Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/264

250 These are such consummate indulgences that we might think Heaven has centred them all in one person, to let us see how far, with a lively understanding, the full possession of them could contribute to human happiness."

On the establishment of the new dynasty, Cibber was one of the first who accepted a discharge. "Of all the comedians who have appeared on the stage in my memory," says Chesterfield, in after years, "no one has taken a kicking with such humour as our excellent Laureate," and the sarcasm will tend to explain how so short a campaign served to dissipate his martial predilections. His father's patron was now in high favour at court, and Cibber, at his instigation, drew up a petition to that nobleman, asking him for some appointment. The duke (for he had been rewarded with this advance in the peerage) told his father to send him to London, and indirectly undertook to provide for him. He waited there five months, and had some prospect of employment in the office of the secretary of state; but having now an opportunity of indulging his theatrical tastes, his inclination towards the stage increased in intensity till it assumed the shape of an absorbing passion. "I saw no joy in any other life than that of an actor," says he; twas on the stage alone I had formed a happiness preferable to all that camps or courts could offer me, and there was I determined, let father and mother take it as they pleased, to fix my non ultra." Accordingly, he appended himself to the company at Drury Lane, then the only theatre open in London.

The patentees had established a harsh though wholesome regulation, to the effect that no novice should receive pay before undergoing a probation of six months. Master Colley, as he was called, waited full three quarters of a year in anxious suspense, but no one in authority deigned to notice him. At length he was fixed upon to carry