Volume V Part 30 (1/2)

Mr. CHARLES JOHNSON.

Mr. Charles Johnson was designed for the law; but being an admirer of the muses, turned his thoughts to dramatic writing; and luckily being an intimate of Mr. Wilks, by the a.s.sistance of his friends.h.i.+p, Mr. Johnson had several plays acted, some of which met with success. He was a constant attendant at Will's and b.u.t.ton's coffee houses, which were the resort of most of the men of taste and literature, during the reigns of queen Anne and king George the first. Among these he contracted intimacy enough to int.i.tle him to their patronage, &c on his benefit-nights; by which means he lived (with oeconomy) genteelly. At last he married a young widow, with a tolerable fortune, and set up a tavern in Bow-street, which he quitted on his wife's dying, and lived privately on the small remainder of his fortune.

He died about the year 1744. His parts were not very brilliant; but his behaviour was generally thought inoffensive; yet he escaped not the satire of Mr. Pope, who has been pleased to immortalize him in his Dunciad.

His dramatic pieces are,

1. The Gentleman Cully, a Comedy: acted at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden, 1702.

2. Fortune in her Wits, a Comedy; 1705. It is a very indifferent translation of Mr. Cowley's Naufragium Joculare.

3. The Force of Friends.h.i.+p, a Tragedy, 1710.

4. Love in a Chest, a Farce, 1710.

5. The Wife's Relief; or, the Husband's Cure; a Comedy. It is chiefly borrowed from s.h.i.+rley's Gamester, 1711.

6. The Successful Pirate, a Tragi-Comedy, 1712.

7. The Generous Husband; or, the Coffee-house Politician; a Comedy, 1713.

8. The Country La.s.ses; or, the Custom of the Manor; a Comedy, 1714.

9. Love and Liberty; a Tragedy, 1715.

10. The Victim; a Tragedy, 1715.

11. The Sultaness; a Tragedy, 1717.

12. The Cobler of Preston; a Farce of two Acts, 1717.

13. Love in a Forest; a Comedy, 1721. Taken from Shakespear's Comedy, As you like it.

14. The Masquerade; a Comedy, 1723.

15. The Village Opera, 1728.

16. The Ephesian Matron; a Farce of one Act, 1730.

17. Celia; or, the Perjured Lovers; a Tragedy, 1732.

PHILIP FROWDE, Esq;

This elegant poet was the son of a gentleman who had been post-master-general in the reign of queen Anne. Where our author received his earliest instructions in literature we cannot ascertain; but, at a proper time of life, he was sent to the university of Oxford, where he had the honour of being particularly distinguished by Mr.

Addison, who took him under his immediate protection. While he remained at that university, he became author of several poetical performances; some of which, in Latin, were sufficiently elegant and pure, to int.i.tle them to a place in the Musae Anglicanae, published by Mr. Addison; an honour so much the more distinguished, as the purity of the Latin poems contained in that collection, furnished the first hint to Boileau of the greatness of the British genius. That celebrated critick of France entertained a mean opinion of the English poets, till he occasionally read the Musae Anglicanae; and then he was persuaded that they who could write with so much elegance in a dead language, must greatly excel in that which was native to them.

Mr. Frowde has likewise obliged the publick with two tragedies; the Fall of Saguntum, dedicated to sir Robert Walpole; and Philotas, addressed to the earl of Chesterfield. The first of these performances, so far as we are able to judge, has higher merit than the last. The story is more important, being the destruction of a powerful city, than the fall of a single hero; the incidents rising out of this great event are likewise of a very interesting nature, and the scenes in many places are not without pa.s.sion, though justly subject to a very general criticism, that they are written with too little. Mr. Frowde has been industrious in this play to conclude his acts with similes, which however exceptionable for being too long and tedious for the situations of the characters who utter them, yet are generally just and beautiful. At the end of the first act he has the following simile upon sedition:

Sedition, thou art up; and, in the ferment, To what may not the madding populace, Gathered together for they scarce know what, Now loud proclaiming their late, whisper'd grief, Be wrought at length? Perhaps to yield the city.