thousand pounds. He also prevailed on the great mogul (who at that time was a prisoner of state in Delhi, but who was still considered as the fountain of honors) to confer on Clive the dignity of Omrah, or noble of the empire; and also bestowed on him, for the support of his title, a grant of an ample revenue. This revenue, which amouted to £28,000 per annum, consisted of the quit-rents paid by the company for the lands they held in the neigh bourhood of Calcutta.

Colonel Clive returned to England in 1760, where his conduct and exploits received the warmest commendations from the East India company; and the following year, the king conferred on him the title of baron in the kingdom of Ireland, by the title of lord Clive, baron Plassey, in the county of Clare.

Some time after the return of Clive to England, the English deposed the nabob Meer Jaffier, and transferred the government to his son-in-law Cossim Ali Khan. But the new nabob making some opposition to the various kinds of injustice and oppression, practised by the servants of the English East India company, they then deposed Cossim Ali Khan, and reinstated Meer Jaffier in the nabobship. The misconduct of the company's servants at length occasioned such disorders and confusions, and such hostilities in India, that lord Clive, and four of his friends, were commissioned, by the East India directors, to go to India, to adjust all disputes with the country powers, and to reform the many abuses which prevailed among the company's servants, both in military and civil departments. Lord Clive, and his fellow commissioners, arrived at Calcutta in May, 1765. They made a treaty with the native princes of India, and established some regulations beneficial to the East India company; but the natives of the country still suffered great injustice and oppression from the servants of the company. Lord Clive returned to England in July, 1767; and was made a knight of the bath in 1769. It should also be observed, that he represented in parliament from the year: 1760 to the time of his decease, the borough of Shrewsbury, the principal town of the county in which he was born. But on the 21st of February, 1773, a motion was made in the house of commmons, to resolve, "That in the acquistion of his wealth, lord Clive had abused the powers with which he was en

trusted." He defended himself, if not satisfactorily, at least with great ability; and the house of commons rejected the motion against him, and resolved, that "lord Clive had rendered great and meritorious services to his country."

Lord Clive was a striking instance of the inefficacy of external honors, and of great wealth to confer happiness, After his re turn to England, though in possession of a splendid fortune and many advantages, he often discovered great uneasiness of mind, and could not endure to be alone. His friends represented this as the result of a depression of spirits, occasioned by a nervous fever; but by others it was attributed to causes of a very different kind. He put an end to his own life on the 22d of November, 1774, when he was not quite fifty years of age. He was interred at Moreton-Say, the parish in which he was born. He had two sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Edward, succeeded him in his title and estate. It is said, that lord Clive gave away much money in acts of benevolence; and he made, at one time, a present of seventy thousand pounds, as a provision for the invalids of the servants of the East India company.

***Authorities. Biog. Britan. second edit. Smollett's History of England, &c.

SAMUEL FOOTE was born at Truro, in Cornwall, but in what year we are not informed. His father, John Foote, esq. enjoyed the posts of commissioner of the prize-office and fine contract; and was member of parliament for Tiverton, in Devonshire. His mother was heiress of the Dineley and Goodere families; and to her, in consequence of an unhappy and fatal quarrel between her two brothers, sir John Dineley Goodere, bart. and sit Samuel

Goodere, captain of the Ruby, man of war, which terminated in the loss of life to both, the Dineley estate, which was of great value, descended. He received his education at Worcester-cola * lege, Oxford; and was thence removed to the temple; but he seems not to have made much progress in the study of the law. He is supposed to have inherited a considerable fortune; but he appears to have dissipated it at a very early period. The vivacity of his temper, and the embarrassed state of his circumstances, then led him to the stage. His first appearance was in the character of Othello; but he soon found, that nature had not qualified him ' for excellence in tragedy; and many objections were made to his performance of several characters in comedy. He soon, therefore, struck out into a new and untrodden path; which was, by taking upon himself the double character of author and performer. Uni der this form, in 1747, he opened the little theatre in the Hay. market, with a drama of his own composing, called, "The Diversions of the Morning." This piece consisted of nothing more than the introduction of several well known characters in real life, whose manner of conversation and expression, Foote very happily hit off in the diction of the drama, and still more happily repre sented on the stage, by an exact and most amazing imitation, not only of the manner and tone of voice, but even of the very persons of those whom he intended to take off."

