any public theatrical representation, having been much engaged in business; but I trust this will not operate against me. I am already perfect in Lingo and Bowkit, and know more than half of Old Doiley. Salary is no object, as I only wish to bring my powers into a proper sphere of action. I do not wish to blaze out awhile, and then evaporate! Being at present bound to my father, and under indentures, of course his consent will be necessary; but this is the only impediment that I am aware of. Your immediate answer, if convenient, will be of great consequence to, sir, your obedient servant, C. M." This was in the year 1790; and, as he was born in 1776, the proposed first comic actor of the metropolitan theatre was just fourteen! The manager simply returned him a line of refusal. the young ambition of the future

man of

But

"Quips, and cranks, and wreathed

smiles,"

was not to be thus extinguished. Excluded from the "properties" of the stage, he bought a pot of rouge, burned corks to give effect to his nascent beard and brows, and crowned all with a wig, copied from Edwin's portraits. The performances took place before his father's servants and apprentices; and, while the serious bookseller was probably calculating on his son's renown in the shoes of Toplady and Romaine, that son was wickedly raising a rebellion of laughter in the paternal kitchen, and flinging about jests and burlesques in the shape of the living Fawcett, Bannister, and Munden.

He records a mot of old Macklin, perhaps the last of this extraordinary survivor of his generation, for at this period he was above a hundred years old. Mathews was sitting next to him, when an actress of more matter than spirit was playing the part of a hoyden on the stage, Macklin watched her frolics for some time with a critical gaze; at length, on a peculiar display of agility, he turned round and said, in a voice that seemed to issue from a cavern, “Sir, that lady jumps very high, but she comes down very heavy."

Determined to be seen on a "real stage," Mathews, and his friend

Litchfield, like himself a stage enthusiast, purchased the honour of a night's display on the Richmond boards for fifteen guineas; the goodnatured and moderate manager having asked only twenty, for the opportunity thus given to two boys to make fools of themselves. The play was to be Richard the Third. Mathews, who had a passion for fencing, took the minor part of Richmond, that he might flourish his rapier in the last scene; and he flourished it to his heart's content. Litchfield, the crook-backed hero, after a few thrusts, would have evidently been satisfied to forfeit his crown and life. But his antagonist "had no idea of paying seven guineas and a half" for nothing. In vain did the tyrant try to die, after a decent defence,-in vain did he show symptoms of exhaustion. "I drove him," says Mathews, palpably enjoying his prowess, even after the lapse of so many years, "I drove him from any position convenient for his last dying speech. The audience laughed, I heeded them not; they shouted, I was deaf. Had they hooted, I should have lounged on unconscious of their interruption. I was resolved to show them all my accomplishments. Litchfield frequently whispered "enough," but I thought with Macbeth. I kept him at it, and, I believe, we fought almost literally a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. To add to the oddity of the scene, a bumpkin in the gallery, probably thinking the tyrant invulnerable by cold steel, and wrapt in the scene, eagerly bellowed out, Why don't you shoot him?" Many years after, as Mathews was relating one evening in the green room this droll incident, Mrs Jordan almost shook him from his feet, by starting up, clasping her hands, and in her warm-hearted fervent tones exclaiming, "Was that you? I was there," and she screamed with laughter, at the recollection of his acting in Richmond, and the length of the combat.

At length, in 1794, having made up his mind to adopt the stage as his profession, chance threw in his way one Hitchcock, acting manager of the Dublin Theatre. The young Roscius of course betrayed himself, and made a bad bargain with this theatrical Sergeant Kite. In short, says Ma

thews, I enlisted; he did not give me a shilling, and I believe never would if he could have avoided it. I stipulated, as far as possible, for what is called low comedy, for I had no pretensions to any thing above that. Why he engaged me at all was a puzzle to me, when I had leisure for repentance, in Dublin. My salary was to depend upon my success. Could I doubt that it would be liberal? After some discussion with his father, who finished by saying that little vagabond Garrick bit you when he took you in his arms,' he set off for Dublin. It was a dark and dreary morning when he landed, and a melancholy foreboding stole over him. He felt that he had embarked on a dangerous sea of adventure, without rudder, compass, or pilot, and all seemed comfortless. A thinner and more consumptive specimen of an Englishman," says he, "never set foot on the Emerald Isle." But this depression was unnatural to his lively and sportive spirit. The sun broke forth, and cheered him,—the novelty of the scene excited him, the odd sayings of the populace who gathered round the custom-house charmed him, and he asserts that the powerful contrast that exhibits itself on first landing in France, is not more powerful than that experienced by a close observer on his first crossing the Irish Channel, and clearing his luggage in Dublin. His first appearance was in Jacob and Lingo, in which some of his songs were enchored, and his comic talent acknowledged by the laughter of the galleries. He soon received a not less expressive evidence of his success, a message from Daly the manager. That high personage summoned him to his closet, and offered him the munificent salary of one guinea a week!

