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Ne'er did I colours high in air advance,
Torn from the bleeding fopperies of France;
No flimsy linsey-woolsey scenes I wrote,
With patches here and there, like Joseph's coat:
Me humbler themes befit: secure, for me,
Let play-wrights smuggle nonsense duty free;
Secure, for me, ye lambs, ye lambkins! bound,
And frisk and frolic o'er the fairy ground:
Secure, for me, thou pretty little fawn!
Lick Sylvia's hand, and crop the flowery lawn;
Uncensured let the gentle breezes rove
Through the green umbrage of the enchanted grove,
Secure, for me, let foppish Nature smile,
And play the coxcomb in the Desert Isle..

The stage I chose-a subject fair and free

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185

stage were improved to the most exquisite entertainment by the talent and management of Garrick, who greatly surpassed all his predecessors of this and perhaps every other country in his genius for acting, in the sweetness and variety of his tones, the irresistible magic of his eye, the fire and vivacity of his action, the elegance of attitude, and the whole pathos of expression." As a poet, Smollett's Tears of Scotland, and Ode to Independence, shew the excellence to which he might have attained, had he cultivated a muse which in those instances had been so propitious to him.

178 Murphy's practice of vamping up old French plays is here alluded to, and the justice of the accusation appeared by Lloyd's translating from the French of M. de Boissy the New School for Woman, from which play Murphy had pilfered and patched up "The Way to Keep Him."

185 The Desert Island, a dramatic tale in three acts, by A. Murphy, 1760, borrowed from a drama of Metastasio, entitled, L'Isola disabitata. This ridiculous pastoral medley, only remarkable for affected simplicity of language, and

'Tis yours-'tis mine-'tis public property. All common exhibitions open lie

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195

For praise or censure to the common eye.
Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed;
Hence Monthly Critics earn their daily bread.
This is a general tax which all must pay,
From those who scribble, down to those who play.
Actors, a venal crew, receive support
From public bounty for the public sport.
To clap or hiss all have an equal claim,
The cobbler's and his lordship's right the same.
All join for their subsistence; all expect
Free leave to praise their worth, their faults correct.
When active Pickle Smithfield stage ascends
The three days' wonder of his laughing friends,
Each, or as judgment or as fancy guides,
The lively witling praises or derides.

200

the improbability of the catastrophe, suited not the taste of John Bull, the Desert Island was deserted, and has never since been represented on the stage. Murphy, in revenge for the treatment he had received in the Rosciad, wrote a contemptible satire, called "An Ode to the Naiads of Fleetditch," grossly indecent in many of its allusions, and which he was afterwards very desirous to suppress. He professed in the advertisement to imitate the style and colouring of Dryden and Pope, in the Macflecknoe and Dunciad. The following lines, descriptive of Churchill's behaviour at the theatres, will sufficiently demonstrate how well Murphy suc ceeded in his attempt:

no more he'll sit

In foremost row before th' astonish'd pit,
In brawn Oldmixon's rival as in wit;

And grin dislike,

And where's the mighty difference, tell me where Betwixt a Merry Andrew and a player?

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209

The strolling tribe, a despicable race! Like wandering Arabs, shift from place to place. Vagrants by law, to justice open laid, They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid, And, fawning, cringe for wretched means of life To Madam Mayoress, or his Worship's wife. The mighty monarch, in theatric sack, Carries his whole regalia at his back; His royal consort heads the female band, And leads the heir apparent in her hand; The pannier'd ass creeps on with conscious pride, Bearing a future prince on either side.

No choice musicians in this troop are found

To varnish nonsense with the charms of sound; No swords, no daggers, not one poison'd bowl;

And kiss the spike,

And giggle,

And wriggle,

And fiddle,

And diddle,

And fiddle, faddle,

And diddle, daddle.

215

208 By 17 G. II. c. 5. All common players of interludes, and all persons who for hire or reward, act or cause to be acted any interlude or entertainment of the stage, or any part therein, not being authorized by law, shall be deemed rogues and vagabonds, and be punished accordingly." This statute has been altered and qualified by several subsequent

enactments.

Beggars they are with one consent,
And rogues by act of parliament.

No lightning flashes here, no thunders roll;

221

No guards to swell the monarch's train are shown;
The monarch here must be a host alone :
No solemn pomp, no slow processions here;
No Ammon's entry, and no Juliet's bier.

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230

By need compell'd to prostitute his art, The varied actor flies from part to part; And, strange disgrace to all theatric pride! His character is shifted with his side. Question and answer he by turns must be, Like that small wit in modern tragedy. Who, to patch up his fame-or fill his purseStill pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse; Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known, Defacing first, then claiming for his own. In shabby state they strut, and tatter'd robe, The scene a blanket, and a barn the globe: No high conceits their moderate wishes raise, Content with humble profit, humble praise. Let dowdies simper, and let bumpkins stare, The strolling pageant hero treads in air: Pleased for his hour, he to mankind gives law, ` And snores the next out on a truss of straw.

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240

281 Mr. Murphy, in the preface to his Grecian Daughter, ae only tragedy of his now on the acting list, acknowledges that it is principally borrowed from the Zelmire of M. Belloy; all his other dramas may with ease be traced to their French or Italian parents. Among others his Zenobia is an obvious transcript from the Rhadamiste of Crebillon.

236 A ludicrous representation of the distresses of itinerant players had been given by Hogarth, in his engraving published in 1738, of Strolling Actresses dressing in a barn,

But if kind fortune, who sometimes we know Can take a hero from a puppet-show,

In mood propitious should her favourite call,
On royal stage in royal pomp to bawl,
Forgetful of himself he rears the head,

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251

And scorns the dunghill where he first was bred.
Conversing now with well-dress'd kings and queens,
With gods and goddesses behind the scenes,
He sweats beneath the terror-nodding plume,
Taught by mock honours real pride t'assume.
On this great stage, the world, no monarch e'er
Was half so haughty as a monarch player.

Doth it more move our anger or our mirth
To see these things, the lowest sons of earth,
Presume, with self-sufficient knowledge graced,
To rule in letters, and preside in taste?
The town's decisions they no more admit,
Themselves alone the arbiters of wit,
And scorn the jurisdiction of that court
To which they owe their being and support.
Actors, like monks of old, now sacred
Must be attack'd by no fools but their own.

grown,

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260

265

of which piece Mr. Walpole observed, that for wit and imagination it was the best of all the artist's works.

260 Churchill appears to have been goaded to this additional attack upon actors in general, and placing their calling in the most ludicrous point of view, by the absurd clamour they raised at his treatment of them in the Rosciad, and by his suspicion that they had influenced the Critical Reviewers, and had retained some hirelings to write the AntiRosciad, Churchilliad, and other poems with which the press then teemed, in their vindication.