For a further account of Cumberland's works, see the following 
 articles : — Affectation, lines on, Anecdotes of Spanish Painters, Ar- 
 mourer, Arundel, Banishment of Cicero, Battle of Hastings, Box Lobby 
 Challenge, Brothers, Calvary, Calypso, Camoens, Caractacus, Carmelite, 
 Choleric Man, Christian Revelation, Country Attorney, Curtius rescued 
 from the Gulph, Days of Yore, Dependant, Don Pedro, Eccentric Lover, 
 Exodiad, False Impressions, Fashionable Lover, First Love, Hammond, 
 Henry, Hints to. Husbands, Impostors, Jew, Jew of Mogadpre, Joanna 
 of Montfaucon, John de Lancaster, Last of the Family, London Review, 
 Love for Love, Memoirs, Mysterious Husband, Natural Son, Note ©| 
 
INDEX, 611 
 
 Hand, Observer, Odea, Plain Reasons for believing in Christ, Prince of 
 Wales, elegiac verses on, Retrospection, Sailor's Daughter, Select Bri- 
 tish Drama, Shakspeare in the Shades, St. Mark's Eve, elegy on, Sum- 
 mer's Tale, Timon of Athens, Troades of Seneca, Tftnbridge, Virgil's 
 Georgics, Walloons, Wat Tyler, West Indian, Wheel of Fortune, 
 Widow of Delphi, Word for Nature. 
 
 Cumberland, Charles, son of the above, marries the daughter of General 
 Matthew, 596*. In the army, ib. 
 
 William, a post captain in the navy, 596. 
 
 Richard, marries the eldest daughter of the Earl of Bucking- 
 hamshire, 596. Dies at Tobago, ib. 
 
 ■ George, killed at the siege of Charlestown in America, 596. 
 
 Elizabeth, marries Lord Edward Bentinck, son to the late 
 
 Duke of Portland, 596. 
 
 — ..- Sophia, marries William Badcock, Esq. 596. 
 
 Frances Marianne, notice of, 596 ; and see Jansen. 
 
 — — — Joanna, Cumberland's eldest sister, character of, 35. Dies 
 
 of the small-pox, 59. 
 Curtius rescued from the Gulph, a pamphlet of Cumberland's directed 
 against Dr. Parr, 471. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dance, Mr., tribute to, 465. 
 
 Davies x Mr., remarks upon Cumberland's alteration of Shakspeare's 
 
 Timon of Athens, 316, 317. Sneering scepticism of, reproved, 410. 
 Days of Yore, a drama by Cumberland, notice of, 548. 
 De Legibus Naiurce, written by Bishop Cumberland, 4. 
 Dr. Mortuis nil nisi bonum, this maxim examined, 33. 
 Dependant, the, a play by Cumberland, notice of, 547. 
 Dilly, Mr., suggestion at one of his literary dinners, 471. Pleasing hours. 
 
 passed by Cumberland at, 471, 472. 
 Dodington, Bubb, his splendid villa of La Trappe, 109, 110. His asso-. 
 
 ciates there, 110 — 112. Dr. Thompson his body-physician, 111, 112. 
 
 His seat at Eastbury described, 113, 114. His wardrobe and equipage, 
 
 114, 115. His character, 116—118. Wrote small poems, 121. His 
 
 diary, ib. His collection of anecdotes, repartees, &c, 121, 122. 
 Don Pedro, a drama by Cumberland, notice of, 547. 
 Drake, Dr., his opinion of Calvary, 527, 528. His competency as a critic, 
 
 examined, 529 — 531. 
 Dramatic Author, popularity attending a successful one, in preceding 
 
 times, 23 1 . Causes of this, and of the decay of that popularity, 232—235. 
 Drydep, mock-criticism of Mr. Pinkerton on, 435. 
 
 2R 2 
 
612 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Dublin, state of society in, 139. 
 
