antics amongst us, was in truth anything but a prisor to thee, as the vain Platonist dreams of this body to be no better than a county jail, forsooth, or some house of durance vile, whereof the five senses are the fetters. Thou knewest better than to be in a hurry to cast off those gyves; and had notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It was thy Pleasure-House, thy Palace of Dainty Devices; thy Louvre, or thy WhiteHall. What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now? or when may we expect thy aerial housewarming? Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed Shades; now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either. Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the schoolmen admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and un-chrisom babes) there may exist not far perchance from that storehouse of all vanities, which Milton saw in vision a LIMBO somewhere for PLAYERS? and that Up thither like aerial vapors fly Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. There, by the neighboring moon (by some not im properly supposed thy Regent Planet upon earth), mayst thou not still be acting thy managerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee? but Iessee still, and still a manager. * TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 287 In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse beholds thee wielding posthumous empire. Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) circle thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on sinful Fantasy! Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth, ROBERT WILLIAM ELLISTON! for as yet we know not thy new name in heaven. It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice, bawling "SCULLS, SCULLS;" to which, with waving hand, and majestic action, thou deignest no reply, other than in two curt monosyllables, "No: Oars." But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small differ ence between king and cobbler; manager and callboy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer. But mercy! what strippings, what tearing off t histrionic robes, and private vanities! what denudations to the bone, before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within his battered lighter. Crowns, sceptres; shield, sword, and truncheon; thy own coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole property-man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy); the judge's ermine; the coxcomb's wig; the snuffbox à la Foppington, — all must overboard, he positively swears, and that Ancient Mariner brooks no denial; for, since the tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath shown small taste for theatricals. Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight; pura et puta anima. But, bless me, how little you look! So shall we all look-kings and keysars-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-colored existence here upon earth, making account of the few foibles, that may have shaded thy real life, as we call it, (though, substantially, scarcely less a vapor than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of Drury,) as but of so many echoes, natural repercussions, and results to be expected from the assumed extravagances 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 Hades-that conducts to masks and merrymakings in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine. PLAUDITO, ET VALETO. ELLISTONIANA. My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose loss we all deplore, was but slight. 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 comparative 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 shopSo 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. man. To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be superfluous. With his blended private and professional habits alone I have to do; that harmonious 66 fusion of the manners of the player into those of everyday life, which brought the stage boards into streets, and dining-parlors, 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, acting. As 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. where a monarch takes up his casual abode for a night, the poorest hovel which he honors by his sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto for that time a palace; so wherever Elliston walked, sat, 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 market-places. Upon flintiest pavements he trod the boards still; and if his theme chanced to be passionate, the green baize carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet. Now this was hearty, and showed a love for his art. So Apelles always painted-in thought. So G. D. always poetizes. I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors some of them of Elliston's own stamp-who 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 and |