coln's-inn-fields, some of them, who seemed to answer for the rest, told me the greatest grievance they had in our company was the shocking temper of Wilks, who upon every, almost no, occasion, let loose the unlimited language of passion upon them in such a manner as their patience was not longer able to support. This indeed was what we could not justify; this was a secret, that might have made a wholesome paragraph in a critical newspaper! But as it was our good fortune that it came not to the ears of our enemies, the town was not entertained with their public remarks upon it.

After this new theatre had enjoyed that short run of favour which is apt to follow novelty, their audiences began to flag; but whatever good opinion we had of our own merit, we had not so good a one of the multitude, as to depend too much upon the delicacy of their taste we knew too, that this company, being so much nearer to the city than we were, would intercept many an honest customer, that might not know a good market from a bad one; and that the thinnest of their audiences must be always taking something from the measure of our profits. All these disadvantages, with many others, we were forced to lay before sir Richard Steele, and farther to remonstrate to him that, as he now stood in Collier's place, his pension of seven hundred pounds was liable to the same conditions that Collier had received it upon; which were, that it should be only payable during our being the only company permitted to act; but in case another should be set up against us, that then this pension was to be liquidated into an equal share with us; and which we now hoped he would be contented with. While we were offering to proceed, sir Richard stopt us short by assuring us, that as he came among us by our own invitation, he should always think himself obliged to come into any measures for our ease and service; that to be a burden to our industry, would be more disagreeable to him than it could be to us; and as he had always taken a delight in his endeavours for our prosperity, he should be still ready on our own terms to continue them.

Every one who knew sir Richard Steele in his prosperity (before the effects of his good nature had brought him to distresses) knew that this was his manner of dealing with his friends in business: another instance of the same nature will immediately fall in my way.

When we proposed to put this agreement into writing, he desired us not to hurry ourselves; for that he was advised, upon the late desertion of our actors, to get our license (which only subsisted during pleasure) enlarged into a more ample and durable authority, and which he said he had reason to think would be more easily obtained, if we were willing that a patent for the same purpose might be granted to him only, for his life and three years after, which he would then assign over to us. This was a prospect beyond our hopes, and what we had long wished for; for though I cannot say we had ever reason to grieve at the personal severities or behaviour of any one lord chamberlain in my time, yet the several officers under them, who had not the hearts of noblemen, often treated us (to use Shakspeare's expression) with all the insolence of office that narrow minds are apt to be elated with; but a patent, we knew, would free us from so abject a state of dependency. Accordingly, we desired sir Richard to lose no time; he was immediately promised it; in the interim we sounded the inclination of the actors remaining with us, who had all sense enough to know, that the credit and reputation we stood in with the town, could not but be a better security for their salaries, than the promise of any other stage, put into bonds, could make good to them. In a few days after, sir Richard told us that his majesty, being apprized that others had a joint power with him in the license, it was expected we should under our hands signify that his petition for a patent was preferred by the consent of us all. Such an acknowledgment was immediately signed, and the patent thereupon passed the great seal; for which I remember the lord chancellor Cowper, in compliment to sir Richard, would receive no fee

We received the patent January 19, 1718; and sir Richard being obliged the next morning to set out for Boroughbridge in Yorkshire, where he was soon after elected member of parliament, we were forced that very night to draw up in a hurry (until our counsel might more advisably perfect it) his assignment to us of equal shares in the patent, with further conditions of partnership. But here I ought to take shame to myself, and at the same time to give this second instance of the equity and honour of sir Richard: for this assignment (which I had myself the hasty penning of) was so worded, that it gave sir Richard as equal a title to our property, as it had given us to his authority in the patent: but sir Richard, notwithstanding, when he returned to town, took no advantage of the mistake, and consented in our second agreement to pay us twelve hundred pounds, to be equally entitled to our property, which at his death we were obliged to repay (as we afterwards did) to his executors; and which, in case any of us had died before him, the survivors were equally obliged to have paid to the executors of such deceased person, upon the same account. But sir Richard's moderation with us was rewarded with the reverse of Collier's stiffness: Collier, by insisting on his pension, lost three hundred pounds a year; and sir Richard, by his accepting a share in lieu of it, was one year with another as much a gainer.

