spect of success for a man trained
as he, and, as for poetry, one can only expect to be "two years writing
a Play, and sollicit three more to get it acted; and for present
Sustenance one's forc'd to scribble _The Diverting Post, A Dialogue
between Charing-Cross and Bow Steeple_, and Elegies upon People that are
hang'd."

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