When Sir Sampson Legend says to Foresight, "Look up, old stargazer! Now is he poring on the ground for a crooked pin, or an old horse-nail, with the head towards him!" we are told “there could not be a finer illustration of the character which Congreve meant to represent, than Parsons showed at that time in his face and attitude." He was finely discriminating, too. His Skirmish in the "Deserter" presented, says Adolphus, "a shrewd, quickwitted fellow, whose original powers were merged, but not absolutely drowned, in drink." In his own estimation, Corbaccio was his best played character; but, said he, generously, “All the merit I have in it I owe to Shuter."

The last character he acted was Elbow, on the 30th of December, 1794, when Kemble revived "Measure for Measure;" but asthma had then reduced him to a shadow, and he had to yield the part to Waldron. He died soon after, and then ensued a singular domestic incident. His second wife was Dorothy Stewart, niece to the Earl of Galloway, whom he had married after the lively young lady had run away from a convent at Lille. Of this marriage there was a little son, who had for tutor a reverend young clergyman; and this tutor Dorothy Parsons married, four days after her husband's decease. So that she had two husbands in the house; one dead and the other living! The first had left her a fortune. The second spent it, and left herself and son destitute. The town had not an old comic actor it esteemed more highly, except, perhaps, Palmer. The carly life of John Palmer was full of disappointment; the latter end of trials; the middle, of some follies; but nothing more. When he was in hopes of employment in the theatre, he had been told to go for a soldier. Garrick would not have him; Foote pronounced his tragedy bad; but thought his comedy would do. He "strolled," struggled, starved; and then was engaged first by Garrick, then by Foote, to do any thing he was told to do, at a salary which barely found him in bread. Again he went to the country; married, or was married by a lady of expectations, which came to nothing, as she had mated with an actor.

When again in London, Palmer was too frightened at Barry, to play Iago to his Othello; Garrick eventually engaged him, but ridiculed his alleged powers of study; on which point, however, Davy soon changed his mind. Palmer slowly made his way, but

it was very nearly stopped for ever, by Mrs. Barry, in the "Grecian Daughter," stabbing him (Dionysius), with a real dagger. He subsequently built and opened the Royalty Theatre, in Wellclose Square, but was compelled to close it, by the patentees. From the difficulties in which this involved him, he never relieved himself, and his life became a struggle between bailiffs eager to catch him, and Palmer eager to escape from bailiffs. Sometimes, he passed a week together in the theatre; at others he was carried out of it in some mysterious bit of theatrical property. From 1761 to 1798 he was on the London stage, one of the best general actors it ever had, except in singing parts and old men, and some tragic characters. His fine figure, nevertheless, was always a help to him. His Young Wilding was pronounced "perfect ;" and among the best of his characters were Face, Captain Flash, Dick, Stukely, Sir Toby Belch, Captain Absolute, Young Fashion, Joseph Surface, Prince of Wales, Sneer, Don John, Volpone, Sir Frederick Fashion, Henry VIII., Father Philip, Villeroy, Brush, &c. Among those he originated were Joseph Surface, Count Almaviva, Sneer, Lord Gayville, Cohenberg, Sydenham, and Dick Dowlas.

He was often careless, and would go on the stage very imperfect, trusting to his wits, his impudence, and the “usual indulgence" of the audience. On one occasion he delivered a prologue, without knowing a line of it. The prompter was beneath a toilet table, and to Palmer standing near, he gave line for line, which Palmer repeated, with abounding smile and action to make up for dropped words. On another occasion, this actor took advantage of an uproar in front, to seem to deliver a prologue of which he knew nothing. He moved his lips, extended his arms, touched his heart, and said nothing. Suddenly came a lull, and then Palmer looked reproachfully, as if the noise had embarrassed him; whereupon one half of the house stormed at the other, for not keeping silence, and under cover of the storm, Palmer seemed to conclude the prologue, and made a grateful bow, as if pleased with the fact of having been enabled to perform a pleasant task.

After playing Father Philip and Comus, at Drury Lane on the 19th of June, 1798, Palmer proceeded to Liverpool. He had finished at Drury as radiant with gayety, on the stage, as if his heart were not breaking. Death had taken from his family circle

his wife and the most dearly loved of his sons. Sorrow for those who had departed, and anxiety for the remaining children who depended on him, affected him deeply, and despite all effort, even when acting, he could not keep the dead or the living for a moment cut of his memory. At length the night came when he was to repeat the character of the "Stranger," and then there was no simulation in his mournful aspect. He had got through his part to the middle of the opening scene of the fourth act. He had answered, "I love her still," to the query of Baron Steinfort (Whitfield) respecting his wife; and then to the question as to his children, he gave the reply, "I left them at a small town hard by ;" but the words, falteringly uttered, had scarcely passed his lips, when he fell, dead, at Whitfield's feet!

