[75] This incident occurred in January 1751, about fifteen years before Mrs. Cibber left the stage.
[76] Murphy's statement is not made seriously; it is simply a joke.
THEOPHILUS CIBBER.
(Hogarth.)
[CHAPTER XIII.]
COLLEY CIBBER.
In the year 1671, the coffee-house politicians, the fine gentlemen, the scholars, and the gossips generally, were in no lack of themes for discussion. In Bow Street, the quidnuncs congratulated themselves, from April to December, at the resolution of the Commons, whose members had rebuked the Lords for daring to alter an impost laid on sugar, to the effect that in all aids given to the King by the Commons, the tax levied might be agreed to, but it could not be altered by the Lords. Knots of shabby-looking clergymen were constantly to be seen in Mr. Brent, the mercer's, shop, discussing the arrangements just made for the sustenance of London incumbents, burnt out by the Great Fire. Upstairs, in the long-room over Mr. Brent's shop, the "wits' room" at Wills', the company never wearied of hearing Major Mohun, the actor, speak of Lord Fairfax who was just dead. There was much gossip, too, both there and about town, touching my Lord Manchester, lately deceased, the parliamentary general who had helped to restore monarchy. If he was the servant of two masters, some persons thought he had been sufficiently punished by being the husband of five wives. The critics were more genially engaged in canvassing the merits of Casaubon, the learned prebendary of Canterbury, who had recently laid aside his critical acumen with his mortal coil. The artists were canvassing the merits of a monument which was that year beginning to rear its head on Fish Street Hill. The architect was Sir Christopher Wren. A foreign sculptor from Holstein was, at that moment, preparing designs for the basso relievo now on the pedestal. This sculptor lived in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, where, on the 6th of November 1671, while arranging the completion of his figures, his lady upstairs,—she was of a cavalier family, and had the blood of William of Wyckham in her veins,—presented him with a living figure, the counterfeit presentment of its father. The child thus born, as it were, with the London Monument, was named Colley Cibber.
How Colley fared at school, stood his own ground, and was envied by the dunces he beat, in a double sense,—how he was determined to succeed in life, and did succeed, and was therefore denounced, as an ass or a knave, by those who failed, or who hated him for his success, or who feared the sarcasms which he himself delivered, without fear,—is known to us all.