before he will let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these new mintings. was for some supposed charm in your conversation that he first grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling irregularities in your moral deportment, upon Innumerable are the ways which they take the first notice of any of these she as readily to insult and worm you out of their hus- exclaims, "This, my dear, is your good band's confidence. Laughing at all you say Mr- !" One good lady whom I took with a kind of wonder, as if you were a the liberty of expostulating with for not queer kind of fellow that said good things, showing me quite so much respect as I but an oddity, is one of the ways;-they have thought due to her husband's old friend, had a particular kind of stare for the purpose; the candour to confess to me that she had till at last the husband, who used to defer to often heard Mr. speak of me before your judgment, and would pass over some marriage, and that she had conceived a great excrescences of understanding and manner desire to be acquainted with me, but that for the sake of a general vein of observation the sight of me had very much disappointed (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in her expectations; for from her husband's you, begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a humourist,—a fellow well enough to have consorted with in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This may be called the staring way; and is that which has oftenest been put in practice against me. representations of me, she had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officerlike-looking man (I use her very words), the very reverse of which proved to be the truth. This was candid; and I had the civility not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch upon a standard of personal accomplishments for her husband's friends which differed so much from his own; for my friend's dimensions as near as possible approximate to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in his air or countenance. Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony; that is, where they find you an object of especial regard with their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attachment founded on esteem which he has conceived towards you, by never qualified exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who understands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so much candour, and by relaxing a little on to his part, and taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly level of moderate esteem that "decent - I These are some of the mortifications which have encountered in the absurd attempt visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavour; I shall therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of which married ladies are affection and complacent kindness "towards guilty,-of treating us as if we were their you, where she herself can join in sympathy husbands, and vice versâ. I mean, when with him without much stretch and violence they use us with familiarity, and their husto her sincerity. bands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. did not come home, till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some as a great wit?" If, on the other hand, it other person is. It endeavours to make up, Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for something excellent in your moral character was that which riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she will cry," I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr. a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great good-will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony But I am weary of stringing up all my that ladies are bound to observe to their married acquaintance by Roman denominahusbands, beyond the point of a modest tions. Let them amend and change their behaviour and decorum: therefore I must manners, or I promise to record the fullprotest against the vicarious gluttony of length English of their names, to the terror Cerasia, who at her own table sent away of all such desperate offenders in future. ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. THE casual sight of an old Play Bill, her plaintive ones. There is no giving an which I picked up the other day-I know account how she delivered the disguised not by what chance it was preserved so long story of her love for Orsino. It was no set -tempts me to call to mind a few of the speech, that she had foreseen, so as to weave Players, who make the principal figure in it. it into an harmonious period, line necessarily It presents the cast of parts in the Twelfth following line, to make up the music-yet I Night, at the old Drury-lane Theatre two- have heard it so spoken, or rather read, not and-thirty years ago. There is something without its grace and beauty-but, when she very touching in these old remembrances. had declared her sister's history to be a They make us think how we once used to "blank," and that she "never told her love," read a Play Bill-not, as now peradventure, there was a pause, as if the story had ended singling out a favourite performer, and cast--and then the image of the ". worm in the ing a negligent eye over the rest; but spell- bud," came up as a new suggestion—and the ing out every name, down to the very mutes heightened image of "Patience" still followed and servants of the scene ;-when it was after that, as by some growing (and not a matter of no small moment to us whether mechanical) process, thought springing up Whitfield, or Packer, took the part of Fabian; after thought, I would almost say, as they when Benson, and Burton, and Phillimore- were watered by her tears. So in those fine names of small account-had an importance, linesbeyond what we can be content to attribute now to the time's best actors.-" Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore."-What a full Shakspearian sound it carries! how fresh to memory arise the image and the manner of the gentle actor! Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the last ten or fifteen years, can have no adequate notion of her performance of such parts as Ophelia ; Helena, in All's Well that Ends Well; and Viola in this play. Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in Her voice had latterly acquired a coarseness, the pride of her beauty, made an admirable which suited well enough with her Nells and Olivia. She was particularly excellent in Hoydens, but in those days it sank, with her her unbending scenes in conversation with steady, melting eye, into the heart. Her the Clown. I have seen some Olivias-and joyous parts-in which her memory now those very sensible actresses too-who in chiefly lives-in her youth were outdone by these interlocutions have seemed to set their Right loyal cantos of contemned love- there was no preparation made in the foregoing image for that which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in her passion; or it was nature's own rhetoric, most legitimate then, when it seemed altogether without rule or law. wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with him in downright emulation. But she used him for her sport, like what he was, to trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and then to be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady still. She touched the imperious fantastic humour of the character with nicety. Her fine spacious person filled the scene. The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, been so often misunderstood, and the general merits of the actor, who then played it, so unduly appreciated, that I shall hope for pardon, if I am a little prolix upon these points. commonly stands like a great helpless mark, set up for mine Ancient, and a quantity of barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The Iago of Bensley did not go to work so grossly. There was a triumphant tone about the character, natural to a general consciousness of power; but none of that petty vanity which chuckles and cannot contain itself upon any little successful stroke of its knavery-as is common with your small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did not clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting his wits at a child, and winking all the while at other children, Of all the actors who flourished in my who are mightily pleased at being let into time-a melancholy phrase if taken aright, the secret; but a consummate villain enreader-Bensley had most of the swell of trapping a noble nature into toils, against soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic which no discernment was available, where conceptions, the emotions consequent upon the manner was as fathomless as the purpose the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. seemed dark, and without motive. The part He had the true poetical enthusiasm-the of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was perrarest faculty among players. None that I formed by Bensley, with a richness and a remember possessed even a portion of that dignity, of which (to judge from some recent fine madness which he threw out in Hot- castings of that character) the very tradition spur's famous rant about glory, or the trans- must be worn out from the stage. No ports of the Venetian incendiary at the manager in those days would have dreamed vision of the fired city. His voice had the of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons; dissonance, and at times the inspiriting when Bensley was occasionally absent from effect, of the trumpet. His gait was uncouth the theatre, John Kemble thought it no and stiff, but no way embarrassed by affec- derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio tation; and the thorough-bred gentleman is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes was uppermost in every movement. He comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, seized the moment of passion with greatest repelling; but dignified, consistent, and, for truth; like a faithful clock, never striking what appears, rather of an over-stretched before the time; never anticipating or morality. Maria describes him as a sort of leading you to anticipate. He was totally Puritan; and he might have worn his gold destitute of trick and artifice. He seemed chain with honour in one of our old roundcome upon the stage to do the poet's message head families, in the service of a Lambert, or simply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and his as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands manners are misplaced in Illyria. He is of the gods. He let the passion or the opposed to the proper levities of the piece, sentiment do its own work without prop or and falls in the unequal contest. Still his bolstering. He would have scorned to pride, or his gravity (call it which you will), is mountebank it; and betrayed none of that inherent, and native to the man, not mock or cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. affected, which latter only are the fit objects For this reason, his Iago was the only to excite laughter. His quality is at the endurable one which I remember to have best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor conseen. No spectator, from his action, could temptible. His bearing is lofty, a little divine more of his artifice than Othello was above his station, but probably not much supposed to do. His confessions in soliloquy above his deserts. We see no reason why alone put you in possession of the mystery. he should not have been brave, honourable, There were no by-intimations to make the accomplished. His careless committal of the audience fancy their own discernment so ring to the ground (which he was commuch greater than that of the Moor-who missioned to restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity of birth and feeling. His dialect Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part on all occasions is that of a gentleman, and a an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked, man of education. We must not confound spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He him with the eternal old, low steward of was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his comedy. He is master of the household to a superstructure of pride seemed bottomed great princess; a dignity probably conferred upon a sense of worth. There was someupon him for other respects than age or thing in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big length of service. Olivia, at the first indi- and swelling, but you could not be sure that cation of his supposed madness, declares that it was hollow. You might wish to see it she "would not have him miscarry for half taken down, but you felt that it was upon an of her dowry." Does this look as if the elevation. He was magnificent from the character was meant to appear little or outset; but when the decent sobrieties of insignificant? Once, indeed, she accuses the character began to give way, and the him to his face-of what ?