But the heroes of the stage are as liable to mishaps as the heroes of romance. The young actor's hopes of gain and glory were soon to be deplorably damped. The part of Beau. fort, in the Citizen, was fastened upon him. Mathews tells his melancholy destiny with humorous sorrow ;-he was to act with Miss Farren, afterwards Lady Derby, who was then playing in Dublin for a few nights. The part was notoriously that of a "walking gentleman," the proverbial bore of actor and audience. Accus

tomed as the lady must have been to mediocre performance in a part made for mediocrity, she probably never saw it before in such grotesque incapacity. With dismay, she observed the new exhibitor appear in the green-room in a scarlet coat (the only one provided by the theatre for the occasion), and that coat made obviously for a figure a head shorter than the wearer, and the sleeves reaching only within an inch of his wrists; a yellow embroidered waistcoat; a pair of black satin breeches, scarcely covering the knee; his hair liberally powder. ed and tied in a queue, according to the mode, and a chapeau-bras, which he scarcely knew how to dispose of. Imagine Mathews in such a dress, and at the age of seventeen, playing a sentimental drawl of a lover to a woman of elegant and accomplished manners! His reception was proportionate. The moment he set his foot on the stage, he was met by a general shout from the galleries, as if a clown in a pantomime had made his appear.

ance.

This was followed by shrieks, equally sympathetic, and, the first storm once over, the wits of the house plied him with their pellets. Thus he enjoyed the following delicate inuen does; "Pat, dont breathe hard, or you'll puff him off the stage."_66 Oh, it's the only puff I'll give him anyhow." His thinness was not forgotten.— "Oh, what a slice of a man? Arrah, where's your other half? Why did you not bring it with you?" Those specimens of rabble sport were death to the unfortunate actor, who was compelled, through no fault of his own, to incur and endure them. The vexation was even heightened by the performances of the charming actress, who was equally compelled by her part to turn this moping lover into burlesque. Her imitation was, of course, received by the galleries with savage rapture,-" Thereon followed from on high a dreadful noise, that might be supposed the war-whoop of the American Indians." Beaufort's exit was commemorated by another dreadful roar, and, at its close, one of his tormentors stood up and proposed

a groan for the long lobster," a proposal which was accorded with the honours. It may be conceived with what misery of mind a man of Ma thews' excessive irritability felt all this torture. Miss Farren apologised

to him when they had returned behind the scenes, for her unwilling burlesque. All was in vain. He begged of the manager," almost in tears," that he would relieve him of this abominable part; but managers, like fathers, have flinty hearts! and Daly could find no other actor to bear the shame of Beaufort, unless "by paying a long arrear of salary," a matter which Daly seems never to have contemplated but as the most formidable of all experiments; and as to Mathews, his biographer supposes that Daly had probably conceived some notion of his being a stage-struck enthusiast, who had money enough to support himself, and, in consequence, the manager in tended to pay him nothing at all.

Let the unlucky being who determines to throw up a regular provision for the life of an actor, read this narrative and be wise. We have here an instance of a true theatrical genius, suffering under privations which might, and must, have broken any heart less intrepidly vivid than his own. What, then, must be the condition of the man who, without any faculty whatever for the stage, with this knowledge painfully forced upon him night after night, with the inevitable consciousness of sinking lower and lower in the scale, suffers this most bitter trial! The solemn, in their generation, may frown over what they term the frivolities of books like this, but a single memoir of such a man, so deserving, and yet so suffering, is a lesson worth all their commonplaces. But the moral extends to farther ob jects. The ambition of adopting "professional life" of all kinds at the present day, is the source of countless instances of misery; a misery, if more secret than that of the theatrical novice, not less pungent. Every profession in England is overstocked; not merely the prizes are beyond the general reach, but the merest subsistence becomes difficult. "The three black Graces, Law, Physic, and Divinity," are weary of their innumerable worshippers, and yearly sentence crowds of them to perish of the aching sense of failure. A few glittering successes allure the multitude; Chancellorships, Bishoprics, and Regiments, figure before the public eye; and every aspirant from the cottage, and the more foolish parents of every aspirant, set down the bauble as gain