The grant of this patent having assured us of a competent term to be relied on, we were now emboldened to lay out larger sums in the decorations of our plays. Upon the revival of Dryden's "All for Love," the habits of that tragedy amounted to an expense of near six hundred pounds; a sum unheard of for many years before on the like occasions. But we thought such extraordinary marks of our acknowledgment were due to the favours which the public were now again pouring in upon us. About this time we were so much in fashion and followed, that our enemies (who they were, it would not be fair to guess, for we never knew them) made their push of a good round lie upon us, to terrify those audi

tors from our support, whom they could not mislead by their private arts or public invectives. A current report, that the walls and roof of our house were liable to fall, had got such ground in the town, that on a sudden we found our audiences unusually decreased by it. Wilks was immediately for denouncing war and vengeance on the author of this falsehood, and for offering a reward to whoever could discover him. But it was thought more necessary first to disprove the falsehood, and then to pay what compliments might be thought advisable to the author. Accordingly an order from the king was ob tained to have our tenement surveyed by sir Thomas Hewett, then the proper officer; whose report of its being in a safe and sound condition, and signed by him, was published in every newspaper. This had so immediate an effect, that our spectators, whose apprehensions had lately kept them absent, now made up our losses by returning to us with a fresh inclination, and in greater

numbers.

When it was first publicly known that the new theatre would be opened against us, I cannot help going a little back to remember the concern that my brothermanagers expressed at what might be the consequences of it. They imagined that now all those who wished ill to us, and particularly a great party who had been disobliged by our shutting them out from behind our scenes, even to the refusal of their money, would now exert themselves in any partial or extravagant measures that might either hurt us or support our competitors. These too were some of those further reasons which had discouraged them from running the hazard of continuing to sir Richard Steele the same pension which had been paid to Collier. Upon all which I observed to them, that for my own part I had not the same apprehensions, but that I foresaw as many good as bad consequences from two houses; that though the novelty might possibly at first abate a little of our profits, yet if we slackened not our industry, that loss would be amply balanced by an equal increase of our ease and quiet; that those turbulent spirits which were always

molesting us would now have other employment; that the questioned merit of our acting would now stand in a clearer light, when others were faintly compared to us; that though faults might be found with the best actors that ever were, yet the egregious defects that would appear in others would now be the effectual means to make our superiority shine, if we had any pretence to it; and that what some people hoped might ruin us, would in the end reduce them to give up the dispute, and reconcile them to those who could best entertain them.

In every article of this opinion they afterwards found I had not been deceived; and the truth of it may be so well remembered by many living spectators, that it would be too frivolous and needless a boast to give it any farther observation.

But in what I have said I would not be understood' to be an advocate for two playhouses. For we shall soon find that two sets of actors tolerated in the same place have constantly ended in the corruption of the theatre; of which the auxiliary entertainments that have so barbarously supplied the defects of weak action, have for some years past been a flagrant instance. It may not therefore be here improper to show how our childish pantomimes first came to take so gross a possession of the stage.

I have upon several occasions already observed, that when one company is too hard for another, the lower in reputation has always been forced to exhibit some newfangled foppery to draw the multitude after them. Of these expedients, singing and dancing had formerly been the most effectual; but, at the time I am speaking of, our English music had been so discountenanced since the taste of Italian operas prevailed, that it was to no purpose to pretend to it. Dancing therefore was now the only weight in the opposite scale; and as the new theatre sometimes found their account in it, it could not be safe for us wholly to neglect it. To give even dancing therefore some improvement, and to make it something more than motion without meaning, the fable of “ Mars and Venus" was formed into a connected presentation