were ease, sprightliness, and distinction of manner, which caused him to be accepted as a model of behaviour in fashionable society. Concerning his relations with Farquhar (which were uniformly good) it has been said by some versifier without much sense of proportion:
Farquhar by writing gain'd himself a name,
And Wilks by Farquhar gain'd immortal fame.
Farquhar, who had been more than once pecuniarily indebted to Wilks, commended to him on his deathbed his orphan daughters. So well was the trust fulfilled that the girls were said to have lost in Wilks a second father. Among those whom Wilks benefited by a somewhat lavish generosity (to which it was due that, though in receipt of an income large for the time, he left his wife almost without provision) was Richard Savage. Dr. Johnson praised Wilks for his generosity in characteristic language. ‘To be humane, generous, and candid is a very high degree of merit in any case, but those qualities deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man … contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal’ (Works, viii. 107). Steele in the ‘Spectator’ (No. 370) speaks of ‘commending Wilks for representing the tenderness of a husband and a father in “Macbeth,” the contrition of a reformed prodigal in “Henry the Fourth,” the winning simpleness of a young man of good nature and wealth in the “Trip to the Jubilee” [Sir Harry Wildair], the officiousness of an artful servant [Mosca] in the “Fox.”’ In the ‘Tatler’ (No. 182) he speaks of Wilks and Cibber as ‘the first of the present stage … perfect actors in their different kinds,’ and draws a parallel between them, the most significant phrase in which is that ‘Wilks has a singular talent in representing the graces of nature, Cibber the deformity in the affectation of them.’ The only charges brought against Wilks as a manager were a certain impetuosity in command and some favouritism towards actors such as Mills, his great friend, whose mediocrity and propriety of conduct appealed to him more than the brilliant talent and irregularity of life of a born actor such as Booth.
A portrait of Wilks was painted in the year of his death by John Ellys or Ellis [q. v.], and was engraved by J. Faber (see Smith, Catalogue).
William Wilks (fl. 1717–1723), a nephew of the preceding, appeared at Drury Lane on 17 Oct. 1715 as Sir George Airey in the ‘Busy Body.’ He was bred as an attorney; Wilks tried vainly to dissuade him from adopting the stage, but sent him in 1714 to Ashbury, the manager of the Dublin Theatre, whom he urged to show him his faults. According to Chetwood, William Wilks played one season at Smock Alley, was engaged at 30s. a week for Drury Lane, and died before he was thirty. His name appears in Genest to Tressel in Cibber's ‘Richard III,’ Octavio in ‘She would and she would not,’ Farewell in ‘Sir Courtly Nice,’ Verdone in the ‘Little French Lawyer,’ Ned Brag in ‘Love for Money,’ Dapperwit in ‘Love in a Wood.’ He had a benefit on 27 April 1719; other benefits to Wilks's brother, the office-keeper, were given on 5 June 1718 and 11 May 1719. On 11 Nov. 1719 W. Wilks was the first Sicinius in Dennis's ‘Invader of his Country.’ On 2 Oct. 1722 he was the original Fainwell in Mrs. Centlivre's ‘Artifice.’ On 7 Jan. of the following year he played Ferdinand in the ‘Tempest,’ and on 5 July 1723 was the first Young Clifford in Theophilus Cibber's alteration of ‘King Henry VI.’ The last part to which his name is found is Sir Harry Beaumont in the first representation of Mrs. Haywood's ‘Wife to be Let’ on 12 Aug. 1723.
[There are early lives of Wilks, all untrustworthy and mostly contradictory of each other. These lives, one anonymous and dedicated to Colley Cibber; a second by Daniel O'Bryan, and a third by Curll, asserting that the two other were unworthy of credit; statements certified to by Mary Wilks, his relict, and by Wilks's brother-in-law, Alex Kingston, were issued within a year of the actor's death, and went through various editions. All are now scarce. Cibber in his Apology supplies much information, often inaccurate. The best account is that in Chetwood's General History of the Stage. Lives appear in Galt's Lives of the Players, and the Georgian Era. The list of characters is taken from Genest's Account of the English Stage. See also Doran's Annals of the English Stage, ed. Lowe; Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill; Hitchcock's Irish Stage; Chalmers's British Essayists; Steele's Theatre; Cunningham and Wheatley's London Past and Present; Clark Russell's Representative Actors; Dibdin's History of the Stage; Lowe's Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature. In the book last named is mentioned ‘To Diabebouloumenon, or the Proceedings at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane,’ 1723, 4to, which appears to deal with the resignation by Wilks of the part of Sir Harry Wildair.]
WILKS, SAMUEL CHARLES (1789–1872), evangelical divine, born in 1789, was son of Samuel Wilks of Newington, Surrey. His grandfather, Samuel Wilks, like many other members of the family,
