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in "Household Words," which was edited by the late Charles Dickens. He also contributed to the Illustrated London News, "Cornhill Magazine," and other papers and periodicals, until, in 1863, he went out to the United States as Special Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. On his return, he published his observations under the title of "America in the midst of War."

He also wrote a series of very graphic letters for the Daily Telegraph from Algeria, during the Emperor's visit to that colony.

The following is a list of Mr. Sala's bestknown works: "How I tamed Mrs. Cruiser," 1858; "Twice Round the Clock," 1859; "A Journey due North: a Residence in Russia," 1856; "Accepted Addresses," 1862; "After Breakfast;" "The Baddington Peerage," 1860; "Breakfast in Bed," 1863; "Dutch Pictures," 1861; "From Waterloo to the Peninsula," 1866; "Gaslight and Daylight," 1859; "Lady Chesterfield's Letters to her Daughter," 1860; "The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous," 1869; "A Trip to Barbary by a Roundabout Route," 1866; "The Two Prima Donnas," 1869; "William Hogarth," 1860; "Looking at Life," 1860; "Make your Game; or, the Adventures of a Stout Gentleman," 1860; "My Diary in America in the Midst of War," 1865; "Quite Alone" (finished by another writer), 1864; "The Perfidy of Captain Slyboots," 1863; "Robson:" a Sketch, 1864; "Rome and Venice," 1869; "Seven Sons of Mammon," 1864.

Tinsley Brothers have just published a cheap edition-at 25. in boards, and 2s. 6d. in handsome cloth covers-of some of Mr. Sala's most celebrated sketches.

"Gaslight and Daylight" is composed of short papers of very great humour and merit. "Papers Humorous and Pathetic" contains "The Key of the Street," "Colonel Quagg's Conversion," and other sketches, arranged by the author in a form suitable for public reading. Better papers for platform reading it would be difficult to find; and both the volumes are very neatly got up, and deserve a large sale, for they are full of very amusing matter. Mr. Sala has been for years the life of the daily paper which he has filled with columns of his correspondence from all quarters of the globe. He is quite in his element when in commission as "Our Special Correspondent," and excels in his power of gushing on any touch-and-go topic

of the day, in a manner very grateful to the feelings of the readers of the paper to which he is attached.

His literary style, though it possesses very great vigour and dash, is anything but good. His short essays and sketches, particularly the earlier ones, have much interest and originality. His novels were never very successful; and he seems to have hit his mark as the special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph.

RALE

THE TWO CIBBERS.

ALPH WALDO EMERSON once wrote a book, which most of us have read, entitled "Representative Men," and very graphic were the illustrations given, in his fine Roman hand, of the characters whom the world has chosen to reckon as leading spirits among the nations. But being no blind hero-worshippers, after the faith of Mr. Carlyle, we have often thought that there are many men-well known by name, at least, in the varied histories of their times-to whom a certain popular prejudice has attached without much accurate knowledge of the real causes of their often undeserved unpopularity, whom a more candid and impartial study would put in a better light than they hitherto seem to have enjoyed. On this principle, following by a certain apt verbal similarity of title, might not a curious book have been written before this on "Misrepresented Men"?

Fame, to a certain extent, even when allied to genuine merit, is often a matter of chance. And in the past, much more than at the present time, the predominance of party friendships in the scale of the State had much more to do with the popular recognition of a man of power than we are well able to understand at the present day.

It would be a Quixotic task indeed to take up the cudgels in defence of every reputation which has been handed down to us with more or less of a sneer attached to it. But there is a familiar old saying, that even a certain personage is not of so sable a hue as he is generally depicted. Give a dog a bad name, and the rest follows as a matter of course-at least, as far as the world at large is concerned. To come to the immediate subject of our paper, there is no character of what we may call the Popeian period who has come down to posterity with more

unmerited scorn and ridicule than Colley Cibber.

Cibber was no poet, as the world knows -or, at least, one in the humblest degree. Pope, unfortunately for "the Laureate," flourished at the same time; and condescended, through political spite, to launch the arrows of his virulence against a man whom he might at least have passed by with the calm air of dignified superiority. Cibber's great fault was setting himself up as a poet. That he was not, his warmest apologist will admit. But while Cibber has been passed down to posterity as, perhaps, the most unworthy holder of the Laureateship ever promoted to the post, successive generations have forgotten-or, what is the same thing, have not cared to allow him-the credit that was really due to him.

Colley Cibber's real claim to notice lies in his twofold capacity as an actor and a dramatist. As either he was not great. As an actor he was not a Betterton, as a dramatist he was not a Congreve; and both these men were his contemporaries.

But all men are not born geniuses, though they may be very clever men for all immediate purposes. They may fill a certain position in public estimation for the natural term of their career, and, unless worried into notoriety by some chance conflict with the lion of the day, retire to the enjoyment of their humble laurels, well satisfied with themselves, and leaving posthumous fame to take care of itself.

This, after all, was really Cibber's case. But for Pope and the "Dunciad," he would never have been mentioned after his own time; or, if at all, as a respectable writer of plays which had a good run in their own day, and as a by no means unworthy actor on the stage.

That the man was vain and pretentious is only to say that he lived in an age when vanity and pretensions were, as they often are now, and, we suppose, always will be, an important part of a man's stock-in-trade towards ephemeral reputation. But that he had merit of a certain sort cannot be denied by any calm student of Cibber's personal history.

