Samuel Foote, the subject of our sketch, was christened on 17th January, 1720, at St. Mary's Church (on the site of the Cathedral now in progress), and was educated first at the Truro Grammar School, under Mr. Conon, where he was particularly fond of his Terence, and afterwards under Dr. Miles, at Worcester. Notwithstanding his strong propensity for jokes and tricks, he was a favourite with his master, and made fair progress with his studies; and he never failed, when visiting Truro, to call at the old school, and, in mock-heroic style, to beg a holiday for the boys. In 1737, he was entered at Worcester College, Oxford, which had been in 1714 founded anew by a connexion of the Foote family,[133] and worked tolerably hard, acquiring considerable proficiency in the lighter classical authors; but his chief delight lay in caricaturing the Provost, Dr. Gower, and in playing tricks upon him and the verger of the College Chapel. One of these tricks consisted in tying a wisp of hay to the bell-rope which hung outside the chapel, in a lane down which certain cows went to grass. The cows naturally snatched at the tempting morsel, and rung the bell in a most weird manner, to the alarm of the authorities, who determined on sitting up to watch the rope one night in order to discover the author of the trick played upon them. Another of Foote's Oxford freaks is recorded by Murphy, who says that whilst at Oxford the future player and dramatist acted in the part of Punch. Shortly after he came of age, which was in 1741, he was entered at the Inner Temple, where he distinguished himself chiefly by the magnificence of his chambers, and by the smartness of his oral criticisms on the actors of the day, when discussing their merits and their faults with other sparks and critics at the Grecian, in Devereux Court, or at the Bedford Coffee-house in Covent Garden. The dry study of the law had little or no attraction for our volatile hero; and Dr. Barrowby (the friend and adviser of Macklin in his controversy with Foote's chief rival, Garrick[134]) has thus sketched the Truro youngster for us at this period of his life. One evening, says he, I saw a young man extravagantly dressed out in a frock-suit of green and silver lace, bag-wig, sword, bouquet, and point ruffles, enter the room,[135] and immediately join the circle at the upper end. Nobody recognised him; but such was the ease of his bearing, and the point and humour of remark with which he at once took part in the conversation, that his presence seemed to disconcert no one, and a sort of pleased buzz of '_Who is he?_' was still going round the room unanswered, when a handsome carriage stopped at the door, and the servants announced that his name was Foote, that he was a young gentleman of family and fortune, a student of the Inner Temple, and that the carriage had called for him on its way to the assembly of a lady of fashion. Vanity was indeed to the last one of Foote's besetting sins, and he could not