"Mr. Foote was a man of wonderful abilities," said Garrick, "and the most entertaining companion I have ever known." "There is hardly a public man in England," said Davies, "who has not entered Mr. Foote's theatre with an aching heart, under the apprehension of seeing himself laughed at." "Sure if ever one person," said Tate Wilkinson, "possessed the talents of pleasing more than another, Mr. Foote was the man." The secret of this success was in Foote playing characters closely resembling himself, and bringing out the personal wit and humorous peculiarity of the man. What he thus played, he was, or had been. Mr. Forster, in a vein of sound criticism, observes: He was the graceless son, the adventurer with the handsome leg; he was the flimsy fop and dandy, who made a god of his tailor and scorned essential for non-essential things; he was the very embodiment of the heedless, light-hearted coxcomb, the type of youthful spirits and recklessness let loose upon the world. But what a man is, he does not always look; and (in the plays in which he first appeared) it was Foote's disadvantage that his appearance told against him. In person, he was short, with a tendency to stoutness; his face, even in youth, was round, fleshy, and flat, and his nose had breadth, without strength or delicacy: though he had a pleasing expression of mouth, more refined than in a man of his temperament might perhaps have been looked for ; and he had an eye, in whose sparkling depths lay a spring of humour unfailing and perpetual, which would have raised from insignificance or repulsiveness features fifty times as coarse and inelegant.-Biographical Essays, pp. 320-21. We agree with the writer, that whoever looks upon the portrait of Foote, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, (now in the collection of the Garrick Club,) must allow that though years of indulgence have done their work, and you look on the hardened clumsy features, the settled look, the painful stoop and infirmity of his later life, you see through them still what as a young man Foote must have been- --a shrewd, keen, observant, mirthful, thoroughly intellectual man, but not exactly a Sir Harry Wildair, Dick Amlet, or my Lord Foppington. And so the matter seems to have struck himself, notwithstanding the amount of favour he received in such parts; for the expression is attributed to him, "If they won't have me in tragedy, and I am not fit for comedy, what the deuce am I fit for?" FOOTE'S NEW ENTERTAINMENTS. The question which Foote put as above, he best answered himself after he had appeared in the Duke of Buckingham's Rehearsal, and given to delighted audiences his version of the celebrated Bayes. Upon this success, there is every reason to believe, Foote shaped his future career. The Rehearsal (now much oftener quoted than read through) had already been altered in representation by Garrick introducing imitations into Bayes, intended for Dryden, but whom Garrick represented as a conceited garret poet going about reciting his own verses. The innovation was condemned by Cibber and Lord Chesterfield; but Garrick's audiences relished the change, more especially his imitations of popular actors of the day. Foote took up Garrick's notion, and worked it out in his own way—bitter sarcasms on the absurdities, and nine-day wonders, and graver matters, as debates in parliament and defeats of the rebels, seasoned with many a sly shaft at great actors on and off the stage-playwrights and players, politicians and persons of high fashion and low repute. That Foote did not injure the original stock upon which he engrafted these novelties is attested by Davies, who says that what Samuel improvised and added to Bayes was as good as the original, but with greater novelty of allusion. In short, Foote equipped himself with wit and character from his own brain as the Bayes of his day; and in the General Advertiser of the 22nd of April, 1747, appeared the following announcement of his new venture: At the Theatre in the Haymarket this day will be performed a Concert of Music, with which will be given gratis a new entertainment called The Diversions of the Morning, to which will be added a farce taken from the Old Bachelor called the Credulous Husband, Fondlewife by Mr. Foote; with an Epilogue to be spoken by the B-d-d Coffee House. To begin at 7. Great was Foote's success: the little theatre was crowded. The Town had been variously entertained from nearly a century earlier with satirical sketches; but no English performer had hitherto dared to portray living persons upon the stage, with their vices and weaknesses, their very voice and dress, and counterfeit presentment. We have had state pageants in theatres dressed in our time to the very fashion and shade of the robes of royalty—the Coronation of George IV.—for example; but we have had no instance of representations got up to be laughed at, such as the Diversions of Foote. In the epilogue, the notabilities of the Bedford Coffee House were brought upon the stage in ludicrous dispute: old Dr. Barrowby was lightly handled, but a quack oculist of ill repute was not let off so lightly. Foote was not to be left to profit exclusively by his success. The actors had a twofold motive for opposing him : he satirized their imperfections, and kept persons away from their theatre by his own attractiveness: he had used spoken dialogue from Congreve's Old Bachelor, and therefore placed himself within the provisions of the licensing act. On the second night, constables from Bow-street were stationed at the doors of the Haymarket Theatre; and they drove back the public as fast as they approached. He who took off every body was not likely to be spared himself: accordingly, the squibs against Foote were very biting, as may be judged from this specimen: Thou mimic of Cibber-of Garrick thou ape! Where, then, shall such insolence meet its reward, &c. Foote lost no time in producing another entertainment. On the morning after the constabies