were horribly fine, and his despair was awful. In comedy, he excelled in strong satirical characters. He was irresistible in sarcasm, and the cutting leer of his eye seemed to glance to the very marrow of his opponent. All his humour had a strong dash of the sarcastic; even in Falstaff he often sacrificed the goodhumoured waggery of the jolly knight to his love for biting sarcasm; and his Richard was remarkable for a vein of sneering humour, that heightened the malignancy of the character.

In every part that he performed, there was a tendency to familiarity of style. Like Hogarth in painting, he had little idea of beauty, nor any great elegance of imagination; but like him, he had a wonderful knowledge of common life, and of the human heart. A great shrewdness in seizing upon whatever was expressive and characteristic, and a happy facility in executing his conceptions. Such is the wonderful power of genius, that this self-abused, negligent, capricious being, with little study and still less care, could arrive at excellencies in his art, which many men of more mind, sounder critical judgment, and unwearied assiduity, may labour all their lives to attain. He was, in fact, an actor more calculated to furnish rules, than to consult them. He was a model, from whom rules might be drawn. But we would hint to our tyros in the art, whom we often see shaking their fingers, drumming with their truncheons on their thighs, and indulging in other little mimicries, which they fancy to be imitating Cooke, that it was the principles on which he excelled that they ought to have studied, and not his peculiarities; and that they might have meditated incessantly, and, provided their intellects would admit, with continual profit, on one of his masterpieces, as Michael Angelo is said to have meditated on the sublime torso of the Hercules.

We have suffered ourselves to talk so much about Cooke, that we had nearly forgotten the work that lays quietly before us, awaiting its doom, like a prisoner at the bar. This, in the plenitude of our power, we might despatch off hand, for much the same excellent reasons, that a learned judge once condemned a culprit to be hanged-first, because it is time for our dinner; and, secondly, because it is not dignified for a critic to sit in judg ment, and no author be damned. But though we are all potent, yet are we merciful; and if we say but little concerning the work,

yet will we endeavour, as far as the nature of our office will admit, that that little shall be just. Indeed, we feel very considerable kindness to the author, for having given us an opportunity of talking. Literary attempts are so rare in this good money-making country, that we have seldom an opportunity to display our prowess; and feel as impatient, with quill in hand, and no work to assault, as does a valiant, new-commissioned officer, with a sword by his side, and no enemy to encounter.

The fault that chiefly strikes us, in this work, is the voluminous quantity of unimportant matter, extracted from Cooke's private common-place book. The details furnished therefrom are occasionally interesting, and present a more faithful picture of his character and mind than could be otherwise made. But they become monotonous, and are frequently trivial. A great part of them are brief chronicles of his daily occupations, wherein he minutes down, with curious fidelity, what time he rose, what time he breakfasted, read the newspaper, dined and went to bed; but particularly the latter; perhaps because he thought it a matter worthy of record that he went to bed sober, or, rather, that he went to bed at all.

It is curious to observe, in these private journals, which occasionally bear more the appearance of confessions, the sober comments that Cooke makes on his habits of intoxication. We have in particular, one severe philippic, which we shall extract both as a specimen of Cooke's turn of thinking, and as a curiosity in itself; being the self-upbraiding of an intemperate man, maturely considered, methodically arranged, and minuted down to stand in evidence against himself. It is not often, however, that he indulges in such severe self-flagellation; we are sorry to say, that in general, he seems to have castigated himself with as much tenderness as did the sage Sancho, when labouring to disenthral the hero of La Mancha.

"Having mentioned cards several times, as introduced at the mess, Mr. Cooke explains, by saying that there was no gambling; at the same time condemns himself for having wasted his time so fruitlessly: It will very little assist me in defending myself, to say that I have frequently wasted my time in a much worse manWhen a man reconciles himself to himself, by making degrees of sin, he is in the utmost danger of advancing to, instead of

ner.