 Duelling, arguments in defence of, 496. Extract from Nubilia on, 497, 
 498. Attempts to institute a Court of Honour, 496, 497. 
 
 E. 
 
 Eastbury, the seat of Mr. Dodington, described, 113, 114. 
 
 Eccentric Lover, a play by Cumberland, notice of, 547. 
 
 Ecclesiastic, in Spain, ignorance of, 359. 
 
 Elfrida, by Mason, praised much by Cumberland, 72. Remarks on, 72, 75, 
 
 Elphin, Bishopric of, offered to Dr. Crane, 137. Rejected, Jb. 
 
 Ely, Bishop of, controversy of Bentley with, 23. 
 
 Encomiums, upon the dead, always to be suspected, 32, 33. 
 
 Enigma, which required a geometrical process, solved by Cumberland, 
 97. 
 
 Epic Poem, on the discovery of India by the Portuguese, projected by 
 Cumberland, 103. Remarks on Camoens, and his translator, ib. Frag- 
 ment of Cumberland's poem, 104—107. Calvary, S26— 529. Exodiad, 
 564. 
 
 Eseurial, Cumberland's account of, superseded by more recent travels, 
 359, 360. 
 
 Essay on Man, curious plagiarism in, from a sermon of Dr. Bentley's, 
 24—26. 
 
 European Magazine, solicitation of Cumberland in, 595. 
 
 Exodiad, a poem written by Cumberland, in conjunction with Sir Jamefc 
 Bland Burges, remarks on, 564. Opinion of the work, 565. 
 
 Eyre, Lord, his character, 192, 193. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fame, histrionic, fleeting qualities of, 54. Brevity of, feelingly enforced 
 by Schiller, 55. 
 
 False Impressions, a play by Cumberland, notice of, 548. 
 
 Fashionable Lover, observations on Cumberland's drama of, 284 — 300. 
 Prologue to, applauded, 288. Extract from, 288 — -290. Action of, skil- 
 fully contrived, 289. Colin Macleod, total failure of this character, 
 290. Bridgemore, 292. Mortimer, 295. Lord Abberville, Tyrrel, Dr. 
 Druid and Aubrey, 297. Language of this drama, 298. 
 
 Faulkner, George, his character, 141 — 143. Prosecutes Foote for lam- 
 pooning him on the stage of Dublin, 143. 
 
 Female Education, modern, defective system of, 41— -43. 
 
 First Love, a play by Cumberland, notice of, 547. Inferior to the J,ew or 
 Wheel of Fortune, 557. Its characters examined, 557 — 560. Mrs. 
 Jjachbald's observations on, 558. Extract from this drama, 559. 
 
INDEX. 613 
 
 Florida Blanca, County letter to Cumberland, 371. 
 Fox, Mr. Henry, character of, 118. 
 
 G. 
 
 •Gainsborough, Mr., tribute to, 465. 
 
 Galloway, Earl of, a poem written by Cumberland, in answer to one of 
 his daughter's, Lady Susan G., 82 — 84. 
 
 Garrick, remarks on his acting, 55, 56. Rejects Cumberland's tragedy 
 of the Banishment of Cicero, 129. Delicate flattery of, in the epilogue 
 to the Brothers, 175. Cumberland's acquaintance with, 175, 176. His 
 corrections in the West Indian, 203. 
 
 Gauden, Bishop, extract from his life of Hooker, 456. 
 
 Germain, Lord George, succeeds the Earl of Halifax, in the colonial de- 
 partment, 334, 335. Cumberland's account of an interview with, 335. 
 His seat at Stoneland, 337. 
 
 Gibbon, his own biographer, 28. Has produced a dignified narrative, ib. 
 An adequate life of, much desired, 29. 
 
 Glover, Mr. author of Leonidas, an occasional visitor at La Trappe, 111. 
 MS. copy of his Medea, in the possession of Dodington, 120, 121. 
 
