Born, at Trinity Coll., Dublin, 19 Feb. 1732. Educated at a school at Bury St. Edmunds, 1738–44; at Westminster School, 1744–46. To Trinity Coll., Cambridge, 1747; B.A., 1750; Fellowship, 1752; M.A., 1754. Private Secretary to Lord Halifax in Board of Trade; and afterwards Crown Agent to Nova Scotia. Married Elizabeth Ridge, 19 Feb. 1759. Ulster Secretary to Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 1761. Clerk of Reports in Board of Trade, 1762. Began to write plays. “The Summer’s Tale” produced, 1765; “The Brothers” at Covent Garden, 1769; “The West Indian,” 1771; “The Fashionable Lover,” Jan. 1772; “The Choleric Man,” 1774; “The Battle of Hastings,” 1778. Secretary to Board of Trade, 1776. On secret mission to Spain, 1780–81. On abolition of Board of Trade, he retired to Tunbridge Wells. Great literary activity; many plays produced, including: “The Walloons,” 20 April 1782; “The Jew,” 1794; “The Wheel of Fortune,” 1795, etc. Edited “The London Review,” 1809. Died, at Tunbridge Wells, 7 May 1811. Buried in Westminster Abbey. Works: “An Elegy, written on St. Mark’s Eve” (anon.), 1754; “The Banishment of Cicero,” 1761; “The Summer’s Tale” (anon.), 1765; “A Letter to the Bishop of O—d” (anon.), 1767; “Amelia” (anon.), 1768; “The Brothers” (anon.), 1770; “The West Indian” (anon.), 1771; “Timon of Athens, altered from Shakespeare,” 1771; “The Fashionable Lover” (anon.), 1772; “The Note of Hand” (anon.), 1774; “The Choleric Man,” 1775; “The Widow of Delphi” (anon.), 1775; “Odes,” 1776; “The Battle of Hastings,” 1778; “Calypso,” 1779; “Anecdotes of Eminent Painters in Spain,” 1782; “A Letter to Richard, Lord Bishop of Landaff,” 1783; “The Mysterious Husband,” 1783; “The Carmelite,” 1784; “Character of the late Lord Viscount Sackville,” 1785; “The Natural Son,” 1785; “The Observer” (anon.), 1785; “An accurate … Catalogue of the several Paintings in the King of Spain’s Palace at Madrid,” 1787; “Arundel” (anon.), 1789; “The Impostors,” 1789; “A Volume of Comedies,” 1791; “Curtius rescued from the Gulph” (anon.), 1792; “Calvary,” 1792; “The Armourer” (anon.), 1793; “The Box-Lobby Challenge,” 1794; “The Jew,” 1794; “First Love,” 1795; “Henry” (anon.), 1795; “The Wheel of Fortune,” 1795; “False Impressions,” 1797; “The Days of Yore,” 1798; “Joanna of Montfaucon” (adapted from Von Kotzebue,) 1800; “A Poetical Version of certain Psalms of David,” 1801; “A Few Plain Reasons why we should believe in Christ,” 1801; “The Tailor’s Daughter,” 1804; “A Melo-Dramatic Piece” (1805); “A Hint to Husbands,” 1806; “Memoirs,” 1806; “The Jew of Mogadore,” 1808; “John de Lancaster,” 1809; “Retrospection,” 1811. Posthumous: “Posthumous Dramatic Works” (2 vols.), 1813. He translated: Lucan’s “Pharsalia,” 1760; “Aristophanes’ Clouds,” 1797.

Personal

  Mr. Cumberland is unquestionably a man of very great abilities; it is his misfortune to rate them greatly above their value; and to suppose that he has no equal.

  Sneer—“He is envious as any old maid verging on the desperation of six-and-thirty; and then the insidious humility with which he seduces you to give a free opinion on any of his works, can only be exceeded by the petulant arrogance with which he is sure to reflect your observations…. Then his affected contempt of all the newspapers strictures; though, at the same time, he is the sorest man alive, and shrinks like scorched parchment from the fiery ordeal of true criticism; yet is he so covetous of popularity, that he had rather be abused than not mentioned at all.”

  It is a delicate and arduous task I have had in hand, and I trust that now, as heretofore, I shall be read and judged with candour. I have not knowingly transgressed, or even strained, the truth, to which I pledged myself; but fairly and sincerely stated how I have employed my faculties, what I have been and what I am. Man hath no need, no right, no interest to know of man more than I have enabled every one to know of me. I have no undivulged evil in my heart; but with unabated affection for my friends, and good will towards my fellow creatures, I remain the reader’s most devoted servant.

