Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/51

F A R F A R 41 have appeared a compliment to his genius, and in truth there was something to forgive on his own part for having been so readily entrapped contrary to all the rules of love and the drama. Increased exertion, however, was necessary, and in 1 704 he produced The Stage Coach, a piece adapted from the French by Farquhar in conjunction with Anthony Motteux, a clever, reckless playwright and essayist, and re markable as having, though a Frenchman, given the world the best English translation of Don Quixote. Three more comedies proceeded from Farquhar before his career was sadly closed at the age of thirty. The 2* win Rivals was brought out in 1705, The Recruiting Officer in 1706, and Ttie Beaux Stratagem in 1707. The last two are vastly superior to Farquhar s other plays, and are the works by which he is now remembered. To relieve the poor dramatist from his difficulties, increased by his ill-starred marriage, the duke of Ormond is said to have advised him to sell his commission in the army and pay his debts, his grace promising at the same time to give him a captaincy in his own regiment. Farquhar sold his commission, but the duke either forgot or was unable to fulfil his promise. Farquhar s earliest biographer ascribes the unfortunate counsel to a " certain great courtier," who made solemn assurance which he forgot to keep. The Beaux Stratagem was written in six weeks, while death was impending over its author. Before he had finished the second act he knew that he was stricken with a mortal illness, but it was necessary to persevere and to be " consumedly lively " to the end. He had received in advance .30 for the copy right from Lintot the bookseller. The play was brought on the stage March 8, and Farquhar lived to have his third night, and an extra benefit on the 29th of April, on which day he is said to have died. He left his two children to the care of his friend Wilks : " Dear Bob, I have nothing to Isave thee to perpetuate my memory but two helpless girls. Look upon them sometimes and think of him that was to the last moment of his life thine, GEORGE FARQUHAK." Wilks obtained a benefit at the theatre for the dramatist s widow, and the daughters had a pension of .30 a year, which one of them was in receipt of so late as 1764. The plots of Farquhar s comedies are skilfully conducted and evolved ; his situations are well chosen (in these his friend Wilks s advice would be useful), and his dialogues are full of life and spirit. To the polished wit and brilliancy of Congreve he has no pretension. His scenes are light and sketchy, and his characters altogether on a lower level than Congreve s, but they were quite equal to them in stage effect. Sergeant Kite, Scrub, Archer, and Boniface are distinct original characters which long charmed on the stage, while the incidents with which they are mixed up the un expected encounters, adventures, artifices, and disguises are irresistibly comic and attractive in representation. Pope considered Farquhar a mere farce writer, while Goldsmith (who evidently adopted him as a model) preferred him to Congreve. On the stage, with good actors, he might be so preferred, but never in the library. He had the advantage of being less designedly and elaborately licentious than Congreve. Love intrigues then formed the chief business of the comic drama ; and in the management of them the homely domestic virtues that form the happiness and cement of society were disregarded or made the subject of ridicule. It is true that the world of comedy was, as argued by Charles Lamb, an artificial world, never perhaps regarded as real or as supplying patterns of morals or manners, but the effect of such representations was to lower and corrupt the national taste, while the fact that no pursuit was then so profitable to an author as writing for the stage was also injurious to our imaginative literature. On this moral view of the question, the reasoning of Macaulay and the eloquent objurgation of Thackeray are un answerable. 1 The artificial comedy, or comedy of manners, as seen in the beginning of the last century, is now " quite extinct on our stage," as Leigh Hunt has observed ; but Hunt is surely in error in dating the decline of English comedy from the time of Farquhar. To say nothing of Goldsmith s two plays, Sheridan s Rivals and School for Scandal show no declension in brilliancy of dialogue, wit, or vivacity, and some of the plays of Cumberland and the Colmans evince high dramatic talent. (R. CA.) FARRAGUT, DAVID GLASCOE (1801-1870), first admiral of the United States navy, was the son of Major George Farragut, a Catalan by descent, a Minorquin by birth, who had emigrated to America in 1776, and, after the peace, had married a lady of Scotch family and settled near Knoxville, in Tennessee ; there Farragut was born on the 5th July 1801. At the early age of nine he entered the navy, under the protection of his name-father, Captain David Porter, with whom he served in the "Essex" during her cruise in the Atlantic in 1812, and afterwards in the Pacific, until her capture by the " Phcebe," in Valparaiso Bay, on the 28th March 1814. He afterwards served on board the " Washington," 74, carrying the broad pennant of Com modore Chauncey in the Mediterranean, and pursued his professional and other studies under the instruction of the chaplain, Mr Folsom, with whom he contracted a life-long friendship. Folsom was appointed from the "Washington as U.S. consul at Tunis, and obtained leave for his pupil to pay him a lengthened visit, in the course of which he acquired a familiar knowledge of Arabic and Turkish. Farragut is said, in his later years, to have spoken fluently all the principal European languages ; this is probably an exaggeration, but with an hereditary knowledge of Spanish, he may have picked up some French and Italian at this time ; until the very end of his career, it was his only visit to European waters. In 1825 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, whilst serving in the navy yard at Norfolk, where he continued till 1832 ; he then served for a com mission on the coast of Brazil, and was again appointed to the yard at Norfolk. It is needless to trace the ordinary routine of his service step by step. The officers of the U.S. navy have one great advantage which is wanting to our own ; when on shore they are not necessarily parted from the service, but are employed in their several ranks in the different dockyards, escaping thus not only the private grievance and pecuniary difficulties of a very narrow half- pay, but also, what from a public point of view is much more important, the loss of professional aptitude, and of that skill which comes from unceasing practice. On the 8th September 1841 Farragut was promoted to the rank of commander, and on the 14th September 1855 to that of captain. At this time he was in charge of the navy yard, Mare Island, California, from which post he was recalled in 1858, and appointed to the " Brooklyn " frigate, the com mand of which he held for the next two years. When the war of secession broke out in 1861, he was " waiting orders " at Norfolk. By birth and marriage he was a Southerner, and the citizens of Norfolk counted on his throwing in his lot with them ; but professional pride, and affection for the flag under which he had served for more than fifty years, held him true to his allegiance : he passionately rejected the proposals of his fellow townsmen, and as it was more than hinted to him that his longer stay in Norfolk might be dangerous, he hastily quitted that place, and offered his services to the Government at Wash ington. These were at once accepted ; he was requested 1 See Macaulay s essay on the Comic Dramatists of the Reformation, and Thackeray s Enr/lish Humorists. In 1840 Leigh Hunt published biographical and critical notices of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbnigh, and Farquhar, prefixed to an edition of their dramatic works a valuable addition to our dramatic literature. IX. 6