ama as in other matters, and Cibber was one of
its luminaries; he wrote some of the best comedies of his day. He also
succeeded where Dryden, for lack of true dramatic taste, failed. He
tampered successfully with Shakespeare. Colley Cibber's version of
"Richard the Third" is impudent and slightly larcenic, but it is
marvelously effective. It has stood a century, and probably will stand
forever; and the most admired passages in what literary humbugs who
pretend they know Shakespeare by the closet, not the stage, accept as
Shakespeare's "Richard," are Cibber's.

Mr. Cibber was now in private life, a mild edition of his own
Lord Foppington; he had none of the snob-fop as represented on our
conventional stage; nobody ever had, and lived. He was in tolerably
good taste; but he went ever gold-laced, highly powdered, scented, and
diamonded, dispensing graceful bows, praises of whoever had the good
luck to be dead, and satire of all who were here to enjoy it.

Mr. Vane, to whom the drama had now become the golden branch of letters,
looked with some awe on this veteran, for he had seen many Woffingtons.
He fell soon upon the subject nearest his heart. He asked Mr. Cibber
what he thought of Mrs. Woffington. The old gentleman thought well of
the young lady's talent, especially her comedy; in tragedy, said he, she
imitates Mademoiselle Dumenil, of the Theatre Francais, and confounds
the stage rhetorician with the actress. The next question was not so
fortunate. "Did you ever see so great and true an actress upon the
whole?"

Mr. Cibber opened his eyes, a slight flush came into his wash-leather
face, and he replied: "I have not only seen many equal, many superior
to her, but I have seen some half dozen who would have eaten her up
and spit her out again, and not known they had done anything out of the
way."

Here Pomander soothed the veteran's dudgeon by explaining in dulcet
tones that his friend was not long from Shropshire, and--The critic
interrupted him, and bade him not dilute the excuse.

Now Mr. Vane had as much to say as either of them, but he had not the
habit, which dramatic folks have, of carrying his whole bank in his
cheek-pocket, so they quenched him for two minutes.

But lovers are not silenced, he soon returned to the attack; he dwelt
on the grace, the ease, the freshness, the intelligence, the universal
beauty of Mrs. Woffington. Pomander sneered, to draw him out. Cibber
smiled, with good-natured superiority.