"They who have won the laurel-You who give." Surely conviviality had few more accomplished victims than Joseph Richardson. The summer theatre was now to do its best to compensate the want of Mr. Kemble in Octavian. The young manager had been indecently accused of predilection for his own pieces. I should call it rather attention to his own interest. His productions had a decided fashion about them, that did not attend those of his contemporaries; and I know that he never refused his stage to a novelty of decent promise. The Mountaineers was of necessity to be played, though the delightful Octavian could not sacrifice any more time to its performance in town. I saw Mr. Palmer in the character. Though not naturally a tragedian, he was an able actor-he had energy, he had pathos-he had a fine, yet rather full, figure; but his countenance, though handsome, was not marking; and his attitudes, though bold, were not picturesque. His appearance indicated nothing of solitude and distraction, and blighted hope. He was a living contradiction in terms, and his Octavian implied a miracle. There was yet another important substitute this season, Fawcett for John Bannister, who went to Liverpool. Much of Bannister, Fawcett could not touch-age must be given to the character to force out the pathetic that was in him. His humour, too, did not seem to spring from flight :-absurdity looked considerate in Fawcett. But Colman soon found out his peculiar force, and wrote for him admirably. The attention of this worthy man, and able actor, was always unfailing to every duty of his profession. In the midst of the son's triumphs as a writer, the elder Colman was drawing to the close of an existence suffering under mental alienation. After the termination of his season, in the year 1785, he had gone to Margate, and was there affected by palsy; but it was not until 1739, that any disorder of the intellect became apparent. He was reduced to a condition of nervous imbecility; and died at a house in Paddington, under proper care, on the 14th of August, aged 62. Mr. Colman was born at Florence, where his father was resident for his Britannic majesty; and this procured the honour of a royal godfather, in the person of King George the Second. His mother was a sister of the Countess of Bath. He received his education at Westminster and at Christ Church, Oxford. He took his degree of master of arts on the 18th of March, 1758, and brought out his first farce in the year 1760. School friendships are often decisive of future engagements. The associate of Lloyd, Churchill, and Bonnel Thornton, was infinitely more likely to become a connoisseur than a lawyer. The Jealous Wife proved him to possess the very highest power as a comic writer; his Terence established his fame as the neatest of all translators. By the deaths of Lord Bath and General Pulteney in 1764 and in 1767, he found himself in circumstances, vehemently to be desired by all followers of the muses. His taste led him to the theatre; and he purchased first into Covent Garden, and finally into the Haymarket. The numerous productions of his pen are before the public, and will long remain so he collected even his fugitive pieces, and was sufficiently alive to his reputation as an author, to think of correctness even in trifles. As a critic, he had that integrity of judgment which leads to the exact truth; while spirits equally, perhaps more, subtle, fly often His achieveaway after hypotheses, useless and untenable. ment as to the epistle of Horace AD PISONES has had the highest praise. His skill in the Latin language was particularly acknowledged by Dr. Johnson. He lived in the full affluence of fame, beloved by the greatest and the best of men, till a cloud gathering in the decline of his course, he was covered from our view, and shortly after sunk below the horizon. CHAPTER VIII. Mr. Harris restores a one shilling gallery.-Holcroft's Prelude.-Mrs. Davenport.-Reynolds, The Rage.—Mr. Kemble acts Publius-Baddeley's death.-Mrs. Robinson.-Her comedy of Nobody.-Author's acquaintance with that lady-Variety of new pieces.-Mr. Kemble revives All's Well that Ends Well, and Measure for Measure.--Death of the admirable Parsons.-Mr. Kemble, with D'Egville for his ballet-master, gives the Splendid Progress of Alexander the Great.-Mr. Kemble's particular attention to the Wheel of Fortune.-Novosielski dies.-First Love.-Mr. Boaden's Secret Tribunal.-Want of helmets.-Zorinski.--Mrs. S. Kemble. The Knights.--Miss Mansell.-Cumberland's hurry.-Reynolds's speculation succeeds.-Mr. Kemble acts Alexander-Cooper fails in Macbeth.-Days of Yore.Holcroft's Man in Ten Thousand.--Morton's Way to Get Married.-Novelties.-Iron Chest. THE merits of our stage architecture are discernible at first sight; a second usually dispels the charm. Covent Garden had recently cost a large sum, to be rendered perfect. A shilling gallery had been left out of the original plan, but was placed at length so as to render the gods invisible to men below. Indeed, those far-seeing powers had no common obstruction to their own view. "Phidias," says the great lecturer, " had discovered in the nod of the Homeric Jupiter the characteristic of majesty, inclination of the head: this hinted to him a higher elevation of the neck behind, a bolder protrusion of the front, and the increased perpendicular of the profile." All these sublime arts had in vain been practised by our theatric gods: for any earthly enjoyment, they might as well have been in heaven, as where they were. Now, however, by cutting away a painted gallery, the shilling was permitted to see the