Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/182

 176 Whiff ord (1787) expressed a common opinion when he declared with regard to the British stage; There Comedy, that once convuls'd the pit, Embracing Sentiment, divorces Wit* 7 Cumberland was still the type and chief of the school, but lesser dramatists suffered by his side. In 1781, the author of The Sauce-Pan complacently asserted: Sure I must rhime, tho' all were full as flat, As dancing C d, or prancing P. And in a note he remarked: "The first author (besides a com- fortable share of other capital performances) has written, in about a dozen years, more stage pieces, as you may call them, than Aeschylus, and Sophocles, and Euripides, and Aristo- phanes, and Menander, and Terence." 48 Peter Pindar, also, spoke belittlingly of Cumberland's plays. 49 Anthony Pasquin (John Williams) likewise, in the first part of The Children of Thespis (1786) glanced slightingly at the dry namby-pamby of Cumberland's pen. 50 At another place he wrote: And Cumberland's -pleas'd that his Muse, tho' in years, Should annual conceive, tho' each brat's born in tears. 61 Dibdin and O'Keefe, Hannah Cowley and Mrs. Inchbald, all were roundly rebuked by Pasquin. Indeed he had unquali- fied praise for nobody but Arthur Murphy. 52 He regrets that 47 The Temple oj Folly. . . by Theophilus Swift, Esq. (London, 1787), 12. The satirist adds an interesting note concerning the meaning of the word senti- ment. He declares that "modern sentiment is neither more nor less than 'an affected conception, affectedly expressed; ' or, 'a display of fine words, to express the fine ideas of a literary coxcomb. ' " XSMWPDRIBVNWLXY: or, The Sauce-Pan (London, 1781), 61. 49 The Works of Peter Pindar (London, 1812), 1, 195; The Lousiad, Canto I. 80 Poems by Anthony Pasquin, 2d ed. (London, n.d.), II, 34. The Children of Thespis is a mine of not altogether reliable miscellaneous intormation con- cerning dramatists, players, and journalists in the London of its day. A note on page 255 contains "a correct list of the News Papers published in London." 61 Ibid., II, 160. M Poems by Anthony Pasquin, II, 189.