"Then I must be on my guard in future; for a joke in your hands is no laughing matter." Murphy considers Cowley as Addison's model. Thinks "Boadicea," by Glover, is, in point of style, the best tragedy since Shakespeare. It has a bad fifth act. The opening of the "Alchemist" is a model of dramatic writing for effect, though never followed. Close your acts well, and have a good fifth act, and your play must succeed. Also, always give a counter turn, a surprise in the fifth, so that nobody shall foresee the conclusion. Was first struck by Dryden's criticisms on the "Silent Woman" in his preface to his plays, and afterwards read it carefully with the play. Had not then thought of the stage. Afterwards read Ricciboni on Molière, d'Alembert's "Life of Des Touches," etc. Used to compose walking about Bagnigge Wells and New River Head, and then call in at an alehouse to write down a thought. Used to make three or four chairs pass for his people on the stage, and would say "that chair has continued too long silent." Kept a memorandum book for good things. When French died without leaving him anything he said to himself: "I have got by him, however; "—having put him into "Sir Bashful Constant" and the "Citizen."

'Murphy had two inscriptions on the collar of his dog:—

6

My name is Prince, of honest fame:

Let other Princes say the same.

My name is Prince, from vice and debts I'm free;

I want no Parliament to pay for me.

"Am I not in Heaven?" said a girl at High Mass? "No, my dear," said Murphy, "there are not so many bishops in Heaven."

MURPHY'S STORIES OF FOOTE

271

Murphy was full of stories of Foote-some of which Rogers has written down in his early memorandum book

"Great as Foote was on the stage," said Murphy, "he was greater in the green-room, and there I loved to attend him. One night when I was there the last Duke of Cumberland hurried in, saying: 'I come every night to swallow all your good things.' 'Do you?' said Foote; you must have a damned good digestion, for you never bring them up again.'

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In his cause before Lord Mansfield, when Lord. Mansfield, who had continued firm on his side throughout, was at last brought over to his opponent: "Damn the trial," says he to Murphy, "what a crane-necked turn it has taken! It has been tried twenty times at Caen. Wood, and gained the verdict in my favour."

'When Foote proposed a venison feast at the "Crown and Anchor" to Murphy and Garrick, Dr. Schonberg and two other lawyers were engaged to it. None came but Foote, Murphy, and Garrick. The bill came to three guineas a head, and Foote wrote to the absentees for their shares. When Foote paid his, the waiter said: "This is a bad shilling, sir." "Is it?" replied Foote, "look at it, Davy." Garrick, who was half-tipsy, said it was and threw it away. "Do you change it for him; " said Foote, "you can make it go as far as anybody! !"

When a collection for the poor players was proposed all but Garrick attended the meeting. "He did set out," says Foote, "but as he turned the corner of the Adelphi he met the ghost of a shilling."

"When L, who had been sentenced to the pillory, saw Foote in the pump room at Bath, whither he had been ordered for the jaundice: "Your looks mend," says "Yes," says Foote, "I am washing the eggs from my face."

L

Murphy said: "I meant Foote in my character of Dashwold, where I have used his bon-mot to the Duke of Cumberland."

'Murphy met Costello at Lord Camden's. "My wife and I," said Costello, "quarrelled, and we agreed to divide. I said to her 'I will take one side of the house and you the other.' I took the inside and she took the outside."'

CHAPTER IX.

Death of Rogers's Father- Richard Sharp

Rogers deciding on a West-end life-R. Cumberland, R. Merry, T. Cooper-Priestley's exile-Horne Tooke's Trial-William Stone's Trial-Mrs. Siddons and her epilogue --Dr. Moore-Early Correspondence with Richard Sharp-Rogers's Commonplace Book - Dr. Johnson and Dr. Priestley-'My Club'-Rogers and Polwhele.

At

THE turning-point in Rogers's life had now come. the beginning of his thirtieth year he had found himself recognised as a popular poet, and had begun to enjoy the kind of fame for which he longed. But no thought of the social celebrity he was afterwards to attain had as yet come into his mind. He was still the junior partner in the bank, and day by day was occupied with its business. He was on the unpopular side both in politics and in religion; and his prospects of wealth were remote. 'While his father lived,' says Samuel Sharpe, 'Mr. Rogers's friends had been as much chosen for their politics as for their literature,' and in the diary quoted in the previous chapter we find him frequently in the company of some of the chief Liberal politicians of that exciting and agitated time. The house at Stoke Newington was one in which Liberal politicians and Liberal divines -Whigs, latitudinarians, and Unitarians-found themselves at home. The elder Rogers was, in words which came into use at a later day, 'a Whig and something

T

more.' Among the signatures to the celebrated Declaration of the Society instituted for the purpose of obtaining a Parliamentary Reform' under the title of Friends of the People,' that of Thomas Rogers comes immediately before that of the Hon. Thomas Erskine, M.P., and Samuel Rogers directly follows on the Right Hon. Lord John Russell, M.P. The names of John Towgood, who had married Samuel Rogers's eldest sister Martha, and of his friends Dr. Kippis and Richard Sharp also appear with those of Grey and Lambton and Sheridan and Mackintosh and Whitbread, among the hundred which constitute this illustrious catalogue. Dr. Priestley had come to London in the autumn of 1791; and the elder Rogers first, and his son afterwards, opened the house at Newington Green to the persecuted philosopher and divine. Thomas Rogers in one of his last letters to his son expresses constant sympathy with the French, but writing on the 13th of September, 1792, about the subscription for France which Horne Tooke and his friends were getting up, he reasons conclusively against it, and tells his son: 'I would wish you not to have anything to do with it. It is of a piece with the rest of Horne Tooke's politics, which are more of the bravado than the man of true wisdom.' This is not the criticism of an opponent, but of a friend. It need not be taken to indicate any difference between father and son. In politics, as in religion and business, there seems to have been to the last the fullest confidence and sympathy between Thomas Rogers and his son Samuel. The beginning of the year 1793, to which part of the diary given in the previous chapter belongs, found Samuel Rogers still