In other words, his If he repel the inman in earnest, and studious man with taking up his leisure, or making his house his home, the same sort of contempt expressed (however natural) would destroy the balance of delight in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor who plays the annoyed man must a little desert nature; he must, in short, be thinking of the audience, and express only so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. perplexity must seem half put on. truder with the sober set face of a more especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone which in the world must necessarily provoke a duel, his real-life manner will destroy the whimsical and purely dramatic existence of the other character (which to render it comic demands an antagonist comicality on the part of the character opposed to it), and convert what was meant for mirth, rather than belief, into a downright piece of impertinence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon any worthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort in his playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free and Easy. Many instances would be tedious; these may suffice to show that comic acting at least does not always demand from the performer that strict abstraction from all reference to an audience which is exacted of it; but that in some cases a sort of compromise may take place, and all the purposes of dramatic delight be attained by a judicious understanding, not too openly announced, between the ladies and gentlemen-on both sides of the curtain. TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. JOYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at length hast thou flown to what genial region are we permitted to conjecture that thou hast flitted? Art thou sowing thy WILD OATS yet (the harvest-time was still to come with thee) upon casual sands of Avernus ? or art thou enacting ROVER (as we would gladlier think) by wandering Elysian streams? This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief antics amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison to thee, as the vain Platonist dreams of this body to be no better than a county gaol, forsooth, or some house of durance vile, whereof the five senses are the fetters. Thou knewest better than to be in a hurry to cast off these gyves; and had notice to quit, I fear, before thou wert quite ready to abandon this fleshy tenement. It was thy Pleasure- House, thy Palace of Dainty Devices: thy Louvre, or thy White-Hall. What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant now? or when may we expect thy aërial house-warming? Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed Shades; now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either. Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the school-men admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs and unchrisom babes) there may exist- not far perchance from that store-house of all vanities, which Milton saw in visions,a LIMBO somewhere for PLAYERS? and that Up thither like aërial vapours fly Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. There, by the neighbouring moon (by some not improperly supposed thy Regent Planet upon earth), mayst thou not still be acting thy managerial pranks, great disembodied Lessee? but Lessee still, and still a manager. In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse beholds thee wielding posthumous empire. Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) circle thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on sinful Phantasy! Magnificent were thy capriccios on this globe of earth, ROBERT WILLIAM ELLISTON ! for as yet we know not thy new name in heaven. It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice, bawling "SCULLS, SCULLS!" to which, with waving hand, and majestic action, thou deignest no reply, other than in two curt monosyllables, "No: Oars." But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler; manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (0 ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer. But mercy! what strippings, what tearing off of histrionic robes, and private vanities! what denudations to the bone, before the surly Ferryman will admit you to set a foot within his battered lighter. Crowns, sceptres; shield, sword, and truncheon; thy own coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole property-man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a navy); the judge's ermine; the coxcomb's wig; the snuffbox à la Foppington-all must overboard, he positively swears-and that Ancient Mariner brooks no denial; for, since the tiresome monodrame of the old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath shown small taste for theatricals. Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight; pura et puta anima. But, bless me, how little you look! So shall we all look-kings and keysars—stripped for the last voyage. But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu pleasant, and thrice pleasant shade! with my parting thanks for many a heavy hour of life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas, public or domestic. Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, leaving to his two brethren the heavy calendars—honest Rhadamanth, always partial to players, weighing their particoloured existence here upon earth,—-making account of the few foibles, that may have shaded thy real life, as we call it (though, substantially, scarcely less a vapour than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of the Drury), as but of so many echoes, natural re-percussions, and results to be expected from the assumed extravagancies of thy secondary or mock life, nightly upon a stage—after a lenient castigation with rods lighter than of those Medusean ringlets, but just enough to "whip the offending Adam out of thee," shall courteously dismiss thee at the right hand gate-the o. P. side of Hades-that conducts to masques and merry-makings in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine. PLAUDITO, ET VALETO. ELLISTONIANA. My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose loss we all deplore, was but slight. My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened into an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was over a counter in the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered upon by a branch of his family. E., whom nothing misbecame--to auspicate, I suppose, the filial concern, and set it a-going with a lustre was serving in person two damsels fair, who had come into the shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publication, but in reality to have a sight of the illustrious shopman, hoping some conference. With what an air did he reach down the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion of the worth of the work in question, and launching out into a dissertation on its comparative merits with those of certain publications of a similar stamp, its rivals! his enchanted customers fairly hanging on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence. So have I seen a gentleman in comedy acting the shopman. So Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. I admired the histrionic art, by which he contrived to carry clean away every notion of disgrace, from the occupation he had so generously submitted to; and from that hour I judged him, with no after repentance, to be a person with whom it would be a felicity to be more acquainted. To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be superfluous. With his blended private and professional habits alone I have to do; that harmonious fusion of the manners of the player into those of every-day life, which brought the stage boards into streets and dining-parlours, and kept up the play when the play was ended.- "I like Wrench," a friend was saying to him one day, "because he is the same natural, easy creature, on the stage, that he is off." "My case exactly," retorted Elliston-with a charming forgetfulness, that the converse of a proposition does not always lead to the same conclusion—“ I am the same person off the stage that I am on.” The inference, at first sight, seems identical; but examine it a little, and it confesses only, that the one performer was never, and the other always, acting. And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private deportment. You had spirited performance always going on before your eyes, with nothing to pay. As where a monarch takes up his casual abode for the night, the poorest hovel which he honours by his sleeping in it, |