Love in the Suds: a Town Eclogue.

Title: Love in the Suds: a Town Eclogue.

Author: W. Kenrick

Release date: July 10, 2012 [eBook #40188] Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40188

Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Katie Hernandez, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

I

A

LETTER

TO

DAVID GARRICK, Esq.

FROM

WILLIAM KENRICK, LL.D.

Meo deo irato. Ter. Phor.

THE THIRD EDITION.

LONDON:

Printed for J. WHEBLE, Pater-noster-Row.

Mdcclxxii.II

To DAVID GARRICK, Esq.

SIR, 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 III 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. IV

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.

With Annotations by the Editor;

AND AN

APPENDIX,

CONTAINING

QUERIES and ANSWERS

Relative to the Personal Satisfaction, pretended to have been required of the Author of the above Eclogue, by the lamentable Roscius. 1

LOVE in the SUDS;

A

TOWN ECLOGUE.

2

3

Time, however, effects strange things, as the poet says, and many have been the passions which have since agitated, and have been also quelled in the bosom of Roscius.

4

5

IMITATIONS.

NOTES.

6

IMITATIONS.

NOTES.

7

NOTES.

8

NOTES.

"If any author of prolific brains In this good company feels labour-pains; If any gentle poet big with rhyme Has run his reckoning out and gone his time: Know such that at our hospital of muses He may lie-in in private if he chuses; We've single lodgings there for secret sinners With good encouragement for your beginners." Prologue to the Fashionable Lover.

It is indeed now plain enough that Roscius has given great encouragement to secret sinners; but I would advise none of our poets to lie in again in private; but to remember the fate of a late tragedy and farce. Poor Clementina, and the lady An hour before marriage, both privately lay-in and miscarried.

9

IMITATIONS.

10

NOTES.

11

IMITATIONS.

NOTES.

12

IMITATIONS.

NOTES.

13

IMITATIONS.

NOTES.

14

IMITATIONS.

NOTES.

To Doctor Goldsmith, on seeing his name in the list of the mummers at the late masquerade.

15

NOTES.

16

NOTES.

Lusus Naturæ Typographus.

Monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui lumen ademptum. Virg.

I thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well; they imitated humanity so abominably Shakespeare.

17

NOTES.

In reply to this notice, it is said, the defendant's plea would have appeared in the same paper; but the cause was obliged to be removed by certiorari to another court; when it appeared thus:

18

IMITATIONS.

NOTES.

19

NOTES.

20

NOTES.

Roscius, however, hath chang'd his mind, and acquired new elastic powers; in so much that the following complimentary verses appeared on the agility, which he lately displayed in the performance of that character.

21

IMITATIONS.

NOTES.

22

IMITATIONS.

23

IMITATIONS.

NOTES.

24

NOTES.

25

NOTES.

26

APPENDIX.

Certain circumstances, to which the author of the foregoing piece was an utter stranger, having happened about the time of its publication, and given rise to rumours equally false and foreign to the party; it appears that Roscius, or some of his friends, was pleased to insert the following queries in the Morning Chronicle of July 2d.

"Candour presents her compliments to Mr.——, she begs his pardon,—— to Dr.—— Kenrick, and desires to ask him a few simple questions; to which, if he be the Plain-dealer he pretends, he will give a plain and direct answer. Query I. Whether you are not the author of the eclogue, entitled, Love in the Suds, as well as of the letter prefixed to it? II. Whether you did not mean, though you have artfully evaded the law, by affecting the translation of a classical cento, to throw out the most scandalous insinuations against the character of Roscius? III. Whether you were not likewise the author of an infamous, anonymous paragraph in a public paper; for which that paper is under a just prosecution? IV. Whether you have not openly acknowledged notwithstanding, that you really entertained a very different opinion of Roscius? V. Whether any cause of dispute, that might subsist between you and Roscius, can authorize so cruel, so unmanly an attack? VI. Whether the brother of Roscius did not personally wait on you to require, in his name, the satisfaction of a gentleman, which

you refused him? CANDOUR." 27

To these queries, the author judged it expedient to make the following reply in the same paper of July 4th.

To CANDOUR.

Madam, "Though I think your signature a misnomer, to shew that I a no stranger to the name and quality you assume, I shall not stand on the punctilio of your being an anonymous querist; but answer your several questions explicitly. I. I am the author of the eclogue you mention. II. I did not mean to throw out the most scandalous insinuations on the character of Roscius, nor any insinuation more scandalous than his conduct. How far that has been so, he knows best, and is left to make the application. III. An infamous paragraph I cannot write; and an anonymous one I will not write, to prejudice my greatest enemy. As to that in question, I have not, to this hour, even seen it. Calumny I detest; but I think vice should be exposed to infamy, nor have I so much false delicacy as to conceive, it should be treated with tenderness in proportion as it is abominable. IV. I have not acknowledged that I entertain a very different opinion of Roscius; on the contrary, I declare, that I entertain a very indifferent opinion of him. V. As to the cause of our dispute, I should be very ready to submit