 Goldsmith, Dr., his portrait by Cumberland, 256 — 259. Defence of his 
 histories, 260 — 262. Of his Animated Nature, 262. Anecdotes of, 263 — 
 269. His Vicar of Wakefield sold for sixty guineas, 269. Cumberland's 
 mistake concerning, ib. Extract from his poem of Retaliation, 270. His 
 epitaph on Cumberland contains more censure than praise, 271, 272. 
 Cumberland's sketch of, in his Retrospection, 272. His style examined 
 and praised, 447. 
 
 Graham, Sir James, his handsome present to Cumberland, 595. 
 
 Gray, Mr., his opinion of the Nouvelle Heloise of Rousseau, 90. Cum- 
 berland's antipathy to, 585. 
 
 Greaves, Mr. Commissary, anecdpte of, 19. Cumberland's letter to, 222. 
 
 H. 
 
 Halifax, Earl of. Lord Lieutenant of Northamptonshire, 80. Appoints 
 Cumberland his confidential secretary, 91. A collateral descendant of 
 a celebrated nobleman of that name, ib. A distinguished statesman 
 and scholar, 91, 92. Fond of English poetry, 92. Married to a lady 
 with a large fortune, from whom he takes the name of Dunk, ib. 
 Crane, an elderly clergyman, an inmate in the family, ib. Formerly 
 his lordship's tutor, ib. His opinions listened to with submissive de- 
 ference, ib. Accompanies Cumberland to Cambridge, 95. Loses his 
 wife, 108. Her character, ib. Accompanies Cumberland to London, 
 ib. Made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 131. Accompanied by " single 
 •speech Hamilton," ib. Circumstance highly to his honour, 133, 134, 
 
6l4 INDEX. 
 
 Presents Cumberland's father to the see of Clonfert, 143. Receives the 
 
 seals of Secretary of State, 146. Appoints Mr. Sedgwicke his under 
 
 secretary, ib. Rejects the offer of Cumberland, 147. Reasons for it, ib. 
 
 His intercourse with Cumberland terminated, 149. Reflections on, ib. 
 
 Character of, by Cumberland, 152 — 154. His death, 334. Succeeded 
 
 by Lord George Germain, ib. 
 Hamilton, Gerard, chief secretary to Lord Halifax, 131. Known by the 
 
 name of " Single-speech," 132. His character, 136. 
 Hammond's Elegies, specimen of imitation of, by Cumberland, 84, 85- 
 
 Remarks on Hammond, 85, 86. Criticism of Dr. Johnson upon, with 
 
 observations, 87, 88. Vindicated from the aspersions of Dr. Johnson, 
 
 88—90. 
 Hayley, Mr., controversy between him and Cumberland, respecting the 
 
 life of Romney, 462. Attacks Cumberland, for his character of Bentley, 
 
 582. Answered by him, ib. 
 Henderson, the actor, account of, by Cumberland, 406—410. The cha- 
 racter of Father Sullivan, in the Walloons, written for him, 406. 
 Henry, a novel by Cumberland, advertisement to, 506. The initial 
 chapters borrowed from Fielding, 507. Its characters examined, 508— 
 521. Extracts from, 512 — 514. Must always be read with pleasure, 520. 
 Higgs, Rev. Mr., visits Cumberland, 108. 
 Hid, Sir John, defence of, 259, 260. 
 Hillsborough, Earl of, letter to Cumberland, 368. 
 Hints to Husbands, a drama, by Cumberland, notice of, 548. Defect in> 
 
 560,561. Characters examined, 561. 
 Holberg, his own biographer, 28. Has produced a lively narrative, 
 
 and communicated as much as posterity wish to know of him, ib. 
 Honour, Court of, attempts to institute, 496, 497. 
 
 Hoppner, Mr., gives his opinion of Mr. Croraek's picture of Chaucer's 
 Pilgrims, 576. 
 
 I. 
 
