crowded to suffocation, he abused public confidence, and had nothing to say but that Cato had full right to take liberty with his senate."

In this strange being, there are two phases of character that are beyond ordinary singularity. The first was his "mental intoxication," of which he thus speaks in one of his journals: "To use a strange expression, I am sometimes in a kind of mental intoxication; some, I believe, would call it insanity. I believe it is allied to it. I then can imagine myself in strange situations and strange places. This humor, whatever it is, comes uninvited, but it is nevertheless easily dispelled, at least, generally so. When it cannot be dispelled, it must, of course, become madness." Here was a decided perception of the way he might be going,-from physical, through mental, intoxication, to the madhouse!

His common sense is another phase in the character of this great actor, who manifested so little for his own profit. He was the guardian of female morals against the perils of contempoary literature ! "In my humble opinion," he says, 66 a licenser is as necessary for a circulating library, as for dramatic productions intended for representation; especially when it is considered how young people, particularly girls, often procure, and sometimes in a secret manner, books of so evil a tendency, that not only their time is most shamefully wasted, but their morals and manners tainted and warped for the remainder of their lives. I am firmly of opinion, that many females owe the loss of reputation to the pernicious publications too often found in those dangerous seminaries."

Cooke may be said to have been dying, from the day he landed in the, United States. His vigorous constitution only slowly gave way. It was difficult for him to destroy that; for in occasional rests he gave it, when he sat down to write on religion, philosophy, ideas for improving society, and diatribes against drinking, in his diary, his constitution recovered all its vigor, and started refreshed for a new struggle against drunkenness and death. The former, however, gave it a mortal fall, in July, 1812, when Death grasped his victim, forever. Cooke was taken ill, while playing Sir Giles Overreach, at Boston, on the 31st of the above month. He went home irrecoverably stricken, met his fate with decency, and ealmly

breathed his last in the following September, in full possession of his mental faculties to the supreme moment.

of

He was buried in the "strangers' vault" of St. Paul's Church, New York, with much respectful ceremony, on the part of friends who admired his genius, and mutilated his body, as I shall presently show. Meanwhile, let me record here, that Cooke was of the middle size, strongly and stoutly built, with a face capable every expression, and an eye which was as grand an interpreter of the poets, as the tongue. He was free from gesticulation and all trickery, but he lacked the grace and refinement of less accomplished actors. In soliloquies, he recognized no audience; and his hearers seemed to detect his thoughts by some other process than listening to his words.

Kemble excelled Cooke in nobleness of presence, but Cooke surpassed the other in power and compass of voice, which was, sometimes, as harsh as Kemble's; and indeed I may say the Kemble voice was invariably feeble. In statuesque parts, and in picturesque characters,-in the Roman Coriolanus, and in Hamlet the Dane,-Kemble's scholarly and artistic feeling gave him the precedence; but in Iago, and especially in Richard, Cooke has been adjudged very superior in voice, expression, and style; "his manner being more quick, abrupt, and impetuous, and his attitudes better, as having less the appearance of study." Off the stage, during the progress of a play, he did not, like Betterton, preserve the character he was acting; nor like Young, tell gay stories, and even sing gay songs; but he loved to have the strictest order and decorum,-he, the most drunken player that had glorified the stage, since the days of George Powell! Could he have carried into real life the scrupulousness which, at one time, he carried into the mimicry of it, he would have been a better actor and a better man.

When Edmund Kean was in America, Bishop Hobart gave permission for the removal of Cooke's body, from the " strangers' vault," to the public burial-ground of the parish, where Kean was about to erect a monument to the memory of his ill-fated predecessor. On that occasion, "tears fell from Kean's eyes in abundance," says Dr. Francis; but those eyes would have flashed lightning, had Kean been aware that there was a headless trunk

beneath the monument; and that, whoever may have been the savage who mutilated the body and stole the head,-that head was in the possession of Dr. Francis! To what purposes it has been turned, this gentlemen 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 very choice, nor very accurate distich:

"Three kingdoms claim his birth.

Both hemispheres pronounce his worth!"

And 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 XXI.

MASTER BETTY.

WILLIAM HENRY WEST BETTY was born at Shrewsbury, in 1791, -a Shropshire boy, but of Irish descent. His father, a man of independent means, taught him fencing and elocution, and was unreasonably 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 in the ungrateful part of Elvira, in “Pizarro." He was then ten years old; was a boy with a will and decision of character; and, 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 66 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 stopped 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 Glasgow, there was

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