the other theatre, than Lewis did King when acting the same parts.

The vulgar Malkin, raised into ludicrous importance, came from Mattocks in genuine coarseness, both of look and deportment. Her voice, on such occasions, was as dissonant as a saw, and she converted her natural quick short step and gliding gait into an awkward hobble or jolt, that seemed studied from the bumpkins of a country fair. Her eyes assumed a wide unmeaning stare, and she accompanied what she said with a kind of idiot giggle, that was far beyond the reach of every thing like reason. If her mirth was checked on the sudden, and her object defeated, she would burst into a cry, sometimes a scream, so truly farcical, that she was invaluable to modern writers.

Andrews and Topham in their epilogues used to turn her loose into the CITY, and from gluttony in the alderman to dandyism in the shopman-from the full-blown Lady Mother, and Miss, Mamma's rival and hourly annoyance, to the lowest of the Low, she finished out the sketch of either sex, and made a couplet frequently unfold a whole history." She was a sort of stage HOGARTH as to the inferior orders of the community; and in her rapid changes they passed before you as in a camera, with all their uncouth gestures and in their natural colours.

It followed from all this, that she never could be flat or heavy-her spirits were of the buoyant kind; she kept up the ball with either Lewis or Quick, and was an established favourite to the last. She did not come into either the Heidlebergs or Nurses, the property of Mrs. Green, and Mrs. Pit, and ultimately of Mrs. Davenport.

Miss Younge had astonishing versatility as an actress. know not whether, in strictness, her genius could be called of the first order; but she certainly was the most useful performer that any theatre could possess. In the higher tragedy. she was dignified and lofty, but her countenance was not sufficiently expressive. In the kindling fervour of an enthusiastic spirit she had a mode of delivery peculiar to herself, and never failed to carry her audience along with her. She wore the male habit occasionally, and the really delicate and affectedly saucy forester, Rosalind, never had, in my judgment, a more winning representative.

In comedy, her women of fashion, though rather too solid and stately, were yet graceful and sportive. She did not af fect a girlish activity: it was the mind that was buoyant, and it seemed to carry the frame lightly through the scene. the character had a vein of sensibility in addition to the other

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captivations, she seized it with so much power, and her voice became so perfect a vehicle for the passion of the moment, that it was impossible she should have a superior. I refer here more particularly to the fine flight of Miss Hardy, in the masquerade scene of Mrs. Cowley's Belle's Stratagem, "Join him in the victorious war-dance on the borders of Lake Ontario," &c. The animation of some points, the subdued softness of others, and the swelling triumph of her close of the passage, furnished one of the most fascinating exhibitions upon the stage. Such was Miss Younge, and, to the last, such was Mrs. Pope. No! I will not ask whether her Queen Katharine equalled that of Mrs. Siddons, or her Beatrice that of Mrs. Abington; but I will record, as the greatest tribute to her talents, the exclamation of Mr. Harris, the manager, on her death, that "the greatest loss he could ever sustain had just befallen him.”

CHAP. V.

Mr. Kemble's first appearance in London.-Hamlet.-Preeminence of the character.-Cast of the play.-Originality of his Hamlet.-Compared with Garrick and Henderson.Mr. Steevens's petulance.-Misstatement of a passage.-Dr. Johnson with Mr. Kemble.-The exclamation upon man.— Points in Mr. Kemble's Hamlet continued.-Hamlet's Ghost.-Why he is drest in armour.--Pneumatology of Shakspeare's age.-Garrick's alteration of Hamlet.

It was on Tuesday, the 30th of September, 1783, that Mr. Kemble made his first appearance at Drury-lane theatre, in the character of Hamlet. The bills announced the play as originally written by Shakspeare; by which it was to be understood no more, than that it was not the miserable alteration of the play, which had so discredited the taste and judgment of Garrick. There were, notwithstanding, then, (and they continue) many important omissions, which the length of what is given alone can sanction: some of the passages absolutely essential to the conduct of the story; all of them to the full development of Hamlet's most interesting and singular character.

Hamlet has been more critically considered than any other of Shakspeare's dramas, and the Prince of Denmark has, in his personal character, afforded a constant theme for moral investigation. But although he is decidedly the great favourite of our countrymen, much pains have been taken to show, that their affection is misplaced, and that Hamlet is vicious and immoral, and consequently unworthy of that sympathy which has attended him from the time that Shakspeare exhibited him upon the stage to the present hour. Upon a hint from Dr. Akenside, Mr. Steevens has pronounced his conduct "every way unnatural and indefensible, unless he were to be regarded as a young man whose intellects were in some degree impaired." It may readily be conceived, that such an opinion would never pass without contradiction; and a more highly philosophical and charitable decision has resolved all his seeming guilt into the really amiable irresolution of his nature.

