to your imagination. In some of his low characters, that became it, he had a shuffling shamble in his gait, with so contented an ignorance in his aspect, and an awkward absurdity in his gesture, that had you not known him, you could not have believed that naturally he could have had a grain of common sense."

LEIGH was a more mercurial actor, inferior only to Nokes, and so much admired by King Charles, that when he spoke of him it was always as "my actor." He died a week after Mountfort, in 1692. CAVE UNDERHIL was a comedian whose particular excellence was in characters of "still life, I mean the stiff, the heavy, and the stupid; in some he looked as if it were not in the power of human passions to alter a feature of him. In the solemn formality of Obadiah, in "The Committee," and in the boobily heaviness of Lolpoop, in "The Squire of Alsatia,' he seemed the immoveable log he stood for. A countenance of wood could not be more fixed than his, when the blockhead of a character required it; his face was full and long; from his crown to the end of his nose was the shorter half of it, so that the disproportion of his lower features, when soberly composed, with an unwandering eye hanging above them, threw him into the most lumpish moping mortal that ever made beholders merry." In 1709 an appeal was made to the public, by the "Tatler," for one" who had been a comic for three generations."

He was a famous First Gravedigger, and it was in that part he took a final leave of the stage. "But, alas," adds Cibber, "so worn and disabled, as if he himself was to have lain in the grave he was digging." He died soon afterwards a superannuated pensioner on the bounty of the patentees.

DICK ESTCOURT has been immortalised by Steele. "The best man I know for heightening the revelry of a company is Estcourt, whose jovial humour diffuses itself from the highest person, at any entertainment, to the meanest waiter." Cibber speaks slightingly of his acting, describing him as only an imitator of his predecessors, especially of Nokes. And it appears he was not alone in that estimate, for says Steele: "It has as much surprised me as anything in Nature to have it frequently said that he was not a good player," and ascribes the opinion to a prejudice in favour of former actors in his parts. "When a man of his wit and smartness could put on an utter absence of common sense in his face as he did in Bullfinch in The Northern Lass,' and an air of insipid cunning and vivacity in the character of Pounce in The Tender Husband' it is folly to dispute his capacity and success, as he was an actor." But most famous was he as a mimic, and kind-hearted Dick Steele discourses most eloquently upon this talent in an admirable paper, which also records his death (Spectator, No. 468). He was a great favourite of the

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Duke of Marlborough's; and he was the first providore of the Beef Steak Club, then just founded. About a year before his death, 1711, he became landlord of the Bumper Tavern, St. James' Street, and Steele, in Spectator 264, calls the attention of his admirers. to the fact. Cibber says that he was such an extraordinary mimic that no man or woman, from the coquette to the privy councillor, ever moved or spoke before him, but he could carry their voice, look, mien, and motion instantly into another company. One day Secretary Craggs, with some of his friends, went with Estcourt to Sir Godfrey Kneller's; and told him that a gentleman in company would give such a representation of some great men, his friends, as would surprise him. Estcourt mimicked Lord Somers exactly. Sir Godfrey was highly delighted and laughed at the joke. Then Craggs gave the wink, and Estcourt mimicked Kneller himself; who cried out immediately. Nay, there you are out, man, by G―, that is not me.' Covent Garden.

He is buried in St. Paul's

CHAPTER III.

THE LADIES.

Mrs. Betterton, the First Great Lady Macbeth-Mrs. MountfortCibber's Wonderful Description of Her Acting-Mrs. Bracegirdle-Anecdotes of Her Charity and Spotless CharacterMrs. Barry-Her Early Career-Dismissed the Theatre, three Times for Incapacity-Otway's Evil Genius-Her Great Talent.

OF

F the ladies of this period the precedence, by date, must be given to Mrs. Sanderson, afterwards MRS. BETTERTON an admirable artiste. Pepys, who always calls her Ianthe, from the part she played in "The Siege of Rhodes," praises her sweet voice. Cibber says "she was so great a mistress of Nature, that even Mrs. Barry, who acted Lady Macbeth after her, could not in that part, with all her superior strength and melody of voice, throw out those quick and careless strokes of terror, from the disorder of a guilty mind, which the other gave us, with a facility in her manner that rendered them at once tremendous and delight

* Previous to the first two or three decades of the eighteen.th century, the term Mistress was used to designate both single and married ladies; Miss being only applied to women of loose character, such being called "my Lord So-and-so's Miss."

ful." He adds that she chiefly excelled in the plays of Shakespeare, in which she was without a rival. She retired from the stage some years before her husband, in 1694, and survived him only eighteen months, losing her senses at his death. She was a woman of unblemished reputation.

MRS. MOUNTFORT, who afterwards married Verbruggen, was even more famous than her husband, and Cibber says, was mistress of more variety of humour than I ever knew in any one woman actress." His sketch of this lady is the finest of all his fine portraits. She was equally at home in the broadest personation of a country wench and in the finest of fine ladies: "In a play of D'Urfey's, now forgotten, called "The Western Lass," which part she acted, she transformed her whole being, body, shape, voice, language, look, and features, into almost another animal; with a strong Devonshire dialect, a broad laughing voice, a poking head, round shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and the most bediz'ning dowdy dress, that ever covered the untrained limbs of a Joan Trot. To have seen her here, you would have thought it impossible the same creature could ever have been recovered, to what was as easy to her, the gay, the lively, and the desirable. Nor was her humour limited to her sex; for while her shape permitted, she was a more adroit pretty fellow, than is usually seen upon the stage. Her easy air,