they may find among my literary relics; they are all much younger men than I am, and I pray God, that death, who cannot long spare me, will not draw those arrows from his quiver which fate has destined to extinguish them, till they have completed a career equal, at least in length to mine, crowned with more fame, and graced with much more fortune and prosperity. I know that they will do what they have said, and faithfully protect my posthumous reputation, as I have been a faithful friend to them and to their living works."

The reader will surely learn with wonder, that this bequest thus solemnly, thus publicly made, has been frustrated, by the intervention of Cumberland's youngest daughter, Mrs. Jansen, his Marianne, to whom he so tenderly dedicates his Memoirs. She has declined, I have been informed, the interference of those friends; but from what motive I do not know; a powerful one it ought to be, to justify her departure from a scheme which seems to have been so pleasing, in anticipation, to her father, and of whose propriety and importance he must have been the most competent judge. I hope, very sincerely, that no capricious feeling has guided her in this determination.

CHAP. XXI.

The NATURAL SON is produced.-Cumberland's excellence in prologues and epilogues asserted.— The character of Lady Paragon, the best female part he ever drew.-Examination of the other characters, and of the language and sentiments. -Anecdotes of Lord SACKVILLE.-His death, and his solemn declaration respecting the affair of Minden.

IN 1784 Cumberland produced his comedy of the Natural Son, the principal incident of which seems to be slightly derived from Fielding's Tom Jones. The prologue is a good one, and shall be transcribed. I do not think, indeed, that Cumberland's merit in this species of writing has been sufficiently acknowledged. After Dryden and Garrick, he may be allowed to surpass all others. The single excellence of Pope, and the not much more than single excellence of Johnson, must not be produced in comparison with the various degrees of excellence which Cumberland has exhibited in his prologues and epilogues.They often contain some very happy couplets, and

occasional displays of wit and humour, not depending upon any allusion to the play to which they belong, but general and abstracted. The following will exemplify this:

The comic muse as Cyprian records prove
Was Comus' daughter by the Queen of Love,
A left hand lineage whilst the tragic dame
From legal loins of father Vulcan came;

Therefore that muse loves frolic, fun, and joke,
This bellows blowing, blustering, puff and smoke :
Hence mother nature's bye-begotten stock
Are all but chips of the old comic block;
For all derive their pedigrees in tail,
From fathers frolicksome and mothers frail.
Therefore, if in this brat of ours you trace
Some feature of his merry mother's face,
Sure, sons of Comus, sure you'll let him in
To your gay brotherhood, as founder's kin.

A married Muse! no; Muses are too wise
To take a poet's jointure in the skies,
Th' anticipation of an unborn play,
Or star sown acres in the milky way:

So each lives single, like a cloister'd min,

But does sometimes as other nuns have done-

Prays with grave authors-with the giddy prates,
Or ogles a young poet through the grates.

Therefore, our rule is, never to inquire

Who begat whom, what dam, or which the sire;
But, soon as e'er the babe breathes vital air

Take him, and never ask how he got there.

Some are still born: some sent to mother earth,

Strangled by critic midwives in their birth;
And many an unacknowledg'd foundling lies
Without a parent's hand to close its eyes.
Thus are our bills with deaths dramatic cramm'd,
And, what is worse,to die, is to be damn'd.

You, the Humane Society, who sit,

To mitigate the casualties of wit,

Save a frail MUSE'S NATURAL SON from death!

He lives on fame, and fame lives on your breath.

The action of this comedy is not very intricate nor very interesting. Its deficiency in interest, however, may be attributed to the author's unskilful management of the materials which he possessed. With his accustomed negligence he tells that in the middle of his play which should have been reserved for the end. The disclosure of Blushenly's birth by O'Flaherty, and the discovery of his relationship to Rueful diminish that plea sure which the spectator would have felt in beholding Lady Paragon's love for him, founded on no other basis then his personal merits. To have accepted him as a poor and nameless foundling, would have exalted her passion upon the purest foundation but before she can actually do this, she knows him as a wealthy heir, and as the offspring of a distinguished family.

Lady Paragon's character, however, is eminently agreeable. I have already said that I consider it as the best female part Cumberland ever drew, though he was inclined to claim that distinction for Lady Davenant in the Mysterious Husband. Lady Paragon must have shone with peculiar lustre in the performance of Miss Farren. She is volatile yet dignified, playful yet discreet, and tender and affectionate without a maudlin affecta

tion of sensibility. She is just that interesting female in whose company no man could find himself without finding something else, perhaps, which would not conduce to his happiness. That unconstrained gaiety of manners, which invites a lover forward, and that tempered chastity of heart which makes him stop before he proceeds too far, that arch vivacity which teases without displeasing, that unsuspecting frankness which, disdaining artifice itself, believes it not in others, and that secure confidence in the power of beauty, loveliness, and virtue, which tempts their possessor to play with her prize almost to losing because she knows how to lure it back again, as the wanton girl gives mimic freedom to her favourite linnet, but lets it not fly beyond the length of the silken cord that holds it, are all displayed with fascinating skill by Cumberland in the character of Lady Paragon; and I can well believe that when such an actress as Miss Farren undertook to adorn these attributes with living grace and action, the effect must have been irresistible.

Nor is the character of Blushenly without much that excites the spectator's pleasure. I could wish, however, that his name had not been indicatory of his qualities. It is a paltry resource, and one to which Cumberland does not often condescend. It is a cheap species of wit to call a fearful man Mr. Timid, or a passionate one Sir Furious Frenzy, or a languishing love sick girl, Miss Wanton.