Chapter V

Mr Holcroft continued in Booth’s company about a year and a half. He next joined Bates’s company, which made the circuit of the principal towns on the east side of the north of England, including Durham, Sunderland, Darlington, Scarborough, Stockton-upon-Tees, etc.

It was sometime in the year 1777, that Mr Holcroft walked with Mr Shield (the celebrated composer, who was then one of the band in the same company) from Durham to Stockton-upon-Tees. Mr Holcroft employed himself on the road in studying Lowth’s Grammar, and reading Pope’s _Homer_.—The writers that we read in our youth are those, for whom we generally retain the greatest fondness. Pope always continued a favorite with Mr Holcroft, and held the highest place in his esteem after Milton, Shakspeare, and Dryden. He used often, in particular, to repeat the character of Atticus, which he considered as the finest piece of satire in the language. Moral description, good sense, keen observation, and strong passion, are the qualities which he seems chiefly to have sought in poetry. He had therefore little relish even for the best of our descriptive poets, and often spoke with indifference, approaching to contempt, of Thomson, Akenside, and others. He was, however, at this time, exceedingly eager to make himself acquainted with all our English poets of any note; and he was seldom without a volume of poetry in his pocket.

At the time that Bates’s company were at Scarborough, Fisher, the late celebrated Oboe player, gave concerts there, which were led by Dance, and in which a Miss Harrop, (afterwards Mrs. Bates) was the principal vocal performer. Holcroft used to sing in the choruses.—He at this time practised a good deal on the fiddle, which he continued ever after to do occasionally; but he never became a good performer. It was Bates, who conducted the commemoration of Handel at Westminster Abbey.

Among the parts which Mr Holcroft played most frequently, were—Polonius, which he did respectably; Scrub, in the Beaux’ Stratagem; Bundle, in the Waterman; and Abel Drugger. He acted this last character after he came to London, one night when Garrick happened to be present.

At Stockton-upon-Tees, Mr Holcroft first became acquainted with Ritson, the antiquarian, and author of the Treatise on animal food, who was afterwards one of his most intimate friends. He was at that time articled to an attorney in the town; but was, like most other young men of taste or talents, fonder of poetry than the law. The poet Cunningham was an actor in the same company. He was the intimate friend of Shield. He was, it seems, a man of a delicate constitution, of retired habits, and extreme sensibility, but an amiable and worthy man. The parts in which he acted with most success were mincing fops and pert coxcombs,—characters the most opposite to his own. He played Garrick’s character of Fribble, in Miss in her Teens. He also excelled in Comus. He was often subject to fits of absence; as a proof of which, he once forgot that he had played the Duke of Albany in King Lear, and had returned to the door of the theatre for the second time, before he recollected himself.—Besides his descriptive poems, he wrote several prologues; and an opera called “The Lass with Speech,” which was offered to the theatres, but never acted, and from which the Lying Valet was taken. He dedicated his poems to Garrick, who sent him two guineas on the occasion, which he returned, begging that they might be added to the theatrical fund. It seems he either did not want pecuniary remuneration for the compliment he had paid to Garrick, or he thought this a very inadequate one. When he was writing anything, his room was strewed with little scraps of paper, on which he wrote down any thought as it occurred; and afterwards he had some difficulty in connecting these scattered, half-forgotten fragments together, before he could make out a fair copy.

At the time that Mr Shield was most with him, he had been long in ill health, apparently in a decline; and this had given a deeper tinge of melancholy to the natural thoughtfulness of his disposition. A little before his death, he wrote the following lines, which seem to convey a presentiment of his fate.

‘Sweet object of the zephyr’s kiss,
Come rose, come, courted by the hours,
Queen of the banks, the garden’s bliss,
Come, and abash yon tawdry flow’rs.
“Why call us to revokeless doom,”
With grief the op’ning buds reply,
“Scarce suffer’d to expand our bloom,
Scarce born, alas! before we die.”

‘Man, having pass’d appointed years,
(Years are but days) the scene must close:
And when Fate’s messenger appears,
What is he but a withering rose?’

These lines can hardly fail of being acceptable to the reader, when he is told, they were the last ever written by a man, to whom we are indebted for some of the most pleasing and elegant pastoral descriptions in the language.—It must abate something of the contempt with which we are too apt to mention the name of a strolling player, when we recollect that Cunningham was one.

