Steele, and Steele obtained a patent for his own Ule and
three years afl;erwards, which he assigned to Gibber,
Wilks, and Booth, confirming their right in the entire
property, reserving to himself a quarter of the profits.
The patent was dated 19th Jan. 1715. The race was now
between Gibber and the younger Rich. Gibber started with
his usual skill and confidence, but suffered a temporary
check by a clever though malicious ruse of his antagonist.
A report was actively circulated that the edifice in Drury
Lane was insecure, as the foundations were sinking. The
rumour obtained such credit that the actors had to play
to empty benches; and until an architect had formally
surveyed the building, and published a written attestation
of its security, Rich's company reaped the fruits of their
audacious calumny.
As soon as Gibber gained upon his antagonist, Rich fell
back upon artificial aid, and introduced those pantomimic
performances which still retain possession of the stage.
Gibber likewise, though much against his conscience, made
auxiliaries of Pantaloon and Golumbine, and the old game
of Davenant and Killegrew was played over again. Rich,
however, whose performances as Harlequin are still fmaous
in theatrical annals, completely captivated the galleries,
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268 COLLEY CIBBER.
and might have realized a handsome competence had not
mismanagement always kept him poor.
The personages of the pantomime, though of recent
introduction in this coimtry, are of almost immemorial
antiquity in their native Italy. Their expressive gestures
were the delight of the ancient Romans, and disarmed
the gravity of statesmen and philosophers. Through the
changing manners of successive centuries, their characters
underwent various modifications. In later times Harlequin
especially degenerated from his early sprightliness and
humour, until the comic muse of Goldoni re-invested
him with his present attractions. We present an extract
on this subject from the memoirs of that entertaining
writer, which, we feel assured, no reader will blame for
its length.
" Comedy, which has at all times been the favourite
spectacle of civilized nations, had shared the fate of the
arts and sciences, and been swallowed up in the ruin of
empires, and the decline of letters ; but the germ of
comedy was never quite extinct in the fertile imagination
of the Italians. The first who laboured to revive it being
disappointed, during a dark age, in skilful writers, had the
boldness to compose plans, to divide them into acts and
scenes, and to utter as impromptus, conversations,
thoughts, and pleasantries which were previously con-
certed.. Those who could read (and the rich were not of
the number) observed that the comedies of Plautus and
Terence always contained fathers who were dupes,
debauched sons, amorous girls, lying valets, and corrupt
maid-servants; and, traversing the different cantons of
Italy, they took their fathers at Venice and Bologna, their
valets at Bergamo, their enamoured youths and maids,
and their soubrettes in the states of Rome and Tuscany.
" We must not wait for written proofs of this reasoning,
because we arie speaking of an age in which writing was
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nearly unknown ; but I prove my assertion in this manner.
The pantaloon has always been a Venetian, the doctor
a Bolognese, and the harlequin and clown have ever been
from Bergamo ; from these places the actors took those
comic characters which are known to us by the name of
the four Italian masks. I advance these remarks not
entirely from my own conception ; I am in possession of a
manuscript of the fifteenth century, in good preservation,
bound in parchment, which contains a hundred and twenty
subjects or canvases of Italian pieces, called comedies of
the art, and of which the principal basis consists invariably
of a pantaloon, a Venetian merchant ; the doctor, a lawyer
of Bologna ; Brighella and Harlequin, valets of Beiigamo ;
the first quick and active, the other heavy. Their antiquity
and permanent existence prove their origin. With regard
to their employment, the pantaloon and the doctor, whom
the Italians call the two old men, represent the part of
fathers or other venerable characters. The first is a
merchant, because Venice was in those ancient times the
richest and most extensive commercial coimtry in Italy,
He has ever preserved the ancient Venetian costume.