ed, when they have once plunged their unlucky offspring into this sea of troubles, which men call the world. But thousands have died of broken hearts in these pursuits,-thousands who would have been happy behind the plough, or opulent behind the counter,-thousands, in the desperate struggles of thankless professions, look upon the simplicity of a life of manual labour with perpetual envy; and thousands, by a worse fate still, are driven to necessities which degrade the principle of honour within them, accustom them to humiliating modes of obtaining subsistence, and make up, by administering to the vices of society, the livelihood which is refused to their legitimate exertions. Among all the pursuits of life, there is but one which is not overstocked, and which, from its nature, seems capable of endless expansion-and that one is Commerce. To this the world is the field; every newly discovered region, every increase of mankind, every new progress of civilisation, opens a new career for this great principle of human employment; and reckoning, as we always feel inclined to reckon, Britain among those nations which have been most especially favoured by the Great Disposer of all, we almost go the length of seeing a direct and peculiar bounty of Providence in the fact that commerce has been appointed the peculiar province of British energy. There the rising generation may find employment, not merely unobstructed by numbers, but actually distending by numbers-not merely unexhausted by variety of effort, but deriving new resources from every new application of the dexterity, diligence, or sagacity of man. The force of circumstances is, even more directly than ever, turning the powers of the country into this vast and overflowing channel of national production. We shall speedily see the younger branches of our proudest aristocracy occupying themselves in commerce, from the simple fact that their habitual professions have no longer room for them. The army is reduced to nothing; the navy offers no hope of promotion, or of service; diplomacy cannot find space for the hundredth part of the candidates for office. The Government clerkships can afford little more than bread, and that bread only to a few; and how long will the contrast between this narrow and de

pendent condition, and the ease, interest, and opulence, of commerce on the grand scale, suffer men to prefer official pride, made ridiculous by official poverty, to the boundless prospects of wealth, and, with it, of power, growing out of the mighty traffic of England with all nations? Where her merchants are princes, princes will be glad to become the merchants, and the connexion will render infinite benefit to both, and to their country. Education, high-mindedness, the manly spirit of the noble, and the honour of men who have to sustain a hereditary name, will give new dignity to the vigour, acuteness, and indefatigable industry of the commercial spirit ; and this combination may effect results at present beyond the farthest vista of national pre-eminence. Let none call these views Utopian; the progress of the world may be but begun; there are evidences of new and fervid impulses surrounding us; and, unless war or civil convulsion come to break up that progress, we may see noble and powerful results in the path of national advancement, even before this generation shall pass away.

The privations which Mathews suffered in his double engagement were more than pangs of hurt vanity. He was often on the point of being starved. "I often heard him say," observes his biographer," that he has gone to the theatre at night without having tasted any thing since a meagre breakfast, determined to refuse to go on the stage unless some portion of his arrears were first paid." However, this wise resolution he seldom was able to keep, the gaiety of the green-room, and his passionate love of acting, chained him to the stage, and, after another night of performance, he went home happy and hungry. It might be fairly presumed that those lessons would not be lost on a mind of his intelligence; and that, when wealth in process of time flowed in upon him, he would have known its value. But there seem to be men whose fate it is to be always involved in a struggle; and the later passages of his life show that he still contrived to be in distress, in the midst of what ought to have been, to one like him, not merely competence, but affluence.

He was singularly apt to meet with accidents; and, in the theatrical tour of the West of Ireland, very narrowly escaped drowning. He describes his

sensations as a dreadful complication of all kinds of suffering. He rose twice sufficiently to see the friend who had accompanied him seated on the grass, intent upon his book. He attempted to scream, but his voice had probably failed, for he remained unheard. His delusion now was a curious one; his brain was probably disordered. "Again I sank," says he, "and can comprehend the catching at a straw,' for my sensations, which are now vividly before me, were those of perishing in an unfinished building, where the beams of the floor were above my head. Drowning has been variously described, and is generally supposed to be a very easy death. I have not experienced any other manner of dying, certainly, but I cannot conceive any mode more painful. The tremendous noise of the rushing waters in the ears; the frightful flashing of light, as if surrounded by sparks from fire-works; the sense of suffocation; and, oh, who can describe the sensations I briefly felt upon my second bound from the bed of the river to the surface! Again I attempted a feeble cry! Again I saw my studious companion, and again I had the conviction that I was unseen! Every hope now fled, and I gradually lost all sensation, except that of struggling to reach the beams that floated in my imagination. To the last I was under the impression that by desperate efforts I might grasp this apparent substance, and so save myself. This is all I am capable of relating from my own knowledge; for I was near death, most decidedly, before I was providentially rescued.

