Connor, A Treatise of the Laws of Nature (London, 1727), and John Towers (Dublin, 1750); French translation by Jean Barbeyrac (Amsterdam, 1744); James Tyrrell (1642–1718), grandson of Archbishop Ussher, published an abridgment of Cumberland’s views in A Brief Disquisition of the Laws of Nature according to the Principles laid down in the Rev. Dr Cumberland’s Latin Treatise (London, 1692; ed. 1701). For biographical details see Squier Payne, Account of the Life and Writings of R. Cumberland (London, 1720); Cumberland’s Memoirs (1807), i. 3-6; Pepys’s Diary. For his philosophy, see E. Albee, Philosophical Review, iv. 3 (1895), pp. 264 and 371; F. E. Spaulding, R. Cumberland als Begründer der englischen Ethik (Leipzig, 1894); and text-books on ethics.
CUMBERLAND, RICHARD (1732–1811), English dramatist, was born in the master’s lodge of Trinity College, Cambridge, on the 19th of February 1732. He was the great-grandson of the bishop of Peterborough; and his father, Dr Denison Cumberland, became successively bishop of Clonfert and of Kilmore.
His mother was Joanna, the youngest daughter of the great
scholar Richard Bentley, and the heroine of John Byrom’s once
popular little eclogue, Colin and Phoebe. Of the great master
of Trinity his grandson has left a kindly account; he afterwards
collected all the pamphlets bearing on the Letters of Phalaris
controversy, and piously defended the reputation of his ancestor
in his Letter to Bishop Lowth, who had called Bentley “aut
caprimulgus aut fossor.” Cumberland was in his seventh
year sent to the grammar-school at Bury St Edmunds, and he
relates how, on the head-master Arthur Kinsman undertaking,
in conversation with Bentley, to make the grandson as good a scholar as the grandfather himself, the latter retorted: “Pshaw, Arthur, how can that be, when I have forgot more than thou ever knewest?” Bentley died during his grandson’s Bury schooldays; and in 1744 the boy, who, while rising to the head of his
school, had already begun to “try his strength in several slight
attempts towards the drama,” was removed to Westminster,
then at the height of its reputation under Dr Nicholls. Among
his schoolfellows here were Warren Hastings, George Colman
(the elder), Lloyd, and (though he does not mention them as
such) Churchill and Cowper. From Westminster Cumberland
passed, in his fourteenth year, to Trinity College, Cambridge,
where in 1750 he took his degree as tenth wrangler. His account
of his degree examination, as well as that for a fellowship at his
college, part of which he underwent in the “judges’ chamber,”
where he was born, is curious; he was by virtue of an alteration
in the statutes elected to his fellowship in the second year of his
degree.
Meanwhile his projects of work as a classical scholar had been interspersed with attempts at imitating Spenser—whom, by his mother’s advice, he “laid upon the shelf”—and a dramatic effort (unprinted) on the model of Mason’s Elfrida, called Caractacus. He had just begun to read for his fellowship, when he was offered the post of private secretary by the earl of Halifax, first lord of trade and plantations in the duke of Newcastle’s ministry. His family persuaded him to accept the office, to which he returned after his election as fellow. It left him abundant leisure for literary pursuits, which included the design of a poem in blank verse on India. He resigned his Trinity fellowship on his marriage—in 1759—to his cousin Elizabeth Ridge, to whom he had paid his addresses on receiving through Lord Halifax “a small establishment as crown-agent for Nova Scotia.” In 1761 he accompanied his patron (who had been appointed lord-lieutenant) to Ireland as Ulster secretary; and in acknowledgment of his services was afterwards offered a baronetcy. By declining this he thinks he gave offence; at all events, when in 1762 Halifax became secretary of state, Cumberland in vain applied for the post of under-secretary, and could only obtain the clerkship of reports at the Board of Trade under Lord Hillsborough. While he takes some credit to himself for his incorruptibility when in Ireland, he showed zeal for his friend and secured a bishopric for his father. On the accession to office of Lord George Germaine (Sackville) in 1775, Cumberland was appointed secretary to the Board of Trade and Plantations, which post he held till the abolition of that board in 1782 by Burke’s economical reform. Before this event he had, in 1780, been sent on a confidential mission to Spain, to negotiate a separate treaty of peace with that power; but though he was well received by King Charles III. and his minister Floridablanca, the question of Gibraltar proved a stumbling-block, and the Gordon riots at home a most untoward occurrence. He was recalled in 1781, and was refused repayment of the expenses he had incurred, towards which only £1000 had been advanced to him. He thus found himself £4500 out of pocket: in vain, he says, “I wearied the door of Lord North till his very servants drove me from it”; his memorial remained unread or unnoticed either by the prime minister or by secretary Robinson, through whom the original promise had been made. Soon after this experience he lost his office, and had to retire on a compensation allowance of less than half-pay. He now took up his residence at Tunbridge Wells; but during his last years he mostly lived in London, where he died on the 7th of May 1811. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a short oration being pronounced on this occasion by his friend Dean Vincent.
