nd Phillis
were not then in it: He read it to Mr. Cibber, who candidly told him,
that though he liked his play upon the whole, both in the cast of the
characters and execution of them; yet, that it was rather too grave
for an English audience, who want generally to laugh at a Comedy, and
without which in their opinion, the end is not answered. Mr. Cibber
then proposed the addition of some comic characters, with which Sir
Richard agreed, and saw the propriety and force of the observation.
This comedy (at Sir Richard's request) received many additions from,
and were greatly improved by Mr. Cibber.--Our author dedicated this
work to the king, who made him a present of 500 l.

Some years before his death, he grew paralytic, and retired to his
seat at Langunner, near Caermarthen in Wales, where he died September
the 1st, 1729; and was privately interred according to his own desire,
in the church of Caermarthen.

Besides his writings above-mentionened, he began on Saturday the 17th
of December, a weekly paper in quarto, called the Town-Talk, in a
letter to a lady in the country; and another, intitled the Tea-Table:
He had likewise planned a comedy which he intended to call The School
of Action.--As Sir Richard was beloved when living, so his loss was
sincerely regretted at his death. He was a man of undissembled, and
extensive benevolence; a friend to the friendless, and as far as his
circumstances would permit, the father of every orphan: His works
are chaste, and manly, he himself admired virtue, and he drew her as
lovely as she is: of his works it may be said, as Sir George Lyttleton
in his prologue to Coriolanus observes of Thomson, that there are not
in them

One corrupted, one immoral thought,
A line which dying he could wish to blot.

He was a stranger to the most distant appearance of envy or
malevolence, never jealous of any man's growing reputation, and so far
from arrogating any praise to himself, from his conjunction with Mr.
Addison, that he was the first who desired him to distinguish his
papers in the Spectator, and after the death of that great man was a
faithful executor of his fame, notwithstanding an aspersion which Mr.
Tickell was so unjust to throw upon him. Sir Richard's greatest error
was want of oeconomy, as appears from the two following instances
related by the elegant writer of Mr. Savage's Life, to whom that
gentleman communicated them.

'Savage was once desired by Sir Richard, with an a