COLMAN, George (1733-1794), essayist and dramatist, usually called the Elder, and sometimes George the First, to distinguish him from his son, was born at Florence, where his father was stationed as resident at the court of the grand duke of Tuscany. After a preliminary course of study at a private academy in Marylebone, he was sent to Westminster School, which he left in due course for Christ Church, Oxford. Here he made the acquaintance of Bonnet Thornton, the parodist, and together they founded The Connoisseur (1754-1756), a periodical which reached its 14Oth number, and which, Johnson said, « wanted weight.” In 1758 he took the degree of Master of Arts, came to London soon afterwards, was entered at Lincoln’s Inn, and was duly called to the bar; and in 1760 he produced his first play, Polly Honeycomb, which met with great success.· In 1761 he brought out The Jealous Wife, a comedy rich in borrowed excellences; in 1764 the death of Lord Bath placed him in possession of an annuity; in 1765 appeared his brilliant metrical translation of the plays of Terence; and in 1766 he produced The Clandestine Marriage, jointly with Garrick, whose Lord Ogleby was one of his finest impersonations. In 1767 he succeeded to a second annuity, on the death of General Pulteney, purchased a fourth share in Covent Garden Theatre, and was appointed acting manager. In 1768 he was elected into the famous Literary Club, then nominally consisting of twelve members; in 1774, after seven years of managership, he sold his share in the great playhouse to Leake; and in 1777 he purchased of Foote, then broken in health and spirits, and near his end, the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. In 1778 he published an edition of Beaumont and Fletcher; and in 1783 appeared his translation of Horace’s ...Epistle De Arte Poetica, with notes and a commentary. He was attacked with palsy in 1785; in 1789 his brain became affected, and he lapsed gradually into idiocy. Besides the works already cited, Colman was author of some 35 plays, of an excellent translation from the Mercator of Plautus for Bonnell Thornton’s edition (1769-1772), and of many parodies and occasional pieces. An incomplete edition of his dramatic works was published in 1777, in four volumes. See also Prose on Several Occasions, with some Pieces in Verse, by George Colman, London, 1787, 3 vols.; and Some Particulars of the Life of the Late George Colman, Written by Himself, London, 1795.
COLMAN, George (1762—1836), the Younger, son of the preceding, passed from Westminster School to Christ Church, Oxford, and King’s College, Aberdeen, and was finally entered as a student of law at the Temple, London. While at Aberdeen he published a poem in honour of Charles James Fox, called The Man of the People; and in 1782 he produced, at his father’s playhouse in the Haymarket, his first play, The Female Dramatists, for which Roderick Random supplied the materials. It was unanimously condemned, but his next attempt, Two to One, was entirely successful, and the young Templar’s vocation was decided on. The failing health of the elder Colman obliging him to relinquish the management of the Haymarket theatre, the younger George succeeded him, at a yearly salary of £600. On the death of the father the patent was continued to the son; but difficulties arose in his way, lawsuits and pamphlets accumulated round him, and he was forced to take sanctuary within the Rules of the King’s Bench. Here he resided for many years. Released at last through the kindness of George IV., who had appointed him exon of the Yeomen of the Guard, a dignity disposed of by Colman to the highest bidder, he was made examiner of plays by the duke of Montrose, then lord chamberlain. This office, to the disgust of all contemporary dramatists, to whose MSS. he was as illiberal as severe, he held till his death. Colman’s comedies, which have never been collected, are a curious mixture of genuine comic force and platitudinous sentimentality. Several of them are yet acted; but their popularity is rather to be attributed to the humour of the actors who adopt them as vehicles for display than to any intrinsic vitality. The best of them are John Bull (1805), for which the author received the largest sum of money that had till then been paid for any single play, The Poor Gentleman, and The Heir-at-Law. Colman, whose conversational powers were remarkable, as Byron has recorded, was also the author of a great deal of so-called humorous poetry (mostly coarse, though much of •it was popular)— My Night Gown and Slippers (1797), Broad Grins (1802), and Poetical Vagaries (1812). Some of his writings were published under the assumed name of Arthur Griffinhood of Turnham Green. See Random Records, London, 1830, 2 vols.; and R. B. Peake, Memoirs of the Colman Family, London, 1842, 2 vols.
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