 Idolatry P the capital error of the Romish church, 7. Earliest accounts of, 
 in Sanehoniatho's Phoenician History, 8. 
 
 Impostors, remarks on Cumberland's comedy of, 491 . Characters in, 491, 
 492. Very inferior to his other plays, ib. 
 
 Jnchbald, Mrs., her mode of criticism, 214, 215. Opinion of the Jew, 55 1 . 
 False position of, controverted, 552. Her sensible observations on the 
 Wheel of Fortune, 555. Remarks on First Love, examined and cen- 
 sured, 558 — 560. 
 
 Inscriptions, monumental, infidelity of, 33. 
 
 Ireland, travelling in, 163, 
 
INDEX. 615 
 
 J. 
 
 James, Dr., extract from Cumberland's ode to, 313. 
 
 Jansen, Mrs., frustrates the bequest of Cumberland, her father, 476. Sur- 
 prise at, ib. Loses her huband in the ill-fated expedition to Walcheren., 
 579. Remarks on her declining- the interference of Sir James Bland 
 Burges, Mr. Sharpe, and Mr. Rogers, 601. 
 
 Jew, the, a play by Cumberland, notice, 547. Examination of the cha- 
 racters in, 549, 550. Mrs. Tnchbald's opinion of, 551. False position 
 of ber's controverted, 552. 
 
 Jew of Mogadore, an opera by Cumberland, notice of, and remarks on, 
 547, 548. 
 
 Joanna of Montfaucon, a drama by Cumberland, notice of, 548. Not men- 
 tioned by him, ib. Adapted from Kotzebue, ib. Extract from the 
 prologue, ib. 
 
 John de Lancaster, remarks upon Cumberland's novel of, 521—524. In- 
 ferior to Henry and Arundel, 521. Plot and characters examined, 521 
 — 525. Exhibits symptoms of mental decay, 522. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., his criticism upon Hammond's Elegies, with observations on 
 it, 87, 88. Cumberland's character of, 236 — 244. Adumbration of, in 
 the Observer, 244. Comparison between him and Burke in the poem 
 of Retrospection, 247 — 249. A better Greek scholar, than insinuated 
 by Cumberland, 250, 251. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kaunitz, Count, pleasing anecdote of, 361. 
 
 Keinble, Mr., tribute to his excellence as an actor, 466, 467. His per- 
 formance of Penruddock contributes to the popularity of the Wheel oH 
 Fortune, 553. 
 
 Kilmore, Cumberland's father translated to the see of, 146. 
 
 Kinsman, Arthur, master of the school at Bury St. Edmunds, 35. Re- 
 proves Cumberland, 36. Knew how to make his boys scholars, 52. 
 
 L. 
 
 La Fontaine, quotation from, on the subject of Cumberland's incon- 
 sistency in his statements, 461. 
 
 Landaff, Bishop of, Cumberland's controversy with, 471. 
 
 Last of the Family, a play by Cumberland, notice of, 547. 
 
 La Trappe, a splendid villa of Bubb Dodington's, in the parish of Ham- 
 mersmith, 109, 110. Description of its visitants, 109 — 112. 
 
 Locke, Jolm, opinion of Blackmore, 89. 
 
 London Review, the first number of, published by Cumberland, 569. 
 Abuses of anonymous criticism considered, 569 — 573. Fate of 573.- 
 
616 INDEX. 
 
 Articles written in, by Cumberland, 574. His absurd examination of 
 
 Mr. Townsend's Armageddon, 574, 575. 
 Lonsdale, Lord, his handsome present to Cumberland, 595. 
 Love, Cumberland's superiority in depicting the passion of, 519. 
 Love for Love, Cumberland's strictures on, noticed, 568. 
 Lowth, BisJtop, appellation of Dr. Bentley, 17. Title of the pamphlet 
 
 written against, by Cumberland, 220. 
 Lyttleton, Lord, his criticism upon the West Indian, 207. 
 
 M. 
 
