Foote, again, read old pieces, with a purpose, quite as attentively as he did new. When he produced his "Liar," in 1762, he professed to have taken it from Lopez de Vega, that is, from the original source from which Corneille took his "Menteur." From the latter, Steele took his "Lying Lover," and a comparison of the language of the two pieces will show that Foote plundered Steele, and hoped to escape by acknowledging obligations to an older author, whom he could not read. There is least of plagiarism in the "Mayor of Garratt," yet even there Foote is detected in borrowing from "Epsom Wells," but with judgment. If he was a picker-up of unconnected trifles, he chose only those of value, and he polished and reset them with tact and taste. He has done this in the "Commissary," in which there is a theft from "Injured Love," in a joke which Hook stole, in his turn, from the "Commissary," to enliven his "Killing no Murder."
Except in ceasing to mimic Whitfield on the stage, after the death of that religious reformer, I can scarcely find a trait of delicacy in Foote's character. He seems to have been as unscrupulous in act, as he was cruel in his wit. One may forgive him, however, for his remark to John Rich, who had been addressing him curtly, as "Mister." Perceiving that Foote was vexed, Rich apologised, by saying, "I sometimes forget my own name." "I am astonished you could forget your own name," said Foote, "though I know very well that you are not able to write it!"
Foote, who spared nobody, was angry with Dr. Johnson for saying that he was an infidel, as a dog was an infidel; he had never thought of the matter. "I, who have added sixteen new characters to the drama of my country!" said Foote. When he left hospitable General Smith's house, after a longer sojourn than usual, Foote's only comment was: "I can't miss his likeness now, after such a good sitting." When Digges first appeared in Cato, we are told that Foote occupied a place in the pit, and raising his voice above the sound of the welcome given to the new actor, exclaimed, "He looks like a Roman chimney-sweeper on May-day." That Foote "deserved to be kicked out of the house for his cruelty," is a suggestion of Peake's, in which all men will concur. But did he deserve it? Chronology tends to disprove this story. Foote played for the last time on the 30th of July 1777. His name does not appear in the bills after that day. Digges made his first appearance in London, as Cato, on the 14th of the following August, and if Foote went into the pit on that occasion, his envy and malevolence must have supplied him with the energy of which he had been deprived by paralysis and other infirmities.
Foote's vanity was as great as his cruelty. To indulging in the former he owed the loss of his leg. Being on a visit to Lord Mexborough, where the Duke of York and other noble guests were present, Foote foolishly boasted of his horsemanship; being invited to join the hunt the next day, he was ashamed to refuse, and at the very first burst the boaster was thrown, and his leg broken in two places. Even when his leg was amputated, he was helped, by the incident, to an unworthy thought, namely, that he would now be able to mimic the one-legged George Faulkner, of Dublin, to the life! This, however, may have been said out of courage.
He bore, with fortitude, a visitation which gained for him a licence to open the Haymarket, from the 15th of May to the 15th of September. It opened his way to fortune; and though what O'Keefe says may be true, that it was pitiable to see him leaning against the wall of his stage dressing-room, while his servant dressed his cork leg, to suit the character in which his master was to appear, I can well believe what O'Keefe adds, that "he looked sorrowful, but instantly resuming all his high comic humour and mirth, he hobbled forward, entered the scene, and gave the audience what they expected, their plenty of laugh and delight."
Among the fairest of Foote's sayings was the reply to Mr. Howard's intimation that he was about to publish a second edition of his Thoughts and Maxims. "Ay! second thoughts are best." Fair, too, was his retort on the person who alluded to his "game leg." "Make no allusion to my weakest part! Did I ever attack your head?" Then Garrick once took as a compliment, that his bust had been placed by Foote in the private room of the latter. "You are not afraid, I see, to trust me near your gold and banknotes." "No," retorted the humorist, "you have no hands!"
Foote was sometimes beaten with his own weapons. After he had leased the Edinburgh Theatre from Ross, for three years, at five hundred guineas a year, a dispute arose, followed by a lawsuit, in which Foote was defeated. The Scottish agent for the vanquishing side, called on Foote, in London, with his bill of costs, which the actor had to defray. The amari aliquid having been got through, the player remarked that he supposed the agent was about to return to Edinburgh, like most of his countrymen, in the cheapest form possible. "Ay, ay," replied the agent, drily, tapping the pocket in which he had put the cash, "I shall travel—on foot!" Foote himself is described as looking rueful at the joke. Again, Churchill only said of him that he was in self-conceit an actor, and straightway Foote, who lived by degrading others, was "outrageously offended." Foote wrote a prose lampoon on Churchill and Lloyd, but did not publish it. Churchill, the bruiser, was not a safe man for Foote to attack, and the actor was fain to be satisfied with calling him the "clumsy curate of Clapham."
Foote took Wilkinson to Dublin in 1757, where they appeared as instructor and pupil, in one of Foote's entertainments, called a "Tea." Wilkinson imitated Luke Sparks as Old Capulet; convulsed the house, instead of being "stoned," as Mrs. Woffington expected, with his imitation of the two Dublin favourites, Margaret herself and Barry, in "Macbeth," and, emboldened by the applause, he imitated Foote in his own presence. Foote's audacity was tripped up by the suddenness of the action; and he looked foolish,—wishing to appear pleased with the audience, but not knowing how to play that difficult part. Subsequently, however, Foote called on Wilkinson, and threatened him with the duel, or chastisement, if he ever dared take further liberties with him on the stage. Wilkinson laughed at the impotently-angry ruffian, and all his brother actors laughed with him. The malignity of Foote found satisfaction in his writing the part of Shift, in the "Minor" (as it was first represented, in Dublin), as a satire on Wilkinson; and he knowingly misrepresented Wilkinson's origin, in order to bring him into contempt.
There is no doubt that Foote loved some of those he jested at. He heard of Sir Francis Delaval's death, with tears; but he smiled through them, when he was told that the surgeons intended to examine the baronet's head. He remarked that it was useless; he had known the head for nearly a quarter of a century, and had never been able to find anything in it! But the wit's testimony to character is never to be taken without reserve. "Why does he come among us," he said of Lord Loughborough. "He is not only dull himself but the cause of dulness in others!" This is certainly not true, for this Scottish lawyer was remarkable in society for his hilarity, critical powers, and his store of epigrams and anecdotes. Lord Loughborough, moreover, merited the respect of Foote, as an old champion of the stage. When he was Mr. Wedderburn, and represented Dunfermline, in the General Assembly of Scotland, he resisted the motion for an act to prohibit the presence of either lay or clerical members of the Church, at dramatic representations. The Assembly had just before been shaken by the fact that the clergy had been to witness Home's "Douglas," and it had smiled grimly at the palliative plea of one offender, "that he had ensconced himself in a corner, and had hid his face in a handkerchief to avoid scandal!" Wedderburn opposed the motion in one of the best speeches which he ever delivered in Scotland, and which ended with these words: "Be contented with the laws which your wise and pious ancestors have handed down to you for the conservation of discipline and morals. Already have you driven from your body its brightest ornament, who might have continued to inculcate the precepts of the Gospel from the pulpit, as well as embodying them in character and action. Is it, indeed, forbidden to show us the kingdom of heaven by a parable? In all the sermons produced by the united genius of the Church of Scotland, I challenge you to produce anything more pure in morality, or more touching in eloquence, than the exclamation of Lady Randolph:—