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Woodward was at one time a good man, in the mercantile view of the phrase, for he was a rich man. Unfortunately, he was induced by Spranger Barry to become partner with him in the Dublin Theatre, – in which venture, Woodward lost all he had saved; and Barry, too, made shipwreck of his fortune. Garrick passed from the stage to years of repose and enjoyment. Barry and Woodward could not quit it till, having had more than enough of labour, Death summoned them to a, perhaps, not unwelcome rest.

Little is known of the origin of Edward Shuter. Small trust can be placed in the report that he was the son of a clergyman – not because he himself was, at one time, only a billiard-marker, or that he could with difficulty read his parts, and had much perplexity in even signing his own name; but because Ned himself never boasted of it. What is certain of him is, that he was an actor entirely of the Garrick period, commencing his vocation as Catesby, at Richmond, in 1744, and concluding as Falstaff, to the Prince, in "Henry V.,"¹²⁵ of Lewis, played for his own benefit, at Covent Garden, in May 1776.

I suppose Chapman, who directed the theatre at Richmond, was struck by the rich humour of the billiard-marker; but it was strange that a low comedian should make his début in so level a part as Catesby. He was then, however, a mere boy. In June 1746, when he acted Osrick and third Witch in "Macbeth," Garrick playing Hamlet and the Thane, he was designated "Master Shuter." Thence, to the night on which he went home to die, after playing Falstaff, his life was one of intense professional labour, with much jollification, thoughtlessness, embarrassment, gay philosophy, hard drinking, and addiction to religion, as it was expounded by Whitfield.

He played through the entire range of a wide comic repertory, and among the characters which he originated are Papillion in the "Liar," Justice Woodcock, Druggett, Abrahamides, Croaker, Old Hardcastle, and Sir Anthony Absolute. His most daring effort was in once attempting Shylock! There are few comic actors who have had such command over the muscles of the face as Shuter. He could do what he liked with them, and vary the laughter as he worked the muscles. Not that he depended on grimace; this was only the ally of his humour, and both were impulsive – as the man was by nature; he often stirred the house with mirth by saying something better than the author had put down for him. Off, as on the stage, it was Shuter's characteristic that he pleased everybody – and ruined himself. I never pass his old lodgings in Denzil Street without thinking kindly of the eccentric but kind-hearted player. Some laughed at him, perhaps, for taking to serious ways, without abandoning his old gay paths of delight; but the former was of his sincerity, the latter of his weakness. That he should choose to follow Calvinistic Whitfield rather than Arminian Wesley, does seem singular; but poor Ned felt that if salvation depended on works, "Pilgarlick," as Whitfield called him, was lost; whereas faith rescued him, and Shuter could believe. He did something more; works he added to his faith, though he made no account of them. Of all the frequenters of Whitfield's Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road there was no more liberal giver than the shattered, trembling, laughing, hoping, fearing, despairing – in short, much perplexed actor and man, who oscillated between Covent Garden stage and the Tabernacle pulpit, and meditated over his pipe and bottle in Drury Lane upon the infinite varieties of life. And therewith exit, Shuter; and enter, Mr. Foote.

CHAPTER XXII
SAMUEL FOOTE

"One Foote, a player," is Walpole's contemptuous reference to him who was otherwise designated as the "British Aristophanes." But, as often happens, the player was as good a man by birth, and at least as witty a man by nature, as he who despised him. His father was a Cornish gentleman, and an M.P.; his mother a daughter of Sir Edmund Goodere, Bart., through whom Foote called cousins with the ducal family of Rutland. A lineal successor of this baronet followed Mrs. Clive, as Walpole's tenant at Little Strawberry Hill, and Horace called him "a goose."

Young Sam Foote, born at Truro, in 1720, became a pupil at the Worcester Grammar School. His kinsfolk on the maternal side used to invite him to dinner on the Sundays, and the observant, but not too grateful guest, kept the Monday school hilarious and idle, by imitations of his hospitable relatives. The applause he received, helped to make Foote, ultimately, both famous and infamous.

Later in life, he entered Worcester College, Oxford, and quitted both with the honours likely to be reaped by so clever a student. Having made fun of the authorities, made a fool of the provost, and made the city turn up the eye of astonishment at his audacity in dress, and way of living, he "retired," an undergraduate, to his father's house. There, by successfully mimicking a couple of justices, who were his father's guests, he was considered likely to have an especial call to the Bar. He entered at the Temple, and while resident there, a catastrophe occurred in his family. His mother had two brothers; Sir John Goodere and Captain Samuel Goodere. The baronet was a bachelor, and the captain in the royal navy, being anxious to enjoy the estate, strangled his elder brother on board his own ship, the Ruby. The assassin was executed. Shortly after, Cooke introduced his finely-dressed friend Foote, at a club in Covent Garden, as "Mr. Foote, the nephew of the gentleman who was lately hung in chains for murdering his brother!"