stage; indeed, the whole ceiling was new. The frontispiece also a new one. The former column became a pilaster. The general character of the house was a fawn colour, with green and gold pannels. The cappings of the boxes were of green morocco leather; the seats stuffed of the same colour. The seats through the whole house were raised. Behind the curtains some red borders were so berly changed for green, and the machinist, an ancient as well as modern divinity, obtained more room for his operations. Conscious of all these improvements, Mr. Harris got Holcroft to scribble a prelude for him, called the Rival Queens; in which, perhaps without design, the superior title was attached to the other house-Queen Covent Garden, Empress Drury. The head tire was equally unfortunate, for the former bore the Piazza upon her crown, and the latter wore the cupola surmounted by Apollo. If Kemble had desired a symbol of difference between them, is not this precisely what he would have chosen? On the 24th of September that excellent actress, Mrs. Davenport, made her first curtsey at Covent Garden; and from that time to the present has remained one of the most diligent and diverting performers that ever amused the public. Mrs. Green was rather cooler; but Davenport flaming in the front of Lewis, Quick, Munden, and Fawcett, was a meteor of infinite value. The comic harmony of all their tones was really past belief. Miss Wallis, in October, returned to this theatre. in Imogen, considerably advanced in talent, but retaining all her native retiring modesty. : Reynolds's comedy, semper eadem, as Mr. Harris used to tell him, was as like in its success as in its structure or characters. The Rage fortunately was supposed to be personal.-Old P.'s were taken for old Q.'s--a boxing Peer was properly named Savage and the husband of a celebrated singer was as decidedly exhibited under the name of Cygnet, as Flush might stand for any one of the tribe of money-lenders. Seduction, disguise, disinheritance, adoption, are the nerves which support him through his five acts; whimsical incidents, practical jokes, and very sparkling dialogue, render his plot of no great consequence ---amusement constantly attends him, and every body who wishes to be amused. It is almost a fortune to give, to such an actor as Lewis, the name of Gingham. But Reynolds passed his whole time in thinking comedies; and only lived by writing them. He was so popular, that he had all the gay world running after him; and the grave preferred their exhilaration to their criticism. Mr. Kemble's decided preeminence in the Roman character, makes it necessary to record his performance of Publius, in the play of the Roman Father, on the 15th of November,-Mrs. Siddons was the Horatia. As this people aimed to be superior to the sympathies of nature, they excite little natural sympathy. 335 In France at this time every thing was Roman, even to the style of a wig. Delation arrived at a climax among the mimics, from which I believe the savage originals themselves shrunk--and children denounced the aristocracy or federalism of their parents, and were applauded for their VIRTUE! The stage suffered a considerable loss on the 20th of this month by the death of poor Baddeley. On the evening before he was seized with a fit, while dressing for Moses in the School for Scandal. He was taken home to his house in Store Street, and effort made to preserve him, but he lived only to the next day. His Swiss and his Jews, his Germans and his Frenchmen, were admirably characteristic-they were finely generalized by Baddeley, and played from actual knowledge of the people, not from a casual snatch at individual peculiarities. Baddeley left money for a dramatic mass to be said for him for ever, in the green-room of Drury Lane Theatre. Baddeley's cake and Dogget's coat and badge, consitute a fame, from which the merits of the actor are said to shrink. The gift of Baddeley keeps his name with good taste in the mouths of the profession of which he was an ornament; and there certainly would be more of such memorials, but that the successful are willing to forget their humbler rank, and those who fail, in their decline have nothing to bequeath. No season presented more indifferent pieces than the present --they departed usually like the shadows they were. Among the sons and daughters of disappointment was that very amiable unfortunate Mrs. Robinson. A perfect martyr to the rheumatism; the use of the lower limbs quite gone; carried from room to room, or from her house to her carriage like an infant; she yet had the nerve to control her bodily sufferings, so as to indulge a constant use of the pen, except at the periods of refection and exercise. Among the numerous trifles that soothed her lonely hours, was a comedy in two acts, entitled Nobody. I remember the warmth with which she chaunted the kindness of Mrs. Jordan in accepting the principal character; and I cannot forget the way, when the storm began, in which the actress, frightened out of her senses, "died and made no sign." Mrs. Robinson at the time lived in St. James's place, and very unaffectedly entertained the few literary friends she had. She was delighted in the opportunity it gave her of hearing all that passed in the world, and of mingling in the conversation her full share of intelligence and grace-she still sat a remarkably interesting woman, and disdained to intrude upon conversation any evidence of pain actually suffered at the moment. So that at the jest of others, and sometimes during her own repartee, the countenance preserved its pleasant expression, while a cold |