* * * * * 'Sir Peter Primrose, smirking o'er his tea, Sinks from himself and politics, to _me_. "Paper, boy!" "Here, sir, I am!" "What news to-day?" "Foote, sir, is advertised--" "What! run away?" "No, sir, he acts this week at Drury Lane." "How's that," cries feeble Grub; "Foote come again? I thought that fool had done his devil's dance: Was he not hanged some months ago, in France?"' Foote once again took the Haymarket Theatre in 1754; and, for a few nights, ridiculed Macklin's celebrated School of Oratory, in the 'Inquisition.'[140] But he soon returned to Drury Lane, as an actor chiefly in his own pieces, and at the same time was occupied in preparing for publication his amusing farce of 'The Knights.' 'The Author,' which was successful, but which was suppressed by the Lord Chamberlain in consequence of the severity of its satire on Mr. Ap Reece (Cadwallader), appeared in 1757; and, probably owing to complications arising out of the matter, early in 1758 Foote went to Dublin with Tate Wilkinson the mimic (who imitated Foote himself so well, as more than once to deceive a shrewd audience). With the same companion Foote visited Edinburgh during the following season, where they reaped a good harvest. It was whilst on this occasion in Ireland that he exclaimed of the Irish peasantry: 'I never knew before what the English beggars did with their cast-off clothes.' In the winter, however, the two returned to Dublin, and here on 28th January, 1760, that clever comedy, 'The Minor,' made its first appearance, but with indifferent success, so that Foote lost a considerable sum of money. During his first visit to Dublin, in January, 1758, having hung a room at his lodgings in black, and provided himself with a dark lanthorn, Foote disseminated hand-bills to the effect that 'there was a man to be met with at such a place who wrote down people's fortunes without asking them any questions.' He is said to have carried on the deception with great success for many days, sometimes clearing as much as £30 a day, it is said, from his dupes. He soon after returned to London, and, having enlarged and improved 'The Minor,' brought it again before the public, and this time with the most satisfactory results, the theatre closing, after the piece had run thirty-eight nights, 'with a full treasury.' Foster thinks its three acts are worth almost any five that he knew. The object of the play was to ridicule religious _cant_, and especially Whitefield, then in the height of his popularity.[141] The story runs that Foote submitted the MS. to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Secker, with a request that his Grace would strike out anything that, from a religious point of view, might appear objectionable. But the Archbishop--knowing the sort of character he had to deal with--returned the MS. untouched, observing that if he erased or corrected anything, Foote would probably have advertised