Foote succeeded as ill at the Temple as at Oxford; and his necessities, we are told, drove him on the stage. As, when those necessities were relieved, he preferred buying a diamond ring, or new lace for his coat, to purchasing a pair of stockings, we may fairly conclude that the stage was a more likely place wherein he might succeed than the back benches of a court of law. Indeed, he did not live to make, but to break, fortunes. Of these he "got through" three, and realised the motto on his carriage, "Iterum, iterum, iterumque."

His connection with those great amateur actors, the Delavals, was of use to him, for it afforded him practice, and readier access to the stage, where, as a regular player, he first appeared at the Haymarket, on the 6th of February 1744, as Othello, "dressed after the manner of the country." He failed; yet "he perfectly knew what the author meant," says Macklin. Others, again, describe his Moor as a masterpiece of burlesque, only inferior in its extravagance and nonsense to his Hamlet, which I do not think he ever attempted. His Pierre and Shylock were failures, and even his Lord Foppington, played in his first season, indicated that Cibber was not to depart with the hope that he was likely to have in Foote an able successor.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to assign Foote's position exactly. According to Davies, he was despicable in all parts, but those he wrote for himself; and Colman says he was jealous of every other actor, and cared little how any dramas but his own were represented. Wilkinson ascribes to him a peculiar excellence.

In Dublin, 1744-45, he was well received, and drew a few good houses; and thence came to Drury Lane. He played the fine gentlemen, – Foppington, Sir Novelty Fashion, Sir Courtly Nice, Sir Harry Wildair; with Bayes, and Dick; Tinsel, and the Younger Loveless, in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Scornful Lady;" but he could not reach the height of Cibber, Booth, or Wilks. He had the defects of all three, and nothing superior to either, but in the expression of the eye and lip. His thickset figure, and his vulgar cast of features, he had not yet turned to purpose. He was conscious of a latent strength, but knew not where it lay. He had failed in tragedy, and was pronounced unfit for comedy; and he asked, almost despairingly, "What the deuce then am I fit for?" As we find him the next three years, 1747-49, at the Haymarket, giving his "Diversions of the Morning," his "Tea," his "Chocolate," and his "Auction of Pictures," it is clear that he soon discovered where his fitness lay.

At the outset, he combined the regular drama with his "Entertainment," Shuter, Lee, and Mrs. Hallam being with him. The old wooden house being unlicensed, Foote got into difficulties, for a time, but he surmounted them by perseverance. He drew the town, morning after morning, and then night after night, with imitations of the actors at other houses, of public characters, and even of members of private clubs. Some of the actors retaliated, Woodward particularly. Their only strong point was that Foote, in striving to enrich himself, was injuring the regular drama. His Cat Concerts did really constitute fair satire against the Italians. But people paid, laughed, and defied law and the constables; and Foote continued to show up Dr. Barrowby, the critic; Chevalier Taylor, the quack oculist; Cock, the auctioneer; Orator Henley; Sir Thomas De Veil, the Justice of the Peace; and other noted persons of the day.

How these persons were affected by the showing-up, I cannot say; but Foote objected to being himself shown up by Woodward. Whereon Garrick asked, "Should he dress at you in the play, how can you be alarmed at it, or take it ill? The character, exclusive of some little immoralities which can never be applied to you, is that of a very smart, pleasant, conceited fellow, and a good mimic."

For a few years Foote was engaged alternately at either house, on a sort of starring engagement, during which he produced his "Englishman in Paris" (Buck, by Macklin;¹²⁶ Lucinda, by his clever daughter); "Englishman Returned from Paris" (Buck, by Foote); "Taste" (Lady Pentweazle, by Worsdale);¹²⁷ and the "Author" (Cadwallader, by Foote). In the first two satires, was scourged the alleged folly of sending a young fellow to travel, by way of education; but in this instance the satire fails, for Buck, who leaves home a decided brute, returns in an improved form as only a coxcomb. "Taste" satirised the enthusiasm for objects of virtú, the gross humbug of portrait painters, and the vanity of those who sat to them. Worsdale was himself an artist, and a scamp. He kept, half-starved, and kicked Letitia Pilkington, the very head of all the house of hussies, obnoxious to such treatment. In the "Author," Foote did not so much satirise writers, or care for improving their condition, as he did to caricature one of his own friends, Mr. Ap Rice (or Apreece), a patron of authors, who sat open-mouthed and silly, in the boxes, to the delight of the audience, and mystified by the reflection of himself, which he beheld on the stage.