The black robe and woollen bonnet are yet worn at
Venice ; while the red waistcoat, breeches cut like drawers,
and red stockings and slippers represent exactly the dress
of the ancient inhabitants of the Adriatic lagoons ; and
the beard, which was a great ornament in those distant
ages,' has been carried to a grotesque extreme fn these
latter days. The second old man, called the doctor, has
been selected from the legal profession for the purpose of
contrasting the learned with the commercial man ; and he
is from Bologna because an university existed in that city,
which, with all the ignorance of the time, yet adhered to
the charges and emoluments of professors. His dress
preserves the ancient costume of the bar of Bologna,
which is nearly the same to this hour ; and the singular
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mask which covers the forehead and nose, has been
imitated from a wine mark which deformed the face of a
lawyer in those days. This tradition yet exists among the
amateurs of the comedy of art. The Brighella and
Harlequin, called in Italy the two Zanies, have been bor-
rowed from Bergamo. The adroitness of the first, and
the extreme heaviness of the second, are proofs of this
assertion ; because in no other country do we find these
two extremes in the dass of the people. Brighella repre-
sents an intriguing, roguish, dishonest valet. His dress is
a kind of livery ; and his tawny mask is a satire on the
complexion of the inhabitants of those lofty mountains,
scorchfd by the heat of the sun. The Harlequins also
have their different names ; but they are always natives of
Bergamo, heavy and clownish, and their dress represents a
poor devil, who picks up pieces of different stuffs and colours
to mend his clothes. The hat corresponds with their beg-
gary, and the tail of a hare, with which it is decorated,
is to this day the usual ornament of the peasants of
Bergamo."
In this country the functions of the two last-mentioned
characters have been reversed. The harlequin is the active
personage, and the brighella is the clown or servant.
In 1 720, Steele opposed some ministerial measure, and
offended thereby the Duke of Newcastle. That nobleman,
who was then all-powerful, summoned the patentees, and
in a peremptory manner, required the resignation of *their
patent, offering to grant them a licence in its stead, which
of course it would have been in his power to suspend at
pleasure. The managers stoutly refused compliance. The
Duke became angry, and threatened to close the theatres, but
had the good sense to take no further notice of the matter.
Dennis, a Whig, took up the cudgels in behalf of his
patron, and with the usual consistency of his party, thus
alludes to the liberties of Englishmen when they happen to
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be actors. The language is as elegant as the sentiments
are generous. "Actors in England," he writes, "have
always been looked upon as vagabonds and rogues by
statute, unless they have been under the protection of our
kings, or some of our English peers ; yet in this last
case I have been credibly informed that for great mis-
demeanours they have been sent to Whitehall, and whipped
at the porter's lodge, and I have heard Joe Haines (a
celebrated actor) more than once ingenuously own that he
had been twice whipped there. If Gibber in the days of
King James, or King Charles I., had dared to treat a Lord
Chamberlain with half the insolence that he has lately
done the present, his bones would have been as bloody as
his head is raw."
A few years after this incident Cibber figured in West-
minster Hall as the defendant in a chancery suit, and
acquitted himself with unusual adroitness and ability.
Steele's improvidence had reduced him to frequent pecu-
niary straits, and he had found it convenient to borrow
various sums of money from his co-patentees. His appli-
cations occurring, however, at continually lessening in-
tervals, it was resolved to refuse all further advance until
existing accounts could be arranged. Steele conceived
such grave displeasure at this, that he entirely neglected
his duties at the theatre, and left his share of the work
to be performed by the rest at their convenience. The
remaining managers accordingly undertook his 3uties,
and appropriated to themselves £1 135. 4 d. a day each,
as compensation for their additional labour. This ar-
rangement was acted upon during the space of three
years when Steele's creditors interfered. His affairs by
this time were completely in the hands of the lawyers, and
at their instance he was induced to file a bill in chancery
to contest the right of the managers to retain any portion
of his share of the profits. The cause came on for
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272 CCLLEY GIBBER.
hearing in 1726 before Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the
Rolls. Cibber pleaded his case in person, and obtained
the applause of all who heard him, and what, perhaps, he
scarcely valued as much, a verdict in his favour. The
triumph was the more flattering as the two opposite
counsel were both men of note, who each afterwards suc-
cessively rose to be Lord Chancellor of England.
