VOLUME X SLICE V Fleury, Claude to Foraker (continued 12)

At the same time, he was inexhaustible in the devising of comic scenes of genuine farce. An oration of “old masters,” an election of a suburban mayor, an examination at the College of Physicians, a newspaper conclave where paragraphs are concocted and reputations massacred—all these and other equally happy situations are brought before the mere reader with unfailing vividness. And everywhere the comic dialogue is instinct with spirit and vigour, and the comic characters are true to themselves with a buoyancy which at once raises them above the level of mere theatrical conventionalism. Foote professed to despise the mere caricaturing of national peculiarities as such, and generally used dialect as a mere additional colouring; he was, however, too wide awake to the demands of his public not to treat France and Frenchmen as fair game, and coarsely to appeal to national prejudice. His satire against those everlasting victims of English comedy and farce, the Englishman in Paris and the Englishman returned from Paris, was doubtless well warranted; while at the same time he made fun of the fact that Englishmen are nowhere more addicted to the society of their countrymen than abroad. In general, the purposes of Foote’s social satire are excellent, and the abuses against which it is directed are those which it required courage to attack. The tone of his morality is healthy, and his language, though not aiming at refinement, is remarkably free from intentional grossness. He made occasional mistakes; but he was on the right side in the warfare against the pretentiousness of Cant and the effrontery of Vice, the two master evils of the age and the society in which he lived.

The following is a list of Foote’s farces or “comedies” as he calls them, mostly in three, some in two acts, which remain in print. The date of production, and the character originally performed by Foote, are added to the title of each:

The Knights (1748: Hartop, who assumes the character of Sir Penurious Trifle); Taste (1752), in which part of the Diversions is incorporated; The Englishman in Paris (1753: Young Buck); The Englishman returned from Paris (1756: Sir Charles Buck); The Author (1757: Cadwallader); The Minor (1760: Smirk and Mrs Cole); The Liar (1762); The Orators (1762: Lecturer); The Mayor of Garratt (1763: Major Sturgeon and Matthew Mug); The Patron (1764: Sir Thomas Lofty and Sir Peter Peppercorn); The Commissary (1765: Mr Zac. Fungus); The Devil upon Two Sticks (1768: Devil,—alias Dr Hercules Hellebore); The Lame Lover (1770: Sir Luke Limp); The Maid of Bath (1771: Mr Flint); The Nabob (1772: Sir Matthew Mite); The Bankrupt (1773: Sir Robert Riscounter); The Cozeners (1774: Mr Aircastle); The Capuchin, a second version of The Trip to Calais, forbidden by the censor (1776: O’Donovan). His dramatic works were collected in 1763-1768.

Bibliography.—Foote’s biography may be read in W. (“Conversation”) Cooke’s Memoirs of Samuel Foote (3 vols., 1805), which contain, amidst other matter, a large collection of his good things and of anecdotes concerning him, besides two of his previously unpublished occasional pieces (with the Tragedy à la mode, part of the Diversions, in which Foote appeared as Fustian). From this source seems to have been mainly taken the biographical information in the rather grandiloquent essay on Foote prefixed by “Jon Bee” (John Badcock, fl. 1816-1830, also known as “John Hunds”) to his useful edition of Foote’s Works (3 vols., 1830). Various particulars will be found in Tate Wilkinson’s Wandering Patentee (York, 1795) and in other sources. There is an admirable essay on Foote, reprinted with additions, from the Quarterly Review, in John Forster’s Biographical Essays (1858). A recent life of Foote is by Percy Fitzgerald (1910).

(A. W. W.)

FOOTMAN, a name given among articles of furniture to a metal stand, usually of polished steel or brass, and either oblong or oval in shape, for keeping plates and dishes hot before a dining-room fire. In the days before the general use of hot-water dishes the footman possessed definite utility, but although it is still in occasional use, it is now chiefly regarded as an ornament. It was especially common in the hardware counties of England, where it is still frequently seen; the simple conventionality of its form is not inelegant.

