those, or any of his begging letters, was but just sufficient for the preservation of his life.’
‘Whenever his distresses so pressed as to induce him to dispose of his shirt, he fell upon an artificial method of supplying one. He cut some white paper in strips, which he tied round his wrists, and in the same manner supplied his neck. In this plight he frequently appeared abroad, with the additional inconvenience of want of breeches.’
‘He fell upon some strange schemes of raising trifling sums. He sometimes ordered his wife to inform people that he was just expiring, and by this artifice work on their compassion…. At other times he would propose subscriptions for poems of which only the beginning and the conclusion were written; and by this expedient would relieve some present necessity.’
‘He had so strong a propension to groveling that his
written by her brother, the learned Dr. Samuel Chandler), and the life of Aaron Hill, Esq.; drawn up by his daughter, Mrs. Urania Johnson,—the rest of the Lives were jointly composed by Mr. Cibber, and the late ingenious Mr. Robert Shiells;—a Scotch gentleman, author of several poetical performances.—The life of Eustace Budgell, Esq.; was sent them by an unknown hand; and is an excellent piece of biography.’ Yet the Monthly Review, when it advertised the work in December, 1753, had boasted of ‘the variety in the manner, stile, and peculiar sentiments of the several compilers,’ and had subsequently illustrated this variety by printing three Lives in full, two of the three being the Lives of Hill and Budgell.
What happened begins now to be clear. Shiels wrote the whole work, except the Lives of Hill, Budgell, and Mrs. Chandler. Cibber revised it. He subjoins a long note, signed T. C., to the Life of Thomson. Further, he prefixes to the Life of Betterton the heading ‘Written by R. S.,’ thus very craftily implying that the rest of the book was his own. Griffiths wrote creeping letters, and told commodious broking lies, on the principle of ‘sufficient unto the day.’ When Shiels, who died a few months after the