  The person you now see deposited, is Richard Cumberland, an author of no small merit; his writings were chiefly for the stage, but of strict moral tendency—they were not without their faults, but these were not of a gross description. He wrote as much as any, and few wrote better; and his works will be held in the highest estimation, so long as the English language is understood. He considered the theatre as a school for moral improvement, and his remains are truly worthy of mingling with the illustrious dead which surround us. In his subjects on Divinity, you find the true Christian spirit; and may God, in his mercy, assign him the true Christian reward!

  In youth, Mr. Cumberland must have been handsome; in age, he possessed a pleasing external appearance, and the polite ease of a gentleman accustomed to the best company. In society he was eloquent, well-informed, and full of anecdote; a willing dealer in the commerce of praise, or—for he took no great pains to ascertain its sincerity—we should rather say, of flattery. His conversation often showed the author in his strong and in his weak points…. In the little pettish sub-acidity of temper which Cumberland sometimes exhibited, there was more of humorous sadness than of ill-will, either to his critics or his contemporaries.

  Richard Cumberland put forth occasionally metrical compositions, but they were vapid stuff. He had a vast memory, and a great facility of feeble verbiage; but his vanity, his self-conceit, and his supercilious airs, offended everybody. He was a tall, handsome man, with a fair, regular-featured face, and the appearance of good birth. For many years he resided at Tunbridge Wells, where he affected a sort of dominion over the Pantiles, and paid court, a little too servile, to rank and title. He wrote some good comedies, and was a miscellaneous writer of some popularity; but in every department he was of a secondary class,—in none he had originality. He was one of Johnson’s literary club, and therefore could render himself amusing by speaking of a past age of authors and eminent men. Sheridan represented him as Sir Fretful Plagiary. He was a most fulsome and incontinent flatterer of those who courted him.

  Cumberland was a most agreeable companion, and a very entertaining converser. His theatrical anecdotes were related with infinite spirit and humour…. When Cumberland was composing any work, he never shut himself in his study: he always wrote in the room where his family sat, and did not feel the least disturbed by the noise of his children at play beside him.

  His sensitiveness to criticism made Garrick call him a “man without a skin,” but he explains that there was then “a filthy nest of vipers” in league against every well-known man.

  To the last Cumberland is described as an agreeable and even fascinating companion, though he was so fond of flattery himself that he supposed it to be acceptable to others, even in the most exuberant proportions. Certain it is that, although he was not altogether happy in his temperament, he made many friends; and though time has dealt hardly with his reputation, one piece of good fortune can never be taken from him, namely, the prospect of going down to posterity astride the epitaph in Goldsmith’s “Retaliation” as “The Terence of England, the mender of hearts.”

General

  Withall the merit which “The Brothers” possesses, and which is of no small account, it is instructive to observe with how much judgment Mr. Cumberland corrected in his second play all those faults he had committed in the first. The language of “The West Indian” is wholly refined, and every idea it contains perfectly delicate. The youthful parts are there rendered brilliant, as well as interesting; and wit and humour are not confined, as here, to the mean or the vulgar, but skilfully on persons of pleasing forms and polite manners.

  We will pronounce no general judgment on the literary merits of Mr. Cumberland; but our opinion of them certainly has not been raised by the perusal of these “Memoirs.” There is no depth of thought, nor dignity of sentiment about him;—he is too frisky for an old man, and too gossiping for an historian. His style is too negligent even for the most familiar composition; and though he has proved himself, upon other occasions, to be a great master of good English, he has admitted a number of phrases into this work, which, we are inclined to think, would scarcely pass current even in conversation…. Upon the whole, however, this volume is not the work of an ordinary writer; and we should probably have been more indulgent to its faults, if the excellence of some of the author’s former productions had not sent us to its perusal with expectations perhaps somewhat extravagant.

  The “Observer,” though the sole labour of an individual, is yet rich in variety, both of subject and manner; in this respect, indeed, as well as in literary interests, and in fertility of invention, it may be classed with the “Spectator” and “Adventurer;” if inferior to the latter in grandeur of fiction, or to the former in delicate irony and dramatic unity of design, it is wealthier in its literary fund than either, equally moral in its views, and as abundant in the creation of incident. I consider it, therefore, with the exception of the papers just mentioned, as superior, in its powers of attraction, to every other periodical composition.

