Shylock, in their earnest malignity, he was paramount. He could not say of a King, as Quin could, “I taught the boy to speak;" but he gave instruction in elocution to Wedderburne, who was afterwards Chancellor. Boswell himself purified his accent by taking lessons from Love, the actor Macklin was very impatient with mediocrity, but very careful with the intelligent. Easily moved to anger, his pupils and, indeed, many others stood in awe of him; but he was honourable, generous, and humane; convivial, frank, and not more free in his style than his contemporaries; but naturally irascible, and naturally forgiving. “I only know of two actors," he said to Charles Mathews, “who had what an actor requires above all other qualities,—discrimination. Charles Macklin was one; I do not remember the other." "I called on old Macklin," says Boswell, in a letter to Temple, in April, 1791, "the comedian, whom I found with a mind active and cheerful, in his ninety-second or ninety-third year. I could not but wonder, while he related theatrical stories sixty years old, and gave me an animated sketch of another comedy in five acts, which he has now finished, and will come out next year."

When Macklin left the stage, his second wife, the widow of a Dublin hosier, and a worthy woman, looked their fortune in the face. It consisted of £60 in ready money, and an annuity of £10. Friends were ready, but the proud old actor was not made to be wounded in his pride; he was made, in a measure, to help himself. His two pieces, “Love à la Mode,” and the "Man of the World," were published by subscription. To this subscription, Dora Jordan gave ten pounds, and promised the same annually. With nearly £1,600 realized thereby, an annuity was purchased of £200 for Macklin's life, and £75 for his wife, in case of her survival. And this annuity he enjoyed till the 11th of July, 1797, when the descendant of the royal M'Laughlins died, after a theatrical life (not reckoning the strolling period) of sixty-four years.

Boaden thought Cooke's Sir Pertinax noisy, compared with Macklin's. "He talked of booing, but it was evident he took a credit for suppleness that was not in him. Macklin could inveigle as well as subdue; and modulated his voice almost to his last year, with amazing skill." In his old days, he was often to be seen among the audience. When he entered the pit, however crowded it might be, way was always made for him to his accustomed seat, the centre of the row next to the orchestra.

PERFECT CONCEPTION OF POETRY.

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Macklin was an acute inquirer into meaning; and always rendered his conceptions with force and beauty. In reading Milton's lines,

"Of man's first disobedience and the fruit

Of that FOR-BID-DEN tree-whose mortal taste
Brought DEATH into the world, and ALL our woe,"

the first word in capitals was uttered with an awful regret, the suitable forerunner, says Boaden, "to the great amiss" which follows.

Macklin's chief objection to Garrick was directed against his reckless abundance of action and gesture; all trick, start, and statuesque attitude, were to him subjects of scorn. He finely derided the Hamlets who were violently horrified and surprised, instead of solemnly awed, on first seeing the Ghost. "Recollect, sir," he would say, "Hamlet came there to see his father's spirit." He died, as he had lived, under the very shadow of the theatre, as all actors had once been accustomed to do. Then came a.

change. "We are all now looking out for high ground, squares, and genteel neighbourhoods, no matter how far distant from the theatres; as if local reflection could give rhythm to the profession, or genteel neighbourhoods instantaneously produce good manners. Such was Macklin's view.

There was great antagonism between Quin and Macklin; but the latter could not compete with the former in wit, though he sometimes equalled him in sarcasm. Macklin's sarcasms were always brightened and pointed by wit. A clergyman told him that a tradesman had called him a liar, and that he had rejoined, “A lie, sir, is one of the things that I dare not commit." And why, Doctor," retorted Macklin, did you give the fellow so mean an opinion of your courage?"

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Macklin's character has been described in exactly opposite colours, according to the bias of friend or foe who affords the description. He is angel or fiend, rough or tender, monster, honest man or knave, and so forth; but he was, of course, neither so bad as his foes nor so bright as his friends made him out to be. Of characters which he played originally (and those were few), he rendered none celebrated, except Sir Archy, Sir Pertinax, and Murrough O'Doherty, in pieces of which he was the author. His other principal characters were Iago, Sir Francis Wronghead, Trappanti, Lovegold, Scrub, Peachem, Polonius, and some others in pieces now not familiar to us.

That Macklin was a "hard actor" there is no doubt; Churchill allows him no excellence, and says he was affected, constrained, "dealt in half-formed sounds," and violated nature; but " Cits and grave divines his praise proclaimed," and Macklin had a large number of admiring friends. In his private life, he had to bear many sorrows, and he bore them generally well, but one, in particular, with the silent anguish of a father who sees his son sinking fast to destruction, and glorying in the way which he is going. This wayward son died April 11th, 1790, after a long illness of ten years, during which he could take no food but by suction.

