So shall we all look-kings and keysars (though, substantially, scarcely less a vapour stripped for the last voyage.

But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant, and thrice pleasant shade! with my parting thanks for many a heavy hour of life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas, public or domestic.

Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, leaving to his two brethren the heavy calendars-honest Rhadamanth, always partial to players, weighing their parti-coloured existence here upon earth, making account of the few foibles, that may have shaded thy real life, as we call it,

than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of Drury,) as but of so many echoes, natural re-percussions, and results to be expected from the assumed extravagancies of thy secondary or mock life, nightly upon a stage -after a lenient castigation, with rods lighter than of those Medusean ringlets, but just enough to "whip the offending Adam out of thee," shall courteously dismiss thee at the right hand gate-the o. P. side of Hadesthat conducts to masques and merry-makings in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine. PLAUDITO, ET VALETO.

ELLISTONIANA.

My acquaintance with the pleasant crea- | would be superfluous. With his blended ture, whose loss we all deplore, was but private and professional habits alone I have slight.

to do; that harmonious fusion of the manners of the player into those of every-day life, which brought the stage boards into streets, and dining-parlours, and kept up the play when the play was ended.—“ I like Wrench,” a friend was saying to him one day, "because he is the same, natural, easy creature, on the stage, that he is off" "My case exactly," retorted Elliston-with a charming forgetfulness, that the converse of a proposition does not always lead to the same conclusion-" I am the same person off the stage that I am on." The inference, at first sight, seems identical; but examine it a little, and it confesses only, that the one performer was never, and the other always,

My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened into an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was over a counter in the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered upon by a branch of his family. E., whom nothing misbecame-to auspicate, I suppose, the filial concern, and set it a-going with a lustre was serving in person two damsels fair, who had come into the shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publication, but in reality to have a sight of the illustrious shopman, hoping some conference. With what an air did he reach down the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion of the worth of the work in question, and launching out into a dissertation on its com-acting. parative merits with those of certain publications of a similar stamp, its rivals! his enchanted customers fairly hanging on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence. So have I seen a gentleman in comedy acting the shopman. So Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. I admired the histrionic art, by which he contrived to carry clean away every notion of disgrace, from the occupation he had so generously submitted to; and from that hour I judged him, with no after repentance, to be a person with whom it would be a felicity to be more acquainted.

And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private deportment. You had spirited performance always going on before your eyes, with nothing. to pay. As where a monarch takes up his casual abode for a night, the poorest hovel which he honours by his sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto for that time a palace; so wherever Elliston walked, sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and set up his portable playhouse at corners of streets, and in the marketplaces. Upon flintiest pavements he trod To descant upon his merits as a Comedian the boards still; and if his theme chanced to

"My conceit of his person,"-it is Ben Jonson speaking of Lord Bacon,-"was never increased towards him by his place or honours. But I have, and do reverence him for the greatness, that was only proper to himself; in that he seemed to me ever one of the greatest men, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that Heaven would give him strength; for greatness he could not want."

be passionate, the green baize carpet of own Foppington, with almost as much wit as tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet. Vanbrugh could add to it. Now this was hearty, and showed a love for his art. So Apelles always painted-in thought. So G. D. always poetises. I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actorsand some of them of Elliston's own stampwho shall have agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake or a coxcomb, through the two or three hours of their dramatic existence; but no sooner does the curtain fall with its leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their faculties. They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their families, servants, &c. Another shall have been expanding your heart with generous deeds and sentiments, till it even beats with yearnings of universal sympathy; you absolutely long to go home and do some good action. The play seems tedious, till you can get fairly out of the house, and realise your laudable intentions. At length the final bell rings, and this cordial representative of all that is amiable in human breasts steps forth-a miser. Elliston was more of a piece. Did he play Ranger? and did Ranger fill the general bosom of the town with satisfaction? why should he not be Ranger, and diffuse the same cordial satisfaction among his private circles? with his temperament, his animal spirits, his goodnature, his follies perchance, could he do better than identify himself with his impersonation? Are we to like a pleasant rake, or coxcomb, on the stage, and give ourselves airs of aversion for the identical character, presented to us in actual life? or what would the performer have gained by divesting himself of the impersonation? Could the man Elliston have been essentially different from his part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously, in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, and 'scape-goat trickeries of his prototype?

"But there is something not natural in this everlasting acting; we want the real man."

Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, whom you cannot, or will not see, under some adventitious trappings, which, nevertheless, sit not at all inconsistently upon him? What if it is the nature of some men to be highly artificial? The fault is least reprehensible in players. Cibber was his

The quality here commended was scarcely less conspicuous in the subject of these idle reminiscences than in my Lord Verulam. Those who have imagined that an unexpected elevation to the direction of a great London Theatre affected the consequence of Elliston, or at all changed his nature, knew not the essential greatness of the man whom they disparage. It was my fortune to encounter him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, with its punctual giants, is now no more than dust and a shadow), on the morning of his election to that high office. Grasping my hand with a look of significance, he only uttered,-"Have you heard the news?”— then, with another look following up the blow, he subjoined, "I am the future Manager of Drury Lane Theatre."-Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for congratulation or reply, but mutely stalked away, leaving me to chew upon his newblown dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to it. Expressive silence alone could muse his praise. This was in his great style.

But was he less great, (be witness, O ye Powers of Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the consular exile, and more recently transmuted, for a more illustrious exile, the barren constableship of Elba into an image of Imperial France), when, in melancholy after-years, again, much near the same spot, I met him, when that sceptre had been wrested from his hand, and his dominion was curtailed to the petty managership, and part proprietorship, of the small Olympic, his Elba? He still played nightly upon the boards of Drury, but in parts, alas! allotted to him, not magnificently distributed by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense of fallen material grandeur in the more liberal resentment of

depreciations done to his more lofty intellec- "Twas the identical argument à fortiori, tual pretensions," Have you heard" (his cus- which the son of Peleus uses to Lycaon tomary exordium)-"have you heard," said trembling under his lance, to persuade him he, "how they treat me? they put me in to take his destiny with a good grace. "I comedy." Thought I—but his finger on his too am mortal." And it is to be believed lips forbade any verbal interruption-"where that in both cases the rhetoric missed of its could they have put you better?" Then, application, for want of a proper understandafter a pause—“Where I formerly played ing with the faculties of the respective Romeo, I now play Mercutio," and so again recipients. he stalked away, neither staying, nor caring for, responses.

O, it was a rich scene,-but Sir AC—, the best of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative almost as well as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice to it, that I was a witness to, in the tarnished room (that had once been green) of that same little Olympic. There, after his deposition from Imperial Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his "highest heaven;" himself "Jove in his chair." There he sat in state, while before him, on complaint of prompter, was brought for judgment—how shall I describe her?— one of those little tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses-a probationer for the town, in either of its senses-the pertest little drab-a dirty fringe and appendage of the lamp's smoke-who, it seems, on some disapprobation expressed by a "highly respectable " audience, — had precipitately quitted her station on the boards, and withdrawn her small talents in disgust.

"Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was courteously conducting me over the benches of his Surrey Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning grandeur.

Those who knew Elliston, will know the manner in which he pronounced the latter sentence of the few words I am about to record. One proud day to me he took his roast mutton with us in the Temple, to which I had superadded a preliminary haddock. After a rather plentiful partaking of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility of the fare, observing that for my own part I never ate but one dish at dinner. "I too never eat but one thing at dinner,"-was his reply-then after a pause-" reckoning fish as nothing." The manner was all. It was as if by one peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all the savoury esculents, which the pleasant and nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her watery bosom. This was greatness, tempered with considerate tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but welcoming entertainer.

"And how dare you," said her manager,assuming a censorial severity, which would have crushed the confidence of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful Rebel herself of Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William her professional caprices-I verily believe, Elliston! and not lessened in thy death, if he thought her standing before him-" how report speak truly, which says that thou dare you, Madam, withdraw yourself, without didst direct that thy mortal remains should a notice, from your theatrical duties?" "I repose under no inscription but one of pure was hissed, Sir." "And you have the pre- Latinity. Classical was thy bringing up! sumption to decide upon the taste of the and beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed, town?" "I don't know that, Sir, but I will which, connecting the man with the boy, never stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder took thee back to thy latest exercise of of young Confidence-when gathering up imagination, to the days when, undreaming his features into one significant mass of of Theatres and Managerships, thou wert wonder, pity, and expostulatory indignation a scholar, and an early ripe one, under the -in a lesson never to have been lost upon roofs builded by the munificent and pious a creature less forward than she who stood Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. before him-his words were these: "They In elegies, that shall silence this crude prose, have hissed me." they shall celebrate thy praise.

THE OLD MARGATE HOY.

sailor-trousers did not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron over them, with thy neat-figured practice in

I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe | of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable I have said so before) at one or other of the ambassador between sea and land!—whose Universities. Next to these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the neighbourhood of Henley affords in abundance, on the banks of my beloved Thames. But somehow or other my cousin contrives thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have to wheedle me, once in three or four seasons, to a watering-place. Old attachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a third, and are at this moment doing dreary penance at Hastings!—and all because we were happy many years ago for a brief week at Margate. That was our first sea-side experiment, and many circumstances combined to make it the most agreeable holiday of my life. We had neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been from home so long together in company.

been of inland nurture heretofore-a master cook of Eastcheap? How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain: here, there, like another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations-not to assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that untried motion might haply raise in our crude landfancies. And when the o'erwashing billows drove us below deck (for it was far gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing weather), how did thy officious ministerings, still catering for our comfort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more cordial conversation, alleviate the closeness and the confinement of thy else (truth to say) not very savoury, nor very inviting, little cabin ?