 Mansfield, Earl of, lines addressed to, by Cumberland, 343—351. 
 
 Mason, Dr., opposes Cumberland's election to a fellowship, 95. His 
 reasons for it, 95, 96. 
 
 Matthew, General, his daughter married to Charles Cumberland, 596. 
 
 Mead, Dr., a friend of Dr. Bentley, 20. 
 
 Memoirs, self- written, considerations on, 127. 
 
 ~- of Cumberland, how far used in the present work, 27, 28. A 
 
 pleasing accumulation of literary anecdote, 28. Remarks on the con- 
 tinued strain of eulogy in, 100, 101. Miss Seward's opinion of, 181. 
 Motives for the extracts from, 255. Public indebted to Mr. Sharpe for 
 the suggestion of, 473. Copy-right of, sold for 500Z. ib. Notice of, 564, 
 565. Pleasing accession of anecdote in the supplement to, 583. Great 
 part of the Memoirs written at Ramsgate, 586. 
 
 Menander, observations on, 283. 
 
 Mengs, the Spanish painter, Cumberland's critique on, 398. 
 
 Mickle's translation of Camoen's Lusiad, remarks on, 103. Fragment of 
 a poem on the same subject by Cumberland, 104—107. 
 
 Minden, Lord Sackville's solemn declaration respecting the affair of, 
 489. 
 
 Moliere, quotation from applicable to Cumberland, 567. 
 
 Murphy, Arthur, his remarks on Cumberland's alteration of Shakspeare's 
 Timon of Athens, 316. 
 
 Mysterious Husband, remarks on Camberland's tragedy of, 413 — 418. 
 
 . Epilogue to, 417. 
 
 N. 
 Natural Son, a comedy by Cumberland, prologue to, 478. Remarks ofl 
 
 its characters, language, and sentiments, 479—484. 
 Neivton, Sir Isaac, a friend of Dr- Bentley, 20. Anecdote of, 70. 
 Nichols, Dr., master of Westminster School, had the art of making his 
 
 scholars gentlemen, 52. 
 North, Z/o?Y/,|Cumberland's memorial to, 385. 
 
INDEX. 617 
 
 Note of Hand, or a Trip to Newmarket, a farce by Cumberland, acted 
 
 with moderate applause, 318. 
 Nottingham, contested election for the county of, 78. 
 Novels, remarks on, 492, 493. Written by the greatest men, 493. 
 Nubilia, extract from, on duelling, 497, 498. 
 Nugent, Lord, his criticism upon the West Indian, 207. 
 
 Oaths, unmeaning and unnecessary, instances of, in Cumberland's works, 
 591. 
 
 Observer, adumbration of Dr. Johnson, in, 244. Begun by Cumberland 
 during his residence at Tunbridge, 419. Comparison of this work with 
 the essays of Johnson, Addison, and Steele, 419. Examination of some 
 particular papers in this work, 422. The religious papers commended, 
 427. Character of Abraham Abrahams written upon principle, 432. 
 Mock criticism on Othello, anticipated by Mr. Pinkerton, 433. Speci- 
 men of, 437. General character of the Observer, 441 . Examination of 
 its style, 444 — 446. A work that will convey Cumberland's name to 
 posterity, 459. 
 
 Odes, by Cumberland, to the Sun, extract from, 312. To Dr. James, 
 313. 
 
 O'Rourke, three brothers of tbis name at Clonfert, 198. Characters of, 
 199, 200. 
 
 Othello, specimen of mock-criticism on, in the Observer, 437. Defective, 
 440,441. 
 
 P. 
 
 Parr, Dr., Cumberland's pamphlet of Curtius rescued from the Gulph, 
 directed against him, 471. 
 
 Perreau, defence of, written by Cumberland, 342. 
 
 Peterborough, Bishop of, See Cumberland, Bishop. 
 
 ■ See of, Dr. Richard Cumberland nominated to, 5. Mode- 
 
 rately endowed, 6. 
 
