CHAPTER XXVI.

EXIT, JAMES QUIN.

THE opposition between Garrick and Barry was sustained during the season of 1752-3. The former had a forcible second in Mossop, and attractive ladies to woo in comedy, or slay in tragedy, in Mrs. Bellamy and Mrs. Pritchard. At the Garden, Barry and Mrs. Cibber were in the full bloom of their health and powers. "No two persons were so calculated to assist each other by voice, manner, and real feeling, as they were;" but, as Wilkinson records, "at the close of this season they separated, never to meet again on the same stage." Meanwhile, fashion patronised Garrick and Mrs Pritchard, rather more lavishly than the rival pair. Each had triumphs in new pieces. Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, in Moore's "Gamester," first played on the 7th February, 1753 (Beverley, Garrick; Mrs. Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard), and Barry and Mrs. Cibber in Jones's "Earl of Essex." Admirable as Garrick was in Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard carried off the chief honours, so natural, so terribly real, and so apparently unconscious of the audience was she in her acting.

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Young's tragedy, the "Brothers," written thirty years before, previous to his ordination, and amended by Lady Wortley Montague, succeeded the Gamesters," in March, 1753. Young surrendered this piece to the players, for the benefit of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. "The Brothers" was acted to thin houses for eight nights, and then shelved. The author realised £400 by it; to which adding £600 more, he gave the £1,000 to the useful Society above named. The play was not original. A great portion is almost literally translated from the French, Persée et Démétrius. Many of the speeches are taken piecemeal from Livy. The contest in the third act is splendidly phrased; but the dénoûement is so confused that Young was

RETIREMENT OF QUIN.

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obliged to add an epilogue to explain what was supposed to take place at, and after the fall of the curtain!

Barry's Jaffier, played for the first time on the 21st of November, 1752, placed him on an equality with Garrick in that character; but he was not so great in this as in the "Earl of Essex." One sentence in this tragedy, uttered by Barry, seems to have had an almost incredible effect. When the Earl, pointing to the Countess of Rutland, in a swoon, exclaimed, Oh, look there!" Barry's attitude and pathetic expression of voice were such that "all the critics in the pit burst into tears and then shook the theatre with repeated and unbounded applause." The bricklayer poet, whom Chesterfield brought from Drogheda, only to die, half-starved, in a garret near Covent Garden, attributed the success of the piece to his own powers, whereas it was due to the wonderful acting of Barry and Mrs. Cibber alone.

With this season, James Quin disappeared from the stage. The triumphs of Garrick, followed by those of Barry, drove from the scene the old player who, for nearly forty years, had belonged to the school of Betterton, and of Booth. Quin had something of each, but was distinct from either. His theatrical life embraces the following dates. Quin began his career in Dublin, in 1714, and ended it at Bath, in 1753, (whither he had retired.) Quin was only temporarily jealous even of Roscius. He was a careless dresser of his characters; and he had a sharp sarcasm, but not a lasting ill-feeling, for those who pretended to better taste, and he gave it practical application.

After he passed,

I have already spoken of Quin's early career. in 1718, to Lincoln's Inn Fields, Rich designed to bring forward the "Merry Wives of Windsor," but no one seemed daring enough to undertake Falstaff. I will venture it,' said Quin, if no one else can be found.' 'You!' cried Rich, 'you might as well try Cato after Booth. The character of Falstaff is quite another character from what you think. It is not a little snivelling part that any one can do; and there isn't any man among you that has any idea of the part but myself!' Ultimately, Quin "attempted" the part; his conception of it was admirable, and the house willingly flung itself into a very storm of hilarious jollity. It was Quin's hard fate to kill two actors-Bowen and Williams, who was the Decius to Quin's Cato. Williams, in delivering the line, "Cæsar sends health to Cato," pronounced the last name so like "Keeto," that Quin could not help exclaiming, Would he had sent a better messenger!" This irritated the

little Welsh actor, the more that he had to repeat the name in nearly every sentence of his scene with Cato, and Quin did not fail to look so hard at him when he pronounced it, that Williams's irritation was at the highest, and in the green-room the irascible Welshman attacked Quin on the ground that he had rendered him ridiculous in the eyes of the audience. Quin treated the affair as a joke, but the Welsh actor would not be soothed. After the play, he lay in wait for the offender in the Piazza, where much malapert blood was often spilt. There Quin could not refuse to defend himself, and after a few passes, Williams lay lifeless on the flag-stones, and Quin was arrested by the watch. Ultimately, he was absolved from blame. At a later period, Quin was well-nigh slaying a more ignoble foe, namely, Theophilus Cibber, whose scoundrelly conduct towards his accomplished wife, Quin had alluded to, under a very forcible epithet applied to her husband. Out of this incident arose a quarrel, and swords were again drawn in the Piazza, where Quin and Cibber slashed each other across the arm and fingers, till they were parted by the bystanders.