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy weather-beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough accommodations ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh-water niceness of the modern steam-packet? To the winds and waves thou committedst thy With these additaments to boot, we had goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of on board a fellow-passenger, whose discourse magic fumes, and spells, and boiling caldrons. in verity might have beguiled a longer voyage With the gales of heaven thou wentest than we meditated, and have made mirth swimmingly; or, when it was their pleasure, and wonder abound as far as the Azores. stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned young course was natural, not forced, as in a hot-man, remarkably handsome, with an officerbed; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath like assurance, and an insuppressible voluof ocean with sulphureous smoke-a great sea chimera, chimneying and furnacing the deep; or liker to that fire-god parching up Scamander.

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of anything like contempt) to the raw questions, which we of the great city would be ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of this or that strange naval implement? 'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou shade of refuge between us and them, conciliating interpreter

bility of assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest liar I had met with then, or since. He was none of your hesitating, half-storytellers (a most painful description of mortals) who go on sounding your belief, and only giving you as much as they see you can swallow at a time-the nibbling pickpockets of your patience-but one who committed downright, daylight depredations upon his neighbour's faith. He did not stand shivering upon the brink, but was a hearty, thoroughpaced liar, and plunged at once into the depths of your credulity. I partly believe,

he made pretty sure of his company. Not hardying more and more in his triumphs many rich, not many wise, or learned, com- over our simplicity) he went on to affirm posed at that time the common stowage of a that he had actually sailed through the legs Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our necessary to make a stand. And here I enemies give it a worse name) as Alderman- must do justice to the good sense and bury, or Watling-street, at that time of day intrepidity of one of our party, a youth, that could have supplied. There might be an had hitherto been one of his most deferential exception or two among us, but I scorn to auditors, who, from his recent reading, made make any invidious distinctions among such bold to assure the gentleman, that there a jolly, companionable ship's company, as must be some mistake, as "the Colossus in those were whom I sailed with. Something question had been destroyed long since;" too must be conceded to the Genius Loci. to whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, Had the confident fellow told us half the our hero was obliging enough to concede legends on land, which he favoured us with thus much, that "the figure was indeed a on the other element, I flatter myself the little damaged." This was the only opposigood sense of most of us would have revolted. tion he met with, and it did not at all seem But we were in a new world, with every- to stagger him, for he proceeded with his thing unfamiliar about us, and the time and fables, which the same youth appeared to place disposed us to the reception of any swallow with still more complacency than prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has ever,-confirmed, as it were, by the extreme obliterated from my memory much of his candour of that concession. With these wild fablings; and the rest would appear prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in but dull, as written, and to be read on shore sight of the Reculvers, which one of our own He had been Aide-de-camp (among other company (having been the voyage before) rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian immediately recognising, and pointing out to Prince, and at one blow had stricken off the us, was considered by us as no ordinary head of the King of Carimania on horseback. seaman. He, of course, married the Prince's daughter. All this time sat upon the edge of the deck I forget what unlucky turn in the politics of quite a different character. It was a lad, that court, combining with the loss of his apparently very poor, very infirm, and very consort, was the reason of his quitting Persia; patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with but, with the rapidity of a magician, he a smile; and, if he caught now and then transported himself, along with his hearers, some snatches of these wild legends, it was back to England, where we still found him in by accident, and they seemed not to concern the confidence of great ladies. There was him. The waves to him whispered more some story of a princess-Elizabeth, if I pleasant stories. He was as one, being with remember having intrusted to his care an us, but not of us. He heard the bell of extraordinary casket of jewels, upon some dinner ring without stirring; and when extraordinary occasion-but, as I am not some of us pulled out our private storescertain of the name or circumstance at this our cold meat and our salads-he produced distance of time, I must leave it to the none, and seemed to want none. Only a Royal daughters of England to settle the solitary biscuit he had laid in; provision for honour among themselves in private. I the one or two days and nights, to which cannot call to mind half his pleasant wonders; these vessels then were oftentimes obliged but I perfectly remember, that in the course to prolong their voyage. Upon a nearer of his travels he had seen a phoenix; and he acquaintance with him, which he seemed obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error, neither to court nor decline, we learned that that there is but one of that species at a time, he was going to Margate, with the hope of assuring us that they were not uncommon in being admitted into the Infirmary there for some parts of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, had found the most implicit listeners. His which appeared to have eaten all over him. dreaming fancies had transported us beyond He expressed great hopes of a cure; and the "ignorant present." But when (still when we asked him, whether he had any