Foote certainly read the pieces offered him for presentation. He kept Reed's "Register Office" for months, and thought so well of it as to turn its Mrs. Snarewell into Mrs. Cole, in his "Minor." That was little compared with his stealing a whole farce from Murphy; and the last was nothing compared with his return for the hospitality bountifully afforded him by Lord Melcombe, at his villa, at Hammersmith. Foote there studied the peculiarities of his good-natured host, and then produced him on the stage, in the character of the Patron! Foote, again, read old pieces, with a purpose, quite as attentively as he did new. When he produced his "Liar," in 1762, he professed to have taken it from Lopez de Vega, that is, from the original source from which Corneille took his "Menteur." From the latter, Steele took his "Lying Lover," and a comparison of the language of the two pieces will show that Foote plundered Steele, and hoped to escape by acknowledging obligations to an older author, whom he could not read. There is least of plagiarism in the "Mayor of Garratt," yet even there Foote is detected in borrowing from "Epsom Wells," but with judgment. If he was a picker-up of unconnected trifles, he chose only those of value, and he polished and reset them with tact and taste. He has done this in the "Commissary," in which there is a theft from "Injured Love," in a joke which Hook stole, in his turn, from the "Commissary," to enliven his "Killing no Murder." Except in ceasing to mimic Whitfield on the stage, after the death of that religious reformer, I can scarcely find a trait of delicacy in Foote's character. He seems to have been as unscrupulous in act, as he was cruel in his wit. One may forgive him, however, for his remark to John Rich, who had been addressing him curtly, as "_Mister_." Perceiving that Foote was vexed, Rich apologised, by saying, "I sometimes forget my own name." "I am astonished you could forget your own name," said Foote, "though I know very well that you are not able to write it!"