CHAPTER VIII.

FROM 1770 TILL 1785.

Dramatic Criticism-Samuel Foote, the Dramatist and Comedian -His Hostility to Newspaper Editors and the Newspaper Press-His Correspondence with the Duchess of Kingston— His Ridicule of the Head-dresses of the Ladies-Edmund Burke-Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Ir will be new to most of my readers when I mention that, notwithstanding the number of dramatic authors, and literary gentlemen generally, who before the year 1770 had been connected with the Newspaper Press, theatrical criticism should have been, until then, a thing unknown. Yet so it was. Previous to that time, instead of sending a competent theatrical critic to the various leading histrionic houses, such as Drury Lane and Covent Garden, to give continuous and detailed notices of new dramatic productions, the proprietors of newspapers contented themselves with such notices of novelties as the lessees of the theatres thought fit to send them. Nor was this all. Newspaper editors even paid for the meagre and miserable notices sent by the managers of theatres. And not only so, but, for reasons which I am unable to comprehend, when an alteration in this state of things. took place, and duly qualified parties were sent to

notice the introduction of new plays, the dramatists of the day showed an implacable hostility to the new theatrical criticism. Foremost among the number, and worse than any one else, was Samuel Foote, at that time the most popular dramatist in the department of comedy. Nothing could exceed the abuse and bitterness with which he wrote, in his dramas, of the newspaper press of that day. Bad as Ben Jonson was, Foote was still worse. There was in his vituperation something resembling the very quintessence of malignity. Anything, too, more outrageously absurd than his character of contemporary journalism could not be imagined. It was so gross an exaggeration throughout, that it completely defeated itself. Instead of the readers laughing at the newspaper press, their laughter, mingled with pity, was directed towards the author, at seeing a popular dramatist, as well as first-rate comedian, putting his name to a production unmatched for the extravagance of its caricature.

In his drama entitled "The Bankrupt," he introduces two characters, one of whom is Mr. Margin, intended to represent the editors of newspapers, or printers, as they still continued to be called; while the other, Sir Robert Discounter, was a fit representative of Mr. Foote himself. Sir Robert, in other words, the author of the drama, gets into a collision with Mr. Margin, the editor, and among other coarse and rancorous epithets which he addresses to the editor, we find the following:-"Impudent rascally

printers,"-otherwise editors ; "These pests, who point their poisoned arrows against the peace of mankind;" "A pack of factious, infamous scoundrels;" "Miscreants;" "This mongrel, squatting upon his joint stool, by a single line proscribes and ruins your reputation at once;" "The tyranny exercised by that fellow, and those of his tribe, is more despotic and galling than the most absolute monarch in Asia."

It will ever be a blot on the memory of Foote that he, a gentleman alike by birth and early breeding, could have so far indulged his inveterate hostility to the Newspaper Press as to have recourse to the use of such language, of which, let me add, many such specimens, equally coarse and virulent, might be given. The extraordinary animosity with which Foote regarded the Newspaper Press of his day, and the coarseness of his abuse of it, have been to most people inexplicable, because the journals of his time-at least as a classwere not only not in the habit of assailing him, but on the contrary, treating him with every respect. I imagine that the true cause of his rancour was to be found in an incidental allusion made by him in one of his letters to the then disreputable Duchess of Kingston. This was on one of the most extraordinary correspondences which ever took place between a gentleman and a lady. Foote had written a piece for the theatres entitled "The Trip to Calais," regarding which the Duchess of Kingston had obtained some information to the effect, that she was held up to

ridicule under the designation of Lady Kitty Crocodile. The necessary license from the Lord Chamberlain to perform the piece was withheld, and consequently it could not be brought out. On this, after writing to the Lord Chamberlain ineffectually imploring him to reconsider his resolution and to grant the requisite permission to perform the piece, adding that if his lordship persisted in withholding a license, it would be his (Mr. Foote's) inevitable ruin, as he would "never be able to muster courage enough to face follies again," he wrote to the Duchess herself a letter, in which the following expressions occur:-"I really, Madam, wish you no ill, and should be sorry to do you an injury. I therefore give up to that consideration what neither your Grace's offers nor the threats of your agents could obtain. The scenes shall not be published, nor shall anything appear at my theatre, or from me, that can hurt you, provided the attacks made on me in the newspapers do not make it necessary for me to act in self-defence."

I have put Foote's reference to the attacks made on him by the newspapers in italics, believing that that may throw some light on the ferocity with which he assailed the journals of his day. The explanation of his thus making his future conduct towards the Duchess of Kingston, in a measure contingent on his being afterwards attacked or not by the newspapers, may be given in a few words. Her chief, if not sole adviser, at this period of her life, was a Rev. Dr. Jackson; and the universal belief was

that there was between them an improper intimacy. Now he was, in 1775, when the correspondence took place between the Duchess and Foote, part proprietor of the Public Ledger, and was in the habit of severely attacking Foote in that journal. But surely the abuse heaped on Foote by one pen, in one journal, was no justification of his conduct in so grossly vituperating and rancorously assailing the whole Newspaper Press of his day.

It may be a slight digression, but it is necessary to give a few lines from the answer to that part of the letter which I have quoted:

"what

"I know too well," says the Duchess, is due to my own dignity to enter into a compromise with an extortionable assassin of private reputation. If I before abhorred you for your slander, I now despise you for your concessions; it is a proof of the illiberality of your satire, when you can publish or suppress it as best suits the needy convenience of your purse. You first had the cowardly baseness to draw the I sheath it until I make you crouch like the subservient vassal as you are, then is there not spirit in an injured woman, nor meanness in a slanderous buffoon.

sword, and if

To a man my sex alone would have screened me from attack; but I am writing to the descendant of a merryandrew, and prostitute the term of manhood, by applying it to Mr. Foote.

"Clothed in my innocence as in a coat of mail, I