But who is this jaunty personage, so noisy at a rehearsal of one of his own indifferent plays? It is "Ned Howard," one of the three sons of the dirty Earl of Berkshire, the first Howard who bore that title, and whom Pepys saw one July day of 1666, serving the King with liquor, "in that dirty pickle I never saw man in, in my life." The daughter of this Earl was the wife of Dryden.
And what does Ned Howard say at rehearsal? The actors are making some objection to his piece; but he exclaims, "In fine,--it shall read, and write, and act, and print, and pit, box, and gallery it, egad, with any play in Europe!" The play fails; and then you may hear Ned in any coffee house, or wherever there is a company, proclaiming, by way of excuse, that "Mr. So-and-so the actor didn't _top his part, sir_!" It was Ned Howard's favourite phrase.
The old Earl of Berkshire gave three sons to literature, besides a daughter to Dryden; namely, Sir Robert, James, and this Edward. The last-named was the least effective. His characters "talk," but they are engaged in no plot; and they exhibit a dull lack of incident. The most of his six or seven dramas were failures; but from one of them, which was the most original, indecent, and the most decidedly damned, Mrs. Inchbald condescended to extract matter which she turned to very good purpose in her "Every one has his Fault." Edward Howard gratified the court-party in his tragedy of "The Usurper," by describing, under the character of Damocles the Syracusan, the once redoubted Oliver Cromwell: while Hugo de Petra but thinly veiled Hugh Peters; and Cleomenes is said to have been the shadow of General Monk. Lacy said that Ned was "more of a fool than a poet;" and Buckingham was of the same opinion.
James Howard came under Buckingham's censure too; and an incident in the "English Monsieur," which, if Pepys's criticism may be accepted, was a mighty, pretty, witty, pleasant, mirthful comedy, furnished the satirical touch in the "Rehearsal," where Prince Volscius falls in love with Parthenope, as he is pulling on his boots to go out of town. James Howard belonged to the faction which affected to believe that there was no popular love for Shakspeare, to render whom palatable, he arranged "Romeo and Juliet" for the stage, with a double denouement--one serious, the other hilarious. If your heart were too sensitive to bear the deaths of the loving pair, you had only to go on the succeeding afternoon to see them wedded, and set upon the way of a well-assured domestic felicity!
