Next, Manning tried the judgment of the town with his "All for the Better," a comedy, of triple plots--stolen from old writers. Manning resembled Steele only in leaving the University without a degree. If Steele obtained a Government appointment after his dramatic success, Manning acquired a better after his failure. He was, first, Secretary to our Legation in Switzerland; and, secondly, Envoy to the Cantons; and was about as respectable in diplomacy as in the drama. Gildon's play of the "Patriot, or the Italian Conspiracy," the last produced this year,[77] with Mills as Cosmo de Medici, and Wilks as his son, Julio, merits notice only as an instance of the mania for reconstructing accepted stories. Gildon, towards the close of his wayward and silly career, transmuted Lee's ancient Roman "Lucius Junius Brutus," into the modern Italian "Patriot." The public consigned it to oblivion. During this season, when "Macbeth" was the only one of Shakspeare's plays performed,[78] the theatre in Dorset Gardens was prepared for opera; and in the summer the company followed Queen Anne to Bath, by command; but there went not with them the most brilliant actress of light comedy that the two centuries had hitherto seen, Mrs. Verbruggen, that sparkling Mrs. Mountfort whose father, Mr. Perceval, was condemned to death for treason against King William, on the day her husband was murdered by Lord Mohun! The Jacobite father was, however, pardoned. Mrs. Mountfort, or Verbruggen, left a successor equal, perhaps superior, to herself, in Mrs. Oldfield.