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"The observations with regard to the respective merits of the actors are, for the most part, just, though not new, being indeed no more than the echo of the critics in every coffeehouse, put into tolerable good rhyme. The whole drift of the performance seems to be plainly and indisputably this: first, to throw all the players, like so many fagots, into a pile, and set fire to them by way of a sacrifice to the modern Roscius; and secondly, to do the same by all the wits and poets of the age, in compliment to Messrs. Lloyd and Colman, the heroes of the piece. Mr. Garrick is seated between these two gentlemen

like Hercules

Supported by the pillars he had raised.

'There he receives incense which they stuff up his nostrils at a most profuse rate.

"It is natural for young authors to conceive themselves the cleverest fellows in the world, and withal that there is not the least degree of merit subsisting but in their own works; it is natural likewise for them to imagine, that they may conceal themselves by appearing in different shapes, and that they are not to be found out by their style; but little do these connoisseurs* in writing know how easily they are discovered by a veteran in the service. In the title-page of this performance we are told, (by way of quaint conceit,) that it was written by the author; what if it should prove that the author and the

*The Connoisseur, a periodical publication of the year 1754, of considerable merit and smartness, conducted and chiefly written by Bonnell Thornton and Colman, sen. under the assumed name of Mr. Town, and to which Lloyd, Churchill, and Cowper, with the other prime wits of the period occasionally contributed. Dr. Southey, in his Life of Cowper, attributes Nos. 111, 115, 119, 134, and 138, to him, and leaves it doubtful whether the letters by Mr. Town's cousin Village, in Nos. 13, 23, 41, 76, 81, 105, and 139, were also his, but thinks most probably not. Mr. Peake, however, in his Memoirs of the Colman family, alleges that the only papers contributed by Cowper, were Nos. 119, 134, and 138

actor are the same! certain it is, that we meet with the same vein of peculiar humour, the same facility of versification,. the same turn of thought, the same affected contempt of the ancients, the same extravagant praise of the moderns, the same autophililism (there's a new word for you to bring into your next poem) which we met with in the other,

When in discoursing of each mimic elf,

We praise and censure with an eye to self.

"Insomuch that we are ready to make the conclusion in the author's own words,

Who is it?-LLOYD.

"We will not pretend, however, absolutely to assert, that Mr. Lloyd wrote this poem, but we may venture to affirm that it is the production jointly or separately of the new triumvirate of wits, (Colman, Lloyd,* and Thornton,) who never let an opportunity slip of singing their own praises, caw me, caw thee, as Sawney says; and so it is, they go and scratch one another like Scotch pedlers."

Besides his not being well pleased with the above account of his poem, Churchill wished to add something farther on the subject of it, and to justify the attack he had made upon the players. Whatever reasons the Reviewers had to be dissatisfied with this poem, the players themselves were not so much offended as they had been with the Rosciad. The author, indeed, treats the profession of acting with great contempt; and paints in the strongest colours the meanness and distress of itinerant companies, and the unhappy shifts to which they are occasionally reduced. But all this the London actors regarded as a trifling injury, compared with the

In answer to this indirect imputation by the Review, the folowing advertisement appeared in the public papers. "Mr. Lloyd was never concerned or consulted about the ;ublication of this poem, or ever corrected or saw the sheets from the press, as we can testify.

WILLIAM FLEXNEY, Publisher,
WILLIAM GRIFFIN, Printer."

satire which had been directed against their individual defects.

Dr. Smollett, the editor of, and principal contributor to the Critical Review, exculpated himself from the charge of being the author of the critique on the Rosciad, in a letter to Mr. Garrick; but so warm was Churchill in his temper, and so prone to take offence, that besides his satirising the writer of the Journal, he extended his resentment to Archibald Hamilton, the printer of it. Their being both Scotchmen certainly did not operate in mitigation of punishment. The tenor of the Critical Review, as edited by Smollett, was to decry any work that appeared favourable to the principles of the Revolution. Nor was Smollett single in this disposition. The Scotch in the heart of London had at this time assumed a dictatorial power of reviling every book that cen sured the Stuarts, or upheld the Revolution-a provocation they ought to have remembered when the tide rolled back upon them.

