Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/33

Pack he was the original Obadiah Prim in ‘A Bold Stroke for a Wife,’ and on 19 April Madame Fillette in Molloy's ‘Coquet, or the English Chevalier.’ In Leigh's ‘Pretenders,’ 20 Nov. 1719, he was the original Sir Vanity Halfwit. On 19 Jan. 1721 he was the first Teartext, a sham parson in Odell's ‘Chimera.’ This appears to have been his last original part. On 10 March 1722, for the benefit of Mrs. Bullock, he played Marplot, the bill announcing it as ‘being the first time of his acting this season, and the last time he will act on any stage.’ He reappeared, however, on 21 April 1724 at Lincoln's Inn Fields, and for Mrs. Knight's benefit played Daniel in ‘Oroonoko.’ On 7 May 1724 he had a benefit, on which occasion the ‘Drummer’ and the ‘Country Wake’ were given. In the latter piece he played Friendly. This is his last recorded appearance.

After his retirement from the stage Pack took a public-house at the corner of the Haymarket and Pall Mall, which he called the ‘Busy Body,’ placing over it his own full-length portrait as Marplot. This, which is said to have been highly executed, has perished, and no engraving of it can be traced. The period of his death has been asked in vain. He was certainly dead in 1749. Chetwood says the name of the tavern which Pack took was the Globe. His best parts were Marplot, Maiden in ‘Tunbridge Walks,’ and Mizen in the ‘Fair Quaker of Deal.’ ‘Indeed,’ says Chetwood, ‘nature seem'd to mean him for those sort of characters.’ Pack went once to Dublin, and experienced a storm at sea, by which he was so frightened that to shorten the voyage he returned by the north of Ireland and Scotland. So lasting were the effects of this terror that he chose to go a long way round sooner than cross the river by a boat. Being asked by a nobleman to go to France for a month, he said, ‘Yes, if your Grace will get a bridge built from Dover to Calais, for Gads curse me if ever I set my foot over salt water again!’ He was, says Chetwood, unmarried, and left no relatives behind him.

[Such particulars as survive concerning Pack are given in Chetwood's General History of the Stage, 1749. A list of the characters he played longer than is here supplied appears in Genest's Account of the English Stage. The particulars concerning his tavern sign are supplied in Notes and Queries, 5th ser. vii. 180, in an editorial communication, presumably from Doran; Cibber's Apology, ed. Lowe, and Doran's Annals of the Stage, ed. Lowe, have also been consulted.]  PACK, RICHARDSON (1682–1728), miscellaneous writer, born on 29 Nov. 1682, was son of John Pack of London, gentleman, who settled at Stoke Ash in Suffolk, and served as high sheriff of that county in 1697. His mother was daughter and coheiress of Robert Richardson of Tudhoe, Durham. After spending a year or two at a country school, where his time was wasted, he was admitted in 1693 to the Merchant Taylors' School, London. On 18 June 1697 he matriculated as a fellow-commoner from St. John's College, Oxford, and stayed there for two years, when he left without taking his degree. As his father intended him for the law, he became in 1698 a student of the Middle Temple, and, after eight terms standing, was called to the bar; but he preferred a more active life, and joined the army. His first command was obtained in March 1705, when he was promoted to the head of a company of foot. His regiment served with Marshal Staremberg in November 1710 at the battle of Villa Viciosa, where his bravery attracted the notice of the Duke of Argyll, who advanced him to the post of major, and remained his friend ever after. His subsequent movements are ascertained from his poems, for at every place of abode he indited epistles to his friends on the hardships in the life of a half-pay officer. He was at Mombris in Catalonia in October 1709, when he addressed some lines to John Creed of Oundle in Northamptonshire, and during the winter of 1712–13 he was writing to the Campbells from Minorca. In June 1714 he was at Ipswich, and in the following August was dwelling at Stoke Ash. He had returned to town in 1719, and was living in Jermyn Street, St. James's, but by 1722 he was at Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. There he remained for some years, and in the spring of 1724 was seized with a dangerous illness, from which he recovered by the care of Dr. Mead. Early in 1725 he moved to Exeter, but he followed Colonel Montagu's regiment, in which he was then a major, when it was ordered to Aberdeen. He died at Aberdeen in September 1728.

Curll printed for Pack in 1719 ‘The Life of T. P. Atticus, with remarks,’ translated from the Latin of Cornelius Nepos; and in 1735 there appeared ‘The Lives of T. P. Atticus, Miltiades, and Cimon, with remarks. By Richardson Pack. The second edition.’ He had intended translating most, if not all, of the lives, but laziness, love of pleasure, and want of health diverted his purpose. When Curll issued in 1725 a volume called ‘Miscellanies in Verse and Prose, written by the Right Honourable Joseph Addison,’ he added to it ‘an essay upon the Roman Elegiac Poets, by Major Pack,’ which seems to have originally appeared in 1721. The English essay was by him, but the translation into