Ten years before Macklin died he lost his daughter. Miss Macklin was a pretty and modest person; respectable alike on and off the stage; artificially trained, but highly accomplished. Macklin had every reason to be proud of her, for everybody loved her for her gentleness and goodness. In 1742, she played childish parts, and after 1750, those of the highest walk in tragedy and comedy, but against competition which was too strong for her. She was the original Irene, in "Barbarossa," and Clarissa, in "Lionel and Clarissa," and was very fond of acting parts in which the lady had to assume male attire. This fondness was the cause, in some measure, of her death; it led to her buckling her garter so tightly that a dangerous tumour formed on the inner part of the leg, near the knee. From motives of delicacy she would not allow a leg which she had liberally exhibited on the stage, to be examined by her own doctor! Ultimately, a severe operation became necessary. Miss Macklin bore it with courage, but it compelled her to leave the stage, and her strength gradually failing, she died in 1787, at the age of forty-eight, and I wish she had left some portion of her fortune to her celebrated but impoverished father.

CHAPTER XLI.

A BEVY OF LADIES;-BUT CHIEFLY MRS. BELLAMY, MISS FARREN, MRS. ABINGTON, AND PERDITA.

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FIRST among the great actresses who passed away from the stage during the latter portion of the last century, were Mrs. Yates and George Anne Bellamy. The former could not compete with Mrs. Cibber, till that lady's illness caused Mandane (“ Orphan of China") to be given to Mrs. Yates, who, by her careful acting, at once acquired a first-rate reputation. In the classical heroines of the dull old classical tragedies of the last century, she was wonderfully effective, and her Medea was so peculiarly her own, that Mrs Siddons never disturbed the public memory of it, by acting the part. Mrs. Yates recited beautifully, was always dignified, but seems to have wanted variety of expression. With a haughty mien, and a powerful voice, she was well suited to the strongminded heroines of tragedy; but the more tender ladies, Desdemona or Monimia, she could not compass. To the pride and violence of Calista she was equal, but in pathos she was wanting. Her comedy (save her Violante) was as poor as that of Mrs. Siddons; her Jane Shore as good; her Medea, unapproachable. I suspect she was a little haughty; for impudent Weston says in his will: To Mrs. Yates I leave all my humility!" Her scorn was never equalled but by Mrs. Siddons, and it would be difficult to determine which lady had the most lofty majesty. In passion, Mrs. Yates swept the stage as with a tempest; yet she was always under control. For instance, in Lady Constance, after wildly screaming,

“I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is much disorder in my wit,"

she did not cast to the ground the thin cap which surmounted her

head-dress, but quietly took it from her head, and placed it on the right side of the circumference of her hoop! Mrs. Yates died in 1787.

George Anne Bellamy is unfortunate in having a story, which honest women seldom have. Mount Sion, at Tunbridge Wells, was the property of her mother, a Quaker farmer's daughter, named Seal, who, on her mother falling into distress, was taken by Mrs. Gregory, the sister of the Duke of Marlborough, to be educated. Miss Seal was placed in an academy in Queen's Square, Westminster, so dull a locality, that the rascally Lord Tyrawley had no difficulty in persuading her to run away from it, to his apartments, in Somerset House. When my lord wanted a little change, he left Miss Seal with her infant son, and crossed to Ireland to make an offer to the daughter of the Earl of Blessington. She was ugly, (he wrote to Miss Seal), but had money; and when he got possession of both, he would leave the first, and bring the latter with renewed love, to share with Miss Seal! This lady was so particularly touched by this letter, that she sent it to the earl, who forbade his daughter to marry my lord, but found they were married already! Tyrawley hoped thus to secure Lady Mary Stewart's fortune; but discovering she had none at her disposal, he naturally felt he had been deceived, and turned his wife off to her relations! Having gone through this amount of villany, King George thought he was qualified to represent him at Lisbon, and thither Lord Tyrawley proceeded accordingly. He would have taken Miss Seal with him, but she preferred to go on the stage. Ultimately she did consent to go; and was received with open arms; but she was so annoyed by the discovery of a swarthy rival, that she listened to the wooing of a Captain Bellamy, married him, and. (in 1731) presented him with a daughter with such promptitude, that the modest captain ran away from so clever a woman, and never saw her afterwards.

Lord Tyrawley, proud of the implied compliment, acknowledged the little George Anne Bellamy, born on St. George's day, 1731, as his daughter. He exhibited the greatest care in her education. He kept her at a Boulogne convent from her fifth to her eighth year, and then brought her up at his house at Bexley, amid noble young scamps, whose society was quite as useful to her as if she had been at a "finishing" school. Lord Tyrawley having perfected himself in the further study of demi-rippism, went as the representative of England to Russia, leaving an allowance for his daughter, which so warmed up her mother's affections for her,