172 Whitford between Churchill and Byron. Richard Cumberland and the minor authors of his school were treated with comparative mildness by the satirists between 1770 and 1780. In The Theatres; a Poetical Dissection (1772), Hugh Kelly, the author of False Delicacy (1768), is advertised as: Vending in dialogue sermonic scenes, and again thus: Kelly between the sister muses steers, Too grave for laughter and too light for tears. 38 Less known dramatists are almost as calmly chidden for their faults: Hull has good feelings, and possesses sense, Yet to an author's fame shews small pretense , Much better must he write, who hopes to rise, Than Spanish Ladies, or Perplexities, To turn a period or to clink a rhime, With little wit, and less of the sublime, May be calPd writing, yet is waste of time. 37 Percival Stockdale in The Poet (1773) was less moderate in his attack upon minor sentimental dramatists. Defending his eminent friend Doctor Johnson, he shouted: Curse on the taste of this preposterous age, Which doaes if IRENE tread the stage; Yet gives applause to Hoole's unmeaning lines, And seems to weep when his Mandane whines. 38 On the whole, however, sentimental dramatists and their plays were not rudely treated by the satirists of the seventies. In The Theatres, strangely enough, Oliver Goldsmith is given 36 The Theatres: a Poetical Dissection by Sir Nicholas Nipclose, Bart. (Lon- don, 1772), 28-29. This piece has been attributed to Garrick, certainly not on internal evidence. Minor satires concerning the theatre were common. Such were Kelly's Thespis and the various replies to it, among them The Kellyad by Louis Stamma, The Rescue: or Thespian Scourge, and Anti-Thespis. 37 The Theatres, 36. A few of the rebukes are less courteous. Bickerstaff is called a "scribbling jay." And "Rough as a rope-maker, lo! Reed comes forth."
38 The Poet. A Poem (London, 1773), 15.