"It appeared, from the evidence of my friend, that the beam in my eye' was my latest vision, for he had jumped into the river with his clothes on to save me. He was an expert swimmer, and made for the spot where he had last seen me rise; when, in almost despair of rescuing, or even finding me, he felt his leg suddenly seized with violence, and he was dragged by my dying struggles, feeble as they were, to the bottom. He was a most accomplished swimmer and diver, or I should never have related the tale. He contrived to get me on shore! I have no recollection of any thing that occurred from my third sinking, until I saw a heterogeneous collection of human figures and humorous countenances about me, and

was almost suffocated afresh with the aroma of mountain dew.' I was carried, much in the state in which I am to believe I came into the world, by two soldiers, under the command of my preserver, Seymour, to the first public house that presented itself; and there they rubbed me down, and rubbed me in all directions; and I was recovered by the means prescribed by the humane society-of whisky dealers." More lessons for the stage-struck. In the midst of his round of stage raptures, his misery went on with regular progression. He describes his sufferings from stage exertion, and even from the more palpable privation of bread, as extreme, though he rallied against them both with a spirit which could probably be found in few. He has subsequently declared to his wife, "that he sometimes fasted two days, wandering about the streets for amusement, when weary of practising his flute and violin at home, and of studying characters which he never expected to be allowed to act." To the world he still strove to keep up an uncomplaining countenance, but to the under-manager, Hitchcock, who had duped him into his engagement, he had no hesitation in declaring that he was on the point of being starved to death. Hitchcock, however, was too old in the life of the stage to allow himself to be wrought up to the dire extremity of paying any body. No effect could be produced on a mind callous by office. The failure of salary for weeks together had been too often pleaded by the Romeos, and Hitchcock's imperturbable smoothness gave only additional provocation to the famishing genius. Mathews cleverly described him as one of those disagreeable people who are never in a passion. In the midst of all this poverty, Kemble came, filled the city with admiration, the house with crowds, and Mathews with renewed delight; and his letter, beginning with "the theatre has been closed for three weeks, during which time, of course, I received no money, which was rather a bore. However, I managed extremely well, as I had a great many invitations during the time, which gave me assistance," proceeds to say that Kemble commenced his career of triumph. At his Hamlet-"if twenty guineas had been given for a place in the boxes, it could not have been

purchased; in all my life I never saw people so anxious to get into a theatre. Every avenue was crowded at an early hour; and after the theatre was filled, I can safely assert, many hundreds went away. To see this, you may judge, gave me no small pleasure."

John Kemble has been often charged with hauteur to the performers. But if this sometimes may have been the case, it was not so with respect to Mathews even at this period. "Nothing could be more agreeable than Kemble's conduct in the theatre, and no one more agreeable or easier to be pleased at rehearsals; ever willing to give instructions without the smallest ostentation; every one was sorry when he went away. He took leave of us all after Richard; and, taking me by the hand, said, Mathews, can I do any thing for you in London? But, for Heaven's sake, get out of this place as soon as you can; it is no place for you to get up in."" He then relates an incident in the life of Cooke, perfectly characteristic of the man. "I am extremely sorry to inform you that Cooke has enlisted. The regiment went to the Isle of Man about a week past. Daly would have been glad to re-engage him, but such was his pride that he would rather turn soldier from real want than come to terms. Many of the performers saw him in his military garb as he was going off, but he seemed rather to wish to avoid speaking to them, appearing quite melancholy.

He was drunk when he enlisted.' This was while Cooke had just been playing to applauding audiences, was rising to the first rank of popularity, and was on the eve of that London engagement which put fortune into his hand, which fortune his drunkenness instantly threw away.

All who have been acquainted with theatrical history during the last fifty years, know the name of Tate Wilkinson. In process of time Mathews obtained an engagement in the com pany of the York manager. Tate Wilkinson was a humourist by nature, and a great deal more of the humourist by art. Possessing some natural faculty for imitation, his manners were a perpetual burlesque, yet with all this affected eccentricity, he had a perfect sense of his own interest, had a subtle knowledge of mankind, managed his theatre with remarkable dexterity, and