—of being "sick poison of self-love, in his conceit of the of self-love," but with a gentleness and Countess's affection, gradually to work, you considerateness, which could not have been, would have thought that the hero of La if she had not thought that this particular Mancha in person stood before you. How infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke he went smiling to himself! with what to the knight, and his sottish revellers, is ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold sensible and spirited; and when we take chain! what a dream it was! you were into consideration the unprotected condition infected with the illusion, and did not wish of his mistress, and the strict regard with that it should be removed! you had no room which her state of real or dissembled for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection mourning would draw the eyes of the world of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep upon her house-affairs, Malvolio might feel sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's the honour of the family in some sort in his nature, that can lay him open to such keeping; as it appears not that Olivia had frenzies-but, in truth, you rather admired any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look to it than pitied the lunacy while it lasted-you -for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice felt that an hour of such mistake was worth respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio an age with the eyes open. Who would not was meant to be represented as possessing wish to live but for a day in the conceit of estimable qualities, the expression of the such a lady's love as Olivia? Why, the Duke, in his anxiety to have him reconciled, Duke would have given his principality but almost infers: "Pursue him, and entreat for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, him to a peace." Even in his abused state to have been so deluded. The man seemed of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness to tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk seems never to desert him. He argues with his head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion. highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, O! shake not the castles of his pride-endure and philosophises gallantly upon his straw.* yet for a season bright moments of confidence There must have been some shadow of worth about the man; he must have been something more than a mere vapour-a thing of straw, or Jack in office-before Fabian and Maria could have ventured sending him upon a courting-errand to Olivia. There was some consonancy (as he would say) in the undertaking, or the jest would have been too bold even for that house of misrule. "stand still, ye watches of the element,” that Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord !-but fate and retribution say no-I hear the mischievous titter of Maria the witty taunts of Sir Toby-the still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight-the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked-and "thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." I confess that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest. There was good foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What an Aguecheek the stage lost in him! Lovegrove, who came nearest to the old actors, revived the person it is offered to-when the face turning character some few seasons ago, and made it full upon me, strangely identified itself with sufficiently grotesque; but Dodd was it, as it that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was came out of nature's hands. It might be not mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful said to remain in puris naturalibus. In countenance be the same vacant face of folly expressing slowness of apprehension, this which I had hailed so often under circumactor surpassed all others. You could see stances of gaiety; which I had never seen the first dawn of an idea stealing slowly over without a smile, or recognised but as the his countenance, climbing up by little and usher of mirth; that looked out so formally little, with a painful process, till it cleared flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in up at last to the fulness of a twilight con- Tattle, so impotently busy in Backbite; so ception-its highest meridian. He seemed blankly divested of all meaning, or resolutely to keep back his intellect, as some have had expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and the power to retard their pulsation. The a thousand agreeable impertinences? Was balloon takes less time in filling than it took this the face-full of thought and carefulness to cover the expansion of his broad moony face over all its quarters with expression. A glimmer of understanding would appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack of fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would catch a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicating it to the remainder. that had so often divested itself at will of every trace of either to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or three hours at least of its furrows? Was this the facemanly, sober, intelligent-which I had so often despised, made mocks at, made merry with? The remembrance of the freedoms I am ill at dates, but I think it is now which I had taken with it came upon me better than five-and-twenty years ago, that with a reproach of insult. I could have walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn-they asked it pardon. I thought it looked upon were then far finer than they are now-theme with a sense of injury. There is someaccursed Verulam Buildings had not en- thing strange as well as sad in seeing actors croached upon all the east side of them, your pleasant fellows particularly-subcutting out delicate green crankles, and jected to and suffering the common lot ;— shouldering away one of two of the stately their fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, alcoves of the terrace-the survivor stands seem to belong to the scene, their actions to gaping and relationless as if it remembered be amenable to poetic justice only. We can its brother-they are still the best gardens hardly connect them with more awful of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved responsibilities. The death of this fine actor Temple not forgotten-have the gravest took place shortly after this meeting. He character; their aspect being altogether had quitted the stage some months; and, as reverend and law-breathing-Bacon has left the impress of his foot upon their gravel walks-taking my afternoon solace on a summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, a comely sad personage came towards me, whom, from his grave air and deportment, I judged to be one of the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a serious, thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be in meditations of mortality. As I have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, I was passing him with that sort of subindicative token of respect which one is apt to demonstrate towards a venerable stranger, and which rather denotes an inclination to greet him, than any positive motion of the body to that effect-a species of humility and will-worship which I observe, nine times out of ten, rather puzzles than pleases the I learned afterwards, had been in the habit * Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice collection of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a man of wit. I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of study could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one evening in Aguecheek, and recognising |