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list of thirty of his Plays is given. His best piece is The Careless Husband. Ie wrote An Apology for his Life, containing some curious information in regard to the social life of those days. Pope had a spite against Cibber, and gave him a conspicuous place in the Dunciad. The injustice of the thing only recoiled on Pope himself, as Cibber was anything but a dullard, and among his contemporaries had a high reputation for his liveliness and wit.

THEOPHILUS CIBBER, 1703-1758, was son of Colley Cibber, and like him an actor and a dramatist. His pieces are not numerous. He was the reputed author of a work called "Cibber's Lives of the Poets." But Johnson says that the work was written by another, and that Cibber had nothing to do with it except to put his name to it, for which service the publisher gave him ten guineas.

MRS. CHARLOTTE CHARKE, 1760, was daughter of Colley Cibber. After separating from her husband, she went upon the stage. Quarrelling with the Manager, she lampooned him in a dramatic piece, called The Art of Management, or Tragedy Expelled. Other pieces: The Lover's Treat; The History of Henry Dumont; A Narrative of her own Life.

THOMAS D'URFEY, 1723, generally known as Tom D'Urfey, was of French Protestant descent, and was destined for the law. But a love of gay company and of light literature soon carried him into other paths. He had the dangerous accomplishments of being able both to write and to sing a good song, and consequently was much in demand in scenes of revelry. He wrote many dramatic pieces, which were played, and he had the general reputation of being a good fellow. But his talents brought him little money, and in his old age he was in extremely narrow circumstances. By the influence of Addison, one of D'Urfey's Plays was acted for his benefit, and with considerable pecuniary returns. A collection of his Songs, Satires, etc., was also published with the same benevolent end, under the title of Laugh and Be Fat, or Pills to Purge Melancholy.

THOMAS SOUTHERNE, 1660-1746, a native of Ireland, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, was a lawyer, a soldier, and a dramatist. It is only in the latter capacity that he gained distinction. His plays were pecuniarily successful. The two most known to readers are The Discovery, and Oroonoko.

"Southerne's Discovery, latterly represented under the name of Isabella, is almost as familiar to the lovers of our theatre as Venice Preserved itself; and for the same reason, that whenever an actress of great tragic powers arises, the part of Isabella is as fitted to exhibit them as that of Belvidera. The choice and conduct of the story, however, are Southerne's chief merits; for there is little vigor in the language, though it is natural, and free from the usual faults of his age. A similar character may be given to his other tragedy, Oroonoko, in which Southerne deserves the praise of having first of any English writer denounced the traffic in slaves and the cruelties of the West India bondage. The moral feeling is high in this tragedy, and it has sometimes been *acted with a certain success; but the execution is not that of a superior dramatist." Hallam.

JOHN DENNIS, 1657-1734, was noted in his day as a critic, and as a dramatic and political writer. He was a native of London, and was educated at Cambridge. His principal works are: Plot and No Plot; Rinaldo and Armida; Orpheus and Emidia, a Masque; The Comical Gallant, etc. He criticised Addison's Cato and Pope's Essay on Criticism with great severity, and was rewarded for the latter by being put into

the Dunciad. "Dennis attained the ambiguous honor of being distinguished as 'the critic,' and he may yet instruct us how the moral influences the literary character, and how a certain talent that can never mature itself into genius, like the pale fruit that hangs in the shade, ripens only into sourness." — D'Israeli.

MRS. SUSANNAH CENTLIVRE, 1667-1722, was thrice married; the last time to Joseph Centlivre, chief cook to Queen Anne. Mrs. Centlivre was a woman of note in the theatrical world, partly as an actress, but chiefly as a writer of plays. She was in great favor with Steele, Rowe, Budgell, and others of that set. Her works have been published in 3 vols. She wrote nineteen Plays; among them, A Bold Stroke for a Wife, and The Perjured Husband, are considered worthy of special mention. She was celebrated for her wit and beauty, as well as for her literary accomplishments. "If we do not allow her to be the very first of our female writers for the stage, she has but one above her, and may justly be placed next to her predecessor in dramatic glory, the great Mrs. Behn."- Biog. Dram.

