lightning, had Kean been aware that there was a headless trunk within the coffin; and that the head was in the possession of Dr. Francis! To what purposes it has been turned, this gentleman may tell in his own words.

"A theatrical benefit had been announced at the Park, and Hamlet,' the play. A subordinate of the theatre at a late hour hurried to my office, for a skull. I was compelled to loan the head of my old friend, George Frederick Cooke. Alas, poor Yorick!' It was returned in the morning; but on the ensuing evening, at a meeting of the Cooper Club, the circumstance becoming known to several of the members, and a general desire being expressed to investigate, phrenologically, the head of the great tragedian, the article was again released from its privacy, when Daniel Webster, Henry Wheaton, and many others who enriched the meeting of that night, applied the principles of craniological science to the interesting specimen before them. Cooper felt as a coadjutor of Albinus, and Cooke enacted a great part that night." If Cooke could have spoken his great part, he would assuredly have added something strong to his comments on what he used to call the "civilization of Yankee-doodle."

The monument, erected by Edmund Kean, consists of a pedestal, surmounted by an urn, with this inscription :- "Erected to the memory of George Frederick Cooke, by Edmund Kean, of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 1821;" and, beneath, this not choice, nor accurate distich:

"Three kingdoms claim his birth.

Both hemispheres pronounce his worth!"

Below this superscription lies all that has not been stolen of what was mortal, of one among the greatest and the least of British actors. During his career, flourished and passed into private life a boy, who still survives, rich with the fortune rapidly acquired in those old play-going days,-Master Betty.

CHAPTER XLVII.

MASTER BETTY.

WILLIAM Henry West Betty was born at Shrewsbury, in 1791,a Shropshire boy, but of Irish decent. His father, a man of independent means, taught him fencing and elocution, and was surprised to find that a histrionic affection came of this double instruction. I shall certainly die, if I do not become an actor!" said the boy, when residing near Belfast, and after seeing Mrs. Siddons as Elvira, in "Pizarro." He was then ten years old; and was a boy with a will and decision of character. In his twelfth year, he made his first appearance at Belfast, on the 11th of August, 1803, as Osmyn, in "Zara." The judgment of the Irish manager, Atkins, was that he was an "Infant Garrick." Master Betty also played Douglas, Rolla, and Romeo; and he went up to Dublin, in November, with the testimony of the Belfast ladies that he was "a darling." In the Irish capital, he acted Douglas, Frederick, Prince Arthur, Romeo, Tancred, and Hamlet. As he is said to have learned and played the last part within three days, I have small respect for his precocious cleverness, and do not wonder that the Dublin wits showered epigrams upon him.

"The public are respectfully informed that no person coming from the theatre will be stopt till after eleven o'clock." Such was the curious announcement on the Irish play-bill which invited the public to go and see Master Betty, and advised them to get home early, if they would not be taken for traitors. Those days were the days of United Irishmen, when Ireland was divided into factions, and Dublin not quite at unity as to Master Betty's merits. The majority, however, worshipped the idol, before which Cork, Waterford, Londonderry, and other cities, bowed the knee. The popular acclaim wafted him to Scotland.

In

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Glasgow, there was one individual who was not mad, and would criticise; but, in return for "a severe philippic" administered by him, the wretch "was compelled to leave the city!" In Edinburgh, Master Betty found more dotage than he had left in Glasgow. It was not merely that duchesses and countesses caressed the boy, but there was Home himself, at the representation of his own Douglas," blubbering in the boxes, and protesting that never till then had young Norval been acted as he had conceived it! And he had seen West Digges, the original, in Edinburgh; and Spranger Barry, the original, in London! Critics said the Infant Roscius excelled Kemble; and Lords of the Court of Session presented him with books, and gave him old men's blessings! He sets the city in flames," said one critic; and another, anticipating the theory of M. de Frarière, in his Educa tion Anterieure, said, "that the boy's pleasing movements of perfect and refined nature had been incorporated with his frame, previous to his birth." Birmingham next took him up, and the English town confirmed the verdicts of Ireland and Scotland. Miss Smith (afterwards Mrs. Bartley) played mother to him one night, and maid beloved the next. Even miners and mill-folk donned their best clothes, in the middle of the week, and went to see Master Betty, and at the close of a dozen performances, the Infant Roscius was celebrated by a Bromwicham poet as having crushed the pride of all his predecessors, and being "Cooke, Kemble, Holman, Garrick, all in one!"

Theatrical coach to carry six insides, to see the young Roscius," was the placard on many a vehicle which carried an impatient public from Doncaster Races to Sheffield, where crowds of amateurs from London fought with the country-folk for admission to the theatre, and a poetic Templar, rather loose in his Italian, remarked in a long poem in his praise:

"Would Sculpture form APOLLO BELVIDERE,

She need not roam to France, the model's here!"

