When in December 1708 The Fine Lady’s Airs gained only a moderate success Baker must have thought of a living in the Church as a pis aller, for he enrolled at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, March 8, 1709, and took an M.A. there the same year.  In a final attempt to succeed with his pen he seems to have tried periodical journalism in the guise of “Mrs. Crackenthorpe” in The Female Tatler.  The British Apollo, at least, pinned this on him.  “The author poses as a woman,” it says, in effect, “and some may thus be taken in,”

    But others will swear that this wise Undertaker
    By Trade’s an At—­ney, by Name is a B—­r,
    Who rambles about with a Female Disguise on
    And lives upon Scandal, as Toads do on Poyson.[9]

Perhaps it was this which, taken quite literally, produced the Biographia Dramatica’s canard as to Baker’s effeminacy (see above).

After grinding out a greater or less amount of this hack-work,[10] Baker gave up trying to write.  His disappearance from the scene thereafter is accounted for by his appointment (1711) to a living in Bedfordshire, where he was Rector of Bolnhurst till his death, and (1716-31) Vicar of Ravensden.  As the Bolnhurst school was founded upon a bequest from him in 1749,[11] he presumably died in that year—­but not, I should guess, of morbus pediculosus.

John Harrington Smith University of California, Los Angeles

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION

[Footnote 1:  The other was William Burnaby.  His plays have been given a modern editing by F.E.  Budd (Scholartis Press, 1931).]

[Footnote 2:  Nicoll, Early Eighteenth Century Drama, Handlist of Plays.  For all subsequent statements as to dates of production I follow this source.]

[Footnote 3:  It was still too lively, however, to be acted outside London.  The Harvard Theatre Collection has a copy once owned by Joe Haines with “cuts” designed to soften it for playing in the provinces.  Such lines as, “The Godly never go to Taverns, but get drunk every Night at one another’s Houses,” “Citizens are as fond of their Wives, as their Wives are of other People,” and “Virtue’s an Impossibility ... every Citizen’s Wife pretends to’t,” are carefully expunged.]

[Footnote 4:  E.g., Bloom to Mrs. Driver, “One moment into that Closet, if it be but to read the Practice of Piety” becomes “One Moment into that Closet, Dear, dear Creature; they say it’s mighty prettily furnish’d,” And in her aside, “I vow, I’ve a good mind; but Virtue—­the Devil, I ne’re was so put to’t i’ my Life,” for the words “the Devil” are substituted the words “and Reputation.”]

[Footnote 5:  No. 50, Sept. 14; No. 61, Oct. 26.]

[Footnote 6:  According to the impression I have of this “morbus” it was a skin-ailment particularly appropriated to beggars, who might contract it upon long exposure to filth and louse-bites.  Even then, though there would doubtless be a certain amount “of discomfort about it, it would scarcely prove fatal.]