MRS. CATHERINE COCKBURN, 1679-1749, had considerable success as a dramatic writer. A Tragedy of hers, written when she was only seventeen years old, was played with great success in the Theatre Royal. The names of some of her plays are: Agnes de Castro, a Tragedy; Fatal Friendship, a Tragedy; The Unhappy Penitent; The Revolution of Sweden. She wrote A Letter in Vindication of Locke's Essay; and Remarks upon Rutherford's Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue.

ROBERT DODSLEY, 1703–1764, is noted both as an author and a publisher. He began life as apprentice to a tradesman, and afterwards he was a footman. His first publication, made when he was twenty-nine years old, was a collection of poems, called The Muse in Livery, or The Footman's Miscellany. His next essay was a drama, The Toy Shop. The manuscript being sent to Pope for examination, he pronounced a warm verdict of approval, which led to its being played at Covent Garden Theatre. Dodsley then opened a bookstore, and was successful in the business. He combined it, however, with authorship and with the patronage of authors. He wrote several other plays, The King and the Miller of Mansfield; The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green; Cleone, a Tragedy, besides numerous poems. He published a Collection of Old Plays, 12 vols., and wrote The Economy of Human Life, etc. But the greatest service he did to literature was his establishment of the Annual Register, begun in 1758 at the suggestion of Edmund Burke (who had the charge of it for some time) and continued to the present time. Dodsley was the first to give employment to Johnson, and his relations generally with the men of letters in his day were of the most pleasant kind.

Jeremy Collier.

JEREMY COLLIER, 1650-1726, an English Nonjuring Bishop, and a man of great celebrity, had in a high degree what the English call pluck, and neither fear nor favor could make him swerve a hair from what he deemed to be right and true. Collier was not a dramatist, but he is considered in this connection, because his greatest celebrity grew out of the battle which he had with the play-writers.

The work to which reference has been made was A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the Stage. At no time in the history of the world has there been a

stage so corrupt and licentious as that of England after the downfall of the Puritans and the return of the Stuarts to power. Collier attacked the monstrous evil. His essay "threw the whole literary world into commotion. There is hardly any book of that time from which it would be possible to select specimens of writing so excellent and so various. He was complete master of the rhetoric of honest indignation. The spirit of the book is truly heroic."— Macaulay. Some of the dramatists, Vanbrugh and others, attempted a reply, but their defence was lame. The victory was overwhelming. After fighting and floundering for some years, these indecent writers were either silenced, or were obliged to reform the character of their plays; and the English drama ever since has been of a more elevated stamp, in consequence of the terrible castigation which it then received.

Collier was almost always engaged in controversy. For the free expression of his opinion, he was imprisoned and outlawed, but he none the less spoke and wrote what he thought. Besides his controversial works, which need not here be recounted, he wrote Essays upon several moral subjects (Pride, Clothes, Duelling, General Kindness, etc., etc.,) which are highly spoken of. He wrote also an Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, 2 vols., fol., and translated Moreri's Great Historical Dictionary, 2 vols., fol.

III. THE PROSE WRITERS.

Addison.

Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, one of the greatest ornaments of English literature, excelled, as did some others to be mentioned in this section, both in prose and verse. His greatest distinction, however, was as a writer of prose. He is generally accepted as the prince of English Essayists, and his Essays in The Spectator are held to be the finest models in the language, of that style of writing.

Education. Addison had every advantage of education which the University of Oxford and the best preparatory schools in England could furnish, and he very early gave evidence of that elegant scholarship and refined taste which marked all his productions. He entered the University at the age of fifteen, and greatly distinguished himself there by his diligence and scholarship. He began his career as an author at the age of twenty-two, and he continued to write and publish, both in prose and verse, to the time of his death.

Career. A poem addressed to King William on one of his campaigns, and written at the age of twenty-three, secured to the young author an annual pension of £300. At the age of twenty-eight he visited Italy, where he remained for two or three years. On the death of the King, and the discontinuance of the pension, Addison was obliged to look about him for some other means of subsistence. Not long after, however, he was applied to by the leaders of the Govern

ment under the new sovereign to write a poem commemorative of the celebrated battle of Blenheim. The task was undertaken by Addison, and the poem, called The Campaign, gave great satisfaction, and led to a long series of political preferments. He was married at the age of forty-four to the dowager Countess of Warwick. Johnson says: "This marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness; it neither found nor made them equal. She always remembered her own rank, and thought herself entitled to treat with very little ceremony the tutor of her son." Addison died full of honors, and in great serenity of mind, when just entering his forty-eighth year.

