h to think that he held the trump card in the
game. The card in question was a little matter of two hundred pounds
owing from Swiney to Rich, and the latter fondly believed that this
loan would bind the debtor to him as with hooks of steel. But we
do not love men the more because they chance to be our creditors;
sometimes, indeed, we love them the less for it, and so these two
hundred pounds did not prevent the Celt from breaking over the traces
of the Englishman. Let Cibber continue the story:

* * * * *

"The first word I heard of this transaction was by a letter from
Swiney, inviting me to make one in the Hay-Market Company. whom he
hop'd I could not but now think the stronger party. But I confess I
was not a little alarm'd at this revolution. For I considered that
I knew of no visible fund to support these actors but their own
industry; that all his recruits from Drury Lane would want new
cloathing; and that the warmest industry would be always labouring
up hill under so necessary an expence, so bad a situation, and so
inconvenient a theatre," &c.

* * * * *

In fine, Master Colley resolved that it would be the course of wisdom
to stay at Drury Lane, where he seems to have enjoyed to an unusual
degree the confidence of the very manager whom afterwards he did
not hesitate to abuse. So when Cibber came up to London from
Gloucestershire, where he had been spending his vacation, he returned
to the fold of his old master.

* * * * *

"But I found our company so thinn'd that it was almost impracticable
to bring any one tolerable play upon the stage. When I ask'd him
where were his actors, and in what manner he intended to proceed? he
reply'd, _Don't you trouble yourself, come along, and I'll shew you_.

"He then led me about all the by-places in the house, and shew'd
me fifty little backdoors, dark closets, and narrow passages in
alterations and contrivances of which kind he had busied his head most
part of the vacation; for he was scarce ever without some notable
joyner or a bricklayer extraordinary, in pay, for twenty years. And
there are so many odd obscure places about a theatre, that his genius
in nook-building was never out of employment, nor could the most
vain-headed author be more deaf to an interruption in reciting his
works, than our wise master was while entertaining me with the
improvements he had made in his