 Physicians in the country, may secure a respectable practice, 3. In the 
 metropolis, confounded with a throng of aspirers, ib. 
 
 Pinkerton, Mr. mock-criticism upon Dry den's Ode, 435. 
 
 Plagiarism, curious, of Pope's in his Essay en Man, from a sermon of Dr. 
 Bentley's, 24—26. 
 
 Plain Reasons why we should believe in Christ, &c, a tract by Cumber- 
 land, buffoonery in, 540, 541. Conclusion of, 541 — 545. 
 
 Pocock, Dr., Bishop of Ossory, his character, 138. Visited by Cumber- 
 land, ib. 
 
618 INDEX. 
 
 Pope, in Ms Dun-clad, speaks contemptuously of Br. Bentley's skill in 
 verbal criticism, 1 1 . Represents him obsequiously attended by Walker, 
 vice-master of Trinity-College, 13. Curious plagiarism of, in his Essay 
 on Man, from a sermon of Dr. Bentley's, 24 — 26. Opinion of Dr. Bentley 
 on his translation of Homer, 38. Challenged by Dr. Bentley's son, 39. 
 Declines the challenge, ib. 
 
 Pownall, Mr., acting secretary to the Board of Trade, 93. Appointed to 
 instruct Cumberland in the details of business, ib. A mere man of 
 office, ib. 
 
 Prince of Wales, father of his present Majesty, elegiac verses upon the 
 death of ? by Cumberland, 63. 
 
 R. 
 
 Reading, the pleasures of, 395. 
 
 Retaliation, a poem, extract from., 270. 
 
 Retrospection, a poem by Cumberland, extracts from, 153, 154, 189, 190, 
 272, 273, 278, 393, 394, 577, 578. Published a few days before his 
 death, 576. Character of, 576, 577. 
 
 Reynolds, Reverend Decimus, appoints Cumberland his heir, 224, 225. 
 Letter-to, 227. 
 
 Sir Joshua, Cumberland accused of attacking his character, 
 
 398. Tribute to, 465. 
 
 Richard Cceur de Lion, a poem by Sir James Bland Burges, written with 
 more rapidity than Pope translated Homer, 583. 
 
 Robinson, John, Cumberland's letter to, 374. 
 
 Robinson, Doctor, translated from the see of Ferns, to that of Kildare, 140. 
 
 Rodney, Sir George Brydges, character of, by Cumberland, 343 — 347. 
 
 Rogers, Mr. becomes acquainted with Cumberland, at Mr. Dilly's, 472, 
 Remarks on his Pleasures of Memory, ib. 473. Advice to him, on his 
 poetical talents, 473. Cumberland's posthumous papers, bequeathed to 
 him, Sir James Bland Burges, and Mr. Sharpe, 598. 
 
 Romney, Mr., controversy between Cumberland, and Mr. Hayley, respect- 
 ing his life, 462. Tribute to, 465. 
 
 Rousseau's attempt to record all the events of his life, 28. Doubtful whe- 
 ther he unfolded all, ib. Gray's opinion of his Nouvelle Heloise, 90. 
 
 S. 
 
 Saclimlle, Lord, visibly declines in health, 484. The old friend and patron 
 of Cumberland, ib. Character and peculiarities of, 484 — 488. Cumber- 
 land's account of his last moments, 489. His solemn declaration 
 respecting the affair of Minden, ib. 
 
 Sailor's Daughter, a play by Cumberland, notice of, 547. 
 
INDEX, 619 
 
 S'ancJioniatho's Phenician History, much time spent in examining-, by 
 Bishop Cumberland, 7. Earliest accounts of idolatry in, 8. Refused 
 to be published by Bishop Cumberland's bookseller, 8. Published aftee 
 his death by his son-in-law, 9. 
 
 Schiller, extract from, on the brevity of histrionic fame, 55. 
 
