at the 'Stratagem,' for his benefit, will create a smile on his countenance, raise his spirits, and make him appear as much a Scrub as ever." In the same year there was an ambitious young actor at Goodman's Fields, named Goodfellow, who played Hamlet and Fribble, two of Garrick's best characters, for his benefit; for taking which he gave the singular reason, that "my friends having expressed a great dislike to my being on the stage, I have resolved upon taking this benefit to enable me to return to my former employment." The public accordingly patronized him in order to get rid of him, and the young fellow was so grateful that he remained on the stage! These examples are cited as they occur to me, and I will not add to them; but rather turn away, to mark some eminent actors flitting from the stage, and some samples of the public opinion connected with it, before the coming of Edmund Kean. CHAPTER XXIV. OLD STAGERS DEPARTING. Or the old actors who entered on the nineteenth century, King was the first to depart. He is remembered now, chiefly, as the original representative of Sir Peter Teazle, Lord Ogleby, Puff, and Dr. Cantwell. He began his London career at the age of eighteen in 1748, on Drury Lane stage, as the Herald in "King Lear," and made such progress, that in the next year Whitehead selected him to play Valerius in his "Roman Father." By 1756 he was an established favorite, and he remained on the London stage, with hard summer work during the holidays, till the 24th of May, 1802, when he took his leave in Sir Peter, to the Lady Teazle of Mrs. Jordan. At the end of upwards of half a century he withdrew, to linger four years more, a man of straitened means—one whom fondness for "play" would not at first allow to grow rich: nor, after that was accomplished, to remain so. I have noticed a few of his principal original characters; of others, his Touchstone has not been equalled, nor his Ranger, save by Garrick and Elliston. He was a conscientious actor, and a prime favorite during the greater part of his career-but the once rapid, clear, arch, easy, versatile Tom King, remained on the stage somewhat too long. Dicky For a Suett was to "low," what King was to "genteel," comedy; and the stage lost Dicky in 1805, in which year he died. Suett was the successor, but not the equal, of Parsons. comic actor he had a very tragical method of life-indicated by a bottle of rum and another of brandy being among the furniture of his breakfast table. From 1780 to 1805 he was a favorite low comedian; he killed his audiences with laughter, and then went home (the tavern intervening) to bed, where his sleep was merely a night of horror caused by hideous dreams, and mental and bodily agony. John Kemble appreciated him, in Weazle particularly, which he played to the tragedian's Penruddock, and by his VOL. II.-15 impertinent and persevering inquiries, peering into Penruddock's face, used to work him up into a condition of irritability required by the part. He was tall, thin, and ungainly; addicted to grimace and interpolations; given to practical jokes on his brother actors on the stage; and original in every thing, even to encountering death with a pun excited by a sign of its dread approach. Suett was one of those perversely conscientious actors, that when he had to represent a drunkard, he took care, as Tony Lumpkin says, to be in "a concatenation accordingly." He was a In 1809 Lewis withdrew, in his sixty-third year. Lancashire man, well descended, though a draper's son, and was educated at Armagh. He left linen-drapery for the stage, played with success in Dublin and Edinburgh, and came to Covent Garden in 1773, where, however, he did not displace Barry, as in Dublin he had vanquished Mossop. He remained at Covent Garden from 1773, when he appeared in Belcour (a compliment to Cumberland, who had helped to bring him thither), till the 29th of May, 1809, when he took his farewell in the Copper Captain, the best of all his parts. He died in 1813, and out of part of his fortune bequeathed to his sister, the beautiful new church at Ealing was chiefly erected. His various styles are indicated by some of the parts he created. Pharnaces and Sir Charles Racket; Arviragus (Caractacus) and Millamour; Percy and Doricourt; Sir Thomas Overbury and Count Almaviva; Herodian and Lackland; Aurungzebe (“Prince of Agra") and Young Rapid; Faulkland and Jeremy Diddler: he played Carlos in the "Revenge," and created the Hon. Tom Shuffleton in "John Bull;" acted Posthumus, and originated Vapid; began his course of original parts with Witmore, in Dr. Kenrick's "Duellist ;" and ended them with Modern, in Reynolds's "Begone Dull Care"both of which plays were failures. In Morton and Reynolds's