Having closed our brief memoir of Foote, it remains to say a few words of his literary peculiarities. His humour was decidedly Aristophanic; that is to say, broad, easy, reckless, satirical, without the slightest alloy of bonhommie, and full of the directest personalities. There is no playfulness or good-nature in his comedies. You laugh, it is true, at his portraits, but at the same time you hold them in contempt; for there is nothing redeeming in their eccentricities; nothing for your esteem and admiration to lay hold of. We cannot gather from his writings, as we can from every page of Goldsmith, that Foote possessed the slightest sympathies with humanity. He seems everywhere to hold it at arm's length, as worthy of nought but the must supercilious treatment; which accounts for, and to a certain extent justifies, the treatment he received from the world in his latter days. Foote could never have drawn a "Good-natured Man," or even a "Dennis Brulgruddery;" for, though he may have possessed the head to do so, yet he lacked the requisite sensibility. So greatly deficient is he in this respect, that, whenever he attempts to put forth a refined or generous sentiment, he almost always overdoes it, and degenerates into cant. Yet his characters—with the exception of his virtuous and moral ones, which are the most insipid in the world—are admirably drawn, are sustained with unflagging spirit, and evince a wide range of observation which, however, rarely pierces beyond the surface.
As works of art, Foote's dramas are by no means of first-rate excellence. They show no fancy, no invention, no ingenuity in constructing, or tact in developing plot; but are merely a collection of scenes and incidents huddled confusedly together for the purpose of drawing out the peculiarities of some two or three pet characters. The best thing we can say of them is, that they exhibit everywhere the keenness, the readiness, the self-possession, of the disciplined man of the world, combined with a pungent malicious humour that reminds us of a Mephistopheles in his merriest mood. It must also be urged in their favour, that they are, in every sense of the word, original. Foote copied no model, but painted direct from the life. He took no hints from others, but gave his own fresh impressions of character. He did not draw on his fancy, like Congreve, or study to make points like Sheridan, but availed himself hastily of such materials as came readiest to hand. The very extravagances of his early life were in his favour, by bringing him in contact with those marked, out-of-the-way characters, who, like Arabs, hang loose on the skirts of society, and constitute the quintessence of comedy. Thus his inveterate love of gambling furnished him with his masterly sketch of Dick Loader; and his long-continued residence at Paris—into whose various dissipations he entered with all the zeal of a devotee—with his successful hits at the absurdities of our travelled fops.
Foote's three best plays are his "Minor," his "Liar," and his "Mayor of Garratt." Perhaps the last is his masterpiece; for it is alive and bustling throughout, is finished with more than the author's ordinary care, and contains two characters penned in his truest con amore spirit. Jerry Sneak and Major Sturgeon are, in their line, the two most perfect delineations of which the minor British drama can boast. There is no mistaking their identity. They speak the genuine, unadulterated vulgar tongue of the City. Their sentiments are cockney; their meanness and their bluster, their pompous self-conceit and abject humility, are cockney; they are cockney all over from the crown of the head to the sole of the shoe. What a rich set-off to the "marchings and counter-marchings" of the one, is the other's recital of his domestic grievances! Jerry's complaint that his wife only allows him "two shillings for pocket-money," and helps him to "all the cold vittles at table," is absolutely pathetic, if—as Hazlitt observes—"the last stage of human imbecility can be called so." While Bow bells ring, and St. Paul's church overlooks Cheapside, Foote's cockneys shall endure. Nevertheless, while we acknowledge their excellence, we entertain the most intense contempt for them, and feel the strongest possible inclination to fling the Major into a horse-pond, and smother Jerry Sneak in a basin of water-gruel.
Foote's conversational abilities were, if possible, superior to his literary ones. For men of the world, in particular, they must have had an inexpressible charm. There is no wit on record who has said so many good things, or with such perfect ease and readiness. Foote never laid a pun-trap to catch the unwary. He had humour at will, and had no need to resort to artifice. His mind was well, but not abundantly stored; and he had the tact to make his knowledge appear greater than it really was. The most sterling testimony that has been borne to his colloquial powers, is that furnished by Dr. Johnson, who says, "The first time I was in company with Foote, was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased; and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him; but the dog was so very comical, that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, and fairly laugh it out. Sir, he was irresistible." Foote's favourite butt was Garrick, whose thrifty habits he was constantly turning into ridicule. Being one day in company with him, when after satirizing some individual, David had wound up his attack by saying, "Well, well, perhaps before I condemn another, I should pull the beam out of my own eye," Foote replied. "And so you would, if you could sell the timber." On another occasion, when they were dining together, Garrick happened to let a guinea drop on the floor. "Where has it gone to?" asked Foote, looking about for it. "Oh, to the devil, I suppose," was the reply. "Ah, David," rejoined his tormentor, "you can always contrive to make a guinea go farther than any one else."
Such was Samuel Foote,—the wit, the satirist, the humourist—whose life inculcates this wholesome truth, that those who set themselves up, with no superior moral qualifications to recommend them, to ridicule the follies and lash the vices of the age, but "sow the wind, to reap the whirlwind!"
THE TWO BUTLERS.
In all countries and all languages we have the story of Il Bondocani. May I tell one from Ireland?
It is now almost a hundred years ago—certainly eighty—since Tom—I declare to Mnemosyne I forget what his surname was, if I ever knew it, which I doubt,—It is at least eighty years since Tom emerged from his master's kitchen in Clonmell, to make his way on a visit to foreign countries.
If I can well recollect dates, this event must have occurred at the end of the days of George the Second, or very close after the accession of George the Third, because in the course of the narrative it will be disclosed that the tale runs of a Jacobite lord living quietly in Ireland, and that I think must have been some time between 1740 and 1760,—or say 65. Just before the year of the young Pretender's burst, a sharp eye used to be kept upon the "honest men" in all the three kingdoms; and in Ireland, from the peculiar power which the surveillance attendant on the penal laws gave the government, this sharp eye could not be surpassed in sharpness,—that is to say, if it did not choose to wink. Truth, nevertheless, makes us acknowledge that the authorities of Ireland were ever inclined at the bottom of their hearts to countenance lawlessness, if at all recommended by anything like a noble or a romantic name. And no name could be more renowned or more romantic than that of Ormond.