had dispersed the crowds at the Haymarket doors, there appeared in the General Advertiser this announcement: On Saturday noon [April 25], exactly at 12 o'clock, at the New Theatre in the Haymarket, Mr. Foote begs the favour of his friends to come and drink a dish of Chocolate with him; and 'tis hoped there will be a great deal of Comedy and some joyous spirits; he will endeavour to make the Morning as Diverting as possible. Tickets for this entertainment to be had at George's Coffee-House, Temple Bar, without which no person will be admitted. N.B. Sir Dilbury Diddle will be there, and Lady Betty Frisk has absolutely promised. Lacey, the patentee of Drury-lane, attempted to suppress the performance; but in vain. Nor could the authorities resist Foote's ludicrous defiance: the magistrates issued their warrant, and the constables threatened with their staves-but in vain; and so the Diversions were repeated forty times. The scheme consisted of Foote's training some young performers for the stage; rehearsing the finest scenes with them; and, as critics, wits, authors, or politicians, improvising with them dialogues of allusion to the events of the day. Then he replied to the outcry against himself, and denied that what he did could be hurtful; and next he imitated the defects of certain leading actors. It was then announced, in June, that At the request of several persons who were desirous of spending an hour with Mr. Foote, but find the time inconvenient, instead of Chocolate in the morning, Mr. Foote's friends are desired to drink a dish of Tea with him at half an hour past 6 in the evening. Henceforth Foote's Giving Tea became an attraction of the Town. Next year he gave an Auction of Pictures, "at his Auction-room, late the little theatre in the Haymarket," where it was repeated nearly fifty times. It was resumed in the winter, when its successful run was broken by the hoax of the Bottle Conjuror.* After the ill-feeling which this imposition produced had nearly subsided, Foote returned with his Tea, and added " some entire new lots," including one of the most disreputable quacks then living. Thus combining entertainment with satire, Foote, in these pieces, laughed at many a leading personage who ministered to fashion and caprice in actual life, besides attacking those on the stage; as well as showing up what was ridiculous in whatever walk of society he might find it. Neither of these entertainments was printed entire, but some of the leading characters have been recorded; and among these we find Sir Thomas de Veil, the Westminster justice, who had made himself a partisan of the actors in opposing the Diversions; Mr. Cock, the fashionable auctioneer of that day, when auctions were scenes of low deceptions in which persons of rank did not hesitate to practise; and Orator Henley, "preacher at once and Zany of the age," who was then giving his "skits at the fashions," and "bobs at the times" from his gilt tub in Clare market. In his more regular productions, however, Foote took higher aim: "when," says Mr. Forster, "he ridiculed the cant of methodism, denounced the mischiefs of quackery, or exposed the impostures of law; when, himself the companion of men of rank and large possessions, he attacked the vulgarity of rank and money-worship, and did not spare the knavery or false pretensions of either birth or wealth,-his satire, even when applied to persons, had the claim to become impersonal through time; and to remain as a warning to vice and folly, long after the vicious and foolish should be forgotten." * January 16, 1748-9, when a large audience assembled to see a poor Scotchman get into a quart bottle: it was a ridiculous hoax contrived by the eccentric Duke of Montagu. "CAT HARRIS." When Foote first opened the theatre in the Haymarket, amongst other projects, he proposed to entertain the public with an imitation of cat music; and for this purpose he engaged a man famous for his skill in mimicking the mewing of cats. This person was called "Cat Harris." He not attending the rehearsal of this odd concert, Foote desired Shuter would endeavour to find him out, and bring him with him. Shuter was directed to some court in the Minories, where this extraordinary musician lived; but not knowing the house, Shuter began a cat solo; upon this, the other looked out of the window, and answered him with a cantata of the same sort. "Come along," said Shuter, "I want no better information that you are the man. Mr. Foote stays for us-we cannot begin the cat opera without you." FOOTE'S FIRST PLAY. Scarcely had the run of the Auction abated, when Foote's first published piece, The Knights, was played. One of the two leading characters is a country politician and news-hunter, Sir Gregory Gazette, who is hoaxed with the information that there are in London one hundred and fifty newspapers published in a week! A more striking oddity is Sir Penurious Trifle,-Foote, like all spendthrifts, was ever hardest upon misers-who is shaved by his barber once a fortnight for the year's growth of his own hair and his daughter's; his shoes are made with the leather of a coach of his grandfather's; his male servant is footman, groom, carter, coachman, and tailor; and his maid takes in needlework from the neighbours, the proceeds being paid to Sir Penurious, who, to give her more time with his daughter, scours the rooms and makes the beds. He is fond of a story, which he has no sooner heard than he repeats. He contrives to lead up to the following story, on replying to a remark that he looks well, "hearty as an oak" -when follows a rigmarole, which "will make you die with laughing" he heard it in a coffee-house at Bath: it is very long, this being only its close-an admirable specimen of the sort of story-telling in which Foote excelled; though its effect must be happier upon an audience than a reader: Lord Tom told us the story; made us die with laughing; it cost me eightpence, though I had a breakfast at home: so, you Knight, when |