FOOTE, SAMUEL, actor and writer of comedy, was b. of a good family at Truro, in Cornwall, 1720. He was educated at Worcester college, Oxford, and about 1740 entered the Temple; but after a career of " pleasure," in the course of which he managed to dissipate two fortunes which had been left him, he turned to the stage as a means of support, and in 1744, made an unsuccessful debut in the character of "Othello." In 1747, lie opened the Haymarket theater—where he was at once director, actor, and dra matic author—with a piece entitled Diversions of the Morning. In this and other pieces, he introduced well-known living characters, and, by his admirable powers of mimicry, succeeded in drawing large audiences, till the theater was closed by order of the magis trates. After 1752, lie continued to perform alternately in London and Dublin. In 1768, he broke his leg by a fall from his horse, and amputation was found necessary.
He, however, recovered his health and spirits, and even turned the incident to account on the stage, composing parts expressly adapted to his own state. He died in 1777. Many comic anecdotes of F. are given in Cooke's Memoirs of Samuel Foote (1805). His conversation must have been inimitably comical. Dr. Johnson, who had a power of refusing to be pleased against his will greater than most men, met F. for the first time at Fitzherbert's, and assumed his most ursine manner; but it was no use: "I was obliged," he says, " to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back in my chair, and fairly laugh it out. Sir, he was irresistible." His plays, four of the hest of which are An Auction of Pictures; The Minor; The Liar; and The Mayor of Garratt, have been frequently published, but never in a complete form. See Forster's essay in the Quart. Rev., 1854.