That Cibber can serve both for fool and for poet.’
Let us take Swift against Pope:
‘Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool.’
No doubt Colley Cibber, who at seventy years of age aped the airs of a man of fashion, made himself as ridiculous on the walks at Hampstead as he subsequently did on the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells, where Richardson describes him making love to the handsome Miss Chudleigh (the pseudo Duchess of Kingston[261]), and growing green with jealousy when she bestowed a smile on anyone but himself. His appointment to the Laureateship, and the Birthday and other odes in which he exhibited his poetical fitness for the honour of the wreath, occasioned Lady Betty Germain to remark, in one of her clever letters to Dean Swift, that if it was the Queen, and not the Duke of Grafton,[262] that picked out such a Laureate, she deserved his poetry in her praise.
In May we find Mrs. Donnellan,[263] sister to the Bishop of Killala, and a friend of Swift’s and Mrs. Delany’s,[264] writing to the latter that she is waiting in Dublin to cross to England ‘when the wind served.’ This lady, who appears to have frequently renewed her visits to Hampstead, was received in the best society, and especially sought that of distinguished literary people. She was the Philomela of the Widow Pendarves’ correspondence with her sister—an affectation that suggests that, like so many of her charming country-women, she had the gift of a melodious voice added to that exquisite Gaelic endowment of taste and feeling in the use of it. Richardson, who after the appearance of ‘Pamela’ had become famous, and was fêted and run after, especially by women who affected literature, was a friend of hers. She appears to have preferred Hampstead, not only for the sake of the Wells, but from her innate love for the natural beauty of the place.
In 1748, the year ‘Clarissa’ took the reading world by storm, Richardson succeeded in persuading her that the air of the north-west suburb was too sharp for her, and so lured her for a time to North End, Fulham. But though getting into years, the lady appears to have had a will of her own, and in the summer of this year returned to her favourite place of abode and the shelter of Pond Street.
Richardson, writing to Mrs. Delany, informs her of her friend’s removal, and adds: ‘I did myself the honour to dine with her there (Pond Street) yesterday. The weather was not propitious ... she complained.... I chid her for her removal. But upon my word, madam, I do think it is not so very much amiss sometimes that control ... but no more on this subject.... I will only add that she rejoices in her prospects variegated with hill and dale. They are certainly very fine.’ To this epistle, the style of which is very like that of his epistolary novels, Mrs. Delany, whose ‘deportment was all elegance, and speech all sweetness,’ as Burke expressed it, a born courtier at heart, replies that she has written to Mrs. Donnellan, ‘condemning her, though she was loath, for going to that ugly Hampstead, which she had never loved since Clarissa had such persecutions there.’
Nevertheless, Mrs. Donnellan continued to enjoy the air of Hampstead from time to time for ten years longer. Mrs. Barbauld, in her ‘Life of Richardson,’ tells us that a friend of hers at Hampstead could remember her ‘a venerable old lady with very sharp, black eyes.’