The portraits of Mossop and Barry are too well known to be quoted. These were more elaborate than the rest, and more amusing. Mossop, was so "attached to military plan," and kept his eyes fixed on his right-hand man. Barry was unfairly dismissed with the fine climax, "conned his passions, as he conned his part." The veteran Quin found his traditional reputation rudely questioned and examined, and was thrust back with the following congé :"Parrots themselves speak properly by rote, And in six months my dog shall howl by note." So with Sheridan's "stages" and methodised tactics: "Why must impatience fall three paces back? Why is the right leg too forbid to stir Why must the hero with the nailor vie, And hurl the close-clench'd fist at nose or eye. In royal John, with Philip angry grown, I thought he would have knock'd poor Davies down. To fright a king so harmless and so tame?" To Barry he was cruel, and it is surprising that a man with Churchill's nature could have been so unjust. His choosing the "well-applauded tenderness in "Lear," and praising a character in which the actor was inferior, was an artful shape of depreciation. affected to see in him nothing but artifice, or art; and yet it was notorious, that there was no such passionate "lover" on the stage. He With the women he was more lenient and gentle. Cibber and Pritchard received high and elegant praise. So did Clive and Pope. In Yates a certain tameness and sameness, with a want of nature, were discovered; but on a more obscure Miss Bride, he lavished far warmer praise. It is indeed so charming, and at the same time so extravagant, a portrait, that we may suspect the satirist had some partiality for this favoured lady. Yet at the present day, Bride is a name about the least known to those, who take interest in the stage. The whole is delightful reading. The sound of these terse close couplets, as full of meaning as of good English, is like the stroke of a good sword on armour. It was read and read again; edition after edition was called for. The common mode in which satire is received by the world, is for every one to discover an application in any direction but their own. But, as Mr. Forster acutely remarks, the reception of "The Rosciad" was on a reverse principle, for every actor had to own his likeness, and was led by a morbid excitement to dwell upon his own disgrace. Roscius was extravagantly lauded. The depreciation of the others, was made subservient to his exaltation. For here was the point of the panegyric, -awarding the palm to Garrick. The praise itself cannot be styled extravagant. It seemed to be called forth by the snarling of critics, who with Sterne's stopwatch in their hand, found hypercritical fault with the "unnatural start" and "affected pause.' He admits that "the best things carried to excess are wrong. The start may be too frequent, pause too long." Actors, just as monkeys mimic man, may by their absurd and overdone imitation, spoil the scenes they mean to adorn. But this should not affect the true thing: "When reason yields to passion's wild alarms, And the whole state of man is up in arms, Whilst working from the heart, the fire I trace, I can't catch words, and pity those who can. Hence to thy praises, Garrick, I agree, And pleas'd with Nature, must be pleas'd with thee." And at the finale, bringing forward Shakspeare, who has seen the histrionic troupe go by, he makes him present Roscius with the palm, in words burning and genuine, and which most happily describe Garrick's gifts and special charm : "If manly sense; if nature linked with art; If fervent faults with greatest beauties joined ; If feelings which few hearts like his can know, And which no face so well as his can show, Deserve the preference-Garrick, take the chair- Words surely which should have their place upon the monument in the Abbey, instead of a Mr. Pratt's feeble praise, and fustian compliment. At this time Garrick actually did not know the author, though he might have noticed the unpleasing form over the "spikes" of his pit-that rude figure for which Churchill himself found a place in his bitter pasquinade: "Even I, whom nature casts in hideous mould, Whom having made, she trembled to behold." It was given out that the players would revenge themselves, by chastising the author; but the bold satirist avowed himself at once, and walked publicly in the Covent Garden Piazza, past the coffee-houses, to give them an opportunity. They never seized it. Yet Garrick's situation, though his vanity must have been unusually gratified by this powerful and public testimonial, was not a little awkward. Sympathy with his fellows, and esprit de corps required not merely that he should take no pleasure in the tribute, but that he should affect a little dissatisfaction. He even was so foolish as to say, that he believed it was a bid for the freedom of his theatre. This may have been a mere green-room whisper; for that freedom was cheap enough, and enjoyed by very small creatures indeed. Indifference of this sort is a favourite and complacent affectation of flattered humanity. But the news of so ungracious a welcome was soon borne to Churchill, who, inflamed by the attacks of reviews and the hostile cries of the actors, had his bludgeon in the air again, and in a very short time produced "The Apology," a sequel to the former work, but in a far more savage key. He was infuriated with all, and fell on both critics and players in bitter verse, not waiting this time for polish or antithesis. Hence have we now, the fine Hogarth picture of the "Strolling Players," which Mr. Forster, so justly, puts immeasurably above Crabbe's pendant on the same subject. It touched Garrick indirectly. For he came to the great actor himself, and though he spared him the humiliation of naming him, there was a savage roughness in the "shaking" he gave him a hint there was no mistaking, and most significant for the future: "Let the vain tyrant sit amid his guards, His young green-room wits and venal bards, It thus seems as if some one had carried Garrick's ८ remark about the freedom of the playhouse to Churchill, and this was a savage hint that he knew what had been so indiscreetly said of him. Roscius was now confounded. The mortification was in exact proportion to his previous exaltation. He first thought of writing a letter of expostulation to the satirist, but was wisely dissuaded. Garrick, in fact, thought everything could be done by a "good letter." There were plenty to enjoy his situation. He had been indeed warned by Lloyd, that Churchill was displeased with him, but he could not have reckoned on such punishment. Lloyd—who had himself written a poem which furnished a hint to Churchill-wrote in great distress to Garrick: for it might be supposed, he said, that he could have checked the satirist. But Garrick, in a letter, in which he honestly confessed how much he suffered, bade him set his mind at rest. He knew enough, he said, of Churchill's spirit and writings, to see that he would not tolerate any interference with his purposes. Wisely, therefore, thinking of the future more than of the past, he humbly told his friend, meaning of course that what he said should reach other ears, that if there was real resentment at the bottom of the attack, he was sure there were no grounds for it; but if it was done because he was "the Punch of the puppet show," and could not be well left out, the matter was of necessity. Mr. Churchill was heartily welcome. Yet for all this he was very "sore." In "The Rosciad," he added, he was raised too high, but in "The Apology" he may have been sunk too low, Churchill "making an idol of a calf, like the Israelites, and then dwindling an idol into a calf again." However, he would bear it all pleasantly. He was Mr. Churchill's great admirer, |