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Cumberland (RICHARD an English dramatist)

RICHARD, an English dramatist, novelist, essayist, and poet, grandson of Richard Bentley; born at Cambridge, Feb. 19, 1732. Of good family and the highest prospects, he was discredited and impoverished in public service, and made literature a profession.

His comedies, "The West Indian," "The Wheel of Fortune," "The Jew," and "The Fashionable Lover," are an epitome of the culture of the time; as are his essays, collected under the title of "The Observer." He wrote "Anecdotes of Eminent Painters in Spain," "Memoirs" (1806). He died in Tunbridge Wells, May 7, 1811.