Mr Holcroft had never been satisfied with his employment as a strolling actor in the country. He sighed for the literary advantages, and literary intercourse which London afforded. He was indeed the whole time labouring hard to cultivate his mind, and acquire whatever information was within his reach. But his opportunities were very confined. He had studied Shakespeare with the greatest ardour, and with some advantage to himself in his profession. Polonius was the character in which he was most successful: he also played Hamlet, and other parts, of which he was but an indifferent representative. I have been told, that Mr Holcroft’s acting, both in its excellences and defects, more resembled Bensley’s than any other person’s. The excellent sense and judgment of that able actor were almost entirely deprived of their effect, by his disadvantages of voice and manner. Mr Holcroft, in the performance of grave parts, had the same distinct, but harsh articulation, and the same unbending stiffness of deportment.

After wandering for seven years as an itinerant actor, with no very brilliant success, he resolved upon trying his fortune in London, and arrived there early in the latter end of 1777. His stay with the last company, which he joined, must therefore have been short. His separation from this company was I believe in some measure hastened by little disagreeable circumstances, but it was no doubt chiefly owing to the general bias of his inclination, to the desire and expectation of fame of some sort or other, either theatrical or literary, on which his mind had for some years been brooding. It is not likely that his success on the stage, though it might in time have ensured him a livelihood in inferior parts, would ever have been such as to satisfy the ambition of an aspiring and vigorous mind. It was, however, on his talents as an actor, that he first rested his hopes of pushing his fortune in London, and of recommending himself to the favour of the public. But before we follow him up to town, it may not be improper to take a retrospect of the path we have already trod. There are some persons of nice tastes, who may perhaps be disgusted with the meanness of his adventures; and who may think the situation in which he embarked in life, and the society into whose characters and manners he seems to have entered with so much relish, unworthy of a man of genius.

But it should be recollected, first, that men of genius do not always chuse their own profession or pursuit. In Mr Holcroft’s case, the question was, whether he should turn strolling player, or starve.

Secondly, there are in this very profession, which is held in such contempt, circumstances which must make a man of genius, not very averse to enter into it. In spite of the real misery, meanness, ignorance, and folly, often to be found among its followers, the player as well as the poet, lives in an ideal world.

The scenes of petty vexation, poverty, and disappointment, which he has to encounter, are endless; so are the scenes of grandeur, pomp, and pleasure, in which he is as constantly an actor. If his waking thoughts are sometimes disagreeable, his dreams are delightful, and the business of his life is to dream. This may be a reason why every one else should shun this profession as a pest, but it is for this very reason that the man of genius may pass his time pleasantly and profitably in it. But let us hear Mr Holcroft’s apology for his former way of life, which seems to have been dictated with a view to his own feelings. ‘Know then,’ he says,[4] ‘there is a certain set or society of men, frequently to be met in straggling parties about this kingdom, who by a peculiar kind of magic, will metamorphose an old barn, stable, or out-house, in such a wonderful manner, that the said barn, stable, or out-house, shall appear, according as it suits the will or purpose of the said magicians, at one time a prince’s palace; at another, a peasant’s cottage; now the noisy receptacle of drunken clubs, and wearied travellers, called an inn; anon the magnificent dome of a Grecian temple. Nay, so vast is their art, that, by pronouncing audibly certain sentences, which are penned down for them by the head, or master magician, they transport the said barn, stable, or out-house, thus metamorphosed, over sea, or land, rocks, mountains, or deserts, into whatsoever hot, cold, or temperate region the director wills, with as much facility as my lady’s squirrel can crack a nut-shell. What is still more wonderful, they carry all their spectators along with them, without the witchery of broom-sticks. These necromancers, although whenever they please they become princes, kings, and heroes, and reign over all the empires of the vast and peopled earth; though they bestow governments, vice-royalties, and principalities, upon their adherents, divide the spoils of nations among their pimps, pages, and parasites, and give a kingdom for a kiss, for they are exceedingly amorous; yet, no sooner do their sorceries cease, though but the moment before they were revelling and banqueting with Marc Antony, or quaffing nectar with Jupiter himself, it is a safe wager of a pound to a penny that half of them go supperless to bed. A set of poor, but pleasant rogues! miserable, but merry wags! that weep without sorrow, stab without anger, die without dread, and laugh, sing, and dance, to inspire mirth in others, while surrounded themselves with wretchedness. A thing still more remarkable in these enchanters is, that they completely effect their purpose, and make those, who delight in observing the wonderful effects of their art, laugh or cry, condemn or admire, love or hate, just as they please; subjugating the heart with every various passion: more especially when they pronounce the charms and incantations of a certain sorcerer, called Shakespeare, whose science was so powerful, that he himself thus describes it:

——I have oft be-dimm’d
The noon-tide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds, etc.’