Liverpool, Chester, Manchester, Stockport, all caught the frenzy, and adored the boy,-to whom Charles Young played subordinate parts! Occasionally, Master Betty acted twice in the same day, and he netted about £500 a week! Royal dukes expressed their delight in him, grateful managers loaded him with silver cups, and John Kemble wrote to Mr. Betty père, to express the happiness he and Mr. Harris would have in welcoming the tenth Won

UNPRECEDENTED EXCITEMENT.

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der to Covent Garden Theatre,-at £50 per night and half a clear benefit!

men.

Accordingly, on Saturday, the 1st of December, 1804, at ten in the morning, gentlemen were "parading " under the Pizza. By two o'clock serried crowds possessed every avenue, and when the doors were opened, there was a rush which, ultimately, cost some persons their lives. "The pit was two-thirds filled from the boxes. Gentlemen who knew that there were no places untaken in the boxes, and who could not get up the pit avenues, paid for admission into the lower boxes, and poured from them into the pit, in twenties and thirties at a time." Contemporary accounts speak in detail of the terrible sufferings not only of women, but "The ladies in one or two boxes were occupied almost the whole night in fanning the gentlemen who were beneath them in the pit. Upwards of twenty gentlemen who had fainted, were dragged up into the boxes. Several more raised their hands as if in the act of supplication for mercy and pity." As for the play, "Barbarossa," the sensible public would have none of it before the scene in the second act, in which Selim (Master Betty) first makes his appearance. When that arrived, he was not disturbed by the uproar of applause which welcomed him; and he answered the universal expectation. "Whenever he wished to produce a great effect he never failed." He was found to be a perfect master." His whisper was "heard in every part of the house," says a newspaper critic; "there is something in it like the under-notes of the Kembles; but it has nothing sepulchral in it. The oldest actor is not equal to him, he never loses sight of the scene. .. His judgment seems to be extremely Nature has endowed him with genius which we shall vainly attempt to find in any of the actors of the present day;"-after which last sweeping judgment comes the qualifying line, "If he be not even now the first, he is in the very first line; and he will soon leave every other actor of the present day at an immeasurable distance behind him." The critics evidently had small confidence in their own judgments, but princes led the applause; their Majesties were charmed with their new "servant;" royalty received him in its London palace, and to the Count d'Artois (future King of France) and an august party at Lady Percival's, the small-eyed and plump faced boy shook his luxuriant auburn curls and acted Zaphna, in French.-"I went to see the young Roscius with an unprejudiced mind, or rather, perhaps, with the opinion you seemed to have formed of him; and left the

correct.

theatre in the highest admiration of his wonderful talents. As I scarcely remember Garrick, I may say, (though there be doubtless room for improvement), I never saw such fine acting; and yet the poor boy's voice was that night a good deal affected by a cold. I would willingly pay a guinea for a place on each night of his appearing in a new character." So wrote Lord Henley, to Lord Auckland, in December, 1804. The philosophers went as mad as the "quality" and critics. Quid noster Roscius egit was given by Cambridge University as the subject for Sir William Brown's prize-medal. Old "Gentleman Smith," the original Charles Surface, came up from Bury St. Edmunds, and presented young Betty with a seal bearing the likeness of Garrick, and which Garrick, in his last illness, had charged him to keep only till he should "meet with a player who acted from NATURE and from FEELING." Having found such actor, Smith consigned to him the keeping of the precious relic! Then, if the overtaxed boy fell ill, as he did more than once, the public forgot the general social distress, the threats of invasion, war abroad, and sedition at home, and evinced such painful anxiety, that bulletins were daily issued, as though the lad were king-regnant or heir-apparent. Subsequently, Drury Lane and Covent Garden shared him between them. In twenty-three nights, at the former house, he drew above £12,000, and this double work so doubled his popularity, that on one night, having to play Hamlet, the House of Commons, on a motion by Pitt, adjourned, and went down to the theatre to see him! This flattery from the whole Senate was capped by that of a single legislator; Charles Fox read Zanga to the little actor, and commented on Young's tragedy, with such effect, that the young gentleman never undertook the principal character! There was some idea of raising a statue to him, and Opie did paint a picture in which young Roscius was represented as having drawn inspiration from the tomb of Shakspeare!

Except John Kemble, there was scarcely an actor of celebrity who did not play in the same piece with him. Suett and Joey Grimaldi, were the Gravediggers to his Hamlet. At the close of the season he passed through the provinces, triumphant, and returned to Drury Lane in 1805, to find "garlick amid the flowers," and a strong sibilant opposition, which he surmounted. He again played the round of tragic heroes and carried heaps of gold away with him to the country, where he easily earned large additions to the heap. But the London furor henceforth subsided. The provinces continued their allegiance for a year or two, but the