In 1747, he published, in 8vo. «The English and Roman Comedy considered and compared, with Remarks on the Suspicious Husband; and an Examination into the merits of the present comic actors.” In this piece, Mr. Foote makes the following ob. servations on the dramatic unities. "To begin," says he, "with the unities of Aristotle, which regard time, place, and action; to which we have added another, disregarded by the writers of other countries, unity of character. The rules prescribed by these unities are, that your time be limited to a natural day; your place unchanged; and your action single. The fourth unity requires, that your character be preserved to the end in every circumstance; and that he neither say, or do, any thing that might as well be said, or done, by any other person of the play.

"As to the unities of time, place, and action, I cannot say that we have strictly attended to them, unless in some particular in

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stances; such as the Alchymist, and most of the plays of Johnson; Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor; to which I might add some others; but in general, these bounds do not hit the taste and genius of the free-born luxuriants of this isle: they will no more bear a yoke in poetry than in religion.

"No political nor critical monarch shall give laws to them: they have indeed sometimes given proofs that they do not despise these mandates of Aristotle because it is not in their capacity to comply with them, but because they will not be indebted to any other country for what they can obtain without its assistance.

"I do not believe that it was ever in the power of man to furnish out a more elegant, pleasing, and interesting entertainment, than Shakespeare has, in many instances, given us, without observing any one unity but that of character; his adhering to that alone, with the variety of his incidents, the propriety of his sentiments, the luxuriancy of his fancy, and the purity and strength of his dialogue, have produced, in one instance alone, more matter for delight and instruction than can be collected from all the starved, straight-laced brats that every other bard has produced."

In the same performance, Foote gives the following character of Quin as an actor: "Mr. Quin's deportment, through the whole cast of his characters, is natural and unaffected; his countenance expressive, without the assistance of grimace; and he is indeed in every circumstance so much the person he represents, that it is scarcely possible for any attentive spectator to believe that the hy pocritical Masquewell, the suspicious superannuated Rake, the snarling Old Bachelor, and jolly jocose Jack Falstaff, are imitated but real persons.

"And here I wish I had room and ability to point out the several masterly strokes with which Mr. Quin has often entertained my imagination, and satisfied my judgment; but under my present confinement, I can only recommend the man who wants to see a character perfectly played, to Mr. Quin, in the part of Falstaff; and if he does not express his desire of spending an evening with that merry mortal, why, I would not spend one with him, if he would pay my reckoning."

Foote's morning exhibition at first met with some opposition from the civil magistrates of Westminster, under the sanction of the act of parliament for limiting the number of playhouses. But as he was patronized by many of the principal nobility and others, this opposition was over-ruled, and with the alteration of the title of his exhibition, that of "Mr. Foote's giving tea to his friends," he proceeded without farther molestation, and continued his performance through a run of upwards of forty mornings, to crowd-" ed and splendid audiences. The ensuing season, he produced another exhibition of the same kind, which he called,' “ An Auction of Pictures," in which he introduced several new characters,' particularly sir Thomas De Veil, then the acting justice of the peace for Westminster; Mr. Cock, an eminent auctioneer; and Orator Henley. In another of his pieces, Foote also, in the character of a theatrical director, took off with great humour and accuracy the different styles of acting of every principal performer on the English stage. In his different exhibitions, he himself represented all the different characters of each performance, where his great mimic powers were necessary; shifting from one to another with all the dexterity of a Proteus,

After he had for some time very successfully performed his whimsical morning exhibitions at the late theatre in the Hay-market, Mr. Foote began to apply himself to writing farces, or short comedies of two acts, such as the "Knight's at the Land's End;""The Englishman at Paris;" "The Englishman returned from Paris, &c. These were some of his introductory pieces to many other more regular and permanent. Before he obtained the royal patent for acting plays at the theatre in the Haymarket, he frequently acted his pieces at Drury-lane, in the beginning of the winter. Sometimes he also ventured on some important parts in old comedies, such as Fondlewife, in the Old Batchelor; sir Paul Pliant, in the Double Dealer; and Ben, in Love for Love. His intimacy with people of the first rank contributed to support him in his attempts upon these masterly characters of Congreve; but he is said to have been but an indifferent player in almost all parts but those which he wrore for himself. Foote appears, however, to have had considerable merit in performing Bayes, in the Rehearsal, Davies says, "the Bayes