Cumberland’s numerous literary productions are spread over the whole of his long life; but it is only by his contributions to the drama, and perhaps by his Memoirs, that he is likely to be remembered. The collection of essays and other pieces entitled The Observer (1785), afterwards republished together with a translation of The Clouds, found a place among The British Essayists. For the accounts given in The Observer of the Greek writers, especially the comic poets, Cumberland availed himself of Bentley’s MSS. and annotated books in his possession; his translations from the Greek fragments, which are not inelegant but lack closeness, are republished in James Bailey’s Comicorum Graecorum (part i., 1840) and Hermesianactis, Archilochi, et Pratinae fragmenta. Cumberland further produced Anecdotes of Eminent Painters in Spain (1782 and 1787); a Catalogue of the King of Spain’s Paintings (1787); two novels—Arundel (1789), a story in letters, and Henry (1795), a “diluted comedy” on the construction and polishing of which he seems to have expended great care; a religious epic, Calvary, or the Death of Christ (1792); his last publication was a poem entitled Retrospection. He is also supposed to have joined Sir James Bland Burges in an epic, the Exodiad (1807), and in John de Lancaster, a novel. Besides these he wrote the Letter to the Bishop of O[xfor]d in vindication of Bentley (1767); another to the Bishop of Llandaff (Richard Watson) on his proposal for equalizing the revenues of the Established Church (1783); a Character of the late Lord Sackville (1785), whom in his Memoirs he vindicates from the stigma of cowardice; and an anonymous pamphlet, Curtius rescued from the Gulf, against the redoubtable Dr Parr. He was also the author of a version of fifty of the Psalms of David; of a tract on the evidences of Christianity; and of other religious exercises in prose and verse, the former including “as many sermons as would make a large volume, some of which have been delivered from the pulpits.” Lastly, he edited, in 1809, a short-lived critical journal called The London Review, intended to be a rival to the Quarterly, with signed articles.
Cumberland’s Memoirs, which he began at the close of 1804, and concluded in September 1805, were published in 1806, and a supplement was added in 1807. This narrative, which includes a long account of his Spanish mission, contains some interesting reminiscences of several persons of note—more especially Bubb Dodington, Single-Speech Hamilton, and Lord George Sackville among politicians, and of Garrick, Foote and Goldsmith; but the accuracy of some of the anecdotes concerning the last-named is not beyond suspicion. The book exhibits its author as an amiable egotist, careful of his own reputation, given to prolixity and undistinguished by wit, but a good observer of men and manners. The uneasy self-absorption which Sheridan immortalized in the character of Sir Fretful Plagiary in The Critic is apparent enough in this autobiography, but presents itself there in no offensive form. The incidental criticisms of actors have been justly praised.
Cumberland was hardly warranted in the conjecture that no English author had yet equalled his list of dramas in point of number; but his plays, published and unpublished, have been
