George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

ACTORS
When he visited Scotland in 1759 — his elevei mth visit— he /
exhibited his disinterestedness in a very marked ked way, by \
refusing, either for himself personally or for his orphan-house,
the estate, both money and lands, valued at seven thousand
pounds, of a Miss Hunter, which she offered him.
From the account already given of the kindly feeling of
Shuter, the comedian, for Whitefield, and of the visits paid by
the chief of actors to the Tabernacle and Tottenham Court
Chapel, it might be supposed that actors were among White-
field's friends ; that is to say, that they admired his talents,
and respected his character and his calling, while refusing to
yield to his warnings and entreaties to seek another profession ;
but such was not the case. To be inferior to him in histrionic
talent would not calm the fretful temper which most of them
had. Garrick would doubtless have been better pleased had
the public called Whitefield the Garrick of the pulpit, and not
himself ' the Whitefield of the stage.' He could not always
disguise his pleasure when another actor was burlesqued and
mimicked, and his feelings would hardly be more generous
towards a Methodist preacher. Dr. Johnson, guided no doubt
by what he saw and knew of the actors of his day, never made
a truer remark than when he observed, that the stage made
' almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous,
insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.' To these qualities he
might have added—for a description of the staff of actors who
are the most brilliant in the history of the English stage
envious, faithless, deceptive. Foote first of all entertained
the play-house goers by imitating Whitefield's appearance and
manner of speaking. Finding himself so successful, he next
wrote a comedy, called the ' Minor,' which affected to kill
Methodism by ridicule, and took the chief part in it himself.
There is not one happy line in it, and it is as destitute of wit
as of piety. There was something in the impudence of the