In 1760, Foote brought out his "Minor" in Dublin, he playing Shift, and Woodward, Mrs. Cole. In the summer of the same year he reproduced it at the Haymarket, playing Shift, Smirk, and Mrs. Cole. After occasionally acting at the two larger theatres, and creating Young Wilding, in the "Liar," he finally went to the Haymarket, where, from 1762 to 1776, he acted almost exclusively.

In the "Minor," the author pilloried Langford, the plausible auctioneer, Mother Douglas, a woman of very evil life, and, in Shift, the Rev. George Whitfield, who was nobly, and with much self-abnegation, endeavouring to amend life wherever he found it of an evil quality. Here was Foote's weakness. He did not care for the suppression of vice; but if he who attempted to suppress it had a foible, or a strongly-marked characteristic, Foote laid hold of him, and made him look like a fool or a rascal, in the eyes of a too willing audience.

The "Minor" failed in Dublin, very much to the credit of an Irish audience, if they condemned it on the ground of its grossness and immorality. To the credit of English society, there was strong protest made against it here; and also in Scotland – in and out of the pulpit; but the theatres were full whenever it was represented, nevertheless! The injury it effected must have been incalculable, for the wit was on a par with the blasphemy; but when Saving Grace and the work of the Holy Ghost are employed to raise a laugh of derision, the edification of the hearers is as little to be expected as it was hoped or cared for by the author. Foote, nevertheless, protested that in this piece, which brought back the coarseness of Aphra Behn, with a deeper irreligious tint, he meant no offence against the pious, but only against hypocrites. He was merely driven to that excuse. It is one, I think, that cannot be accepted, for Foote was not a truthful man. When he was taxed with ridiculing the Duchess of Kingston as Kitty Crocodile, in the "Trip to Calais," he assured Lord Hertford, the Chamberlain, that he had no idea that the allusions in that piece could apply to the duchess; and when he failed in procuring a license to play it, he had the impudence to assert, as the grounds of failure, that he had refused to put Lord Hertford's son on the box-keeper's free list – or as a more improbable story has it, to make the young gentleman box-keeper; and – hence, denial of the license! Lady Llanover, in a note in her Memoirs of Mrs. Delaney, roundly asserts that when Foote had completed his caricature of the duchess, "he informed her of it, in the hopes of extorting a large bribe for its suppression;" but from this assertion I dissent; though it is not improbable, as Walpole has recorded, that the duchess offered him a bribe "just as if he had been a member of parliament!"

Foote's fourteen years' of summer seasons at the Haymarket, formed an era of their own. There had never been anything resembling it, nor has anything like it succeeded. In his first year, 1762, he produced the "Orators." "There is a madness for oratorys," writes Walpole, alluding to Macklin's school, and Foote's lectures. In the satire on public speakers, Foote caricatured Faulkner, the Irish publisher; a fact which Chesterfield was the first to joyfully proclaim to the victim, whose infirmity – he had but one leg – should have saved him from what otherwise may have been due to his conceit, if personal caricature be justifiable at all.

In the "Mayor of Garratt," the more general caricature of a class – the Sneaks and the Bruins, has been more lastingly popular; the individual, however, is included in Matthew Mug, aimed at the Duke of Newcastle.

In the "Patron," the general satire was levelled at the enthusiasm of antiquaries, men capable of falling in love with a lady, because her nose resembled that of the bust of the Empress Poppœa. The individual pilloried in this piece was Lord Melcombe, under the form of Sir Thomas Lofty, played by Foote; who also laughed at the English Nabob of that day, in Sir Peter Pepperpot, acted by him, in the same piece. Foote considered this his best play; but in this, as in all his pieces, with much original wit, there was rank, though judicious plagiarism, from the stores of other writers.

