his own. We have heard veterans who have seen King, declare, that William Farren in his best days was quite as good as the far-famed original. Mrs. Baddely was reckoned a great beauty, but very improvident, and died in abject poverty. Baddely was jealous of the attentions bestowed on his spouse by George Garrick (David's brother and treasurer), and called him out. Just as they had taken their places and were going to fire, Mrs. Baddely arrived on the ground, and rushed between the combatants, exclaiming, "Spare him! spare him!" Whether she meant her husband or reputed lover, did not trans. spire, but the fight was at an end; and after some tears and explanations, all three went home together amicably in the hackney-coach which had conveyed the lady to the scene of action. John Kemble was once challenged by Aickin, and took the field, attended by Jack Bannister as his second; Aickin had neither pistols nor friend, but Kemble accommodated him with both. Aickin fired, and missed; Kemble declined to return the shot, and the affair terminated. On their way home, Bannister complimented his principal on the perfect coolness and self possession he had evinced. "There was no great merit in that, Jack," replied Kemble, "for I saw from the way in which the fellow pointed his pistol, he was much more likely to shoot you than me."

Baddely was celebrated for acting Frenchmen, but is better remembered by an annual twelfth cake, with wine and punch, bequeathed by him to the performers of Drury-lane, and to provide for which in perpetuity, he invested one hundred pounds in the three per cents.

Do not hurry past the painting now before you. This is a scene from the old comedy of The Committee, by Sir Robert Howard, painted by Vandergucht, with Moody as Teague, and Parsons as Obadiah. The play is better known to modern audiences as curtailed into the farce of Honest Thieves. Observe Parsons attentively. Did you ever see utter, helpless inebriety, so admirably personified without being disgusting? He is drunk down to his shoe-buckles and the strings of his inexpressibles. Garrick was very partial to Parsons, and took great pains in teaching him. His face was long, and possessed astonishing flexibility; the great merit of his countenance was its power of ex

pressing every passion with which comedy abounds. But Parsons, although a rich, unctuous actor, never descended to buffoonery, or coloured more highly than nature suggested to him. He was a well-read man, and also an artist of considerable merit. When his collection of pictures was sold at Christie's after his death, many of his own works brought good prices. Moody was considered the best representative of Irish characters on the London stage, but from all that tradition has preserved concerning him, we suspect he was not to be compared to Jack Johnstone or Tyrone Power.

This very forbidding old gentleman is Charles Macklin, in his 93rd year, painted by Opie, as Shylock. Nobody knew his exact age, but he was supposed to have reached 108. You will find him again, by Dewilde, in another room, as Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, in his own comedy of The Man of the World. In these two characters he reached a high point of excellence; but in extreme old age he committed a sinful trespass on the domains of tragedy, by attempting Macbeth and Richard III. Strange, indeed, are the vagaries of theatrical genius. John Kemble, during his last season, was with difficulty prevented from exposing his asthma in Falstaff; and Liston always persisted that he was intended for a tragedian.

This large painting of Spranger Barry and his wife, in Hamlet and the Queen, may be looked upon as a great curiosity. There are very few portraits of Barry, who was as careless of fame as Garrick was sedulous on the same point. He started at once as a great actor without practice, and kept rapidly advancing, until he proved the most formidable rival the great little potentate of Drury-lane ever encountered. His voice was music itself, and obtained for him the name of the silver-toned Barry. It has even been known to charm a bailiff who came to arrest him, and extort from him the money to pay a second son of Agrippa, who was waiting in another room. In 1751 occurred the great contest for supremacy between him and Garrick, in Romeo, in which the preponderance was supposed to lie with Barry, notwithstanding the fire and energy which Garrick contrived to throw into the part. Macklin's criticism was spiteful against both. "Barry," he

said, "comes swaggering into the garden, talking so loud that the servants would inevitably take the alarm, and toss him in a blanket. Garrick sneaks in like a thief in the night, as if he was afraid of the watch-dog, and trembling at the sound of his own voice." The contest, before it was abandoned, proved pernicious to the treasury of both theatres, and very wearisome to the public, as indicated by the following epigram, which appeared in the Daily Advertiser:

:

"Well, what's to-night,' says angry Ned,
As up from bed he rouses;
Romeo again l' and shakes his head,

Ah! plague on both your houses !'"

There is another likeness of Barry in his private character; but we miss Mossop, who was supposed, with many defects, to rank next to him; also an Irishman, and equally improvident. He died at the early age of 43, in extreme poverty, having only one halfpenny in his possession at his decease. Mossop excelled in tyrants, and possessed a voice of iron, which never gave way. His style of elocution was pompous and emphatical, with an equal emphasis upon every syllable. There appears to have been justice in Churchill's censure, wherein he says of Mossop's dislocated minuteness of ut

terance

"In monosyllables his thunders roll

He, she, it, and, we, ye, they-fright the soul."

There is one portrait here of Thomas Sheridan, the father of Richard Brinsley, who completes the triumvirate of celebrated Irish actors coeval with Garrick. He was an excellent scholar, and a performer of sound judgment rather than genius. His English Dictionary was long in good repute; his "Essay on British Education and "Oratorical Lectures" show that he was a writer possessed of depth in reasoning, and an ample command of graceful language.

