CHAP. XLII.

The Padlock-Mr. Dibdin-Mungo-Mrs. Arne The Hypocrite, taken from Cibber's Non-Juror-French Manners and English Maria and Charlotte - Mrs. Abington-Her various talents in acting ---Her accomplishments, and behaviour in private life.

THE

HE Padlock is a very pleafing mufical performance, which more engaged the liking of the publick than any little piece of the kind that has been acted these twenty years. The plot is taken from a Spanish novel *. The mufic was compofed by Mr. Dibdin, who played the part of Mungo with much fatisfaction of the audience. Bannifter played Diego, and fung fome very difficult fongs with great fkill. Bannifter is, in many parts, a judicious actor, as well as an agreeable finger of such songs as please an English audience.

* The 12th of the exemplary morals of Cervantes.

Mrs. Arne, who died about nine or ten years fince, charmed every body in Leonora; she was univerfally cried up as the most pleasing of all our English fingers; the melody, fullaefs, and flexibility of her tones, have not been equalled on our stage. She fell a facrifice, it is thought, to her intense application to finging; the weaknefs of her conftitution could not fuftain the perpetual exercise of the theatre. The great defire of the publick to hear her in. ceffantly, deprived them of a moft harmonious finger, who was termed the nightingale of the ftage, in the feventeenth or eighteenth year of her age.

The Hypocrite, a comedy, is an unimproved and flovenly alteration of Cibber's Non-Juror, and was acted with more applaufe and profit to the alterer than could have been expected; but, I believe, he owed the greatest part of its fuccefs to the admirable performance of Mrs. Abington, in Charlotte.

Cibber's Non-Juror was certainly a party play, if a comedy may be called

fo,

fo, which was profeffedly written in de-
fence of those principles, and that conftitu-
tion, upon
which the government was efta-
blished, and against thofe men who were
its avowed enemies; for Jacobites, in the
reign of George the First, were certainly not
efteemed friends to the House of Brunswick.

Cibber understood English manners too well, to adopt all the characters and plot of Moliere's Tartuffe; the frequent interpofition of a chambermaid, her influence over her young mistress, and pertness to her mafter, would not fuit the economy of ant English fable, however agreeable to French customs. The lovers in Moliere are genetally infipid, and the Valere and Mariane. of the Impoftor have no farther importance than that of being agents in the play. The quarrelling fcene between them, in the third act, is a mere farcical altercation: Cibber, in the Non-Juror, has finely improved this incident by a moft interesting fcene of jealous love, and has befides drawn fuch an amiable character of a gay, goodnatured, fenfible and generous coquette

M 4

in

his

}

his Maria, that we may challenge any of our own, or foreign ftages to produce an equal; but this author has not been altogether fo attentive through his play to that difcrimination of French and English cuf toms, as might have been expected from a man of his great judgment and experience. In the French play, the lady is engaged to make two discoveries of Tartuffe's paffion for her; and this the manners of France would juftify. The feene in the third act would have been a fufficient proof of the Impoftor's villany to an Englishman. The language of love every French lady expects to hear from the graveft of characters; and we find Elmire apologizing to Tartuffe, an infamous hypocrite, for the part fhe had acted in the discovery of his paffion for her, by affuring him that it was contrary to her own inclination, and that the was engaged in it by the defire of others.

C'eft contre mon humeur que j'ai fait tout ceci;
Mais on m'a mife au point de vous traiter ainfi.

In the Non-Juror the cafe is different; an elderly gentleman marries a young

lady of five and twenty, for love; the ferious remonftrances of fuch a woman as lady Woodvile must have got the better of her husband's bigotry, therefore Cibber should have referved the detection of Wolfe to the last act.

*

The alterer has injudiciously introduced into the play an old lady Lambert, borrowed from the Madam Pernelle of Moliere, which Cibber very judiciously threw out, as of no fervice to his plot. Mawworm, a new character, was fupported by the irresistible power of Wefton's acting: the cheapest way to gain applaufe is to make a character fpeak falfe English; and in this the greateft part of Maw-worm's merit confifts. Cantwell, the methodist, the genuine offspring of the Antinomian faints in the days of Oliver Cromwell, bears no mark of difcrimination.

It is with the greatest pleasure I speak of Mrs. Abington's action in Charlotte: though the part had been moft excellently performed by Mrs. Oldfield, and fince her time with great applause and approbation by

Mrs.