In 1728, " The Beggar's Opera," written in ridicule of
the Italian opera, and the effect of which was popularly
said to make Rich gay and Gay rich, was brought out at
Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play had been offered to Cibber,
but by an oversight, committed occasionally by shrewd men
of experience, he had declined it. The hint of the piece
had been given by Swift, but Congreve, Pope, and Swift all
doubted whether it would fail or succeed. During the
first act they were still hesitating, when they heard the
Duke of Argyll, who was in the next box, exclaim : " It
will do, it must do, I see it in the eyes of them." Pre-
sently a biu-st of applause approved the keenness of the
Duke's perception, and the enthusiasm increased till the
fall of the curtain. The mania this piece excited through-
out the country is incomprehensible. Ladies learnt the
songs; scenes from it were painted on their fans, and
adorned the walls of their houses, and the Italian opera
was for a while exploded.
From this period Drury Lane declined. Steele died in
the following year ; Mrs. Oldfield in 1 730. Booth fell ill ;
and in 1731 Wilks, too, died. These accumulated mis-
fortunes so affected the reputation and efficiency of the
theatre, that, though it made a vigorous effort, it never
recovered its position until Garrick, some years afterwards,
brought new powers into the field, and resuscitated the
system that Cibber had so prosperously carried out. In
1732 the patent expired, and Cibber without much trouble
obtained its renewal for twenty-one years, in behalf of
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COLLEY CIBBER. 273
Booth, Mrs. Wilks, and himself. Booth sold a half of his
share to a man named Highmore, who knew nothing of
theatrical matters ; Mrs. Wilks appointed one Ellis to act
for her, who was equally unqualified, and Gibber foreseeing
nothing but ruin, closed with an oflFer of Highmore, and
sold his share for 3000 guineas. About this time, like-
wise, a rage for theatrical speculation sprang up. Odell
built a theatre in Goodman's Fields, in 1729; GiflFard
another in 1732, and Rich opened the theatre in Covent
Garden on the 7th of December of the same year.
Fielding, with his Great Mogul's Company, took the
Haymarket, and the ferocious satires of that extraordinary
writer induced the government to pass the celebrated bill
limiting the number of theatres, and obliging all managers
to submit their pieces to the supervision of a licenser.
We now recur to Gibber's dramatic career. After the
comparative failure of his last play,* he was meditating
what new line he could take up, when an event occurred
which he had the skill to avail himself of, and he adroitly
made a public calamity minister to his private benefit.
The rebellion in Scotland, in favour of the Pretender, gave
him the cue, and he accordingly made a formal and
vigorous attack on Jacobitism in his play, "The Non-
Juror," founded on the "TartuflFe," of Molifere. His
success was great, although such success depends more on
the temper of the audience than the merit of the piece,
and is always one-sided ; for, though he pleased many, he
oflFended many, who could still remain faithful to their
earlier predilections. He acquired, however, a noisy popu-
larity. Lintot, the publisher, gave him a hundred guineas
for the copyright, an unprecedented price at that time;
and on presenting a copy to King George I. his magna-
nimity did not restrain him from pocketing £200 as the
reward of his triumph over the fallen.
* See page 257.
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274 COLLEY GIBBER.
*
In 1730, he was dignified by the laurel. The appoint-
ment was owing, not to any poetical merit he may have
manifested, but to the fact of his having proved himself a
sound Whig, by writing " The Non -Juror." The ridicule
poured upon him on this occasion was unsparing, and it
was not diminished by the publication of his successive
Birth-day Odes.
"Well, said Apollo, still 'tis mine
To giye the real Latirel ;
!For that, my Pope, my son divine,
Of rivals ends the quarrel.
" Bat guessing who should have the luck
To be the Birth-day fibber,
I thought of Dennis, Tibbald, Duck,
But never dreamed of Gibber."
His enemies had been on the increase for some years
past, and persecuted him with a pertinacity and bitterness
of which we fortunately have no instance in the present
day. Periodical publications attacked him with unre-
mitting industry. Attempts were made at the outset to
stifle plays which eventually, by their continued popu-
larity, proved their adaptation to the public taste, and the
merciless satire of Pope selected him as its choicest victim.
It is difficult now to detect the causes of such rancorous
hostility, as there appears little in his genius or character
to warrant it. In a letter to Pope, he gives the following
account of the origin of that poet's ill-feeling towards
him, and, as the assertion was suflFered to go forth without
contradiction, we may assume that from so contemptible
a cause arose that long enduring contention.