The conduct of the Reviewers was the more to be lamented, as all their subsequent animadversions, however just, were imputed by Churchill to disappointed malice and revenge. Had his faults of style and composition been reprehended with a spirit of liberal and manly criticism, he would probably have been the first to acknowledge and correct them: both parties were obstinate in their error; the Reviewers never bestowed any but unwilling commendation, and evinced an asperity in their comments which betrayed the source of their chagrin. Churchill, on the other hand, bold in the public applause, contemned their admonitions, and purposely, though injuriously to his own reputation, persisted in declining to adorn his original and vigorous thoughts with the graces of polished versification, or by labour

weaken to refine

The generous roughness of a nervous line.

The Monthly Review thus noticed this poem. "However we may admire the strength of poetry, the accuracy of observation, and happy vein of humour in the Rosciad, humanity would wish that no set of men should be made ridiculous and contemptible in a profession from which they must draw

their subsistence. In this poem there is a greater degree of severity and more poignancy of satire against the gentlemen of the stage than even in the Rosciad."

"In the Apology, however, we meet with as much humour and fancy, facility of expression and harmony of numbers, as are to be seen in most productions of the present, or per haps any past age. Certain it is, that no poet was ever formed from studying Pope, while many, with Pope himself, have caught the spark of genius from the great, though unequal Dryden."

The feverish anxiety of Garrick, in consequence of the alered tone respecting him in the Apology, from what it was in the Rosciad, characteristically displayed in the following propitiatory letter to Lloyd, who most probably exercised his soothing influence over his capricious friend, and effected a hollow truce, if not a cordial peace between the bard and the too sensitive actor.

Hampton, Friday.

DEAR SIR,-Whenever I am happy in the acquaintance of a man of genius and letters, I never let any mean, illgrounded suspicions creep into my mind to disturb that happiness; whatever he says, I am inclined and bound to believe, and, therefore, I must desire you not to vex yourself with unnecessary delicacy upon my account. I see and read so much of Mr. Churchill's spirit, without having the pleasure of his acquaintance, that I am persuaded that his genius disdains any direction, and that resolutions once taken by him will withstand the warmest importunities of his friends. At the first reading of his Apology, I was so charmed and raised with the power of his writing, that I really forgot that I was delighted when I ought to have been alarmed; this puts me in mind of the Highland officer, who was so warmed and elevated by the heat of the battle, that he had forgot till he was reminded by the smarting, that he had received no less than eleven wounds in different parts of his body. All I have to say, or will say upon the occasion is this: if Mr. Churchill as attacked his pasteboard Majesty of Drury Lane from resentment, I should be sorry for it, though I am conscious it is ill-founded; if he has attacked me merely because I am

the Punch of the Puppet-show, I sha'nt turn my back upon him and salute him in Punch's fashion; but make myself easy with this thought-that my situation made the attack necessary, and that it would have been a pity that so much strong, high-coloured poetry should have been thrown away, either in justice or in friendship, on so insignificant a person as myself. In his Rosciad he raised me too high, in his Apology he may have sunk me too low; he has done as the Israelites did, made an idoi of a calf, and now the idol dwindles to a calf again. He has thought fit, a few weeks ago, to declare me the best Actor of my time, (which, by the bye, is no great compliment, if there is as much truth as wit in his Apology,) and I will shew the superiority I have over my brethren upon this occasion, by seeming at least that I am not dissatisfied, and appear as I once saw a poor soldier on the parade, who was acting a pleasantry of countenance, while his back was most wofully striped with the cat-o'nine-tails. To be a little serious-you mentioned to me, sometime ago, that Mr. Churchill was displeased with me— you must have known whether justly or not;—if the first, you should certainly have opened your heart to me and have heard my Apology-if the last, you should, as a com- . mon friend to both, have vindicated me, and then I might have escaped his Apology; but be it this, or that, or t'other, I am still his great admirer, and, Dear Sir, Your sincere Friend, and most humble Servant,

To Mr. Lloyd.

D. GARRICK.

The original of the above is one of a very valuable collection of contemporary autograph letters in the possession of Mr. Pickering, and appears to have been reclaimed by Gar rick, by whom it is thus indorsed:-A Letter from me te Lloyd about Churchill's Apology.

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