Mr Holcroft’s first comedy, called Duplicity, was acted in October, 1781. It had been offered to Mr Harris, and came out at Covent Garden. The prologue was written by Mr Nicholson. The applause it met with, both on the first night and afterwards, was very great. Mr Holcroft’s feelings on this occasion he has expressed in a manner honourable to himself in a letter to Mr Greville, dated October 18, the day after it was acted. ‘SIR, I received your very obliging letter last night, just as I was going to the theatre, and had not time to answer it till to-day. Indeed, Sir, I do not find myself so much flattered by the very favourable opinion which, as far as I am able to come at the truth, the town entertains of me, as I am by your friendship and kindness. It is true I have had great difficulties to encounter, and the unhappy effects of a narrow education to surmount: but to be thus distinguished is more than a compensation for the labour I have taken, and the conflicts I have had with poverty, obscurity, and their dismal attendants. I am successful—I am happy—I shall acquire the means of making my father, my family, and some of my friends happy. These are the purest sources of pleasure, and which, as I have reason to know, both you and Mrs. Greville most intimately feel. My greatest danger is the possibility of not supporting the new character I have undertaken, with that equanimity, moderation, and ease, which are so essential to real worth. Vanity is continually spreading the net for pride, and those who are never entrapped, are either very strong or very cunning. To be successful, I have now only to be industrious: having escaped the Dog of Hell, the Elysian Fields are before me, if I have but taste and prudence to select the sweets. But this egotism is a species of the folly I have been declaiming against.’ Mr Greville, it may be necessary to add here, had perused Mr Holcroft’s piece before it came out, and had suggested some alterations both in the plot and language. Several were also made by Mr Holcroft in the course of the rehearsals, and more by Mr Harris; some of them against the author’s judgment. Mr Holcroft now considered his fame as established, and his fortune as already made. The author of a successful and admired comedy he thought had a passport which would carry him securely through the world. In these flattering hopes, he was unhappily deceived. He also wrote on the same day to his father, in terms which his success and the warmth of his affection dictated. ‘MY DEAR FATHER, I know that a short letter will be acceptable to you rather than none, especially on this occasion. My piece is come out at Covent Garden Theatre under the title of Duplicity. You may perhaps have heard some account of its reception from the newspapers: its success has been very flattering, and no circumstance relative to it gives me more satisfaction than that I shall now be enabled to provide for my dear father.’