Scarcely any thing is known of this celebrated performer, but through Cibber, with whom he was a joint patentee in Drury-lane theatre. They sometimes warmly differed, but Cibber respected his integrity and admired his talents. The accounts of Dogget in “Cibber’s Apology,” are exceedingly amusing, and the book is now easily accessible, for it forms the first volume of “Autobiography, a collection of the most instructive and amusing lives written by the parties themselves;”—a work printed in an elegant form, and published at a reasonable price, and so arranged that every life may be purchased separately.
Cibber says of Dogget, “He was a golden actor.—He was the most an original, and the strictest observer of nature, of all his contemporaries. He borrowed from none of them; his manner was his own; he was a pattern to others, whose great merit was, that they had sometimes tolerably imitated him. In dressing a character to the greatest exactness he was remarkably skilful; the least article of whatever habit he wore, seemed in some degree to speak and mark the different humour he presented; a necessary care in a comedian, in which many have been too remiss or ignorant. He could be extremely ridiculous without stepping into the least impropriety to make him so. His greatest success was in characters of lower life, which he improved from the delight he took in his observations of that kind in the real world. In songs and particular dances, too, of humour, he had no competitor. Congreve was a great admirer of him, and found his account in the characters he expressly wrote for him. In those of Fondlewife, in his ‘Old Batchelor,’ and Ben, in ‘Love for Love,’ no author and actor could be more obliged to their mutual masterly performances.”
Dogget realized a fortune, retired from the stage, and died, endeared to watermen and whigs, at Eltham, in Kent, on the twenty-second of September, 1721.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 64·77.
[278] Mr. Brady’s Clavis Calendara.
[279] Dr. James Anderson, in Trans. Soc. Antiq. Scot.
[280] V. Wilfridi inter xx Scriptores.