 School-connexions, remarks on, 51, 52. 
 
 Scott, Mr. Walter, portrait of, by Miss Seward, 184. Observations on his 
 poetry, 2/3—279. On the Lady of the Lake, 276. On Don Roderick, 
 277. Cumberland's temperate but discriminate censure of, 278. 
 
 Sedgwicke, Mr., appointed under-secretary to Lord Halifax, 146. The 
 situation wmch he vacates, accepted by Cumberland, 147. 
 
 Select British Drama, edited by Cumberland, 568. His History of the 
 Rise and Progress of the Stage in, ib. 
 
 Seneca, a passage in the Troades of, versified by Cumberland, 98 — 100. 
 
 Seward, Miss, opinion of Cumberland's Memoirs, 181, 186, 187. Censure 
 of her letters, 181 — 184. Instances of her vanity, affectation, and 
 vitiated phraseology, ib. Her hyperbolical adulation of Mr. Southev, 
 1 83 . Her portrait of Mr. Walter Scott, L84. 
 
 Shaltspeare in the Shades, a dramatic piece by Cumberland, 44. De- 
 scription of, and extracts from, 44 — 50. 
 
 Shahspeare' s Timon of Athens, altered and spoiled by Cumberland, 313. 
 Specimen of, 314. Murphy's and Davies' opinion of, 316. 
 
 Sharpe, Mr., tribute of affection to, by Cumberland, 473. Public in- 
 debted to, for the suggestion of his Memoirs, ib. Lines addressed to, 
 474, 475. Accedes to Cumberland's request, 475. Cumberland's 
 posthumous papers bequeathed to him, Sir James Bland Burgcs > and 
 Mr. Rogers, 598. 
 
 Sherlock, Bishop, visited by Cumberland, 109. In the last stage of 
 bodily decay, ib. His mind unaffected, ib. Arranges his sermons for 
 publication, while in this state, ib. 
 
 Siddons, Mrs., Cumberland's Carmelite, dedicated to her, 465. Speaks 
 the prologue, 470. 
 
 Smith, Dr., Master of Trinity College, agrees upon an alteration of the 
 existing statutes in favour of Cumberland, 90. 
 
 Smith, Mr., his remonstrance with Cumberland, 161. 
 
 Society for the suppression of Vice, some advice to, and remarks on, 
 450,451. 
 
 Southey Mr., Miss Seward's adulation of, 183. His Madoc, neglected by 
 the present generation, ib. 
 
 Spain, brief history of painting in, 402. 
 
 Spanheim, Baron, a friend of Dr. Bentley, 20. 
 
 Spanish Painters, anecdotes of, published by Cumberland, 397. 
 
t>20 INDEX. 
 
 Spenser, opinion of, by Lord Burleigh, 89. 
 
 Stage, history of the rise and progress of, by Cumberland, 568. 
 
 Stamvick, rectory of, accepted by Cumberland's father, 34. Exchanged 
 
 by him for the vicarage of Fuiham, 109. 
 St. Mark's Eve, elegy on, written by Cumberland, 96. Published by 
 
 Dodsley, ib. Passes into oblivion, ib. 
 -Stone, Primate, his character, 139, 140. 
 Stoneland, a seat of Lord George Germain, 337, 338. 
 Stothard, Mr., exertions in his behalf by Cumberland, 577. 
 Stubbs, Mr. tribute to, 465. 
 Style, observations on simplicity of, 253, 254. General remarks on, 444 
 
 —446. 
 Summei^s Tale, a drama by Cumberland, remarks on, 156, 157. 
 -Sun, extract from Cumberland's ode Xo the, 312. 
 
 T. 
 
 Terence, observations on his Andria, 283. 
 
