charges in money; the fourth was still worse, and then another play
was given out, not one place being taken in the boxes for any ensuing
night. The managers were therefore obliged to discontinue it.

This usage Mr. Dennis highly resented; and in his dedication to the
duke of Newcastle, then lord chamberlain, he makes a formal complaint
against the managers. To this play Mr. Colley Cibber took the pains to
write an epilogue, which Mrs. Oldfield spoke with universal applause,
and for which poor peevish, jealous Dennis, abused them both.

Mr. Dennis happened once to go to the play, when a tragedy was acted,
in which the machinery of thunder was introduced, a new artificial
method of producing which he had formerly communicated to the
managers. Incensed by this circumstance, he cried out in a transport
of resentment, 'That is my thunder by G--d; the villains will play my
thunder, but not my plays.' This gave an alarm to the pit, which
he soon explained. He was much subject to these kind of whimsical
transports, and suffered the fervor of his imagination often to subdue
the power of his reason; an instance of which we shall now relate.

After he was worn out with age and poverty, he resided within the
verge of the court, to prevent danger from his creditors. One Saturday
night he happened to saunter to a public house, which he discovered in
a short time was out of the verge. He was sitting in an open drinking
room, and a man of a suspicious appearance happened to come in. There
was something about the man which denoted to Mr. Dennis that he was a
Bailiff: this struck him with a panic; he was afraid his liberty was
now at an end; he sat in the utmost solicitude, but durst not offer to
stir, lest he should be seized upon. After an hour or two had passed
in this painful anxiety, at last the clock struck twelve, when Mr.