The "Imperial Captives" was a more ambitious venture, by a new author, Mottley. It was a tragedy, in which Quin played Genseric, King of the Vandals, and in which there is much love and a little murder, in the old thundering style, and all at cross-purposes. Distress made a poet of Mottley. His father was a Jacobite colonel, who followed James to France; his mother, a thorough-bred Whig, who stayed under William in England. Occasionally, they settled their political differences, and met. Mottley was one of those men who depend on patrons. He had lost a post in the Excise Office, and had not gained either of two which had been promised him, one in the Wine Licence Office, by Lord Halifax, and one in the Exchequer to which he had been appointed, but from which he was immediately ousted by Sir Robert Walpole. An estate, in which he had a reversionary interest, was sold by his widowed and extravagant mother to pay her debts, and thus stripped of post and prospects, Mottley made an essay as dramatic author, a career in which he was not destined to be distinguished, although Queen Caroline patronised him during a part of it--but so she did Stephen Duck! "Cato" was not superseded; but Young was putting the finishing stroke to his "Revenge." That tragedy, which has been acted more frequently and more recently than "Cato," was first played in the Drury Lane season of 1720-21. On the 18th of April, of the latter year, Zanga was played by Mills, while Booth took Alonzo, and Wilks, Carlos. The secondary parts were thus played by the better actors. Mrs. Porter played Leonora, Mrs. Horton, Isabella. This was a fine cast, and the piece was fairly successful. A story in the _Guardian_, and two plays, by Marlowe and Aphra Behn, are said to have furnished Young with his materials, in handling which, one of his biographers has described him as "superior even to Shakspeare!" The action does not flag, the situations are dramatic, the interest is well sustained, and the language is expressive and abounding in poetical beauty. The story of love, jealousy, and murder is, however, a little marred by the puling lines of the black Iago,--Zanga, at the close. Young obtained but £50 for the copyright of this piece. Young's "Revenge," if built upon other plays, has served the turn of later authors. In Lord John Russell's "Don Carlos," the reason given for the grovelling Cordoba's hatred of the Spanish prince, reminds the reader of that of Zanga for Alonzo; not less in the fact itself, the blow believed to be forgotten, but in the expression. Any one, moreover, who remembers the avowal which Artabanus makes of his guilt in the "Artaxerxes" of Metastasio, will be inclined to think that the Italian had in his mind the similar speech of the Moor to his master.