it to the publick, were I egotist enough to think it deserved their attention. VI. The brother of Roscius did personally wait on me, to desire I would meet "him, the said Roscius, who would bring a friend with him; I being at liberty to do the same;" but as nothing of time, place, or weapon was mentioned, I did not look on this message as a challenge; nor well could I, as I never heard of requiring gentleman's satisfaction by letter of attorney, and the professed end of our meeting 28 turned merely on a matter of business.—It is possible, indeed, the messenger, otherwise instructed, might imagine it such, especially as, it seems, his head has teemed with nothing but challenges and duels, since his magnanimous monomachy with one of his brother Roscius's candle-snuffers.—That Roscius himself, however, did not mean to send me a challenge, is plain, from his solliciting afterwards by letter, a conference in the presence only of a common friend to both: a request that would have been complied with, had not he thought proper, in

a most ungentleman-like manner, to make a confidant, in the meantime, of a booby of a bookseller, who had the folly and impudence to declare that he would, on his [Roscius's] account, take an opportunity to do me some desperate mischief.—Lest I should be yet supposed, from the purport of this last query, to have any fear of a personal encounter with the doughty Roscius, I require only that it may be on an equal footing. I am neither so extravagantly fond of life, nor think myself so consequential in it, as to fear the end of it from such an antagonist; nor, to say the truth, should I have any qualms of conscience, if nothing less will satisfy him, about putting an end to so insignificant a being as his: but, as "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," it is but right to provide against a mishap. Roscius has a large fortune, and little or no family to leave it to: I have a large family, and little or no fortune to leave it. Let Roscius but previously settle only half his estate on my heirs, on condition that he deprives them of a protector, and I will meet him

to-morrow, and engage at his own weapons, not only him, but his brother George into the bargain.36 And now, Madam Candour, give me leave to ask you a question or two, in my turn. 29 Qu. I. Whether, from many gross instances of misbehaviour, Roscius hath not long had sufficient reason to suspect the detestable character of Nyky? II. Whether, therefore, granting Roscius to be himself immaculate, he is excusable for his notorious partialities to such a character? III. Whether he has any right to complain of unjust severity, in being ludicrously reproached with such partialities, by a writer, whom he hath treated, even in favour of that very wretch, with disrespect, with insolence, with injustice. W. KENRICK."

Instead of candidly replying, however, to the above three queries, a very difficult task, indeed, to Roscius, he caused the Court of King's Bench to be moved for a rule to shew cause, why leave should not be given him to file an information against the author for a libel: which being granted of course, the same was exultingly announced in the following paragraphs inserted in all the news-papers:

"Yesterday morning Mr. Dunning made a motion in the Court of King's Bench, for a rule to shew cause why an information should not be laid against the author of Love in the Suds. When the court was pleased to grant a rule for the first day of next term. The poem was read in court by the Clerk of the Crown, and afforded no small diversion when it came to that part which reflects upon a certain Chief Justice, who was present all the time.

"Besides Mr. Wallace and Mr. Dunning, who are employed by great actor, in his prosecution of some detestable charges which have been lately urged with as much folly as wickedness against his character, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Mansfield are also engaged, and the cause now becomes a matter of much expectation with the publick."

To these paragraphs the author judged it necessary to make the following reply, in the above-mentioned Morning Chronicle; almost all the rest of the news-papers, by the indefatigable industry 30 and powerful influence of Roscius, a proprietor in most of them, being shut against him.

The Author of Love in the Suds to the Printer of the Morning Chronicle.

SIR, "In reprehending others you should ever be cautious of falling into the error you condemn. In yesterday's paper you indirectly charge me, among others, with having "urged a detestable charge with as much folly as wickedness against a certain great actor."—What other people have done I know not, nor does it concern me; but I may safely defy all the Lawyers in Westminster-Hall fairly to deduce such a charge as you hint at from the eclogue in question. In this respect it is certainly as innocent as the great actor's Jubilee Ode! But granting it otherwise with any one else, how can you take upon you to say that such a charge is urged foolishly and wickedly? Can you know it to be false or groundless? And if not, on what grounds do you charge the accusers with folly and wickedness? Why does not the Candour of the great actor, reply to the Queries put to him in your paper of Saturday last? But no; unable to justify himself at the bar of the publick, he flies for refuge to the quirks and quibbles of Westminster-Hall; and even this at the latter end of a

term, in order to deceive the town into a notion that the court will countenance his prosecution. Why was not his motion made sooner, that cause might have been shewn in time, and the futility of it made immediately evident? Believe me, Sir, before an end is put to this business, the publick will be better enabled to judge on which side the folly and wickedness lies, than you appear to do at present. I am, yours, &c. W. K.

FINIS.

Shortly will be published,

A

LETTER

TO

DAVID GARRICK, Esq.

OCCASIONED

By his moving the Court of King's Bench, for Leave to file an Information against the Author of Love in the Suds, or the Lamentation of Roscius for the Loss of his Nyky.—— In which the real Purport of that Performance, with the Motives for its publication will be explained and justified.

BY THE AUTHOR.