In the "Commissary," Foote, as Zachary Fungus, aimed his shafts at the gentility of the vulgar; hitting Dr. Arne, personally, in the character of Dr. Catgut. In 1766, Foote met with the accident which reduced him to the condition of one-legged George Faulkner, whom he held up to ridicule in the "Orators," and he did not play;¹²⁸ but in 1767 he opened the Haymarket Theatre, after reconstructing the interior. He wrote no new piece; but he had the Barrys for a few nights, and brought out that burlesque-tragedy, the "Tailors," which was said to have been left anonymously at Dodsley's shop, and which kept its vitality down to the days of John Reeve. The fault of this piece is not in having tailors instead of persons of consequence in a burlesque, but – that the tailors talk seriously, and like people of consequence, well brought up.

His great success in 1768, was with his "Devil on Two Sticks," by which he cleared between three and four thousand pounds – a golden harvest, of which scarcely a grain was left at the close of the year. The satire here is generally laid against medical quackery, in the person of Dr. Last, by Weston; but Foote, as the Devil in disguise, took upon him the burthen of individual caricature. As Dr. Squib, he rendered ridiculous Dr. Brocklesby; and as the President of a College of Physicians, he exposed to derision Sir William Browne, who had taken an active part in a professional controversy, now without interest. Sir William's wig, coat, contracted eye firmly holding an eye-glass, and his remarkably upright figure, were all there; but the caricaturist had forgotten Sir William's special characteristic – his muff, which the good-tempered doctor sent to Foote, to make the figure complete!

In 1769, Foote produced nothing new of his own; but the general business was good, and Sheridan drew good houses in tragedy, both this season and the next, though Foote described him as "dwindled down into a mere Cock and Bottle Chelsea Pensioner." In 1770, Foote, in his "Lame Lover," in which he acted Sir Luke Limp (Vandermere and Weston played Serjeant and Jack Circuit), made a miss in aiming at "those maggots of the law, who breed in the rotten parts of it." In the following year, the groundwork of his expected annual play, was the ungallant conduct of Mr. Walter Long to Miss Linley, afterwards Mrs. R. B. Sheridan. In the "Maid of Bath," Long is severely handled under the name of Flint, and Bath society is roughly illustrated. The taste, in using a private domestic story for such a purpose, is questionable. The satire, however, did not kill Long, who lived till 1807, and bequeathed then, to the already wealthiest heiress in England, Miss Tilney, daughter of Sir James Tilney, Bart., nearly a quarter of a million of money. It was this heiress's hard fate to marry a more worthless personage than he who only wooed and was false to the Maid of Bath; and the small wreck of her fortune is now being saved – or lost amid the breakers and breakwaters of the Court of Chancery.

Foote, characterising himself as a "popularity-monger," produced in the course of his next season the "Nabob," in which he made a combined charge on antiquaries and Anglo-East Indians generally, in the person of Sir Matthew Mite, in which was involved the individual caricature of General Richard Smith, whose father had been a cheesemonger. Some irascible Anglo-Indians called at Foote's house in Suffolk Street, behind the theatre, to administer personal chastisement; but he bore himself with such tact, convinced them so conclusively that he had not had Smith in his mind, and persuaded them, by reading the play, that it was only naughty old Indians generally against whom he wrote, that they who came to horsewhip remained to dine, and make a night of it. The piece was afterwards supported by the good old ladies, to show their antagonism to Anglo-Indian naughtiness.

Foote's "Nabob" afforded Walpole an excuse for withdrawing his name from the Society of Antiquaries. In the play, Mite is made an F.S.A.; and reads a foolish address to the Society, on Whittington and his Cat. This was in ridicule of Pegge, who had touched on the subject of the illustrious lad, but who was "gravelled" by the then inexplicable Cat. Walpole, affecting to see that Pegge and Foote had rendered the Society for ever ridiculous, took his name off the books; but not on that account. The true ground was that, in his own words: – "I heard that they intended printing some more foolish notes against my Richard III."

