The author of the following Eclogue, having requested my
assistance to introduce it to the world; it was with more
indignation than surprize I was informed of your having used your
extensive influence over the press to prevent its being advertised
in the News-papers. How are you, Sir, concerned in the Lamentation
of _Roscius_ for his _Nyky_? Does your modesty think no man
entitled to the appellation of Roscius but yourself? Does Nyky
resemble any nick-named favourite of yours? Or does it follow,
that if you have cherished an unworthy favourite, you must bear
too near a resemblance to him? _Qui capit ille facit_; beware of
self-accusation, where others bring no charge! Or, granting you
right in these particulars, by what right or privilege do you,
Sir, set up for a licenser of the press? That you have long
successfully usurped that privilege, to swell both your fame and
fortune, is well known. Not the puffs of the quacks of Bayswater
and Chelsea are so numerous and notorious: but by what authority
do you take upon you to shut up the general channel, in which
writers usher their performances to the public? If they attack
either your talents or your character, _in utrumque paratus_, you
are armed to defend yourself. You have, besides your ingenuous
countenance and conscious innocence; _Nil conscire sibi, nulla
pallescere culpa_; Besides this brazen bulwark, I say, you have a
ready pen and a long purse. The press is open to the one, and the
bar is ever ready to open with the other. For a poor author, not a
printer will publish a paragraph, not a pleader will utter a
quibble. You have then every advantage in the contest: It is
needless, therefore, to endeavour to intimidate your antagonists
by countenancing your retainers to threaten their lives! These
intimidations, let me tell you Sir, have an ugly, suspicious look.
They are besides needless; the _genus irritabile vatum_ want no
such personal provocations; Heaven knows, the life of a
play-wright, like that of a spider, is in a state of the most
slender dependency. It is well for my rhiming friend that his
hangs not on so slight a thread. He thinks, nevertheless, that he
has reason to complain, as well as the publick, of your having
long preferred the flimzy, translated, patch'd-up and mis-altered
pieces of your favourite compilers, to the arduous attempts at
originality of writers, who have no personal interest with the
manager. In particular, he thinks the two pieces, you are
projecting to get up next winter, for the emolument of your
favorite in disgrace, or to reimburse yourself the money, you may
have advanced him, might, for the present at least, be laid aside.
But you will ask me, perhaps, in turn, Sir, what right I have to
interfere with the business of other people, or with yours? I will
answer you. It is because I think your business, as patentee of a
theatre-royal, is not so entirely yours, but that the publick also
have some concern in it. You, Sir, indeed have long behaved as if
you thought the town itself a purchased appurtenance to the
theatre; but, tho' the scenes and machines are yours; nay, tho'
you have even found means to make comedians and poets your
property; it should be with more caution than you practise, that
you extend your various arts to make so scandalous a property of
the publick.
Again I answer, it is because I have some regard for my friend,
and as much for myself, whom you have treated as ill perhaps as
you have done any other writer; while under your auspices, some of
the persons stigmatised by the satirist, have frequently combined
to do me the most essential injury. But _nemo me impune lacessit_.
Not that I mean now to enter into particulars which may be thought
to relate too much to myself and too little to the publick. When I
shall have leisure to draw a faithful portraiture of Mr. Garrick,
not only from his behaviour to me in particular, but from his
conduct towards poets, players and the town in general, I doubt
not to convince the most partial of his admirers that he hath
accumulated a fortune, as manager, by the meanest and most
meretricious devices, and that the theatrical props, which have
long supported his exalted reputation, as an actor, have been
raised on the ruins of the English stage.
In the mean time, I leave you to amuse yourself with the following
jeu d'esprit of my friend; hoping, tho' it be a severe correction
for the errours of your past favouritism, it may prove a salutary
guide to you for the future. With regard to its publication I hope
also to stand excused with the reader for thus interposing to
defeat the success of those arts, which you so unfairly practise
to prevent, from reaching the public eye, whatever is disagreeable
to your own.
I am, Sir,
Yours, &c.
W. K.
LOVE in the SUDS;
A
TOWN ECLOGUE.
BEING THE
LAMENTATION of ROSCIUS
FOR THE
LOSS of his NYKY.
_Dixin' ego vobis, in hôc esse Atticam elegantiam?_ TER.
_O me inselicem!----
----quæ laudâram quantum luctus habuerint!_