to extract the teeth, and one of them, the pawnbroker, had a mind to take the whole of the lower jaw as a pledge; but propably from the failure of any present supply of his friend the publican's spirits, threw it back again into its place. From such gurdians, the coffin passed into the custody of Mrs. Hoppey the sexton's servant, Elizabeth Grant, who discharged, I suppose by some male deputy, the functions of grave-digger in this well-conducted parish. Elizabeth Grant, by the aid of a light and in company with the workmen, exhibited the body to as many people as chose to look at it; and the teeth and the smaller bones and the hair were, at vile prices, sold to a great number of persons. A player of the name of Ellis had taken some hair and one of the ribs away in a piece of paper. As this person was an ingenious worker in hair, he meditated a larger purchase; but he was afterwards refused admittance. Mr. Neve published his succinct account of the transaction on the 24th of August, and entertained not the smallest doubt that the body so treated was that of Milton; he closes his narrative with this strong and terrible sentence: "The blood of the lamb is thus dashed against the door posts of the perpetrators, not to save, but to mark them to posterity."

There could be but one opinion as to the shameful usage of the body but there were two as to the question, whether that body was or was not Milton's. Mr. Steevens, the commentator upon Shakspeare, distinguished himself, as usual, by the diligence of his inquiries, and the subtlety of his inferences. He decided against Mr. Neve's opinion; and maintained that Milton had certainly escaped this profanation, on the following grounds:

First-Because Milton was burried in the year 1674, and that this coffin was found in a situation previously assigned to the Smiths, a wealthy family, unconnected with his own. See their mural monument, dated 1653, immediately over the place of the supposed Milton's interment.

Secondly-Because the hair of Milton was decidedly of a light hue, and that of his pretended skull of the darkest brown, without any mixture of grey among it. Now Milton was 66 years old when he died, a period at which human locks are in a greater or less degree always interspersed with white.

Thirdly-Because the skull in question is remarkably flat and small, and with the lowest of all possible foreheads; whereas the head of Milton was large, and his brow conspicuously high. Fourthly-Because the hands of Milton were full of chalk stones. Nothing of the kind was found in the hand of the substitute, though time does not destroy the trace, where the

fingers are preserved; a fact ascertained upon a subject almost coeval with Milton.

Fifthly-Because from the smallness of the bones-the slight insertion, whiteness, evenness, and sounds of the teeth, it was most probably a female, one of the three Miss Smiths. The sex could not absolutely be determined. If not a female, it might be the favourite son, John Smith, for whom an expensive receptacle had been ordered.

Sixthly--Because Milton was not in affluence--expired in an emanciated state-in a cold month, and his funeral was ordered by his widow. One of such expense was, therefore, little likely to come from a rapacious woman, who oppressed his children while he was living, and cheated them after he was dead.

Such are the strong points of Mr. Steeven's case. I will not weaken them by some, which prove nothing but the writer's pleasantry. His concluding reflections every reader would complain, if I omitted. I therefore insert them for two reasons: first, as expressing a right feeling upon the subject; and second, as presenting a lively portrait of the very peculiar mind of a gentleman, with whom I delighted to converse; and who, to antiquarian sagacity, united a pleasantry, that seemed eternally "mocking the meat he fed on."

"Thanks to fortune (says Mr. Steevens,) Milton's corpse has hitherto been violated but by proxy! May his genuine reliques (if aught of him remains unmingled with common earth) continue to elude research, at least, while the present overseers of the poor of Cripplegate are in office! Hard, indeed, would have been the fate of the author of Paradise Lost, to have received shelter in a chancel, that a hundred and sixteen years after his interment his domus ultima might be ransacked by two of the lowest human beings, a retailer of spirituous liquors, and a man who lends sixpences to beggars, on such despicable securities as tattered bed-gowns, cankered porridge-pots, and rusty gridirons. Cape saxa manu, cape robora, Pastor! But an ecclesiastical court may yet have cognizance of this more than savage transaction. It will then be determined whether our tombs are our own, or may be robbed with impunity by the little tyrants of a workhouse.

"If charnel-houses, and our graves, must send
Those that we bury back, our monuments

Shall be the maws of kites."

After a careful consideration of the subject, the only reason for supposing this body to be the poet's is, that it was found

exactly in the situation which tradition had assigned to it; I mean, under the clerk's desk, as it stood in Milton's time. Every thing else is against it. What, then, it may be said, became of the actual coffin of the great Republican? He was burried in the year 1674, and the church was repaired eight years after the interment. Let us recollect, that the year 1682 was a year of violent contest. The sectarists were assailed in their city fastnesses, and threatened with a court persecution, at least as violent as their own former persecution to the court. The citizens had to struggle with a mayor, nominated, in fact, by the king, and who arbitrarily appointed their officers. Perhaps the elders of Cripplegate might apprehended some violation of the Poet's remains. What they had already seen in the case of the regicides, they might behold in the case of him, who certainly did not aid, but as certainly did justify all that they had done. Such an apprehension might change the situation of the coffin. If this be deemed a gratuitous and uncalled for supposition, it can only be so from the fair presumption, that a frame worn out by complicated disease was of easy decomposition; and that one hundred and sixteen years was a period adequate to the demolition of all but the literary remains of Milton.

