In this piece, there is the most perfect of Cibber's beaux, written for his own acting; and it is to be observed, that as time progressed and fashion changed, so did he observe the progress, and in his costume illustrate the change. Lord Foppington is a different man from Sir Novelty Fashion; my lord _does_ make love to a lady. With a respectful leer, he stares full in her face, draws up his breath, and cries, "Gad, you're handsome!" He is married, too, and has just sufficient regard for his wife to wish himself sun-burnt if he does not prefer her to his estate. He talks French enough to cite an _à la_ what d'ye call it; has Horace enough at his memory's ends to show his breeding, by an apt quotation; and evidences his gentlemanly feeling, albeit a _fine_-gentlemanly feeling, on witnessing the happy union of the two wayward lovers,--Lord Morelove and Lady Betty Modish,--by the very characteristic exclamation:--"Stap my breath, if ever I was better pleased since my first entrance into human nature!" The example of comparative purity, set in this piece, was not immediately followed; but for that, Cibber is not to blame. The "Careless Husband" was produced in 1704, and nearly seventy years elapsed before the period when Garrick positively refused to pollute the boards of Drury Lane, by reproducing thereon, on Lord Mayors' Days, one of the most filthy of the filthy plays of Ravenscroft.[79] The critics of Cibber's time were unreasonable. Because he was sometimes an adapter, they called him an adapter always; and the reviewers, sick, sorry, nay maddened at his success, declared of his most original comedy, that it was "not his own." But they never had the wit to discover whence he had stolen it. He took the adverse criticism with philosophy and good-humour,--as he took most things. By the last, he once saved ten shillings a week of his salary. Rich announced the intended reduction to him, with the remark, that even then he would have as much as Goodman ever had,--whose highest salary was forty shillings a week. "Aye!" said Cibber, laughing, "and Goodman was forced to go on the highway, to help him to live!" To save Colley from the same desperate course, Rich made no reduction in his salary.