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Clive, and Colonel Bluff by Macklin, the only actor of any promise that Highmore had been able to secure. With the new comedy the Author's Farce was revived. It would be unnecessary to refer to this again, but for the additions that were made to it. These consisted chiefly in the substitution of Marplay Junior for Sparkish, the actor-manager of the first version.
This, however, will be more conveniently treated under its proper date, and it is only necessary to say here that the slight sketches of Marplay and Sparkish given in the first edition, were presumably intended for Cibber and Wilks, with whom, notwithstanding the "civil and kind Behaviour" for which he had thanked them in the "Preface" to Love in Several Masques, the young dramatist was now, it seems, at war.
Proceed to the particular works of creation, you will find how curious journeyman Nature has been to trim up the vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch." The fault is not in any inaptness of the images, nor in the mere vulgarity of the things themselves, but in that of the associations they awaken.
She was being pestered by half a dozen sparkish admirers who were somewhat taken aback when they discovered that the "gentlewoman who had never appear'd on any stage before" could more than hold her own in repartee and give the fops of fashion as good as or better than they gave. How could they tell that the sprightly young budding actress had graduated in the wit and slang of the streets?
Dreading the moment when the inexorable stoker, grimily lurking behind the glittering rococo-work, should decide that this set of riders had had their pennyworth, and bring the whole concern of steam-engine, horses, mirrors, trumpets, drums, cymbals, and such-like to pause and silence, he waited for her every reappearance, glancing indifferently over the intervening forms, including the two plainer girls, the old woman and child, the two youngsters, the newly-married couple, the old man with a clay pipe, the sparkish youth with a ring, the young ladies in the chariot, the pair of journeyman-carpenters, and others, till his select country beauty followed on again in her place.
'He had, besides all this, a variety in his genius, which few capital actors have shewn, or perhaps have thought it any addition of their merit to arrive at; he could entirely change himself, could at once throw off the man of sense, for the brisk, vain, rude, lively coxcomb, the false, flashy pretender to wit, and the dupe of his own sufficiency; of this he gave a delightful instance, in the character of Sparkish, in Wycherley's Country Wife: in that of Sir Courtly Nice, by Crown, his excellence was still greater; there his whole man, voice, mien, and gesture, was no longer Mountford, but another person; there, the insipid, soft civility, the elegant and formal mien, the drawling delicacy of voice, the stately flatness of his address, and the empty eminence of his attitudes, were so nicely observed, that had he not been an entire matter of nature, had he not kept his judgment, as it were a centinel upon himself, not to admit the least likeness of what he used to be, to enter into any part of his performance, he could not possibly have so compleatly finished it.
What is that which some call land but a fine coat faced with green, or the sea but a waistcoat of water-tabby? Proceed to the particular works of the creation, you will find how curious journeyman Nature hath been to trim up the vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch.
In the introduction to the Miscellanies, he refers to "a slight Pique" with Wilks; and it is not impossible that the key to the difference may be found in the following passage: "Sparkish. What dost think of the Play? Marplay. It may be a very good one, for ought I know; but I know the Author has no Interest. Spark. Give me Interest, and rat the Play. Mar.
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