Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/113

 DOGGET. 109 was a very great favourite, wrote in some measure with a view to his manner of acting. In a few years after, he removed to Drury-lane theatre, where he became joint-manager with Wilks and Cibber, which situation he continued, till, on a disgust he took in the year 1712, at Mr. Booth's being forced on him as a sharer in the management, he threw up his share in the property of the theatre, though it was calculated to have been worth 1000l. per annum. By his frugality, however, he had accumulated sufficient to render him comfortable for the remainder of his life, with which he retired from the fatigue of his profession in the very meridian of his reputation. As an actor he had great merit; and his contemporary, Cibber, informs us, that he was the most original, and the strictest observer of nature of any actor of his time. His manner, though borrowed from none, frequently served for a model to many; and he possessed that peculiar art of arriving at the perfectly ridiculous, without stepping into the least impropriety to obtain i t . And s o extremely careful and skilful was h e i n the dressing o f his character t o the greatest exactness o f propriety, that the least article o f what h e wore, seemed i n some degree t o speak and mark the different humour h e represented. “This,” says Wilks, “I have heard confirmed b y one who performed with Dogget, and that h e likewise could, with uncommon exactness, paint his face s o a s t o repre sent the age o f seventy, eighty, and ninety, distinctly, which occasioned Sir Godfrey Kneller t o tell him one day a t Button's, that h e excelled him i n painting, for that h e (Sir Godfrey) could only copy nature from the originals before him but that Dogget could vary them a t plea sure, and yet keep a close likeness. “This great actor,” says the facetious Tom Davis, “was perhaps the only one who confined himself t o such characters as nature seemed t o have made him for. No temptation could induce him t o step out o f his own circle, and from this circumstance h e never appeared t o the audience with any diminution o f his general excellence.” I n his temper h e was a true