The sensation which this caused was most painful; and it was not allayed by those pious persons who saw in this sudden death an especial judgment launched by Heaven on the head of a man who exercised an unrighteous calling. To support their theory, they invented the story that Palmer was stricken after uttering the quotation, in the first scene of the third act, "there is another and a better world!" These words suited the inferences they wished to draw. They did not agree with the facts; but it was the old story, so much the worse for the facts!" The lie yet lives.

Poor Palmer! One cannot help having a kindly feeling for "Plausible Jack." Can you not see him coming up to Sheridan, when reconciliation had followed quarrel, with his head bent blandly forward, his eyes turned up, his hand on his heart, and a phrase after the manner, if not of the very matter of Joseph Surface, of which he was the original representative? "If you could but see my heart, Mr. Sheridan !" and Sheridan's pleasantly remonstrating remark, "Why, Jack, you forget I wrote it!"

And then he was so modest. "Plausible, am I?" he once asked, "you really rate me too highly. The utmost I ever did in that way was, on once being arrested by a bailiff, when I persuaded the fellow to bail me!"

After many of these actors had commenced their career, and Jong before some of them concluded it, a great player came, charmed, and departed, leaving a name and a reputation which render him worthy of a chapter to himself. I allude to Henderson.

CHAPTER XVII.

JOHN HENDERSON.

In the bill of the Bath Theatre for October the 6th, 1772, the part of Hamlet is announced to be performed "by a young gentleman." On the 21st of the month, we read, "Richard III., by Mr. Courtney, the young gentleman who acted Hamlet." Mr. Courtney repeated those characters, and subsequently played Benedick, Macbeth, Bobadil, Bayes, Don Felix, and Essex; and on the 26th of December, having thus felt his way and become satisfied of his safety, we have “Henry IV.," with "Hotspur by Mr. Henderson."

After being anonymous and pseudonymous, he added, under his last and proper designation, the following characters to those he had previously acted: Fribble, Lear, and Hastings, Alonzo, and Alzuma; and Mr. Henderson was an established Bath favorite.

At this time, Henderson was five-and-twenty years of age Descended from Scottish Presbyterians and English Quakers, with a father who was an Irish factor, Henderson is the sole celebrity of the street in which he was born, in March, 1747, Goldsmith Street, Cheapside. The father died too soon for his two sons to remember him in after life; but the boys had an excellent mother, who unconsciously trained one of her sons to the stage, by making him familiar with the beauties of Shakspeare.

Having succeeded so far in art as to obtain a prize when he was Fournier's pupil, for a drawing exhibited at the Society of Arts; and having been as reluctant as Spranger Barry to be bound apprentice to a silversmith, Henderson longed to win honor by the sock and buskin. This desire was probably fostered by the sight of Garrick in the shop of Mr. Becket the bookseller, a friend of Henderson's. Garrick seldom went to coffee-houses, and never to taverns, but at Becket's shop he held a little court, and Henderson sighed to be as great as he.

The weakly-voiced lad, with no marked presence, and a son

sumptive look, could obtain audience or favor from no one; least of all from Roscius. He went up to remote Islington, and, in the long room of an inn there, delivered Garrick's Ode on the Shakspeare Jubilee. After this, and, perhaps, in consequence, Garrick received him, heard him recite, shook his head at a voice which was more woolly than silvery, and, after some counsel, procured for him an engagement at Bath, and at a trifling salary.

For five seasons he was a rising, improving, and the cherished actor at Bath. But his fame did not influence the London managers. At length, exeunt Garrick, Barry, Woodward, and Foote; and Colman, lacking novelty, at the Haymarket, invites, somewhat unwillingly, young Henderson from Bath. He appeared at the Little Theatre in 1777, and, in a little more than a month of acting nights, put £4,500 into the manager's pocket. He played Shylock, Hamlet, Leon, Falstaff (in "Henry IV.," and in the "Merry Wives"), Richard III., Don John, and Bayes.

In this first season he played three of his greatest parts-Shylock, Hamlet, and Falstaff. The first was selected for his début, contrary to his own inclination. Macklin's Shylock was the Shylock of all playgoers; but the difference between it and Henderson's attracted attention and audiences. Old Macklin himself praised his young rival's conception of the part with energetic liberality. "And yet, sir," said Henderson, "I have never had the advantage of seeing you in the character." "It is not necessary to tell me that, sir," said Macklin, with no conceited modesty. "I knew you had not, or you would have played it differently." Garrick also saw Henderson in the part, and remarked that Tubal was very creditably played indeed! It is said that Henderson, after delighting Garrick, when breakfasting with him in 1772, by imitations of Barry, Woodward, Love (whose single character of note was Falstaff), and some others, offended him by a close imitation of Garrick himself. Colman is reported to have been equally offended by an imitation of himself, at his own table, by Henderson, who did not, as Foote would have done, watch his host, and mimic him at other tables. Henderson seems to have been so little willing to offend, that in playing Bayes, he omitted the imitations of contemporary performers, by which all other actors of the parts had been wont to reap rich harvests of applause.