648 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[JUNE, 



the tone may be somewhat too harsh. In 

 the case of the writer before us there are 

 redeeming virtues. The manifest kindli- 

 ness of his nature, the elasticity of his 

 spirit, the resolution with which he en- 

 counters difficulties, and the readiness 

 he shows, when defeated, to return to the 

 charge, the perseverance, and ardour, and 

 tact he displays worthless as are many 

 of the objects on which these qualities are 

 exerted command something 1 like respect, 

 and, in spite of our sterner judgments, we 

 cannot but regret the want of success 

 with which so much energy has been 

 attended. 



As an actor, Mr. Dibdin has been little 

 distinguished. It is as a scribbler he has 

 won his notoriety ; and indeed for thirty 

 years he has worked, and still works, one 

 of the most prolific pens the age abound- 

 ing in such materials can produce. He 

 is the author of nearly two hundred dra- 

 matic pieces, of one, two, three, and five 

 acts not one of four ; of nearly two 

 thousand songs ; of countless epilogues 

 and prologues, of essays, tales, leading 

 articles for magazines, papers, &c., to an 

 amount of which himself has long lost 

 count the whole of which were written 

 on the spur of pressing occasions, and for 

 temporary purposes, and which, with the 

 exception of a farce or two still keeping 

 the stage, have, as he would himself 

 phrase it, " left not a rack behind." Of 

 such a man's evanescent career, why 

 should the forgotten particulars be re- 

 traced? To gratify the taste of the day 

 for notoriety. Tom Dibdin has known 

 and been known to numbers; he must 

 have something to tell, and all must be 

 sure that what he knows he will tell. 

 The two bulky volumes will be glanced 

 at by those who expect to find themselves 

 or their acquaintance figuring for good or 

 for ill the ridiculous will of course be 

 most sought for no matter whether the 

 object of ridicule be myself or my friend 

 no matter, we are talked of. Mr. Dib- 

 din had two volumes of given dimensions, 

 by contract with his publisher and tempter, 

 to fill; and how was he to fill them, but by 

 gossipping of those who moved in the sole 

 circle of the green-room ? and nine times 

 out often such gossipping was little likely 

 to be creditable to either party. Still 

 there is no want of blarney. 



Mr. Dibdin for we must give our 

 readers a glance of his career was the 

 son of Charles Dibdin the Orpheus or 

 Tyrta3us of the navy ; his mother, and 

 grandmother, and all his line to the flood, 

 perhaps, were theatrical ; and he himself, 

 at four years of age, appeared as Cupid 

 to Mrs. Siddons's Venus, in the Shakspeare 

 Jubilee, 1775. At eight he was placed 

 in the choir of St. Paul's, and seemed in- 

 evitably destined for a singer. By some 



singular interference with this destiny, he 

 was apprenticed to an upholsterer in the 

 city the well-known Sir William Raw- 

 lins by whom he thought himself treated 

 with severity, and who, seeing his ap- 

 prentice's stage predilections, which were 

 quite irrepressible, was perpetually pre- 

 dicting he icould do no good. In the 

 course of his Reminiscences, Dibdin re- 

 curs many times to Sir William, evidently 

 to prove how much the knight was mis- 

 taken. Sir William however was a shrewd 

 fellow, and his predictions seem not to 

 have been very wide of the mark. At ths 

 end of three or four years unable any 

 longer to resist his histrionic longings, he 

 took French leave of Sir William, and on 

 board a Margate 'hoy' made his debut 

 in a popular song of his father's, to the 

 assembled crew, who rewarded his efforts 

 with such shouts of applause, as confirmed 

 him in his purpose, and opened visions of 

 future celebrity. An opportunity quickly 

 presented itself; and on the coast he en- 

 listed in a small joint-stock concern. His 

 powers were at once acknowledged, and 

 their extraordinary versatility added some- 

 thing- to the miserable fractions of his 

 share of the profits. He sung, and played, 

 and painted, and fiddled, and scribbled 

 himself to such a degree of reputation, 

 that in a few months he was actually en- 

 rolled a member of one of the regular 

 Kent companies. Here he laboured in 

 all the varieties of his vocation for some 

 ^ears, till at last came the supreme felicity 

 of treading the London boards. In London, 

 however, he soon gave up acting find- 

 ing scribbling and stage-management the 

 more profitable employments. Then, still 

 soaring, he became successively prompter, 

 half-manager, and sometimes whole ma- 

 nager of the royal theatres, and finally 

 lessee and proprietor of minor theatres, 

 sometimes of Sadler's Wells, and then of 

 the Surrey all the while scribbling in- 

 defatigably, seizing upon all public occa- 

 sions, and bringing out piece after piece, 

 at the rate of half a dozen or even a dozen 

 in the season. 



" A rolling stone gathers no moss," and 

 this seems to have been poor Dibdin 's 

 fate. His friends never found him long in 

 the same position. With reason, or with- 

 out, he was for ever changing. Though 

 neither extravagant nor profligate in the 

 common acceptation of these terms, he 

 was, what comes to the same thing, im- 

 provident living from hand to mouth 

 spending freely, what sometimes came 

 flowingly reserving nothing for a rainy 

 day neither dreading, nor calculating 

 on resources; but fagging on, and con- 

 fiding in good luck and ultimate success. 

 At the end of thirty years, he finds himself 

 driven to the insolvent courts. Not to 

 feel for a man so labouring, and so failing, 



