he was wiser than his gravity and could be merry when he pleased, or when wild mirth sprang out of deep feeling, and remorse enforced its lessons by hints of a frightful ecstasy. His performance of Rover in Wild Oats' was, perhaps, the most congenial with his nature of all his later representations; hit the happiest points between stern truth and delightful falsehood, and presented the liveliest picture of such a life as his own, catching in its course the colour of a myriad sentiments and modes of thought and being, but preserving a deep current of personal consciousness and enjoyment beneath all changes."

CHAPTER VII.

THE ELDER MATHEWS.

His Birthplace and Early Associations-The Schoolmaster of the Old Type-A Backslider-Stage Struck-A Richard that would not be Killed-A Droll Looking Lover-A Touch of Romance -Tate Wilkinson's Opinion of him-The Botany Bay of Actors-Among Savages-Engaged for the Haymarket-Birth of Young Charles-Scott's Companion to Kenilworth-His Accident" At Home"-Secession from the Dramatic StageWonderful Mr. Pennymann-Godwin-His TransformationsImitations at Carlton House-As the Spanish AmbassadorVisit to America-Embarrassments-As Sir Fretful PlagiaryColeridge's Impromptu-His Eccentricities-Début of Young Charles.

DUR

URING nearly eighty years the name of Charles Mathews was one of the foremost in our dramatic annals; it was as familiar to our fathers and grandfathers as it is to us, and the youth of this generation will carry into the next remembrances of "the evergreen Charles who still, at the age of seventy-three, remained the inimitable comedian, and alas! seemingly, for us at least, the last of his race. Not, however, with the younger but the elder owner of the old familiar name has this chapter to do.

Charles Mathews, the elder, then, to begin in the

orthodox manner, was born at No. 18, Strand, on the 28th of June, 1776. The house has long since disappeared, it stood in front of the old Hungerford Market, and consequently upon a part of the ground now occupied by the Charing Cross Railway Station. His father was what he calls "a serious bookseller,” that is to say, he dealt only in religious works, and was a very serious man, being minister of a Lady Huntingdon's Chapel at Whetstone. He and his wife appear, however, to have been very worthy personages, although surrounded by a horde of ignorant, hypocritical, and grasping fanatics. Mathews, in the fragment of autobiography which precedes his wife's Memoirs, gives some laughable pictures of these ranters, and tells us that from eight to thirteen he was as gloomy a little bigot as any of them; that he listened with great satisfaction to the denunciations of perdition which made up their sermons, and devoutly hoped it might be the doom of everybody who differed from him and his fraternity.

He tells us, in that same fragment, that his talent for mimicry was manifested at a very early age, that he "had an irresistible impulse to echo, like the mocking-bird, every sound he heard." His imitation of a noted street vendor of eels procured him such a thrashing, when he was about ten years age, that he felt the effects of it for several weeks afterwards.

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THE SCHOOLMASTER OF THE OLD TYPE.

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After receiving the rudiments of education at St. Martin's Free School, he was removed to Merchant Taylors'. His description of the pedagogues of that establishment is almost as graphic as Lamb's picture of Christ Church about the same period. Bishop, the head-master, wore a huge powdered wig, larger than any other bishop's wig. It invited invasion, and we shot paper darts with such singular dexterity into the protruding bush behind, that it looked like a fretful porcupine.' He had chalkstone knuckles, too, which he used to rap on my head like a bag of marbles, and, eccentric as it may appear, pinching was his favourite amusement, which he brought to great perfection. There were six forms; I entered the school at the lowest, and got no higher than the fifth, but was, of course, alternately under the tuition of the four masters. Gardner, the lowest in grade, was the only mild person amongst them. Two more cruel tyrants than Bishop and Rose never existed. Lord, the fourth master, was rather an invalid, and, I believe, had been prescribed gentle exercise; he therefore put up for, and was the successful candidate for the flogging department. Rose was so great an adept at the cane, that I once saw a boy strip, after a thrashing from him, that he might expose his barbarous cruelty, when the back was actually striped with dark streaks like a zebra."

Only the classical tongues were taught at Mer

chant Taylors', and he attended the French Classes of that same Madame Coterille, described in the last chapter.

It must be supposed that our hero's youthful fanaticism was wearing off, as, like Elliston, he joined her amateur performances, and was induced to sustain the part of Phoenix in Philips' "Distressed Mother," and in the next year the Chaplain in Otway's "Orphan." From that time, "Instead of reading Brother Hill's Experience of his Sainted Sarah,' or 'The Last Moments of the Pawnbroker's Laundry Maid,' or other such tracts, from my father's shelves, I selected the beauties of the living dramatists which nestled unheeded amongst the great mass of sermons and theological works. They heated my imagination, and, together with the lessons in the French nursery, gave me the most ardent desire to witness a play. On every occasion of my father's absence, instead of standing behind the counter, I mounted upon it, and with a round ruler for a truncheon, red ink for blood, the kitchenpoker for a sword, and a towering goose feather fixed on one side of my hat, turned up for the purpose, the skirt of my coat thrown gracefully over my left shoulder for a mantle, and a red tape garter encircling my knee, did I exhibit myself to the great edification of his apprentices. . . . . I could scarcely walk the streets without offering my kingdom for a horse to every pedestrian I met. At