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Of Quin's rivalry with Garrick, I have already said something. If he was vanquished in that contest, he was not humiliated. His great merit is incontestable. His Cato and Brutus were good; when he was about to act the first part, the bills intimated that Cato would "only be attempted by Mr. Quin;" he was afraid of the reminiscence of Booth; but at the words, "Thanks to the gods, my boy has done his duty!" came the reiterated cry of Booth outdone!" and the famous soliloquy was enthusiastically encored! He was excellent in Henry VIII, Volpone, Glo'ster, Apemantus, Ventidius, the Old Batchelor, and "all the Falstaffs." He was happy only in a few speeches of Pierre. His Plain Dealer is commended, and the soliloquies of Zanga are eulogised. His Macheath and some other operatic parts, he played and sung extremely well. His failures were Macbeth, Othello, Richard, Lear, Chamont, and Young Bevil. Davies says, he often gave true weight and dignity to sentiment by a well-regulated tone of voice, judicious elocution, and easy deportment. The expression of the tender, as well as of the violent, emotions of the heart was beyond his reach. The plain and the familiar rather than the striking and the vigorous became him whose action was either forced or languid, and whose movements were ponderous or sluggish. But his countenance was expressive, his eye vivacious; his voice. clear, full, and melodious; his memory extensive, his pro

nunciation articulate, and his figure majestic. His great defect lay in his cadenced delivery, and his long and unnecessary pauses. From the retirement of Booth till the coming of Garrick, Quin can scarcely be said to have had a rival, unless it were the clever but lazy Delane.

Quin has left some reputation as a humorist. That he was not well read, even in the literature of that profession, of which he was so distinguished a member, is asserted; but he boasted that he could read men more readily than books, and it is certain that his observation was acute, and the application of what he learned thereby, electrically prompt. If he was inexorable in enforcing the payment of what was due to him, he was also generous with the fortune he amassed. Meanness was not among the faults of Quin. The greatest injury has been done to his memory by the publication of jests, of a reprehensible character, and which were said to be his, merely to quicken their sale. He lived in coarse times, and his jokes may have been, now and then, of a coarse quality; but he also said some of the finest things that ever fell from the lips of an intellectual wit. Of all Quin's jests, there is nothing finer than two which elicited the approval of Walpole. Bishop Warburton, in company at Bath, spoke in support of prerogative. Quin said, "Pray, my Lord, spare me; you are not acquainted with my principles. I am a republican; and, perhaps, I even think that the execution of Charles I. might be justified." "Ay!" said Warburton, "by what law ?" Quin replied; "by all the laws he had left them." Walpole saw the sum of the whole controversy couched in those eight monosyllables. The Bishop bade the player remember that all the regicides came to violent ends. "I would not advise your Lordship," said Quin, "to make use of that inference, for, if I am not mistaken, that was the case of the twelve apostles." Warburton and Quin frequently met in the house of Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, Bath. The Bishop treated Quin with an offensively patronising air, and endeavoured to make him feel the distance between them. He once, at Allen's house, admonished the player on his too luxurious way of living, and he requested him, as he could not see him on the stage, to recite some passages from dramatic authors, in presence of a large company assembled in the drawing-room. Quin, after a simulated hesitation consented, and stood up to deliver passages from "Venice Preserved;" but in reciting the lines

"Honest men

Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves
Repose and fatten,"

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he so pointedly directed his looks, at "honest men" to Allen, and at "knaves" to Warburton, that the company marked the application, and the bishop never asked for a taste of the actor's quality again. When this unpleasant Bishop of Gloucester, published an edition of Shakspeare, the actor remarked, He had better mind his own Bible, and leave ours to us !" This goes far to disprove the story that Quin knew no difference between Shakspeare's" Macbeth," and Davenant's. Quin was open to censure on the score of his epicurism. He so loved John Dory as to declare, that for the enjoyment of it, a man should have a swallow from here to the antipodes, and palate all the way!" and if, on his servant calling him in the morning, he heard that there was no John Dory in the market, he would turn round, and lazily remark, then call me again to-morrow."

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In his latest days, his powers of retort never failed him. When a fop once condoled with him on growing old, and asked what the actor would give to be as young as he was? "I would almost be content to be as foolish!" was Quin's reply. Almost as good was his remark to a dirty fingered clergyman, who boasted of what he got out of his living. "I see you keep the glebe in your own hands, doctor," remarked Quin. Nobody bore with his sharp sayings more cheerfully than Mrs. Woffington. We all know his remark, when Margaret, coming off the stage as Sir Harry Wildair, declared that she believed one half the house thought she was a man. Less known is his comment when on asking her why she had been to Bath? she answered, saucily,—“Oh, for mere wantonness?" and Quin retorted with, "Have you been cured?" It was to a Master of the Mint, who had said, "If 'twere not for your patent you'd be imprisoned!" Quin replied, "Aye, and if 't were not for your patent, you'd be hanged," The roughest of Quin's jokes manifested the kindliness of his heart, Here is an obscure actor, Dick Winston, lying, -hungry, weary, and disengaged, on a truckle bed, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. He is in utter despair, as Mr. Quin enters, followed by a man carrying a decent suit of clothes; and the great actor hails him with a 66 Now, Dick, how is it you are not up and at rehearsal ?" Quin had heard of his distress, got him restored to his employment, and took this way of announcing it. Winston dressed himself in a state of bewilderment! "Mr. Quin," said he, hesitatingly, "what shall I do for a little ready money, till Saturday arrives?" "Nay!" replied Quin; "I have done all I can for you; but as for money, Dick, you must put your hand in your own pocket." Quin had put a £10 note there! Again;