FOOTSCRAY, a city of Bourke county, Victoria, Australia, on the Saltwater river, 4 m. W. of and suburban to Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 18,301. The city has large bluestone quarries from which most of the building stones in Melbourne and the neighbourhood is obtained; it is also an important manufacturing centre, with numerous sugar-mills, jute factories, soap works, woollen-mills, foundries, chemical works and many other minor industries.

FOOT-STALL, a word supposed to be a literal translation of pièdestal, or pedestal, the lower part of a pier in architecture (see Base).

FOPPA, VINCENZO, Italian painter, was born near Brescia. The dates of his birth and death used to be given as 1400 and 1492; but there is now good reason for substituting 1427 and 1515. He settled in Pavia towards 1456, and was the head of a Lombard school of painting which subsisted up to the advent of Leonardo da Vinci. In 1489 he returned to Brescia. His contemporary reputation was very considerable, his merit in perspective and foreshortening being recognized especially. Among his noted works are a fresco in the Brera Gallery, Milan, the “Martyrdom of St Sebastian”; and a “Crucifixion” in the Carrara gallery, Bergamo, executed in 1455. He worked much in Milan and in Genoa, but many of his paintings are now lost.

See C.J. Ffoulkes and R. Maiocchi, Vincenzo Foppa (1910).

FORAGE, food for cattle or horses, chiefly the provender collected for the food of the horses of an army. In early usage the word was confined to the dried forage as opposed to grass. From this word comes “foray,” an expedition in search of “forage,” and hence a pillaging expedition, a raid. The word “forage,” directly derived from the Fr. fourrage, comes from a common Teutonic origin, and appears in “fodder,” food for cattle. The ultimate Indo-European root, pat, cf. Gr. πατεῖσθαι, Lat. pascere, to feed, gives “food,” “feed,” “foster”; and appears also in such Latin derivatives as “pastor,” “pasture.”

FORAIN, J. L. (1852- ), French painter and illustrator, was born in 1852. He became one of the leading modern Parisian caricaturists, who in his merciless exposure of the weaknesses of the bourgeoisie continued the work which was begun by Daumier under the second Empire. The scathing bitterness of his satire is as clearly derived from Daumier as his pictorial style can be traced to Manet and Degas; but even in his painting he never suppresses the caustic spirit that drives him to caricature. He has, indeed, been rightly called “a Degas pushed on to caricature.” In his pen-and-ink work he combines extraordinary economy of means with the utmost power of expression and suggestion. Forain’s popularity dates from the publication of his Comédie parisienne, a series of two hundred and fifty sketches republished in book form. He has contributed many admirable, if sometimes over-daring, pages to the Figaro, Le Rire, L’Assiette au beurre, Le Courrier français, and L’Indiscret. His political drawings for the Figaro were republished in book form under the title of Doux Pays.

FORAKER, JOSEPH HENSON (1846- ), American political leader, was born near Rainsboro, Highland county, Ohio, on the 5th of July 1846. He passed his early life on a farm, enlisted as a private in the 89th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in July 1862, served throughout the Civil War, for part of the time as an aide on the staff of General H.W. Slocum, and in 1865 received a captain’s brevet for “efficient services during the campaigns in North Carolina and Georgia.” After the war he spent two years at the Ohio Wesleyan University and two years at Cornell. In 1869 he was admitted to the Ohio bar and began practice in Cincinnati. He was a judge of the Cincinnati Superior Court from 1879 to 1882. In 1883 he was the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, but was defeated; in 1885 and 1887, however, he was elected, but was again defeated in 1889. He then for eight years practised law with great success in Cincinnati. In 1896 he was elected United States senator to succeed Calvin S. Brice (1845-1898); in 1902 was re-elected and served until 1909. In the Senate he was one of the aggressive Republican leaders, strongly supporting the administration of President M’Kinley (whose name he presented to the Republican National Conventions of 1896 and 1900) in the debates preceding, during, and immediately following the Spanish-American War, and later, during the administration of President Roosevelt, was conspicuous among Republican leaders for his independence. He vigorously opposed various measures advocated by the president, and led the opposition to the president’s summary discharge of certain negro troops after the Brownsville raid of the 13th of August 1906 (see Brownsville, Texas).