FOOTE, Samuel, was born at Truro, in Cornwall, and descended from an ancient and respectable family. His father was member of parliament for Tiverton in Devonshire, and enjoyed the post of commissioner of the prize office; his mother was heiress of the Dinely and Goodere families. Foote was educated at Worcester College, Oxford, which owed its foundation to Sir Thomas Cookes Windford. On leaving the university he commenced student of law in the Temple; but as the dryness of this study did not suit the liveliness of his genius, he soon relinquished it. He then married a young lady of a good family and some fortune; but their tempers not agreeing, harmony did not long subsist between them. He now launched into all the fashionable follies of the age, gambling not excepted, and in a few years squandered away his whole fortune. His necessities led him to the stage, and he made his first appearance in the character of Othello. He next perform ed Fondlewife with much greater applause; and this, indeed, was ever afterwards one of his capital parts. He likewise attempted Lord Foppington, but afterwards gave it up as unsuitable to his talents. In 1747 he opened the little theatre in the Haymarket, taking upon himself the double character of author and performer; and he appeared in a dramatic piece of his own composition, called the Diversions of the Morning. The piece consisted of nothing more than the exhibition of several characters well known in real life, whose style and manner of conversation and expression the author had very happily hit off in the diction of his drama, and still more happily represented on the stage, by an exact and indeed amazing imitation, not only of the manner and tone of voice, but even of the very persons of those whom he intended to take off. This performance at first met with some opposition from the civil magistrates of Westminster, under the sanction of the act of parliament for limiting the number of playhouses, as well as from the jealousy of one of the managers of Drury Lane theatre. But the author being patronized by many of the principal nobility, and other persons of distinction, this opposition was overruled; and having altered the title of his performance, Mr Foote proceeded, without further molestation, to give Tea in a Morning to his friends, and represented it through a run of forty mornings to crowded and splendid audiences. In the ensuing season he produced another piece of the same kind, which he called An Auction of Pictures. Into this performance he introduced several new and popular characters; particularly Sir Thomas de Veil, then the acting justice of peace for Westminster, Mr Cock the celebrated auctioneer, and the equally famous Orator Henley. The Auction had also a very great run. His Knights, which was the production of the ensuing season, exhibited somewhat more of dramatic regularity. But still, although his plot and characters seemed less immediately personal, it was apparent that in the performance he kept some real persons strongly in his eye; and the town took it upon themselves to fix these where the resemblances appeared most striking. Thus Mr Foote continued from time to time to select, for the entertainment of the town, such public characters as seemed most likely to engage their attention. But his dramatic pieces, exclusively of the interlude called Piety in Pattens, are only to be ranked among the petites pieces of the theatre. In the execution they are somewhat loose, negligent, and unfinished; the plots are often irregular, and the catastrophes frequently inconclusive; but, with all these deficiencies, they contain more strength of character, more strokes of keen satire, and more touches of temporary hmnour, than are to be found in the writings of any other modern dramatist. Even the language spoken by his characters, incorrect as [7:9:737]it may sometimes seem, will on a closer examination be found altogether dramatical: abounding with those natural minutiae of expression which frequently form the very basis of character, and which render it the truest mirror of the conversation of the times to which it applies.

In the year 1766, being on a party of pleasure with the Duke of York, Lord Mexborough, and Sir Francis Délavai, Mr Foote had the misfortune to break his leg by a fall from his horse, in consequence of which he was compelled to undergo an amputation. This accident so sensibly affected the duke, that he made a point of obtaining for Mr Foote a patent for life, by which he was allowed to perform, at the little theatre in the Haymarket, from the 15th of May to the 15th of September every year.

Mr Foote, finding his health declining, entered into an agreement with Mr Colman, for his patent of the theatre, according to which he was to receive from Mr Colman L.1600 per annum, besides a stipulated sum whenever he chose to perform. Mr Foote made his appearance two or three times in some of the most admired characters; but being suddenly affected with a paralytic stroke one night whilst upon the stage, he was compelled to retire. He was advised to bathe; and accordingly retired to Brighton, where he apparently recovered his former health and spirits, and continued what is called the cock of the company who resorted to that agreeable place of amusement. A few weeks before his death he returned to London; but, by the advice of his physicians, set out with an intention to spend the winter at Paris and in the south of France. He had got no farther than Dover, when he was suddenly attacked by another stroke of the palsy, which in a few hours terminated his existence. He died on the 21st of October 1777, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was privately interred in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. Foote’s published dramas, twenty in number, were written in the following order: 1. Taste, a comedy, in 1752; 2. The Englishman in Paris, 1753; 3. The Knights, 1754; 4. The Englishman returned from Paris, 1756; 5. The Author, 1757; 6. The Minor, 1760; 7. The Lyar, 1761; 8. The Orators, 1762; 9. The Mayor of Garrat, 1763; 10. The Patron, 1764; 11. The Commissary; 12. Prelude on opening the Theatre, 1767; 13. The Devil upon Two Sticks, 1768; 14. The Lame Lover, 1770; 15. The Maid of Bath, 1771; 16. The Nabob, 1772; 17. The Bankrupt, 1772; 18. The Cozeners, 1774; 19. A Trip to Calais, 1776; 20. The Capuchin, altered from the former, but prohibited. Piety in Pattens, and The Diversions of a Morning, altered from Taste, were never published. The anonymous mock tragedy entitled The Tailors is usually printed with Foote’s works, being generally thought to be his composition. Foote borrowed liberally from Molière and others; but what he took without ceremony he generally contrived to make his own by a certain originality in the manner of employing it; and his own humour was so peculiar and effective, that no player has since been equally successful in the parts which he himself performed.