While the warm blood bedews my veins And unimpair’d remembrance reigns, Resentment of my country’s fate Within my filial breast shall beat. Yes! spite of thine insulting foe, My sympathising verse shall flow; Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn Thy banish’d peace, thy laurels torn!’ The following were the lines which were supposed to be likely to offend the friends of the hero of Culloden; but the sentiment was shared by many who were not friends of the Stuart cause:―― Yet, when the rage of battle ceased, The victor’s rage was not appeased; The naked and forlorn must feel Devouring flames and murd’ring steel. The pious mother, doom’d to death, Forsaken, wanders o’er the heath, &c., &c. The picture was somewhat over-drawn, but there were thousands who believed it to be true to the very letter. [Illustration: Leaves] [Illustration: Decorative banner] CHAPTER VII. (1746.) [Illustration: Drop-T]he players and the playwrights were zealous Whigs throughout the rebellion. The Drury Lane company to a man became volunteers, under their manager, Mr. Lacy, who had asked the royal permission to raise a couple of hundred men, in defence of his Majesty’s person and Government. To attract loyal audiences at a time when the public could not be readily tempted to the theatre, ‘The Nonjuror’ was revived, at both houses. Two players, Macklin and Elderton, set to work to produce plays for their respective theatres, on the subject of Perkin Warbeck. While Macklin was delivering what he wrote, piecemeal, to the actors, for study, and Elderton was perspiring over his laborious gestation of blank-verse, the proprietors of the playhouse in Goodman’s Fields forestalled both by bringing out Ford’s old play, which is named after the Pretender to the throne of Henry VII. Macklin called his piece ‘Henry VII., or the Popish Impostor.’ This absurd allusion to Perkin was a shaft aimed at the actual Pretender. The Whigs approved of both title and play, and they roared at every line which they could apply against Tories and Jacobites. ◆[Sidenote: _THE PLAYERS._]◆ At both houses, occasional prologues stirred the loyal impulses or provoked the indignation of the audience. At Covent Garden, ‘Tamerlane,’ which was always solemnly brought out when the popular wrath was to be excited against France, was preceded by a patriotic prologue which Mrs. Pritchard delivered in her best manner, and Dodsley sold the next day, as fast as he could deliver copies over the counter of his shop in Pall Mall. Rich and his Covent Garden players did not turn soldiers, but he gave the house, _gratis_, for three days for the benefit of a scheme that was to be to the advantage of the veterans of the army; and this brought 600_l._ to the funds. The actors sacrificed their salaries, and charming Mrs. Cibber sang as Polly, in the ‘Beggars’ Opera’ more exquisitely than