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CHAPTER VI.

CIBBER AND HIS "APOLOGY."

NE of the most interesting figures of the eigh

teenth century stage, a man whose career makes a bridge between the halcyon days of Betterton, Kynaston, and Barry and those of the incomparable Garrick (whom he contemptuously called "the prettiest little creature") now claims attention. This is none other than Colley Cibber, whose want of genius was atoned for by an "infinite variety" which enabled him to become actor, manager, dramatist, man about town and, by some inscrutable dispensation of Providence and royal favor, Poet Laureate of the English nation. As an actor he was a success in characters of the light foppish variety, yet he convulsed his friends, in a way not intended, by his penchant for tragedy; as a manager, he showed great administrative capacity, while he could be overbearing and unpleasant; as a dramatist he wrote some popular, sprightly comedies, and as a poet he seems to have been "one of the worst on record." "Colley Cibber, Sir," pompously said Dr. Johnson to the admiring Boswell, "was by no means a blockhead; but by arrogating to himself too much, he

was in danger of losing that degree of estimation to which he was entitled.”

The weighty Doctor, with all his prejudices and arrogance, had an elephantine way of hitting the bull's eye of truth about men and things, and he never gauged a nature better than he did in this instance. When, however, he called Cibber a "Poor creature," he shot wide of the mark, for while the volatile Colley had a thousand faults he accomplished too much to deserve so mean a description. Yet it would have been expecting the impossible to ask that the man who insolently referred to Garrick, even before his face, as “Punch,” and who looked upon players as little more or less than disreputable puppets, should find any great compliment for a butterfly like the Laureate. Butterflies have their uses, the one in this case writing an autobiography that is now a theatrical classic, but Johnson could find no health in them, particularly if their wings were singed by the footlights.

Whatever was artistic in the temperament of this author-actor must have been inherited from his father, Caius Gabriel Cibber, a native of Holstein who emigrated to England prior to the Restoration and afterwards acquired considerable fame as a sculptor. His figures are now forgotten, but the dandified form of his son seems a reality even yet; we can picture him flitting about among the coxcombs of his time; then rushing to the theatre to play some character dear to his heart, or hurrying home to compose a wretched ode

over which his friends were to laugh, and perhaps have for a sharer in their merriment the complaisant Colley himself.

In 1682, when little more than ten years old, the young Cibber was sent to a school in Lincolnshire, where his life seems to have been neither more brilliant nor less lazy than that of the average boy. 'Even there," he remembers, "I was the same inconsistent creature I have been ever since! always in full spirits, in some small capacity to do right, but in a more frequent alacrity to do wrong; and consequently often under a worse character than I wholly deserved." writes an ode, later on, and gets the ill-will of his fellow-students for his pains, not so much because the poetry was bad, (although to judge by his subsequent efforts in this direction it must have been a curiosity,) as on account, very possibly, of his characteristic vanity at having perpetrated it.

He

Next the father tries to get his son admitted to Winchester College, but the fact that the lad is descended, on his mother's side, from the founder of the institution, William of Wickham, is not sufficient for the purpose, and so we shortly find Colley taking up arms in the interests of William of Orange, among the troops. collected by his father's patron, the Earl of Devonshire, to accomplish the ruin of the obstinate James II. The peaceful establishment of King William on the English throne put a stop to any budding desire on the youth's part to become a great warrior, and now his tastes be

gin to incline toward the stage. He goes up to London, ostensibly to await an appointment in the Secretary of State's office, but the delay in the arrival of the preferment is as balm to his soul, or, to use his own quaint explanation: "The distant hope of a reversion was too cold a temptation for a spirit impatient as mine, that wanted immediate possession of what my heart was so differently set upon. The allurements of a theatre are still so strong in my memory that perhaps few, except those who have felt them, can conceive: And I am yet so far willing to excuse my folly that I am convinc'd, were it possible to take off that disgrace and prejudice which custom has thrown upon the profession of an actor, many a well-born younger brother and beauty of low fortune would gladly have adorn'd the theatre, who by their not being able to brook such dishonor to their birth, have pass'd away their lives. decently unheeded and forgotten."

All thoughts of settling down to a Government clerkship were finally thrown to the winds, and in 1690 the aspiring young fellow became an humble actor, strictly on probation, in the united company formed by Betterton, Mountford, Kynaston, Barry, Bracegirdle, and their associates. He was to receive no pay until that fortunate incident, already narrated, should bring him to the attention of Betterton, but he looked upon the privilege of witnessing gratis all the performances at the theatre as a sufficient reward for his modest services. Before the first year's stay had ended Colley was receiving the

princely salary of ten shillings a week, and he considered himself the happiest of mortals.

sex.

To be sure, he burned with an ardent ambition to play the lovers to the heroines of the chaste Bracegirdle, but he was soon snubbed out of any such wild hopes. An inexperienced, unattractive looking actor with an insufficient voice, a meagre person (tho' then not ill made) with a dismal pale complexion" was not a fit companion for one of the most charming of her But there was no such word as discouragement in the egotistical lexicon of this curious "poor creature." Soon he is playing the Chaplain in The Orphan of Otway, and winning the honest praise of Goodman, now retired from the stage, who says with more vigor than elegance, "If he does not make a good actor I'll be d-d." Then he gets married, on twenty pounds a year from his father and twenty shillings a week from the theatre; looks upon his wife and himself as “the happiest young couple that ever took a leap in the dark," and completes this vision of bliss by wooing the poetic muse after that unblushingly absurd way of his.

Once the illness of a superior serves him a good turn. The Double Dealer is to be played before Queen Mary, and Mr. Congreve, its author, finding that Kynaston is too sick to take the part of Lord Touchwood, and much disturbed by the discovery, at last asks Cibber to try the character. The substitute is delighted, he plays with confidence and success, her Most Gracious Majesty is