This scene from King John, by Mortimer, gives us William Powell as the gloomy monarch, and Bensley as Hubert. Powell came out at Drury-lane when Garrick was travelling in Italy in 1763; and although a perfect novice, burst upon the stage with every perfection but experience. He drew such large sums of money to the treasury, that Lacy wrote to his partner to say, he might amuse himself on the Continent as long as his health re

quired, for his place was amply filled in his absence. Roscius took the alarm, and not being at all disposed to bear "a brother near the throne," returned with all speed to look after his endangered laurels. Powell's career was short and fleeting as that of a meteor. He died in 1769, aged only thirty-three. Bensley was a stiff, noisy actor, who trusted much to a powerful voice and sound lungs. He had held a commission in the Marines, served in North America, and retired from the stage on being appointed barrackmaster of Knightsbridge. One day while he was yet an actor, he invited some of his old brother-officers to dinner, and when the wine was circulating, they asked him how he could leave a gentlemanlike profession to become a vagabond player. "I am well paid," replied their host, "and I suppose that consoles me." "And how much may you get by this business, Dick?" demanded one of the guests. "About six hundred a-year," answered Bensley. "The d-1 you do!" exclaimed the red coats with one accord; "have you any vacancies in your corps ?" Had Powell lived, his name would have come down to us in the very first class of great actors, but he was cut off before his powers attained maturity. Such was the fate, too, of his friend Charles Holland, who introduced him to Garrick, and whom you see hanging there over the chimney. He had considerable merit, but injured his reputation by a servile imitation of his master, except that he ranted outrageously, which Garrick never did. Holland was once storming through Richard III. to a very thin house, and remarked to Mrs. Clive, that it was most extraordinary. "On the contrary," replied the lady, "it is perfectly natural, when they can hear every word outside without paying for admittance."

At last we have reached Samuel Foote, the Proteus of the stage, painted by no less a person than Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was no great actor in the legitimate line, but a brilliant wit and a pestilent imitator-the terror of everybody, high or low, gentle or simple, who laboured under physical defects or peculiarities; except only Dr. Johnston, who awed him into silence by the purchase of a shilling cudgel, which he most certainly would have used with a hearty good-will, on provocation. A sacrilegious dog was Foote. How he

says

ever got into Westminster Abbey, the Dean and Chapter only can tell; but the authorities of the cathedral were less conscientiously fastidious in those days than they are at present. Having let in St. Evremond, they thought, perhaps, there could be no great mischief in allowing Foote to occupy a niche near him. In the face of these questionable precedents, it seems rather hard to have excluded Lord Byron, and reminds us of the text which something about straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. There can be no reason whatever why great actors should not find statues and monuments in cathedrals or churches as readily as the great poets of whom they have been the able illustrators. But let them be perpetuated in their own, and not in their assumed characters. Much as we admire John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, we think they would look better as Cato and Queen Catherine in some locality less exclusively devoted to sacred purposes. For many years Foote acted with a cork leg, and died in 1777, aged 56. He has been called the. English Aristophanes, but the wit of his farces is flat, obsolete, and too coarse for modern refinement. The Mayor of Garratt is sometimes acted, but all the rest are long forgotten. To the honour of Irish taste it should be recorded that The Minor, which carried all London after it, was condemned on its earlier production in Dublin.

Who is this? Woodward in Petruchio by Vandergucht-a first-rate portrait of a first-rate actor; equally fa mous too as a harlequin, in which many thought he surpassed Lun himself. His person was so elegant that he could not throw himself into an ungraceful attitude, even if he tried. He saved £6,000 in a few years at his outset, and lost it in half the time, by commencing manager in Dublin. His great forte lay in characters of light, eccentric comedy, and he was very particular in his mode of dressing his parts a collateral advantage which even the greatest genius should not despise. Woodward surmounted all competitors in Petruchio, Mercutio, Bobadil, Marplot, and Brass in The Confederacy. Not far off, is Ross, as Hamlet, by Zoffany. He was a very pleasing actor, but so indolent that he scarcely allowed fair play to his own talents and opportunities. He

was disinherited by his father for going on the stage, and being of improvident habits, suffered much from poverty in his declining years. An anecdote in

his career has been often mentioned before. For nine or ten years, he received regularly at his benefit, a note sealed up, enclosing ten guineas, and these words, "A tribute of gratitude from one who was highly obliged, and saved from ruin, by seeing Mr. Ross's performance of George Barnwell." Ross never knew the name of the donor, nor saw him to his knowledge.

Look at the extraordinary and ungraceful costumes of Iachimo and Posthumus in this scene from Cymbeline, with portraits of John Palmer and Reddish. The acting must have been of a superior class which could triumph over such grotesque accoutrements; assuredly they never belonged to any age or country in the world. These authentic memorials of stage panoply, as worn by the great disciples of the school of Garrick, are strange evidences of the taste of the day, and would be received as exaggerations, but that we are well assured the painters could not have invented them. Palmer died on the stage in Liverpool, while acting the Stranger, in 1798. He was the original Joseph Surface, in which his excellence has never been questioned. Charles Lamb says of him, "Jack had two voices-both plausible and insinuating; but his secondary, or supplemental voice, was still more decisively histrionic than his common one. It was reserved for the spectator, and the dramatis persone were supposed to know nothing at all about it. The lies of Young Wilding, and the sentiments in Joseph Surface, were thus marked out in a sort of Italics to the audience." Reddish was the second husband of Mrs. Canning. He was always wild and eccentric, and died mad, in the lunatic asylum of York, in 1785.

We are not yet half through the collection, and hark! there rings "that tocsin of the soul, the dinner-bell," and the waiter announces that the welcome repast is ready. "Hear him! hear him!" as they say in parliament. The symposium cannot wait, so the pictures must. Reader, if you are not tired of our gossip, we shall, perhaps, invite you to accompany us through the remainder on some future occasion. J. W. C