 Thompson, Dr., a physician out of practice, Dodington's body-physician, 
 
 description of, 111. Anecdote of, 111, 112. An inmate of La Trappe, ib. 
 Tichell, remarks upon his elegy on the death of Addison, 86, 87. 
 Timon of Athens, Shakspeare's play of, altered and spoiled by Cumberland, 
 
 313. Specimen of, 314— t316. Murphy's and Davies' opinion of, 316. 
 Tiranna, a celebrated Spanish actress, account of, 362—367. 
 Townspnd, Charles, one of the Lords of Trade, notices Cumberland fop 
 
 solving an enigma, which required a geometrical process, 97. Submits 
 
 a report to him, for his inspection, ib. Affords him an opportunity of 
 
 displaying his scholastic acquirements, 97 : , 98. 
 Townsend, Mr., absurd examination of his Armageddon, by Cumberland, 
 
 574, 575. 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, an alteration in its existing statutes, agreed 
 
 upon, in favour of Cumberland, 90. 
 Troades, of Seneca, a passage in, versified by Cumberland, 98 — 100. 
 Tunbridge, invocation to, from the Retrospection, 393. Volunteers of, 
 
 headed by Cumberland, 581. 
 'Turner, Mr. Sharon, sends a complimentary letter to Cumberland, 584, 
 
 585. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vicar of Wakefield, copyright of, sold for sixty guineas, 269. Cumberland's 
 
 mistake concerning, ib. 
 fincent, Dr., Dean of Westminster, his address delivered on the funeral 
 
 of Cumberland, 589. Objections to, 590. 
 
INDEX. 621 
 
 fiirgifs Georgics, part of, translated by Cumberland, 5*6, 57. Extract 
 from, 58. 
 
 W. 
 
 Walker, vice-master of Trinity College, represented as the obsequious 
 attendant of Dr. Bentley, 13. 
 
 Wallis, Dr., a friend of Dr. Bentley, 20. 
 
 Walloons, remarks on Cumberland's comedy of, 406. Henderson's cha- 
 racter in, ib. 407. 
 
 Warburton, Bishop, Dr. Bentley's opinion of, 38. Complimentary letter 
 to Mr. Cumberland, on the Banishment of Cicero, 125, 126. Opinion 
 of Burke's style, 252. 
 
 Warren Dr., a competitor of Cumberland, while at school, 39. 
 
 Wat Tyler, a comic opera, by Cumberland, altered and produced under 
 the name of the Armourer, 547. 
 
 West, Mr., tribute to, 465. 
 
 West Indian, presented to Garrick, 202. Accepted and performed, 203, 204. 
 History of its success, 204—206. Copyright sold to Griffin for 150?. who 
 boasted of having sold 12,000 copies, 205, 206. Criticisms upon it, by 
 Lord Lyttleton and Lord Clare, 207. By Lord;Nugent, 208. Observa- 
 tions upon its fable, characters, and language, 208—215- Belcour, 
 209, 210. Charlotte Rusport, Louisa Dudley, 210. Major O'Flaherty, 
 210—213. Inferior to the delineations of Irish characters, by Colman 
 and Miss Edgeworth, 213. Ungrammatical construction of the lan- 
 guage, 214. Mrs. Inchhald's mode of criticism, 214, 215. 
 
 Westminster, Dean of, address delivered on the funeral of Cumberland, 
 589. Objection to, 590. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, Cumberland buried in Poet's Corner there, 589. 
 
 Westminster School, Cumberland removed to, 50. His contemporaries 
 there, 50, 51. 
 
 Wheel of Fortune, a play, by Cumberland, notice of, 547. Kemble's 
 acting in Penruddock contributes to its popularity, 553. Outline of the 
 plot taken from Kotzebue's Misanthropy and Repentance, 553. Its 
 characters examined, 553 — 557. Mrs. Inchbald's observation on, 554. 
 
 Whig, constitutional, character of, 79. 
 
 Widow of Delphi ; or, the Descent of the Deities, remarks on Cumberland's 
 opera of, 341. 
 
 Word for Nature, a play, by Cumberland, notice of, 547. 
 
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