a lady's, the hangman should be summoned to perform his office. Such violations of propriety are not to be endured: let them be corrected, and I shall be ready and content to agree with Mr. Hunt, that our Royal Stages have in no period of my remembrance been more amply furnished with performers, capable of doing justice to the best writers, and something more than justice warrants to the bad.

At the same time it is of a long succession of departed favourites, eminent in their profession, that I could speak within the period of nearly seventy years. To have seen them, and retain a lively recollection of their persons and performances, is amongst the few gratifications, which Time bestows upon old age in compensation for much better comforts, which he takes

away.

I can imagine that I sit and hear the deep-toned and declamatory roll of Quin's sonorous recitation; solemn, articulate and round; dealt out with that pedantic magisterial air, as if he were a professor lecturing his pupils ex cathedra, and not an actor addressing his audience from the stage. I can fancy that I see him sawing the air with his unwieldy arm, whilst the line laboured as he mouthed it forth. A vast full-bottomed perris wig, bepowdering a velvet coat embroidered down the seams, a long cravat, square-toed high-heeled shoes, and rolled silk stockings, clothing two sturdy legs, that rivalled ballustrades, were in his day the equipments of a modern tragic hero; whilst the hoop and shape (as we see it represented by Hogarth) surmounted by a high-plumed helmet over the aforesaid full-bottom, denoted the Roman or Grecian chief in his antient and appropiate costuma. We saw those things without amazement then.

Let me not however fail to recollect, that this Atlas of the stage could stand under the enormous globe of Falstaff's paunch, and carry himself through that eccentric character with consummate pleasantry. When I saw him once in that part I was very young, and of course very easily amused; but it was in

my much riper state of judgment, when I kept much more careful watch upon Henderson in the same part, and his performance was according to my conception of good acting one of those instances, so soon summed up, of absolute histrionic perfection; and I class it in my idea of excellence with the Lear of Garrick, the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. Pritchard, the Penruddock of Kemble, and (I must take leave to add) with the lago of Mr. Cooke.

Quin was not a confined actor: he did not walk in a narrow path, but took a circuit in his road to fame through, all the graver casts of the legitimate sententious comedy. He would not have done much for the merry dramatists of the present day, but to the writers of the middle age, Vanbrugh and Farquhar and Congreve, he was a tower of strength. I believe he was oratorical preceptor to His present Majesty; I know he taught Lord Halifax and some other persons of distinction; and till the pointed penetrating style of Garrick gave a less laborious and a quicker current to poetic measure, Quin's Atlantic swell kept its majestic roll unrivalled.

1

It is no new thing to tell the world that Quin was a mannerist: every tragic performer, male or female, has been, is and will be a mannerist, as long as the stage endures. Mrs. Cibber was decidedly such. I have her now in my mind's eye. I behold a slender graceful form from between the wings of a wide expanded hoop-petticoat (pushed sideways on the stage) rise like an exhalation. As she advanced in the character of Calista, Belvidera, or Monimia, she pitched her recitation in that plaintive key, from which she hardly ever varied, and you felt yourself professedly at a tragedy in the first sentence that she uttered. It was sweet, but it was sweetness that sickened you; a song that wearied you; a charm that unnerved, a perfume that stifled you... You would have thanked Mr. Fawcet, or any other saw-grinder, to have broken the spell. There was no bearing the pabetic prolongation of one silver tone although melodious as Apollo's harp. Neither is there any

reason why metrical recitation should copy the mechanical correctness of a steam-engine: because heroic lines are all of the same length, it does not imply that they must all be set to the same tune, and sung in the same time. Let the heroine, who wishes to have mourners at her death, recollect that the swan only sings when she is dying. Whilst I am writing this, 1 have Mrs. Henry Siddons in my thoughts; and as this is the one only instance in which she shares the failings of her prototype, I sincerely wish her to dismiss it. Every picture must have light and shade: the eye enjoys the change of seasons; so does the ear of sounds. The tragic performer should be aware, that the passions must not be wearied by continual solicitation; the strong appeal must be reserved for great occasion. No hearer can sit through five long acts of continual lamenta tion: the finest feelings are the most fugacious; they can only be arrested by a master hand, and then they can be held but for a certain time; a tedious petition destroys its own purpose, and a loquacious pleader is not calculated to excite compassion.