" The play of ' The Rehearsal,' " says Gibber, " which
had lain some few years dormant, being by his present
Majesty (then Prince of Wales) commanded to be revived,
the part of Bays fell to my share. To this character
there had always been allowed such ludicrous liberties of
observation upon anything new or remarkable in the state
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COLLEY GIBBER. 275
of the stage as Mr. Bays might think proper to take.
Much about this time, then, the 'Three Hours After
Marriage' had been acted without success, when Mr. Bays,
as usual, had a fling at it ; which in itself was no jest,
unless the audience would please to make it one. But
however, flat as it was, Mr. Pope was mortally sore upon
it. This was the offence : In this play, two coxcombs
being in love with a learned virtuoso's wife, to get unsus-
pected access to her, ingeniously send themselves as two
presented rarities to the husband, the one curiously
swathed up like an Egyptian mummy, and the other
slily covered in the pasteboard skin of a crocodile ^ upon
which poetical expedient, I, Mr. Bays, when the two kings
of Brentford came from the clouds into the throne again,
instead of what my part directed me to say, made use of
the words: 'Now, Sir, this revolution I had some
thought of introducing by a quite different contrivance ;
but my design taking air, some of your sharp wits, I
found, had made use of it before me ; otherwise I in-
tended to have stolen one of them in the shape of a
Mummy, and the other in that of a Crocodile!' Upon
which, I doubt, the audience, by the roar of their applause,
shewed their proportionable contempt of the play they
belonged to. But why am I answerable for that ? I did
not lead them by any reflection of my own into that con-
tempt. Surely, to have used the bare words Mummy
and Crocodile was neither unjust nor unmannerly. Where,
then, was the crime of simply saying there had been two
such things in a former play ? But this, it seems, was so
heinously taken by Mr. Pope, that in the swelling of his
heart, after the play was over, he came behind the scenes,
with his lips pale and his voice trembling, to call me to
account for the insult ; and accordingly fell upon me with ^
all the foul language that a wit out of his senses could be
capable of. How durst I have the impudence to treat
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any gentleman in that manner, &c. Now let the reader
judge by this concern who was the true mother of the
child ! When he was almost choked with the foam of his
passion, I was enough recovered from my amazement to
make him, as near as I can remember, this reply : * Mr.
Pope, you are so particular (distinguished) a man, that I
must be ashamed to return your language as I ought to
do ; but since you have attacked me in so monstrous a
manner, this you may depend upon, that as long as the
play continues to be acted, I will never fail to repeat the
same words over and over again.' Now, as he accord-
ingly found I kept my word for several days followbg,
I am afraid that he has since thought that his pen was a
sharper weapon than his tongue to trust his revenge with ;
and however just cause this may be for his so doing, it is,
at least, the only cause my conscience can charge me with.*'
The play thus glanced at with such fatal eflfect, was a
miserable performance, the joint production, as it was
surmised, of Gay, Arbuthnot and Pope, which deservedly
failed on the first night of representation. Pope, however,
had previously sneered at Gibber in his epistle to Arbuthnot,
and in the First Part of "The Dunciad." In 1740, when
Gibber published his apology, he made the following
characteristic allusion to the attacks of the satirist:
" When," says he, " I find my name in the satirical
works of this poet, I never look upon it as any malice
meant to me, but profit to himself. For he considers
that my face is more known than most in the nation, and
therefore a lick at the Laureate will be a sure bait, ad
captandum vulguSj to catch little readers." The passage
nettled Pope, and he attacked Gibber again in the Fourth
Book of " The Dunciad," representing him as the darling
of the Goddess of Dulness.
" Soft in her lap her Laureate son reclines."
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COLLEY CIBBER. 277
Gibber's equanimity was disturbed, and he published the
letter from which we have made the above extract, entitled,
" A Letter from Mr. Gibber to Mr. Pope, inquiring into the
motives that might induce him, in his satirical works, to
be so frequently fond of Mr. Gibber's name." This was
replied to in an anonymous pamphlet, with the remarkable
title of "A Blast upon Bays, or a New Lick at the
Laureate ; containing remarks upon a* late tattling per-
formance ;" but Gibber was not entirely without champions,
as one man warmly took up his cause in a letter with the
motto :
^'Tu ne cede malls sed contra audentior ito."
