Wilson was another professional writer, but less successful on the stage than in his recordership of Londonderry. Another lawyer, Higden, was one of the jolliest of fellows; and wishing the actors to be so too, he introduced so many drinking scenes into his sole play, "The Wary Widow," that the players, who tippled their real punch freely, were all drunk by the end of the third act; and the piece was then, there, and thereby, brought to an end!
In the last years of the seventeenth century, a humble votary of the muses appeared in Duffet, the Exchange milliner; and in Robert Gould, a servant in the household of Dorset, where he caught from the wits and gay fellows assembled at Knowle or at Buckhurst, a desire to write a drama. He was, however, a schoolmaster, when his play of the "Rival Sisters"—in which, other means of slaughter being exhausted, a thunderbolt is employed for the killing a lady—was but coldly received. Gould was not a plagiarist, like Scott, the Duke of Roxburgh's secretary, nor so licentious. The public was scandalised by incidents in Scott's "Unhappy Kindness," in 1697. Dr. Drake was another plagiarist, who revenged himself in the last-named year, for the condemnation of his "Sham Lawyer," by stating on the title-page that it had been "damnably acted." That year was fatal, too, to Dr. Filmer, the champion of the stage against Collier. Even Betterton and Mrs. Barry failed to give life to the old gentleman's "Unnatural Brother;" and the doctor ascribed his want of success to the fact, that never at any one time had he placed more than three characters on the stage! The most prolific of what may be termed the amateur writers, was Peter Motteux, a French Huguenot, whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought, in 1660,[56] to England, where he carried on the vocations of a trader in Leadenhall Street, clerk in the foreign department of the Post Office, translator, original writer, dramatist, and "fast man," till the too zealous pursuit of the latter calling found Peter dead, in very bad company, in St. Clements Danes, in the year 1718. Of his seventeen comedies, farces, and musical interludes, there is nothing to be said, save that one called "Novelty" presents a distinct play in each act,—or five different pieces in all. By different men, Peter has been diversely rated. Dryden said of him, in reference to his one tragedy, "Beauty in Distress:"
"Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown;
But too much plenty is thy fault alone:
At least but two in that good crime commit;—
Thou in design, and Wycherly in wit."
But an anonymous poet writes, in reference to one of his various poor adaptations, "The Island Princess:"
"Motteux and Durfey are for nothing fit,
But to supply with songs their want of wit."
How Motteux found time for all his pursuits is not to be explained; but, much as he accomplished in all, he designed still more—one of his projects being an opera, to be called "The Loves of Europe," in which were to be represented the methods employed in various nations, whereby ladies' hearts are triumphantly won. It was an odd idea; but Peter Motteux was odd in everything. And it is even oddly said of him, "that he met with his fate in trying a very odd experiment, highly disgraceful to his memory!"[57]