Works.- Addison's writings, both prose and poetical, are very numerous. Only a few of them can here be named. The poems best known are The Campaign, already mentioned, and the tragedy of Cato. His principal prose writings are essays contributed to The Tatler and The Spectator. It is as an Essayist that his peculiar excellencies appear to the greatest advantage. His contributions to the papers just named, particularly those to The Spectator, of which paper he was the originator, are generally conceded to be the best specimens of essay writing to be found in the language, and they are held up by the most eminent critics, as models of style. It was in reference to these essays, especially, that Johnson uttered his oft-quoted saying: "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the study of Addison." Says Macaulay: "It is praise enough to say of a writer, that, in a high department of literature, in which many eminent writers have distinguished themselves, he has no equal; and this may, with strict justice, be said of Addison. He is entitled to be considered, not only as the greatest of English Essayists, but as the forerunner of the great English Novelists. His best essays approach near to absolute perfection; nor is their excellence more wonderful than their variety."

Among the smaller poems of Addison are four of the nature of hymns, which seem absolutely perfect, and which have found their way into the hymn-books of nearly every Christian Church. These are "The Lord my pasture shall prepare," "When all thy mercies, O my God," "The spacious firmament on high," and "When rising from the bed of death." They were all published originally in The Spectator.

Addison had considerable celebrity in his day as a writer of Latin. His Odes in that language are highly commended by the critics.

EUSTACE BUDGELL, 1685-1736, a writer contemporary with Pope and Addison, contributed about forty papers to The Spectator, some to The Guardian and The Tatler, and published for some time a weekly magazine of his own, The Bee. He published also Memoirs of the Family of the Boyles, and some other things.

Steele.

Sir Richard Steele, 1671-1729, is the writer of this age who comes nearest to the peculiar qualities and the matchless excellence of Addison. Like Addison, too, Steele's chief distinction is as an Essayist. In the Tatler, Spectator,

and Guardian, Steele's papers rank very little below those of his great compeer. If Addison is clearly the first, Steele is with equal clearness the second, of English Essayists.

Early Career. Steele was a native of Ireland. He was educated at the Charter-house School, and afterwards at Oxford, but did not obtain his degree. He enlisted in the Horse Guards, and rose to the rank of Captain. During this period of his life, and also subsequently, though in a less degree, he was idle, dissipated, and extravagant. Through the influence of Addison, who had been his school-friend, he obtained the position of Gazetteer. He married a West India lady, who lived only a few months. In 1707, he was married again, this time to Mary Scurlock, of Wales, who figures so prominently in his correspondence. Steele continued his extravagances, and became involved more and more in debt.

Literary Undertakings. — In 1709, Steele began The Tatler, which was followed by The Spectator and The Guardian. In these several undertakings he was largely assisted by Addison, and in The Spectator the latter's share was, it is well known, the largest.

Political Course. Steele was throughout those troublous times a consistent Whig. A member of the House, he was expelled for his political pamphlet entitled The Crisis, in which he set forth freely the great dangers to which the Protestant cause was exposed. On the accession of the House of Hanover, Steele came into favor, was returned to Parliament, and made a baronet. On the occasion of the attempted passage of the notorious Peerage-Bill, limiting the power of royalty to create new peers, Steele took direct issue with his old friend Addison against the measure.

Merits as an Author. — As an author Steele's reputation rests chiefly upon his essays. His comedies were comparatively unsuccessful. The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode, The Tender Husband, and The Conscious Lovers are the best. But as an essayist his fame will be lasting. To The Tatler, The Spectator, and The Guardian he contributed respectively 188, 240, and 82 papers. He and Addison may be justly regarded as the founders of the easy and graceful essay style of English prose, equally removed from the weighty and involved periods of Milton and the puerile conceits of the Restoration.

"The Essays of Steele have eclipsed his dramas. His Bickerstaff, the Spectator Club, allegories, and short tales have the true, ever-living dramatic spirit. In taste and delicate humor he was greatly inferior to Addison. But in invention and insight into human character and motives he was fully his equal. He knew the world better, and fully sympathized with almost every phase of life and character except meanness and cruelty. He seems to have considered it his special mission to reform the minor vices and absurdities of English society. Had his satire been more keen and trench

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