In 1773, Foote produced his Puppet-show-droll, "Piety in Pattens, or the Handsome Housemaid." In this he committed a mistake, not unlike that he had committed in the "Minor," by taking unworthy means to a certain end. In a dull and occasionally indecent introductory address, he professed to have chosen puppets for his actors, because the contemporary players were marked by inability. This was said to a densely crowded house, while Garrick and Barry were still at the head of their profession! In the piece itself, played by excellently contrived puppets, Foote intended to ridicule sentimental comedy, by professedly playing one, showing "how a maiden of low degree, by the mere effects of morality and virtue, raised herself to riches and honours." The sentiment here involved is, of course, made fun of; but, in fact, the author failed to render it ridiculous, for the housemaid declines the riches and honours which she might have taken as the rewards of her morality and virtue. There ensued a riot, and some damage, after which Foote resorted to the novel process of resting the approbation of his piece, on a show of hands; but though there was a majority in his favour, the piece was not permanently successful. The author found compensation in his "Bankrupt," which was chiefly aimed at a speculating Baronet, but generally at all who were concerned in cheating their creditors. In 1774 a better, but a more cruel piece of wit, was produced by "Foote, the celebrated buffoon," as Walpole had called him the year before. This was the "Cozeners." Mrs. Grieve, the woman who had extorted money, on pledge of procuring government appointments, and who had not only deceived Charles Fox, by pretending to be able to marry him to an heiress, but had lent him money rather than miss his chariot from her door, was fair game, and was well exposed, in Mrs. Fleecem. This was delicate ground, however, for Foote, who was very generally accused of having earned an annuity from Sir Francis Delaval, by bringing about a marriage between Sir Francis and the widow Lady Nassau Powlett, who had been a very intimate friend of Foote's. The cruelty of the satire lay in the character of Mrs. Simony, in which the vices of the once fashionable and lately hanged preacher, Dodd, were transferred to his then living widow.¹²⁹ It was an insult to that poor woman, and a brutality against the Rev. Richard Dodd, brother of the criminal, and the estimable Vicar of Camberwell. The ridicule of Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son is in far better taste. But Foote was now beginning to lose spirit, and he produced only one more piece, the "Capuchin," in which he played O'Donovan, in 1776. This piece was merely an alteration of the unlicensed "Trip to Calais," in which Foote had gibbetted the Duchess of Kingston. In the "Capuchin," he more rudely treated her Grace's Chaplain, Jackson, under the name of Viper; but the farce had small merit, and the only thing in connection with it, deserving of record is, that Jackson, while on trial for treason, in the time of the Irish Rebellion, destroyed himself.

Such are the dramatic works of the English satirist, to compare whom with Aristophanes is an injustice to the Athenian, whose works Plato admired; and even St. Chrysostom kept them under his pillow! In the eleven extant comedies, of the fifty-four written by Aristophanes, we find the inequality of the distribution of riches pointed at in "Plutus;" in the "Clouds" the poet is in jest, not in earnest, in denouncing vice; in the "Frogs" we have a humorous review of both Euripides and Æschylus; in the "Knights," a satire against Cleon, which is unequalled for fun and effect. The "Inhabitants of Acharnæ" is a "screaming farce" chiefly in favour of peace-makers. The "Wasps" caricatures the Athenian disposition to go to law. The "Birds" is made a vehicle to convince the audience of the necessity of a change in the government. "Peace," in which the heroine, so-called, never utters a word, was written to bring about the much-desired end of the Peloponnesian war. The "Female Orators" exposes the absurdity of women desiring to be beyond their vocation. The "Feast of Ceres" demonstrates that the women can both say and act to the purpose when called upon; and this is more seriously shown in "Lysistrata." All these, however, are original, plot and wit are the poet's own (which is far from being the case with Foote); and the chief end seems to be the public good, and not the satirising of particular individuals. Aristophanes, however, goes in this latter direction, even farther than Foote; his abuse of Socrates, a great and good reformer, is not palliated by the wit which accompanies it; a daring wit, which was carried to such excess that the downfall of the old comedy ensued, and Alcibiades forbade that any living person should be thenceforth attacked by name upon the stage.

The descriptions of Aristophanes are true, however coarse they may be. He was a patriot and philosopher as well as a poet, and fearless in attacking every obstruction to the well-being and improvement of society. Foote laughed at individuals, denied the personality, and cared nothing at all as to who might be the better or the worse for his sarcasm. It has been said that the satire of Aristophanes killed Socrates. It really did so no more than that of Foote killed Whitfield. In this one respect the two men are alike.

Such exhibition of character as Foote made was described by Johnson, as a vice; and he, like Churchill, denied the actor's powers. The former maintained that Foote was never like the person he assumed to be, but only unlike Foote; and that he failed altogether, except with marked characteristics. He was as a painter who can portray a wen; and if a man hopped on one leg, Foote could do that to the life. Foote himself acknowledged that he pursued folly, and not vices, but he never mimicked in others the follies which were the most strongly marked in himself; such as extravagance in dress. He did not aim at improvement of character; his motives in this respect were of the very lowest: "Who the devil!" he said, "will give money to be told Mr. Such-a-one is wiser and better than himself… Demolish a conspicuous character, and sink him below our level … there we are pleased, there we chuckle and grin, and toss the half-crown on the counter." Now, bad examples which lower our standard of right and wrong do infinite harm. At this sinking of men below our level, the Archbishop of Dublin has glanced, when he says: "For one who is corrupted by becoming as bad as a bad example, there are ten that are debased by becoming content with being better."