receding from, the most abominable depravity. It is a doubt with me, whether a gamester, (here I take the word in its utmost latitude,) or drunkard, be the most vitious character, or the most dangerous to society. The former, without deranging his faculties, exerts them all for the avowed purpose of plundering every one he plays with; his dearest friends not excepted, (if such a wretch can have a friend,) and when, by superior villany, or some unforeseen chance, he is in his turn beggared, he is ready fitted for the most atrocious crimes, robbery, murder, or suicide. Drunkenness, in addition to the high degree of wickedness attached to it, has the melancholy and woful effect of degrading the human beneath the brute creation. What confidence can be placed in those persons who are in the habit of rendering them selves incapable of rational exertion? A crime committed in this state is aggravated by the state itself, and in this light both moral and religious law must view it. There have been many excellent arguments used against this beastly vice, and many exposures of its dreadful tendency, but none more strong, pointed and convincing, than the following short story, I believe an oriental one: A young man was decreed by fate to commit one heinous crime. He was to have the choice of three; but inevitably must choose. It was left to him to make his election, of parricide, incest, or drunkenness. He chose the last, got drunk, and committed the former two."

We shall only add that this sermon, in a manner preached to himself, fared the fate of most other sermons. No sooner could old Cooke escape from the admonitions of his own conscience, than they were speedily forgotten; and he fell to sinning with greater vehemence than ever; as if to reward himself for having been so marvellously sober and rational. Indeed, it seems as if he accompanied these confessions by a kind of absolution; and having wiped off the old score, stood ready to begin a new one.

We shall not enter into an analysis of his biography; it contains many well told anecdotes, whimsical, characteristic, and often disgusting; such, we apprehend, as occur in the history of most distinguished actors of vagabond propensities, But though they are often amusing in themselves, still it is pitiable to witness such prostration of intellect, such wilful abuse of genius, such absolute self-abandonment.

Amid all the anecdotes, however, of his low sensualities and joyless revels, there are two or three gleams of native benevolence of feeling, that are really touching. We allude, among VOL. I. New Series. 3 U

other instances, to old Cooke's deportment on reposing for an evening, at Amboy, in the rural retreat of Mr. Dunlap. There was something in the innocent cheerfulness, the domestic endear ment of this family circle, that seemed to warm the blighted heart of this poor, homeless wanderer. He seemed to contrast this scene of tranquil happiness with his own vagabond life, and sighed for equal innocence and repose. This, and the circumstance of his liberality to a poor widow, who had sheltered him in her hovel, during one of his paroxysms of intemperance, show that Cooke possessed a heart, which, however desolated and worn out by debauchery, was not originally bad.

It was Cooke's great misfortune that his ruling propensity became notorious, and that he had no longer the apprehension of discovery to make him cautious in his excesses; he, therefore, gradually became familiar with disgrace, and regardless of public exposure. The good-humoured indulgence with which he was received by polite audiences, after repeatedly insulting them by drunken desertions from the theatre, or, what is worse, by drunken exhibitions, led him to magnify his own importance in the public eye, He seemed to think that there was a redeeming spirit in his performances that atoned for every fault; he grew arrogant upon indulgence, and it was amusing to notice the proud and lordly air he could assume, when he thought his dignity not sufficiently acknowledged. Poor Cooke should have recollected that there is such a thing as being beneath public resentment; we cannot indulge any great feelings of indignation against beings who are mere objects of amusement; and there are no personages who enjoy a greater latitude of privilege than those from whom no good is expected,

Independent of Cooke's habits of intemperance, we do not find that he was prone to any other habitual vices. It is true, he would occasionally romance, and dwell rather fondly on former adventures; particularly his military exploits in this country during our revolution; when he was within an ace of taking General Washington, and putting an end to the war "with his own hands." But this might seem a very trivial and common-place achievement, to the mind of a man, who, in the way of his profession, was continually in the practice of overthrowing empires<

It must be admitted also, that he was somewhat extravagant in the number of his wives; but the domestic establishments of actors, like those of sailors, are seldom rigorously scrutinized, and it is thought a pretty tolerable instance of fidelity if they have not more than one wife in every port. As to his intemperate excesses, nature had wisely provided against their bad effects, by implanting in his bosom a discreet and insurmountable antipathy to fighting; so that his revels, however noisy, were generally harmless. He now and then threw the furniture out of the window when drunk; but then he paid for it when sober and he occasionally indulged in boisterous and abusive language, but if it were followed by blows, they were none but such as fell upon his own carcass. In a word, he appears to have been one of those unlucky beings, who are nobody's enemy but their own; and we close the amusing biography before us with a mingled, goodnatured kind of feeling towards the hero; in which there is a great deal more. of admiration than esteem, and considerably more of pity than contempt,