Mrs. Cibber was extremely elegant and alluring in her action; her very frame was fashioned to engage your pity, for it seemed wasted with sorrow and sensibility; the cheek was hollow, and the eye was joyless; there was neither youth, nor health, nor beauty; yet perhaps in the representation of many of her characters she became more impressive by the privation of those charms, than she would have been in the possession of them. I have heard some, who remembered her, contend, that as an actress, she has never been equalled. I am not of that opinion. Her style and manner harmonized with Barry's, as Mrs. Pritchard's did with Garrick's. Barry was the Marc Antony and Romeo of the stage; Garrick would have played Macbeth and Abel Drugger in the same night, and Mrs. Pritchard would have played with him as Lady Macbeth and Doll Common. Foote said, that Garrick would have rehearsed Richard the Third before a kitchen-fire in July to amuse the

boy that turned the spit. I do not know that Mrs. Pritchard would have done quite as much, but she was so little fastidious about her cast of parts, that she took first, second or third, as they fell to her lot; and as Nature was her guide, she always appeared to be the very character she assumed. Whilst she could display the finest powers in the loftiest parts, I have seen her play the humble confidante to Mrs. Cibber's heroine, and never give an elevation to a single line above its pitch and station in the drama. I remember her coming out in the part of Clarinda in The Suspicious Husband, whilst Garrick acted Ranger. The unfitness of her age and person only added to the triumph of her talents. As Garrick's genius could dilate his stature, so could her excellence give grace and juvenility to her person. In short he might have played a giant, and she a fairy, if Shakespear would have written parts for them. On the first night of The Jealous Wife, at which I was présent, she rescued Garrick from his embarrassment, and the audience from its languor, when she broke out and feigned a fit, that electrified the theatre, and saved the play.

The part of Lady Macbeth is probably the strongest test, to which the genius and powers of an actress can be put. None can attempt it with impunity, whose abilities are not of the highest order; for the passions that it stirs, the language it employs and the energy it demands, are all of the sublimest cast. As our nation to its honour boasts the poet, who conceived it, so has it also had to boast of actresses, who in succession from the date of its production to the present day of Mrs. Siddons have figured in that luminous situation without diminishing its lustre.

As I am now speaking of Mrs. Pritchard, and not called upon, nor disposed, to make comparisons, I shall only say that I retain a strong impression of her excellence. I have distinctly in my mind her conduct and deportment in the opening scene, where meditating on the intelligence her husband's letter had imparted to her, she gives the first tremendous indication

of her character; during which she never failed to command the profoundest stillness and attention throughout all the theatre. As she proceeded to unfold her thoughts, and her mind seemed expanded to admit the visions her ambition teemed with, her air, voice, feature, form itself, and her whole nature visibly imbibed the poet's inspiration: then it was we felt that thrilling horror at our hearts, which gave us the full consciousness of her powers, and proved there was an actress, who could picture to the life a character of the most terrific sublimity, that ever man's imagination formed.

To her succeeded Mrs. Yates; to Mrs. Cibber Mrs. Barry, and the stage was still respectably supported. Mrs. Barry in her best days was a lovely and enchanting actress: she possessed in an eminent degree all the properties, that are adapted to express and to excite the tender passions. She had more variation and flexibility of tone than Mrs. Cibber, and her eyes, were powerful auxiliaries to her voice and action. She was not exclusively a tragic actress, but filled the characters of upper comedy with great success, I do not recollect to have seen Garrick play with more animation on any occasion, than when upon the stage with her, as for instance in the part of Don Felix and others of that amatory cast. In those days, before theatres were of the size, to which they, since have grown, the countenances of performers could be distinctly seen, and the language of the eyes could be understood by the spectators; and not to have discovered how their lively com ment animated and improved the text would have been a loss indeed.

Of Garrick it was not originally my purpose to have spoken in this place; but the recollection of his various and enchanting talents presses on my mind, and not to speak of him, when speaking of his colleagues and contemporaries, is a self-denial that I cannot practise. He was the great promoter (I had almost said the founder) of that legitimate taste for the early dramatists, particularly Shakespear, which Mr. Kemble, to his