Throughout the whole quarrel, Gibber had by far the
best of it, both in temper, discretion, and the justice of
his cause. His warm recognition of his antagonist's
great abilities, contrasts with the asperity and the want of
candour in Pope, in refusing to recognize any talent in one
of the most successfrd dramatists of the day.
" That Gibber," says the former, " ever murmured at
your fame, or that he was not always, to the best of his
judgment, as warm an admirer of your writing as any
of your nearest friends could be, is what you cannot by
any one fact or instance disprove. How comes it then,
that in your works you have so often treated him as a
dunce or an enemy? Did he at all intrench on your
sovereignty in verse, because he had now and then written
a comedy that succeeded ?"
The blows that the combatants dealt upon each other,
fell with more telling eflfect on Pope's sensitive organiza-
tion than on the thicker self-sufficiency of his antagonist.
Pope, though he attempted to disguise his agony, was
tortured by the wanton levity and shamelessness of his
opponent. Dr. Johnson says: "I have heard Mr.
Richardson relate that he attended his father on a visit.
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278 COLLEY GIBBER.
when one of Gibber's pamphlets came into the hands of
Pope, who said : * These things are my diversion/ They
sat by him while he perused it, and saw his features
writhen with anguish, and young Richardson said to his
father, when they returned, that he hoped to be preserved
from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope."
Whereas Gibber could enjoy his own castigation, and
would read to his friends the lines pointed at himself,
interspersing them with humorous observations, which
were as amusing to his auditory as they would have been
galling to their object.
Pope now meditated a new edition of " The Dunciad,"
and was spurred on to the undertaking by another
pamphlet, entitled " The Egotist, or Golley on Gibber,"
which Mr. Disraeli regards as Gibber's " Supplement to
his Apology." In the latter end of 1743 "The Dunciad"
appeared, in its altered and final state. Theobald had
been dethroned from his painfril pre-eminence, and Gibber
raised to his place. Pope, in this instance, allowed his
irascibility to cloud his judgment, and thus marred the
whole design of the poem. Theobald, as its hero, was
perhaps in his place, but to make Gibber the hero of dul-
ness, was preposterous. He was without doubt open to
attack in innumerable points, but he possessed one quality
in which his superiority could enable him to laugh at all
detraction, and that was the very reverse of dulness. The
poem was accompanied by a long Discourse of Richard
Aristarchus, intended as a reply to Gibber's attacks, written
by Warburton, in which he aimed his blow at two anta-
gonists at once, ridiculing Bentley in his manner, and
Gibber in his matter. This called forth another letter
from Gibber, which was the final effort in the strife.
Though the wonderful superiority of talent in Pope
made the contest so unequal from the first, yet Gibber
kept the laugh on his side throughout; and it may be
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doubted .whether the satire of Pope has not, in the
estimation of posterity, injured his own character and
reputation more than Gibber's. Still, with all his levity
and vivacity, our hero could not be quite obtuse to the
keen point of such a missile. " After all," says Mr.
Disraeli, " one may perceive that, though the good-humour
of Gibber was real, still the immortal satire of Pope had
injured his higher feelings. He betrays his secret grief
at its close, while he seems to be sporting with his pen ;
and though he appears to confide in the falsity of the
satire, as his best chance for saving him from it, still he
feels that the caustic ink of such a satirist must blister
and spot wherever it fells."
He quitted the stage the same year in which he was
appointed Poet-Laureate. The following ten years he
employed in drawing up his memoirs, which he published
under the title of " An Apology for the Life of Mr.
Golley Gibber," a life which Fielding said he lived only
to apologize for. This work has been the most popular
of all his productions, and has obtained the praise of men of
such diverse tempers as Horace Walpole and Dr. Johnson;
the former terming it " Gibber's inimitable treatise on
the stage," while Johnson pronounces if to be " very
entertaining."
It is a rambling book of gossip, written in a slovenly
style, but filled with interesting notices of the most
eminent actors and actresses of his time. They, too,
were performers of no ordinary merit ; and such a work,
on its first appearance, must have exceeded in interest
any novel or romance. His character, as there uncon-
sciously depicted by himself, presents little to excite
our sympathy, still less our esteem. His inordinate vanity
represses any impulse of admiration his talents might
excite ; and that utter abnegation of aU self-respect,
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