herbert had brought us together at his house, we interchanged visits, and it is nothing more than natural to confess I was charmed with his company and flattered by his attentions. I had a house in Queen-Ann-Street, and he then lived in Southampton-Street Covent Garden, where I frequently went to him and sometimes accompanied him to his pleasant villa at Hampton. In the mean time, whilst I was thus fortunate in conciliating to myself one eminent person by my epilogue, I soon discovered to my regret how many I had offended by my prologue. A host of newspaper-writers fell upon me for the pertness and general satire of that incautious composition, and I found myself assailed from various quarters with unmitigated acrimony. I made no defence, and the only one I had to make would hardly have brought me off, for I could have opposed nothing to their charge against me, but the simple and sincere assertion that I alluded personally to no man, and being little versed in the mock-modesty of modern addresses to the audience, took the old style of prologue for my model, and put a bold countenance upon a bold adventure. Numerous examples were be

fore me of prologues arrogant in the extreme'; Johnson abounds in such instances, but I did not advert sufficiently to the change, which time had wrought in the circumstances of the dramatic poet, and how much it behoved him to lower his tone in the hearing of his audience: neither did Smith, who was speaker of the prologue, and an experienced actor, warn me of any danger in the lines he undertook to deliver. In short mine was the error of inexperience, and their efforts to rebuff me only gave a fresh spring to my exertions, for I can truly say, that, although I have been annoyed by detraction, it never had the property of depressing me. I was silly enough to send this comedy into the world with a dedication to the Duke of Grafton, a man, with whom I had not the slightest acquaintance, nor did I seek to establish any upon the merit of this address: he was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and this was my sole motive for inscribing my first comedy to him. As for the play itself, whilst the prologue and the prologue's author run the gauntlet, that kept possession of the stage, and Woodward and Yates lost no credit by the support they gave it.

I will not trouble the reader with many apo logies or appeals, yet just now whilst I am beginning to introduce a long list of dramas, such as I presume no English author has yet equalled in point of number, I would fain intercede for a candid interpretation of my labours, and recommend my memory to posterity for protection after death from those unhandsome cavils, which I have patiently endured whilst living.

I am not to learn that dramatic authors are to arm themselves with fortitude before they take a post so open to attack; they, who are to act in the public eye, and speak in the public ear, have no right to expect a very smooth and peaceful career. I have had my full share of success, and I trust I have paid my tax for it always without mutiny, and very generally without murmuring. I have never irritated the town by making a sturdy stand against their opposition, when they have been pleased to point it against any one of my productions: I never failed to withdraw myself on the very first intimation that I was unwelcome, and the only offence I have been guilty of is, that I have not always thought the worse of a composition only because the public did not think well of

it. I solemnly protest that I have never written, or caused to be written, a single line to puff and praise myself, or to decry a brother dramatist, since I had life; of all such anonymous and mean manœuvres I am clearly innocent and proudly disdainful; I have stood firm for the corps, into which I enrolled myself, and never disgraced my colours by abandoning the cause of the legitimate comedy, to whose service I am sworn, and in whose defence I have kept the field for nearly half a century, till at last I have survived all true national taste, and lived to see buffoonery, spectacle and puerility so effectually triumph, that now to be repulsed from the stage is to be recommended to the closet, and to be applauded by the theatre is little else than a passport to the puppet-show. I only say what every body knows to be true: I do not write from personal motives, for I have no more cause for complaint than is common to many of my brethren of the corps. It is not my single misfortune to have been accused of vanity, which I did not feel, of satires, which I did not write, and of invectives, which I disdained even to meditate. It stands recorded of me in a review to

this hour, that on the first night of The School for Scandal I was overheard in the lobby endeavouring to decry and cavil at that excellent comedy: I gave my accuser proof positive, that I was at Bath during the time of its first run, never saw it during its first season, and exhibited my pocket-journal in confirmation of my alibi: the gentleman was convinced of my innocence, but as he had no opportunity of correcting his libel, every body that read it remains convinced of my guilt. Now as none, who ever heard my name, will fail to suppose I must have said what is imputed to me in bitterness of heart, not from defect in head, this false aspersion of my character was cruel and injurious in the extreme. I hold it right to explain that the reviewer I am speaking of has been long since dead.

In the ensuing year I again paid a visit to my father at Clonfert, and there in a little closet at the back of the palace, as it was called, unfurnished and out of use, with no other prospect from my single window but that of a turfstack, with which it was almost in contact, I seated myself by choice, and began to plan and compose The West Indian.