For I considered that I knew of no visible fund to support these actors but their own industry; that all his recruits from Drury Lane would want new cloathing; and that the warmest industry would be always labouring up hill under so necessary an expence, so bad a situation, and so inconvenient a theatre," &c.
* * * * * In fine, Master Colley resolved that it would be the course of wisdom to stay at Drury Lane, where he seems to have enjoyed to an unusual degree the confidence of the very manager whom afterwards he did not hesitate to abuse.

So when Cibber came up to London from Gloucestershire, where he had been spending his vacation, he returned to the fold of his old master.
* * * * * "But I found our company so thinn'd that it was almost impracticable to bring any one tolerable play upon the stage.

When I ask'd him where were his actors, and in what manner he intended to proceed?
he reply'd, _Don't you trouble yourself, come along, and I'll shew you_.
"He then led me about all the by-places in the house, and shew'd me fifty little backdoors, dark closets, and narrow passages in alterations and contrivances of which kind he had busied his head most part of the vacation; for he was scarce ever without some notable joyner or a bricklayer extraordinary, in pay, for twenty years.

And there are so many odd obscure places about a theatre, that his genius in nook-building was never out of employment, nor could the most vain-headed author be more deaf to an interruption in reciting his works, than our wise master was while entertaining me with the improvements he had made in his invisible architecture; all which, without thinking any one part of it necessary, tho' I seem'd to approve, I could not help now and then breaking in upon his delight with the impertinent question of--_But, Master, where are your actors_ ?" * * * * * This exhibition of a spirit so commonplace and inartistic proved too much for Cibber.

Perhaps he might have pardoned it had there been no salary owing him, for your greatest apostle of the drama will sometimes do a good deal of winking at glaring inconsistencies when a money _quid pro quo_ looms up in the distance.