If there was little honesty in Foote's method of dealing with human weaknesses, so was there small courage in the spirit of the satirist. He could annoy Garrick by saying that his puppets would not be so large as life, "not larger in fact than Mr. Garrick," and could mimic him as refusing to engage Punch and his wife, – Mr. and Mrs. Barry, – for he could do so with impunity. But, Barry, six feet high, he never assailed, and he was deterred from bringing Johnson on the stage, by a threat from the latter that he would break every bone in his body.

Johnson, personally, disliked Foote, yet was forced into admiration by Foote's wonderful powers of wit and laughter-compelling humour. Johnson, probably, was trying to excuse himself when he said that if the grave Betterton had come into the room where Foote was, the latter would have driven him from it by his broad-faced, obstreperous mirth. But Foote's conversational powers and wide knowledge, which charmed Fox, would have charmed Betterton too, and I do not think either could have been like Johnson's imaginary hostler, who, encountering Foote in a stable, thought him a comic fellow, but parted from him without a feeling of respect. Johnson thought less of Foote's conversation than Fox did; he described it as between wit and buffoonery, but admitted that Foote was a "fine fellow in his way," and he hoped somebody would write his life with diligence. Walpole tersely described him as "a Merry Andrew, but no fool." So the black boy thought, who hated the small beer which Foote (who sneered at Garrick for having been a wine merchant) at one time brewed and sold, through a partner. The boy was so delighted with Foote's wit, as he waited on him at dinner, that he declared, in the kitchen, he could drink his bad beer for ever, and would certainly never complain of it again.

Foote had so little moral courage, and was so thin-skinned, that attacks upon him in the newspapers caused him exquisite pain, and he stooped so far to the Duchess of Kingston as to offer to suppress his "Trip to Calais," if she would put a stop to the assaults made on him through the press. The notorious lady, who was tried for bigamy, called him the "descendant of a Merry Andrew," and Foote informed her that though his good mother had lived to fourscore, she had never been married but once. Something, however, is to be said for this well-abused person. She did not marry the Duke of Kingston till the Ecclesiastical Court had broken her marriage with Lord Hervey. The House of Lords reversed the decree of the Ecclesiastical Court, after the lady had married a second time, and it was this reversal of an old judgment which exposed her to the penalties of bigamy. When these facts are remembered, half the jokes against Foote's adversary fall to the ground.

Neither the claims of friendship nor a sense of courtesy could restrain Foote from a brutal jest when opportunity offered to make one. He had no more intimate friend than Charles Holland, who was at Drury Lane, from 1755 to 1769; and whose father was a baker, at Chiswick. Foote attended the funeral there, and on his return to town, he gaily remarked that he "had seen Holland shoved into the family oven!" As for his courtesy, it was on a par with his sense of friendship and fellowship. When down at Stratford, on the occasion of the Shakspeare Jubilee, Garrick's success embittered Foote's naturally bitter spirit. A well-dressed gentleman there, civilly spoke to him on the proceedings. "Has Warwickshire, sir," said Foote, "the advantage of having produced you as well as Shakspeare?" "Sir," replied the gentleman, "I come from Essex." "Ah!" rejoined Foote, remembering that county was famous for calves, "from Essex! Who drove you?"

The better samples of Foote's wit are to be found in his own comic pieces. In his "Lame Lover," how admirable is Mr. Sergeant Circuit's remark when his wife asks for money, and protests she must have it, as her honour is in pawn! "How a century will alter the meaning of words!" cries the Sergeant. "Formerly, chastity was the honour of women, and good faith and integrity the honour of men; but now, a lady who ruins her family by punctually paying her losses at play, and a gentleman who kills his best friend in a ridiculous quarrel, are your only tip-top people of honour! Well, let them go on! It brings grist to our mill; for while both sexes stick firm to their honour, we shall never want business either at Doctors' Commons or the Old Bailey!" Again, in the "Nabob," a hard hit is made at the bold profligacy of the period, in the words of Touchet (Baddeley) to Sir Matthew Mite (Foote), both of whom had been talking of hanging, or worse, hereafter, to the bribe-taking members of an election club; – "That's right, stick to that! for though the Christian Club may have some fears of the gallows, they don't value damnation a farthing!"