comedies, his breathless and restless style told well; but Lewis's reputation is connected with the authors of an older period. His Copper Captain was a masterpiece; and Cooke recorded of him, that during the last thirty years of his life, he was the unrivalled favorite of the comic muse, in all that was frolic, gay, humorous, whimsical, eccentric, and at the same time elegant." During twenty-one years he was mana 66 ger of Covent Garden; and the same writer testifies that Lewis was a model for making every one do his duty, by kindness and good treatment." As early as 1802, he had been warned by an epileptic fit, while rehearsing Sapling, in Reynolds's "Delays and Blunders;" but he recovered, played two years longer, and in less than two years more died, leaving a handsome fortune to his wife, children, and other members of his family. The greatest loss to the stage, in the early years of the present century, was in the person of Miss Pope, the only real successor of Kitty Clive. She withdrew on the 26th of May, 1808, after playing Deborah Dowlas in the "Heir at Law," for the first and last time. She had played as a child when Garrick was in the fullest of his powers; won his regard, and the friendly counsel of Mrs. Clive; played hoidens, chambermaids, and half-bred ladies, with a life, dash, and manner, free from all vulgarity; laughed with free hilarity that begot hilarious laughing; and the only question about her was not if she were an excellent actress or not, but as an actress, in what she most excelled. She gave up young parts for old as age came on, and would have done it sooner, but that managers found her still attractive in the younger characters. In them she had been without a rival; and when she took to the Duennas and Mrs. Heidelbergs, she became equally without a rival. She was the original Polly Honeycombe, Miss Sterling, Mrs. Candour, Tilburina, and of two or threescore other parts, less known. Miss Pope was as good a woman, and as well bred a lady, as she was a finished actress, and was none the less a friend of Garrick for having little theatrical controversies with him touching costume, salary, or other stage matters. In the year she played Cherry, Polly Honeycombe, Jacinta, Phædra, Beatrice, Miss Prue, Miss Biddy, and other buoyant ladies and lasses, a poet said of her:"With all the native vigor of sixteen, Among the merry groups conspicuous seen, Such was she in Churchill's eyes, in 1761. The fairy of that day; but, in 1807, the fairy had expanded into "a bulky person, with a duplicity of chin." Such was she in the eyes of Horace Smith, to whom she told her love for handsome but fickle Holland, losing, or casting off whom,-she never after heeded suit of mortal man. In the drawing-room of her and her brother's house in Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, two doors east of the Freemason's Tavern, in that richly furnished apartment, where for forty years Miss Pope lived,-among choice portraits of Mrs. Oldfield and her little son, afterwards General Churchill; of Lord Nuneham, who, as Earl of Harcourt, visited Miss Pope with as much ceremonious courtesy as if she had been a princess; of Garrick and of Holland,—the old lady told the tale of her young love, her hopes and her disappointment, to Horace Smith. Garrick, or "Mr. Garrick," as Miss Pope, with the old habit of reverence, used to call him, had observed the intimacy and growing attachment between the young actor and actress, and, guardian of the happiness of those whom he regarded, he warned the lady of the waywardness, instability, and recklessness of the swain. But Holland could persuade in his own cause more successfully than Garrick could urge against him; and Miss Pope, trusting the man she loved, looked confidently forward to the day when she would become his wife. Ere that day arrived, she went in the old Richmond coach, on her way to pay a visit to Mrs. Clive, at Twickenham; and on the road, she passed a post-chaise, in which were Holland and a lady. The perplexed Miss Pope rode thoughtfully on, and, alighting at Richmond Bridge, walked meditatively along the meadows to Strawberry Hill. Her jealous attention was attracted by a boat on the river, opposite Eel Pie Island, the rower of which could not so hurriedly but confusedly pull through the weeds to the Richmond side, before she saw that he was her faithless swain, Holland, making a day of it with that seductive picce of mischief, Mrs. Baddeley. Poor Miss Pope might fairly confess to the "pang of jealousy," which she then endured. Shortly after, they met at rehearsal. He, being conscious of wrong and incapable of confessing it, assumed a haughty bearing, but the injured woman was as proud as he; and from that time |