"bass viol." He seems to have been an amiable, and attractive prince, fond of the society of those below him; with a wish to be intimate with such men as Sterne and Garrick. He was treated with distinction everywhere, and loaded with honours; the courts had all their grandest shows for him. At Rome some little difficulty was found about his reception, as there was one of the Stuarts there, as Cardinal Duke of York. There was a coldness between him, and the King at home; but he consoled himself by fêtes, and music, and dancing, and at last died in the service of the pleasures he so loved, of a cold caught from excessive dancing. There was something almost pathetic in the circumstance of his death in a lonely little principality, far away from home, whence he sent a message, taken home by an aide-de-camp, asking forgiveness from his brother. Garrick, knowing him so well, naturally adapted the stages of his tour, so as to fall in with the festivities given in honour of the Duke. came in for some of the honours. His friend Mr. Beauclerk was also following in the august wake. Early in May, the actor reached Parma, the Duke of which court had caught some of the "Anglomanie." He had, of He had, of course, "read Shakspeare" (the fore-ordained victim for the experiments of all foreign students), and could speak English tolerably well. The English Duke entertained the prince, at the hotel Pallavacini, and had Garrick, Lord Spencer, and the Minister Tillot, as his guests. To be asked to so select a party was certainly a high compliment. After the dinner was over, the Italian Prince showed a little anxiety to hear the English fashion of declamation, and expressed his wish with so much feeling and delicacy,

แ

He

that Garrick at once stood up. This proves how thoroughly the actor deserved the favours, and friendship he received, and how far above he was the almost childish sensitiveness, which too often belongs to a position so equivocal.

He gave a short sketch of the story of "Macbeth," to prepare them for the situation, and then went through his famous dagger scene. He did it with more than usual effect.* The Duke was so delighted, that he sent him, next morning, a gorgeously enamelled snuff-box, and ordered apartments for him in the palace. Snuff-boxes indeed were to be a special shape of homage to his genius. Later, when he was coming home through Germany, the Duke of Wurtemburg presented him with another, in acknowledgment of the pleasure he had received from these recitations. Long after, when Garrick was in his library at home, showing these tokens to two of his actors, one of them, Holland, broke out a little coarsely with, "And so you went about the Continent mouthing for snuff-boxes!" Garrick, with that good humour which was his characteristic, only laughed, and took not the least offence.

He then posted on to Venice, to be in time for the shows given in honour of the Duke, who had arrived on the 26th of May. That city enchanted him, as it has enchanted many, at first; but a month's stay, he said, was like a honeymoon, in bringing you to a temperate consideration of things. He was dazzled and fatigued to death with the series of shows, which

Murphy seems to hint that no one present understood a word of what he said, which added to the triumph of the exhibition; but three at least, out of the four guests, understood English.

transcended even the wonders of the "Arabian Nights." But the famous "Regate," a specialté of Venice, astounded him. At Venice were Lord Ossory, and Mr. Beauclerk again, and Mr. Arden, a clergyman, whose house he afterwards visited in England. Venice was then a very wild and disorderly city, peopled with adventurers of all sorts. When Garrick came away his friends did not go with him; they had fallen into the hands of a gambling marquis and a Don Pepy, two adventurers, who, in one night, stripped them of ten thousand pounds. These were the days of costly follies; and fashion made the young Englishman of quality the favourite victim. The scandal took wind, and travelled all over Europe. He was now, however, beginning to grow restless and eager for home again. His heart was beginning to turn back to Drury Lane. Even in his walks on the Rialto, he fancied himself keeping an appointment with Pierre, though, strange to say, not expecting to meet a Bassanio and Antonio; for when the real Venetian nobleman came by, dressed like an attorney in one of the Spiritual Courts at York or London, the Shakspearean spell was rudely broken. He was getting models of Italian scenery made, and sending them home. He was looking out for dancers. Above all, he was naturally disquieted by the rumour of a star that had risen up in his absence, and whose brilliancy was, perhaps, magnified by distance. The name of this star was Powell, the young fellow from the Spouting Club, who, he heard, was now fascinating the town with his Philaster, and passing from Philaster through the whole round of parts. This alarming news troubled him. The success had been overwhelming. The

town was as "horn mad," as it had been in the old delightful transport of Goodman's Fields. Tall, thin, as he was, he was quite of the Barry order; and his voice in tragedy, went to all hearts, and drew abundant tears. The pit stood up, and shouted, in spite of Foote, who sat in the boxes on the first night, and affected to jeer at the whole. Somehow, wherever there is an act of grace, such as would be the welcome of a young actor, or at the Shakespere jubilee later, those sneering features are sure to be seen in the crowd.*

Garrick's uneasiness is plain to us. Yet he behaved admirably, and with true magnanimity. In Garrick's letter of advice to Powell, so often quoted, and his anxiety about his "doing Alexander," and "playing himself to rags," is to be seen that very pardonable dread which a really magnanimous mind often experiences, of being thought meanly jealous of a rising competitor. He, indeed, wrote that he had no joy in thinking of the stage, and affected to consider that he was to be "baited" if he returned there. But his heart, it is quite plain, was fluttering at the wings of Drury Lane.

When Digges first appeared at the Haymarket, this ungracious man was again in the pit, and when the new actor came out as Cato, dressed in "gilt leather and black," Foote's voice was heard, "in a pretended undertone ""A Roman chimney-sweeper on May day!" The laughter produced by this "sally" had nearly shipwrecked the actor.

CHAPTER II.

PARIS.

1764-1765.

HE stayed at Venice until the middle of June. He filled in his time by ransacking the curiosity, and booksellers', shops. He was writing drawing-room verses for the Marquise Ligneville. He was still longing to be at home; and nervous as to what people were saying of him. Yet Mrs. Garrick's health was still bad, and the sciatica so violent, that he could not think of returning as yet. They had tried all the fashionable and even absurd nostrums, then in vogue. Baretti, whom he had met in Venice, asked him, "Have you forgotten the black hen?"-the same remedy that was prescribed for Sterne and Smollett at Montpelier. She had tried a Venetian plaster, but fruitlessly; and finally they both set off for the famous mud baths of Albano, near Padua, and which Baretti prophesied would certainly restore her.

The "mud baths" had the happiest effect, and she was soon able to throw away her stick. By the middle of August, they had got on to Munich, but there he was seized with a dreadful bilious attack, which kept him in bed for a month. Luckily he had an English doctor near him, who kindly broke off his own tour, to stay with him, and who gave him better remedies, than the "flayed cocks" and "black hens"