Mr. Kemble took great trouble to inform himself upon the subject. Ellis the player showed to him the spoils he had brought away from the grave; and he went to Cripplegate, and I think he saw Mr. Neve, who had convinced himself, that the body so profaned was really Milton's. But on being shown the objections of Mr. Steevens, he said they were absolutely unanswerable; and he added, "Ill as the commentator has behaved to me, I always admired the force of his mind, and am happy that he has exerted it, as I think, triumphantly, on the present occasion." We had long after this an opportunity of reviving the subject, when Bacon's most enchanting bust of Milton was put up in the front of the north gallery. He walked with me. into the city one Saturday morning and while the servants werecleaning the church for the Sunday's service, we took our seats in the opposite gallery, and enjoyed this triumph of the elder Bacon over Rysbrack, whose bust of the poet, auditor Benson at length contrived to get into Westminster Abbey. I hope he mentioned it to Mrs. Siddons, because her own knowledge both of sculpture and Milton merited such a gratification.

CHAPTER IV.

Season of 1790-1.--Mrs. Esten, her fine talents.—Mr. King replaced at Drury Lane, by Mr. Kemble.-Death of Edwin.-Grimace.-Mr. Kemble acts Charles Surface.-Mr. Munden's first appearance.—Mrs. Siddons re-engaged.— Siege of Belgrade.-School for Arrogance.--Death of Beard. -Sketch of him.-Pantheon Opera.-Bate Dudley.-His Woodman.-O'Keefe.-Merry.Wild Oats.-Old Drury finally condemned.-Account of her last moments.—Old and Modern Theatres compared.-The Hon. F. North's Kentish Barons.-Next Door Neighbours.-Colman's Surrender of Calais.

THE first event of any theatrical importance in the winter scason of 1790-1, was an acquisition of an enchanting woman and most interesting actress to the boards of Covent Garden. I allude to the performance of Mrs. Eston, in Rosalind, on the 20th of October. In her figure she was delicate, not tall, but graceful, and aware of the interest attached to the languor of sensibility. She had an eye that really did any thing that it pleased, aided by such lengthened fringes, as Byron or Moore have bestowed upon the beauties of warm climates. The daughters of Comedy have a Scylla and Charybdis in their art, like other people; and rarely pass with such perfect skill, as to be uninjured by either affectation or vulgari ty. The highest refinement to a mixed audience, always savours of the former. A careless indulgence of mirth, and a desire to provoke excessive laughter, drops blamed, or unblamed, into the latter.

Mrs. Eston's mother was the once celebrated Mrs. Bennett, upon whose novels our ladies depended for all the interesting romance of upper life, and looked not always in vain for a charm against the morning's ennui. No man need be ashamed of such reading as could amuse our greatest statesmen; and I confess I am inclined to attribute greater merit to such inventions, than to productions of a graver character, but so constructed, as to be useless to the wise and repulsive to the unlearned. From this mother Mrs. Esten received her mental accomplishments-perhaps something of the novel adhered to her through life.

She had really produced a great sensation in Edinburgh. From the quality of her voice, her tragedy coloured a little after Mrs. Siddons. In comedy she seemed as if her effects would be as gay and brilliant as those of Miss Farren, did not some concealed uneasiness check the animal spirits, and whisper to the actress, that she herself was not happy. But this characteristic quality of Mrs. Esten was highly favourable to her in such a character as Rosalind. "Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of;" and passages out of number of a similar nature will crowd into the reader's memory to verify this remark. Her Indiana, a part seldom now before us, was given with infinite delicacy and grace. Her Monimia, her Ophelia, her Lady Townley, her Belvidera, all evinced more or less captivations in the actress; and after the two greatest names of her time, and as combining partially some of the excellencies of both, I know nothing that ought to stand before Mrs. Esten. Again I must notice the eloquence of her eye, as the unrivalled magic, that perhaps compels me to this decision.

On the 23d of October, Mr. Kemble replaced Mr. King, in the business at Drury Lane, for which he was so qualified; but perhaps in doing so replaced him in those town habits which were so fatal to his fortune. After playing all night with a sharper, at a fashionable club, and losing every thing, KING discovered that he had been bubbled, and hinted his suspicions to his antagonist; who coolly said to him, "I always play with marked cards; why don't you?" King was happy in the new arrangement, for it gave him all the support in his art that he had been used to, without the mortification of a nominal management divested even of the shadow of authority.

On the 30th of the same month, Covent Garden lost, if not in value, yet in utility, more than Drury Lane acquiredEdwin died. This singular being was the absolute victim of sottish intemperance. I have seen him brought to the stagedoor at the bottom of a chaise, senseless and motionless. Poor Brandon, on these occasions, was the practising physician of the theatre. If the clothes could be put upon him, and he was pushed on to the lamps, he rubbed his stupid eyes for a minute, consciousness and brilliant humour awakened together, and his acting seemed only the richer for the bestial indulgence that had overwhelmed him. His last performance was at the Haymarket Theatre, always the palace of jocularity,-there, on the 2d of August, he acted the Gregory Gubbins of the battle of Hexham, and announced unconsciously the wonderful alteration that came upon him. On the 6th

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