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was delivered quite calmly, and in a deep tone full of pathos. As he asked her forgiveness, he knelt and appealed to Heaven with energy and great firmness. His farewell

"Good angels visit thee,"

was most affecting. He then moved very slowly to the wing, stood there a moment, said his last two sentences with a broken voice, and passed out to tremendous applause. Then returning with the guard, as Alicia said her last few words, he came up, took her hand most tenderly, and motioned back the soldiers, —led her off, as if to be still more in private, put up his prayer in a sort of whisper until he came to the line

"O should he wrong her!"

when his voice swelled, but sank again, then left her, got slowly backwards to the wing, looked back, and said, "Remember!" with a tone that seemed to the audience like the last utterance of a dying man.

All this shows a surprising study, not of mere vulgar "points," but of judicious contrast and effects.

Walpole had a poor opinion of his acting; but Walpole, as a judge of stage matters, is notoriously astray. He thought him "a very good and various player," but that Quin's Falstaff was quite as good as Garrick's Lear. Mrs. Porter and the Dumesnil were far before him in tragic passion. He was inferior to Quin in Brute and Macbeth, and to Cibber in Bayes. His Bayes was indeed original, but not the true reading. Cibber made it the burlesque of a great poet; Garrick the picture of a mere garreteer. He was a poor Lothario, a ridiculous Othello, a woeful Lord

Townly, and Hastings." Ranger he thought suited him best, and though the town did not relish his Hotspur, he thought he succeeded in it better than anything. In this extraordinary opinion, he says he was supported by Sir C. H. Williams, and Lord Holland. It was the fashion to talk of Quin's Falstaff, but Reynolds, who had seen it, owned he was disappointed. Garrick often thought of taking up this part and during the Jubilee gave a specimen, that delighted all who saw it. It would have suited him admirably, and have made a fine pendant to his Sir John Brute. But the physical creation would have been too much for him, and he would have been overpowered in the artificial corpulence of the character. It is hard to say what was his cheval de bataille. Not certainly his Romeo, not Othello, not Falconbridge, nor Hotspur. If we were strictly limited to the choice of two parts, we might name Lear and Drugger; and yet we should have liked Kitely or Ranger, Brute or Archer. Macbeth, Richard, or Hamlet we might not have cared so much for. Fox thought Barry's Romeo much finer; a judgment, however, that loses all value, when he could think the prodigy, "Master Betty," superior. Still he was an enthusiastic admirer, and in the boxes at Drury Lane, during Garrick's Lear, he was seen one night holding up his hands in wonder and delight. One morning Gibbon called on Reynolds, after seeing Garrick's Richard, and thought he was inconsistent; for in the first part he was too "mean and creeping," and even "vulgar," and in the last quite the contrary. Cumberland thought Lear his finest part.

The characteristics of his acting, outlined by his

enemy, David Williams, are very remarkable. "In tragic parts, your execution is masterly. It is much improved within the last few years. Your province lies principally where the passions are exhibited by the poet, as agitated or wrought up to a high degree; your perfection consists in the extreme. In exaggerated gesture, and sudden bursts of passion, given in a suppressed and tender manner, you are inimitable. In the struggles and conflicts of contradictory passions, or in their mixture and combination, and when his effects are drawn by the author to a point of instant and momentary expression, there you are often excellent."

His fine reputation is bound up with the literature of the country; and readers of Fielding, and Smollet, and Sterne, will see how delighted those great writers were to record, how they had been affected by the great actor. In short, in this wonderful man's case, compliment seems to have exhausted all its shapes.*

*Admirers of "Tom Jones" will recal Partridge at Drury Lane, during Garrick's Hamlet. "Well, if that little man there, upon the stage, is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in my life. Ay, ay; go along with you! Ay, to be sure! Who's fool then? Will you? God have mercy upon such foolhardiness! . . . Follow you? I'd follow the devil as soon. . . . O! here he is again! No further? No, you have gone far enough already. Nay, sir, did you not yourself observe, when he found it was his own father's spirit, how his fear forsook him by degrees, and he was struck dumb with sorrow?'

"He the best player!' said Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer. Why I could act as well as he, myself. I am sure if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did.""-Tom Jones, bk. 16, ch. v.

BOOK THE SIXTH.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE GRAND TOUR.

SEPTEMBER, 1763.

AFTER this pleasant visit, he returned to town, and was busy with his preparations for the journey they were about to make. The "grand tour," if it was then a delightful progress, had also its responsibilities. He was really going for a holiday; he certainly took with him the resolution of never appearing on the stage again-unless the remedy for his temporary unpopularity was successful. He had a fond hope that it would be. Before going, he had appointed Colman to look after his interests in the theatre; he made arrangements for the appearance of a clever clerk, whom he had heard "spouting" at the Wood Street Debating Club, beyond Temple Bar, and who, he thought, would fairly support lover parts, during his absence. He did not dream that the terrible cry,

a rival!" would be raised. Finally, on the 15th of September, the very night his theatre opened, he and Mrs. Garrick, and their little dog, set off down to Dover.

As we have seen, nearly two years before, he had told Sterne, then starting off for Paris, that he was

VOL. II.

I

soon likely to visit that capital. Roscius, indeed, delighted in good company, and had long since discovered the truth, that the "finest" company is the most agreeable. The startling success of Sterne in Paris, whom the wits and "élégans" of Paris were loading with attentions-honours written home to Southampton Street, in a sort of rapture, stimulated his eagerness and when he heard from his friend that at "two great houses" his own gifts and genius had formed the staple of the conversation during the whole of a dinner party; all wondering how he could be so great in two such opposite walks of acting, it was very natural he should look forward to coming and receiving this homage in person.

He found little change in the state of the people from his first journey, though this time, he took a different route for variety. He came up by, what is now the beaten track, St. Omer and Arras. The accommodation and impositions were nearly the same: "for which the English may thank themselves; they wish to appear rich and generous," and in consequence were charged above double what the French paid. As they posted along, the country parts appeared to him more thriving, the roads good, and every acre cultivated, though there was but little enclosure. The poverty of the people was very remarkable; and the carriers, whom he often talked with on the road, complained sorely of the oppressive taxes.

At Calais he put up-not at the famous Dessein's, but at the Table Royal-" a good and reasonable house, with civil and obliging people." Here he was waited

* MS. Journal.

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