His "Apology for his Life," written by himself, though full of the vanity of which we have spoken, is one of the most pleasantly reading autobiographies in the English language; and, subject to certain modifications from other sources, gives us a better idea of the

real Colley Cibber in the flesh than any haphazard prejudices of mere traditional bias. With this view, without entering into any professed biography of the despised Laureate, we will glance in a cursory manner at the leading facts of Cibber's career.

Though born in London himself, in Southampton-street, Westminster, in the November of 1671, he was of foreign extraction. His father, Caius Gabriel Cibber, was a native of Holstein, and came into England some time before the Restoration, to follow his profession, that of a statuary. The two figures of the lunatics-the raving and the melancholy formerly over the gates of Bethlehem Hospital, were the work of the elder Cibber. It is to them that Pope, in the "Dunciad," refers in those two bitter lines— "Where o'er the gates, by his fam'd father's hand, Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand."

Caius Gabriel took good care to give his son a decent education. At ten years of age Colley was sent to the free school at Grantham, "where," says Cibber himself, "I stayed till I got through it—from the lowest form to the uppermost.' Adding, with a modesty for which he got little credit in his lifetime, "and such learning as that school could give is the most I pretend to, which, though I have not utterly forgotten, I cannot say I have much improved by study; but even there I remember I was the same inconsistent creature I have been ever since -always in full spirits in some small capacity to do right, but in a more frequent alacrity to do wrong; and consequently often under a worse character than I wholly deserved."

That the young Cibber, with all his vanity and carelessness, had talents of a superior order was proved even in these his schooldays.

On the death of Charles the Second, the boys of his class were required to compose a funeral oration on that monarch; but none were equal to the task save Cibber, who was subsequently placed at their head. Again, when James the Second was crowned, his schoolfellows petitioned for a holiday, which the master consented to grant on the condition that one of them should write an ode upon the occasion. The ode was produced by the laureate of the school within half an hour; but, unfortunately for the poor bard who had thus won the school a holiday, his companions, annoyed by his vain-boasting of the performance, declined his com

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pany on an excursion which they had previously organized.

At sixteen, he left school. According to his own account, he was a descendant of William of Wykeham, by his mother's side. His father-thinking, in his ignorance, that this was quite sufficient to obtain for his son an immediate entrée into the famous school of Winchester-sent him down to the town "without the least favourable recommendation or interest, save that of my naked merit and a pompous pedigree in my pocket. Had he tacked a direction to my back, and sent me by the carrier to the mayor of the town to be chosen member of Parliament, I might have had just as much chance of succeeding in the one as in the other."

As might have been expected, however, a candidate with such weak credentials was rejected.

In a fit of disgust, Cibber now entered the army, serving under the Duke of Devonshire in the revolution which placed the Prince of Orange on the throne. From this point must be reckoned the first exhibition of his political proclivities, which afterwards made him the object of virulent abuse from literary men of the opposite party.

But Cibber's military career soon came to an end-luckily perhaps for himself, for his personal bravery was not of the highest order. On the contrary, his natural temperament was one of notorious timidity. It is said that, in his subsequent dramatic career, the actors under him were often accustomed to work upon this weakness of their superior, in order to maintain what they considered their just rights. The following story will suffice as a good example:

Bickerstaff, a comedian whose benefit play Sir Richard Steele, in No. 3 of the "Tatler," good-naturedly recommended to the public as his relation, had acquired an income of four pounds per week. Cibber, in an economical moment, retrenched onehalf of his salary, and was immediately waited upon by the impoverished actor, who knew from what quarter this diminution had arisen. He represented the largeness of his family, and concluded by flatly informing the cowardly manager that, as he could not subsist upon the narrow allowance to which he had reduced him, he must call the author of his distress to account, for that he would rather perish by the sword than die from starvation. The affrighted Cibber referred him to the next Saturday for answer, when he

found his usual stipend was restored to its plenary amount.

To Cibber's passive valour Lord Chesterfield ironically alludes in a weekly paper called Common Sense:

"Of all the comedians who have appeared on the stage in my memory, no one has taken a kicking with such humour as our excellent Laureate."

And it is said that Gay gave Cibber some striking proofs of the resentment he felt against him for the manner in which, when acting Bays, he alluded to his comedy of "Three Hours after Marriage."

It is curious to notice in how low an estimation the profession of an actor was held in that day among the better classes, compared with the more liberal opinions of the present time.

Cibber was sent to London under promise of the patronage of the Duke of Devonshire; but he had not been long in the metropolis before new views burst upon his mind, and he thus apologizes for the course which he chose for himself:—

"To London I came, when I entered into my first state of attendance and dependence for about five months, till the February following. But, alas! in my intervals of leisure, by frequently seeing plays, my wise head was turned to higher views. I saw no joy in any other life than that of an actor. 'Twas on the stage alone I had formed a happiness preferable to all that camps or courts could offer me; and there I was determined, let father and mother take it as they pleased, to fix my non ultra; so that if my life did not then take a more laudable tune, I have no one but myself to reproach for it.”

But the stage-struck youth's prospects were hardly, in the beginning, cheering to his ambition. But he was content to be patient; and we dare say not a few more famous actors of later times could tell very much the same story of their early struggles on the boards.

"I waited," he says, "full three-quarters of a year before I was taken into a salary of ten shillings a-week, which, with the assistance of food and raiment at my father's house, I then thought a most plentiful accession, and myself the happiest of mortals."

Cibber does not tell the immediate incidents of this incipient good luck; but in the "Dramatic Miscellanies" the story of Colley

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