time, when Mrs. Siddons acted in the "Runaway," Miss Younge was the great magnet in comedy. Yet the part allotted to Mrs. Siddons bespeaks no intention of keeping her back from public attention. On the contrary, whilst Miss Younge in the piece acted Bella, whose fortune is rather in the side-plot, Mrs. Siddons appeared as Emily, the lovely fugitive, who may be called the heroine of the play. The part is tender and dignified, and was peculiarly suited to the beauty of Mrs. Siddons. But the comedy, though in some respects pleasant, fails to concentrate much interest in the principal charac ever seen. When the bookseller told her that he had sold only fifteen copies of her "Siege of Acre," her chagrin was manifest. After she was gone, the bibliopolist informed us that he had actually disposed of only three copies, but could not find in his heart to mortify her with the strict truth. I was told, however, that Mrs. Cowley had written the "Belle's Stratagem.' I went home, and read it ; and Letitia Hardy cured me of my contemptuous compassion for an excellent comic. authoress. ter. In one of the last scenes, the heroine's distress consists in being accused of having been a strolling player, a somewhat mortifying part for our young actress to personate. Mrs. Siddons, according to Mr. Boaden, was to sound the very bass-string of humility, by performing in a farce, by T. Vaughan, called "Love's Metamorphoses;" but Mr. Boaden seems to have condemned the piece without having read it, for he gives it not even its real title, which is "Love's Vagaries," not "Metamorphoses," and it is very passable. The author was Clerk of the Peace for Westminster. He is canonized in the " Rosciad," by the name of Dapper. Garrick was now about to leave the stage, and was determined to leave the parting impression of his comic excellence by playing his favorite character of Ranger, in "The Suspicious Husband." To Mrs. Siddons he allotted the part of Mrs. Strickland; and, as far as beauty could give attraction in comedy, no one could better represent the young and lovely wife. On this occasion Mrs. Siddons's type was enlarged on the bills of the play, and she had a whole line to herself—"Mrs. Strickland, Mrs. Siddons." Hitherto she had played no part that was strictly tragic on the London boards, but Garrick now revived "Richard III.," which had been discontinued for several years, and he assigned the part of Lady Anne to our actress. She here met Roscius in all his terrors.Garrick's acting that night must have been startling. From what his cotemporaries have said of it, we may guess that his impressiveness bordered upon excess. He made the galleries often laugh when he intended that they should shudder. By his force, approaching to wildness, and the fire of his eyes, he dismayed the young actress. He had directed her, in speaking to him, always to turn her back to the audience, in order that he might keep his own face towards them; and her forgetfulness of this direction was punished by Garrick with a glance of displeasure, that unnerved her powers. Of this performance the following account is given, in the theatrical report of "The London Magazine" for May, 1776. After declaring that Garrick's appearance beggared all description, the writer adds: "As to most of the other characters, particularly the female ones, they were wretchedly performed. Mrs. Hopkins was an ungracious Queen, Mrs. Johnston a frightful Duchess, and Mrs. Siddons, a lamentable Lady Anne.” A week afterwards she had an opportunity to attempt reinstating herself in Garrick's good graces, as "Richard III." was again performed, by command of their Majesties, on the 5th of June. Whether she succeeded or not, I know not; but Garrick closed his own brilliant career five days afterwards, and left Mrs. Siddons to receive from the Managers a dismissal, to which, if he had not prospec tively consented, he had at least offered no opposition. Altogether, though this first failure of the greatest of actresses evinces nothing like positive or acute discernment in the public taste; and though the criticism which I have quoted was most heartlessly uncandid; yet I am not prepared to blame her audiences implicitly for wilful blindness to her merit. By her own confession, she was infirm in her health, and fearfully nervous. It is true she was the identical Mrs. Siddons who, a year afterwards, electri- |