I mention this dispute, to show the great attention that had been excited to the character; that in an age of commentary every line had been critically considered; and that,

though youth might choose the part from the aid it really lends to the actor, yet it required a very "learned spirit of human dealing," a sound judgment, and all the other requisites of the art, to obtain for the performer, in that day, any marked and distinguished admiration.

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I remember speaking once with Mr. Kemble upon question agitated among the critics, whether Othello or Macbeth were our poet's greatest production. "The critics," said he, may settle that point among them; they will decide only "for themselves. As to the people, notice this, Mr. Boaden: "take up any Shakspeare you will, from the first collection "of his works to the last, which has been read, and look what "play bears the most obvious signs of perusal. My life for "it, they will be found in the volume which contains the "play of Hamlet." I dare say, in my time, some hundred copies have been inspected by me; but this test has never failed in a single instance.

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The actor, therefore, who on the previous reputation of learning and diligence, excited notice and challenged criticism, had every possible difficulty to contend with: if he agreed with his predecessors and contemporaries, it would be said that he wanted originality; if he differed essentially, in either conception or execution, he was open to the charge of selfsufficiency and presumption. To extricate him in some degree from this dilemma, and to dispose the audience favourably towards him, there was some influence to be used, and it no doubt was employed with considerable success. Mrs. Siddons had, with becoming zeal, prepared her friends to welcome her elder brother; and as she had herself acted repeatedly with him, there could be no reasonable doubt of the opinion she expressed of his talents. I am not sure that the inadequate exhibition of Othello by Stephen Kemble the week before at Covent Garden, did any harm to his brother. It was,

to be sure, awkward to find a foil in his own family, but the incident scemed to turn itself into a joke against the manager of the rival theatre, who had engaged the big, instead of the great Kemble.

The cast of the play had nothing peculiar in it. Kemble took the performers of the other parts as he found them. Bensley was the Ghost-Farren the Horatio-Baddely the Polonius-Barrymore the Laertes. Facker had been so long the excellent or vicious monarch of the stage, that he was never deposed. By a very striking anticipation, Mrs. Hopkins performed his mother; and Miss Field was the representative of Ophelia. Parsons was the grave-digger of the bill only; being indisposed, Suctt, who had before shovelled

in dust" for him at York, attended him on this occasion. I notice this last circumstance to show the malignity of one of his critics in the papers; who, finding his Hamlet full of faults, yet gave to Parsons his most decided approbation. This gentleman thus proved his power of seeing, what was invisible to every perception but his own, or rather of writing from the play-bill without visiting the theatre.

On Mr. Kemble's first appearance before the spectators, the general exclamation was, "How very like his sister!" and there was a very striking resemblance. His person seemed to be finely formed, and his manners princely; but on his brow hung the weight of "some intolerable wo." Apart from the expression called up by the situation of Hamlet, there struck me to be in him a peculiar and personal fitness for tragedy. What others assumed, seemed to be inherent in Kemble. "Native, and to the manner born," he looked an abstraction, if I may so say, of the characteristics of tragedy.

The first great point of remark was, that his Hamlet was decidedly original. He had seen no great actor whom he could have copied. His style was formed by his own taste or judgment, or rather grew out of the peculiar properties of his person and his intellectual habits. He was of a solemn and deliberate temperament-his walk was always slow, and his expression of countenance contemplative-his utterance rather tardy for the most part, but always finely articulate, and in common parlance seemed to proceed rather from organization than voice.

It was soon found that the critic by profession had to examine the performance of a most acute critic. To the general conception of the character I remember but one objection; that the deportment was too scrupulously graceful; but, besides that Hamlet is represented by the poet as "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," I incline to think the critic's standard was too low, rather than Kemble's too high; the manners were not too refined for such a person as Mr. Kemble's.

There were points in the dialogue in almost every scene which called upon the critic, where the young actor indulged his own sense of the meaning; and these were to be referred to the text or context, in Shakspeare, and also to the previous manner of Garrick's delivery, or the existing one of Henderson's. The enemies of Kemble, that is, the injudicious friends of other actors, called those points NEW READINGS; which became accordingly a term of reproach among the unthinking. The really judicious, without positively deciding, admitted the ingenuity and praised the diligence of the young