Cave Underhill was another member of Davenant's Company. He was not a man for a lady to fall in love with; but in 1668 Davenant pronounced him the truest comedian of his troop. He was on the stage from 1661 to 1710, and during that time the town saw no such Gravedigger in "Hamlet" as this tall, fat, broad-faced, flat-nosed, wide-mouthed, thick-lipped, rough-voiced, awkwardly-active low comedian. So modest was he also that he never understood his own popularity, and the house was convulsed with his solemn Don Quixote and his stupid Lolpoop in "The Squire of Alsatia" without Cave's being able to account for it.[33] In the stolid, the booby, the dully malicious, the bluntly vivacious, the perverse humour, combining wit with ill-nature, Underhill was the chief of the actors of the half century during which he kept the stage. Cibber avers thus much, and adds that he had not seen Cave's equal in Sir Sampson Legend in Congreve's "Love for Love." A year before the old actor ceased to linger on the stage he had once made light with laughter, a benefit was awarded him, viz., on the 3d of June 1709.[34] The patronage of the public was previously bespoken by Mr. Bickerstaffe, in the _Tatler_, whose father had known "honest Cave Underhill" when he was a boy. The _Tatler_ praises the old comedian for the natural style of his acting, in which he avoided all exaggeration, and never added a word to his author's text, a vice with the younger actors of the time. On this occasion Underhill played his old part of the Gravedigger, professedly because he was fit for no other. His judgment was not ill founded, if Cibber's testimony be true that he was really worn and disabled, and excited pity rather than laughter. The old man died a pensioner of the theatre whose proprietors he had helped to enrich, with the reputation of having, under the pseudonym of Elephant Smith, composed a mock funeral sermon on Titus Oates; and with the further repute of being an ultra-Tory, addicted in coffee-houses to drink the Duke of York's health more heartily than that of his brother, the King.