Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/298

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284
COLLEY CIBBER.

were aroused, which Charlotte skilfully inflamed by her dark suggestions, and then boldly undertook the defence of the leaguered house. The plate was carried up into her room, which she garnished with all the weapons of war the establishment could afford, and then sent the household to bed. After a long vigil, to her great mortification, no attack was made, universal silence prevailed, when luckily a cur began to bark. Up went the window, and volley after volley was poured into the unoffending void, while her mother and the domestics lay below in trembling consternation. While still a girl, she married Mr. Charke, an eminent composer on the violin, but he was a worthless libertine, and after the birth of a daughter, they separated. She then obtained an engagement on the stage, and relates with childish simplicity, how for a whole week she did nothing but walk from one end of the town to the other, to read her name on the bills. Her success was such as to justify expectations of her becoming a most accomplished actress, and as Lucy in "George Barnwell," she attracted considerable attention; but she soon quarrelled with the manager, and afterwards satirized him in a farce she wrote, termed "The Art of Management." She then tried a new sphere, and opened a shop in Long Acre, as oil-woman and grocer, and her whole soul was absorbed in the fluctuations of sugar. The shop did not pay, and she quitted it to become the proprietress of a puppet-show, by which she lost all she had, and was arrested for a debt of seven pounds. Her release was effected by the contributions of some acquaintances, when she dressed herself in male attire, and assumed the name of Mr. Brown. Under this disguise, she engaged the affections of a young heiress, to whom, in order to escape a private marriage urged by the amatory damsel, she was compelled to disclose her secret. Shortly afterwards, she exhibited her valorous spirit by knocking a man down with a cudgel for having