“Upon the hypocrisy of the French character,” explains Cibber (who probably looked upon France, Papacy, and the Pretender as a threefold combination of sin), “I engrafted a stronger wickedness, that of an English Popish priest lurking under the doctrine of our own Church to raise his fortune upon the ruin of a worthy gentleman, whom his dissembled sanctity had seduc’d into the treasonable cause of a Roman Catholick outlaw.  How this design, in the play, was executed, I refer to the readers of it; it cannot be mended by any critical remarks I can make in its favour.  Let it speak for itself.”

The “Non-juror” did speak for itself, too, and that in decided terms.[A] The production entailed the scorn of the disaffected, and made for Cibber some lasting enemies, but the friends of government were strong, Cibber was lauded for his loyalty, and the comedy achieved a triumph.  The vivacity of Oldfield’s acting, as Maria, delighted all beholders, and it was further agreed that the performance was well given throughout.  In the cast were Booth, Mills, Wilks, Cibber, Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Oldfield, and Walker.  The Walker here mentioned was at that time a very young man, not over seventeen or eighteen years of age, and made his first hit in the “Non-juror.”  When the “Beggars’ Opera” was subsequently brought out, the mighty Quin refused to play the highwayman, Macheath, and Walker willingly took the part and made therein the reputation of his life.  But success turned his unsteady head.  “He follow’d Bacchus too ardently, insomuch that his credit was often drown’d upon the stage, and, by degrees, almost render’d him useless.”  Ungrammatical, but to the point, Mr. Chetwood.

[Footnote A:  The success surpassed even expectation.  It raised against Cibber a phalanx of implacable foes—­foes who howled at everything of which he was afterwards the author; but it gained for him his advancement to the poet-laureateship, and an estimation which caused some people to place him, for usefulness to the cause of true religion, on an equality with the author of “The Whole Duty of Man.”—­DR. DORAN.]

This Walker was a genius in a small fashion.  He possessed an expressive face and manly figure, with a native buoyancy and humour which stood him in good stead in the character of Macheath, while he had the further gift of dominating a tragic scene with an assumption of tyrannic fire which must have been greatly admired by the theatre-goers of his time.  He could not sing, to be sure, when he graced the “Beggars’ Opera,” but the audiences took the will for the deed, applauded his gaiety of action, and quickly pardoned his lyric short-comings.  We are equally lenient nowadays to many a comic-opera comedian, so called.  Chetwood tells us that Walker was the supposed author of two pieces, “The Quakers’ Opera,” and a tragedy styled “The Fate of Villainy.”  The latter, it appears, “he brought to Ireland in the year 1744, and prevailed on the proprietors (of the Dublin theatre) to act it, under the title of ‘Love and Loyalty.’  The second night was given out for his benefit; but not being able to pay in half the charge of the common expences, the doors were order’d to be kept shut.”