They had quarrelled about its appearance,
they had now a new quarrel about its
success, and it was said by Johnson could not
conveniently quarrel any more. The first
night of Cleone, a Tragedy, was Saturday,
the second of December, one thousand seven
hundred and fifty-eight, and on Sunday
morning the manager wrote to the bookseller
sincerely congratulating him upon his last
night's success. In the same brief letter
Garrick expressed the concern with which
he had heard from some of Dodsley's friends,
that his appearance in a new part on the
same night, was designed to be detrimental
to his play, and a wish to be informed
how he could best support his interest in
its continued success. To this Dodsley
replied somewhat haughtily wishing that he
could have thanked him for contributing in
any way to its success. Garrick
acknowledges the peevish answer of the
poet-publisher to his well-meant proposal, and sinks
in his address from "Dear Sir" to "Master
Robert Dodsley." The letters may be seen
in the Garrick Correspondence, though
wrongly dated there. In any future edition
of Boswell they should be particularly
referred to in illustration of Johnson's letter
about Garrick and Cleone.

Dodsley was present the first night, and could
not have failed to contrast his then appearance,
rich and successful and his own master,
with his early attendance in livery in the
footman's gallery, to carry a flambeau in the
streets before his mistress's chair. "Cleone
was well acted," says Dr. Johnson, writing to
Langton, "but Bellamy left nothing to be
desired. I went the first night, and supported
it as well as I might; for Doddy you know
is my patron, and I would not desert him.
The play was very well received. Doddy, after
the danger was over, went every night to the
stage-side, and cried at the distress of poor
Cleone." To this account we are enabled to
add two illustrations new to the editors of
Boswell. Dodsley dedicates his play to the
witty Earl of Chesterfield, and I have seen a
letter from the earl to the poet, in which he
says, "you should also instruct the actors not
to mouth out the y in the name of Siffroy, as
if they were crying oysters." The other
illustration is more important. Johnson's picture
of Doddy at his own play is supported by
Churchill.

   Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone's woes
   Whilst he, fine feeling creature all in tears,
   Melts as they melt, and weeps with weeping peers.

Long after Dodsley's death, Mrs. Siddons
appeared as Cleone. Doddy would have died
of mixed grief and delight had he lived to see
Mrs. Siddons in his favourite character. But
Mrs. Siddons could not support the play, and
Cleone has joined the limbo of abdicated and
rejected pieces.

Doddy was now rich and well to do, with
a brother as a partner, to assist him in his
business; keeping good company, and enjoying
himself at his own table, in the society of
the best authors. His liberality was long
remembered. Three-and-thirty years after his
death, the elegance and hospitality of the
house at Tully's Head are recorded, in print,
by the elder Warton. " I reflect with pleasure,"
he says, "on the number of eminent men
I have met at Dodsley's table." "The true
Noctes Atticæ," Johnson used to say, "are
revived at honest Dodsley's house." Nor was
he ashamed of his early condition in the world.
When Boswell observed, that Mr. Robert
Dodsley's life should be written, "I doubt,"
said Johnson, "whether Dodsley's brother
would thank a man who should write his
Life; yet Dodsley himself was not unwilling
that his original low condition should be
recollected. When Lord Lyttleton's Dialogues
of the Dead came out, one of which is between
Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartiqueneuve,
a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me,
'I knew Dartiqueueuve well, for I was once
his footman.'"

This modest, clever, and useful man (whose
features have been preserved by the pencil of
Sir Joshua) died at Durham, in the year
seventeen hundred and sixty-four, while on
a visit to his friend, Mr. Spence, then a
prebendary of that cathedral, and was buried on
the north side of the cathedral, beneath a stone
recently repaired by the interposition of the
Rev. James Raine, the friend of Surtees,
and the learned continuator of his History of
Durham. If Dodsley were but a poor poet,
he did not die of a poet's complaint. The
disease that carried him off was gout, His
old master could not have died of a more
epicurean complaint.

I cannot quit this subject without referring
to another case of a man emancipating himself
from the badge of livery and soaring into public
distinction—of one who rose from being
footman to a duchess, to be his Majesty's
postmaster-general, and whose only child was
that secretary of state,—to whom Addison
bequeathed his works, in an exquisite Dedication,
well known to all readers of a classic
author, and whose early death Pope bewailed,
in a poem of great beauty. The father of Mr.
Secretary Craggs was nothing more considerable
at his first appearance in the world than
footman to Lady Mary Mordaunt; and yet,
as Lady Wortley Montagu informs us, the
meanness of his education never appeared in
his conversation.

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