  He could not easily endure a rival in any branch of literature, but, without entering into his failings, it may easily be conceded that he had not in his time many equals. His talents were so various, his productions so numerous, and of many of them it may truly be asserted, that they were so valuable and so instructive, that who can call to memory without a sigh that his latter hours were darkened by poverty.

  It [“West Indian”] is a classical comedy; the dialogue spirited and elegant; the characters well conceived, and presenting bold features, though still within the line of probability; and the plot regularly conducted, and happily extricated…. The drama must have been Cumberland’s favourite style of composition, for he went on, shooting shaft after shaft at the mark which he did not always hit, and often effacing by failures the memory of triumphant successes. His plays at last amounted to upwards of fifty, and intercession and flattery were sometimes necessary to force their way to the stage…. He had a peculiar taste in love affairs, which induced him to reverse the usual and natural practice of courtship, and to throw upon the softer sex the task of wooing, which is more gracefully, as well as naturally, the province of the man.

  Cumberland was the last, and the best of the Sentimental School. His Genius was of too masculine a character to submit entirely to the fetters which the popular prejudices would impose upon it; and his taste too pure, to relish the sickly viands with which the public appetite was palled.

  Cumberland’s worthless epics of “Calvary,” “Richard the First,” “The Exodiad.”

  He aimed without success at Fielding’s constructive excellence, and imitated that great master’s humor, only to reproduce his coarseness.

  There were few departments of literature in which this worthy writer did not do fair journeyman’s work, and amid other work he employed himself as a writer of comedies. He who shoots often must hit sometimes. The “West Indian” has merit in it; but his characters are all endowed with a superhuman morality. Cumberland understood stage effect,—particularly of the emotional kind. But he was over-emotional.

  Were I to be discovered on Primrose Hill, or any other eminence, reading “Henry,” I should blush no deeper than if the book had been “David Grieve.”… Cumberland has, of course, no place in men’s memories by virtue of his plays, poems, or novels. Even the catholic Chambers gives no extracts from Cumberland in the “Encyclopedia.” What keeps him for ever alive is—first, his place in Goldsmith’s great poem, “Retaliation;” secondly, his memoirs to which Sir Walter refers so unkindly; and thirdly, the tradition, the well-supported tradition—that he was the original “Sir Fretful Plagiary.” On this last point we have the authority of Croker, and there is none better for anything disagreeable. Croker says he knew Cumberland well for the last dozen years of his life, and that to his last day he resembled “Sir Fretful.”

  A rather curious person, and better known to literature as Sir Fretful Plagiary, but a scholar, a skilful playwright, and no contemptible man of letters.

  As a writer, Cumberland was not great; he was not even of the second rank, if we count men like Goldsmith and Sheridan in that degree; but he frequently wrote with effect, and invariably as a scholar and a gentleman. Like too many people, he tried to succeed in too many things, and has in consequence just missed high distinction, alike as a poet, a novelist, and a dramatist. Goldsmith’s comparison of him with Terence might pass muster as a compliment, but certainly could not be defended on the score of accuracy. No doubt the later dramatist’s methods were framed on those of Terence but in all the latter’s great literary qualities Cumberland was but a shadow of him. Where is that pure and perfect style which have caused some eminent critics to class Terence with Cicero, Cæsar, and Lucretius? Where the fine individualisation of character, the cosmopolitanism, the metrical skill, the coruscating wit, the exquisite pathos? Cumberland’s “Memoirs” are garrulous, but interesting, though some of his stories and recollections require taking with a considerable grain of salt. But he is so overshadowed by his contemporaries, that something less than justice has been done to his literary powers. In private life he was all that was excellent and sincere, he had varied stores of information, which he was never backward in imparting; and he was ever moved by a genuine consideration for the claims and feelings of others.

  Richard Cumberland, playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, and editor, civil servant and amateur diplomatist, belongs to that numerous body of authors who have had to pay for temporary popularity by permanent neglect. His comedies have not held the stage like those of his contemporaries, Sheridan and Goldsmith; his novels are no longer read like those of his model, Henry Fielding; his “Observer” essays have not become a classic like the “Spectator” and the “Rambler;” his poems are dead; his pamphlets are forgotten; and even his delightful “Memoirs” have hardly taken the place they deserve in the biographical literature of his period.