608 To sacred Dullness and her first-born due, Shall blow the trumpet, and give out the bill. There rule secure from critics and from sense, Nor once shall Genius rise to give offence; Eternal peace shall bless the happy shore, And little factions break thy rest no more. 615 From Covent Garden crowds promiscuous go, Whom the Muse knows not, nor desires to know: Veterans they seem'd, but knew of arms no more Than if, till that time, arms they never bore: 6:20 Like Westminster militia train'd to fight, has grievously bedaubed herself in attempting to fling a great deal of filth upon Mr. Churchill." 621 The Westminster militia, with their metropolitan brethren in arms, the City of London trained bands and lumber troopers, were the standing joke of their fellow-citizens, and have acquired an enduring fame in their well-known representatives, Johnny Gilpin and Major Sturgeon; the latter, after a brilliant field day, returning to town in the Turnham Green stage with Captain Cucumber, Lieutenant Pattypan, and Ensign Tripe, were stopped near the Hammersmith turnpike, and robbed and stripped by a single footpad. About the year 1760, when the militia was first settled apon its present establishment, the county of Middlesex was xtremely backward in raising its due proportion of national defence. The city of Westminster did not even take one single step for the purpose, when a Scotch adventurer of the They scarcely knew the left hand from the right. Ashamed among such troops to show the head, Their chiefs were scatter'd, and their heroes fled. name of Macgregor, conceiving this to be a good opportunity of filling his pockets, set about raising a regiment in Westminster; and with such activity did he proceed, that government noticed his exertions, and promised to establish the regiment so soon as three-fourths of the commissions should be filled up. This was an arduous business, and people of the lowest description obtained commissions. Macgregor obtained his end in being appointed adjutant (the only lucrative situation) in this Westminster regiment of Middlesex militia; he sold all the commissions in it in the most disgraceful manner to the lowest tradesmen, and even to the most notorious swindlers; among the rest, the celebrated Denis O'Kelly, alias Count O'Kelly, the fortunate possessor of Eclipse, obtained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in it, though his outset in life was in the situation of a hack Irish chairman. To give some respectability to the corps, Sir Thomas Frederic and Sir John Gibbon were, in a moment of conviviality, induced to take the higher commands upon themselves. The privates hardly deserve the censure of the poet; in spite of their officers, they attained a degree of discipline equal to any militia regiment under the crown, and distinguished themselves by their good conduct in the several places between the Lands' End and Lancaster, where they were at different periods quartered. 625 Luke Sparks, though no scholar, was a man of strong intelligence, and knew how to take possession of a character; but he sometimes gave too much hardness in his manner; his colouring was coarse, though his outline was generally exact. Sparks was too much the man of the world to be hurt by a poetical arrow. He acquired a competent fortune, though not entirely from acting, and retired from the stage soon after the publication of the Rosciad, and lived at Brentford. He died about the year 1769, and his last request was that the. funera. service might be pronounced over him by the Rev. 6:25 Sparks at his glass sat comfortably down To separate frown from smile, and smile from frown. Smith, the genteel, the airy, and the smart, John Horne, afterwards better known by his additional name of Tooke, conferred on him with a competent annuity by Mr. William Tooke, a bencher of the Temple, for literary and controversial services rendered in resisting an inclosure bill. 627 A very favourite actor in genteel comedy, commonly called gentleman Smith, and particularly distinguished in Charles Surface, in the School for Scandal. He was the son of a wholesale grocer in the City, educated at Eton, and from thence removed to Cambridge, which he abruptly left for the stage, and made his first appearance in the character of Theodosius in 1753. His chief defect was an unpleasing monotony of voice and an unwieldy person. He married a sister of the Earl of Sandwich, whom he survived; and retired from the stage on 9th June, 1788, to Bury St. Edmunds. In the year 1797, he was prevailed upon to act Charles, for the benefit of his friend King, which he did, notwithstanding the disadvantages of age and corpulence, with an ease and elegance that obtained the unanimous plaudits of a crowded house. The following are the concluding lines of his farewell address: Full thirty-five campaigns I've urged my way Full oft have stood by Barry's, Garrick's side, With them have conquer'd, and with them have died; Nor murder my two nephews in the tower; Smith was just gone to school to say his part. 630 Stood on her feet as fast asleep as he. 629 David Ross was the son of a gentleman of consideration at Edinburgh, and educated at Westminster School, and afterwards abandoned by his father, and persecuted by him in as cruel a manner as Savage was by his unnatural mother, Lady Rivers. At his death he left him by his will the sum of one shilling, to be paid to him on the first day of every month of May, that being his birthday, the more bitterly to remind him of his misfortune in being born. He resorted to the stage, and afterwards submitted to marry the cast-off mistress of a nobleman for the sake of her annuity. Late in life he succeeded in invalidating his father's will, and obtained about £6000. He pleaded guilty to the charge brought against him by Churchill, and laughed at his punishment over a glass with his friend Bonnel Thornton. His defects were evidently owing to his love of ease and fondness for social pleasure; but he sometimes gave proofs that he was master of abilities, to rouse and animate an audience in the most passionate scenes of our best tragedies. 630 Ross's Statira was Mrs. Palmer, the daughter of Mrs. Pritchard. She was an actress of very inferior merit, and was only endured in consequence of her mother's popularity. 633 Charles Macklin, alias M'Laughlin, "the Jew that Shakspeare drew." The censure bestowed on him by Churchill is just, but his very defects were in his favour in the representation of Shylock, Iago, and characters of that stamp, and in his own plays of the Man of the World and Love a la Mode. The latter appeared in 1760, the principal characters were a Scotchman and an Irishman; the first harsh and odious, the latter mild and amiable. The ridicule on the Scotch was Whose acting's hard, affected, and constrain'd, Ne'er know the workings of united force, Ne'er kindly soften to each other's aid, Nor show the mingled powers of light and shade, No longer for a thankless stage concern'd, 641 rendered more apparent and acceptable by Lord Bute's injudicious endeavour to have the farce prohibited, while all he was able to gain, by way of compromise, was that it should not be printed. George the Second, whose age then kept him from public places, sent for a copy and ordered it to be read to him. Macklin completely failed in tragedy, and on one occasion quarrelled with the audience, and brought an action against some persons who were most vociferous in their expressions of displeasure; and as it was proved to be a conspiracy, he obtained a verdict against them. He so far got rid of his national dialect as publicly to give lectures on elocution, and was English tutor to Lord Loughborough, afterwards Earl of Rosslyn. A satisfactory account of his long career in the theatrical world would include a history of the stage during the greater part of the last century, he having made his first appearance in 1726, and his last performance was Shylock, in the year 1790, though his life was protracted till February, 1797, when he had attained the unusual age of one hundred and seven years. He had an extraordinary harsh set of features, and an unprepossessing countenance, which occasioned Quin to say of him, "If God writes a legible hand, that fellow is a villain;" and at another time, addressing himself to him, he used these words, "Sir, by the lines, or I should rather say cordage of your face." He was considered as an excellent tutor in the theatrical art, and Barry was in no small degree indebted to his instructions for his celebrity in Othello. He was himself fond of acting in tragedy, and several very severe rebuffs did not deter him from it. He once attempted VOL. I. 12 |