ers who lived about the Time of Shakspeare," published about fifteen years since. In short, all his merits and demerits to set forth would take to the end of Mr. Upcott's book, and then not be told truly.

WHEN I heard of the death of Coleridge, it wa without grief. It seemed to me that he long had been on the confines of the next world, that he had a

* To anybody. — Please to fill up these blanks.

↑ Disraeli wrote a book on the Quarrels of Authors. Somebody should write one on the Friendships of Literary Men. If such a work is ever written, Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge will be honorably mentioned therein. Among all the friendships celebrated in tale or history, there is none more admirable than that which existed between these two eminent men. The "golden thread that tied their hearts together" was never broken. Their friendship was never "chipt or diminished;" but, the longer they lived, the stronger it grew. Death could not destroy it.

Lamb, after Coleridge's death, as if weary of "this green earth," as if not caring if "sun and sky and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself," went out with: life, willingly sought "Lavinian shores."

"Lamb," as Mr. John Forster says in his beautiful tribute to his memory, 66 never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great spirit joined his friend. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, 'cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed' upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he would lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect of the death of

hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not grieve. But, since, I feel how great a part he was of me. His great and dear spirit haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the proof and touchstone of all my cogitations. He was a Grecian (or in the first form) at Christ's Hospital, where I was Deputy-Grecian; and the same subordination and deference to him I have preserved through a life-long acquaintance. Great in his writings, he was greatest in his conversation. In him was disproved that old maxim, that we should allow every one his share of talk. He would talk from morn to dewy eve, nor cease till far midnight; yet who ever would interrupt him? who would obstruct that continuous flow of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion? He had the tact of making the unintelligible seem plain. Many who read the abstruser parts of his "Friend” would complain that his works did not answer to his spoken wisdom. They were identical. But he had a tone in oral delivery which seemed to convey sense to those who were otherwise imperfect recipients. He was my fifty-years-old friend without a dissension. Never saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can

Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three weeks ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He interrupted himself and them almost every instant with some play of affected wonder or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the words,' Coleridge is dead.' Nothing could divert him from that; for the thought of it never left him. About the same time, we had written to him to request a few lines for the literary album of a gentleman who entertained a fitting admiration of his genius. It was the last request we were destined to make, the last kindness we were allowed to receive. He wrote in Mr. Keymer's volume, — and wrote of Coleridge." - EDITOR.

see again. I seem to love the house he died at more passionately than when he lived. I love the faithful Gilmans more than while they exercised their virtucs towards him living. What was his mansion is consecrated to me a chapel.

EDMONTON, Nov. 21, 1834.

THE OLD ACTORS.*

I Do not know a more mortifying thing than to be conscious of a foregone delight, with a total oblivion of the person and manner which conveyed it. In dreams I often stretch and strain after the countenance of Edwin whom I once saw in "Peeping Tom." I cannot catch a feature of him. He is no more to me than Nokes or Pinkethman. Parsons, and, still more, Dodd, were near being lost to me till I was refreshed with their portraits (fine treat) the other day at Mr. Matthews's gallery at Highgate; which, with the exception of the Hogarth pictures a few years since exhibited in Pall Mall, was the most delightful collection I ever gained admission to. There hang the players, in their single persons and in grouped scenes, from the Restoration, - Bettertons, Booths, Garricks, —justifying the prejudices which wo entertain for them; the Bracegirdles, the Mountforts, and the Oldfields, fresh as Cibber has described them; the Woffington (a true Hogarth) upon a couch, dallying and dangerous; the screen scene in Brinsley's famous comedy; with Smith and Mrs. Abingdon whom I have

From the "London Magazine," 182"

not seen; and the rest, whom, having seen, I see still there. There is Henderson, unrivalled in Comus, whom I saw at second-hand in the elder Harley; Harley, the rival of Holman, in Horatio; Holman, with the bright glittering teeth, in Lothario, and the deep pavior's sighs in Romeo, the jolliest person ("our son is fat") of any Hamlet I have yet seen, with the most laudable attempts (for a personable man) at looking melancholy; and Pope, the abdicated monarch of tragedy and comedy, in Harry the Eighth; and Lord Townley. There hang the two Aickins, brethren in mediocrity; Wroughton, who in Kitely seemed to have forgotten that in prouder days he had personated Alexander; the specious form of John Palmer, with the special effrontery of Bobby; Bensley, with the trumpet-tongue; and little Quick (the retired Dioclesian of Islington), with his squeak like a Bart'lemew fiddle. There are fixed, cold as in life, the immovable features of Moody, who, afraid of o'erstepping Nature, sometimes stopped short of her; and the restless fidgetiness of Lewis, who, with no such fears, not seldom leaped o' the other side. There hang Farren and Whitfield, and Burton and Phillimore, names of small account in those times, but which, remembered now, or casually recalled by the sight of an old play-bill, with their associated recordations, can "drown an eye unused to flow." There too hangs, not far removed from them in death, the graceful plainness of the first Mrs. Pope, with a voice unstrung by age, but which in her better days must have competed with the silver tones of Barry himself, so enchanting in decay do I remember it, of all her lady parts, exceeding herself in the "Lady Quakeress" (there earth touched

heaven) of O'Keefe, when she played it to the " merry cousin" of Lewis; and Mrs. Mattocks, the sensiblest of viragos; and Miss Pope, a gentlewoman ever, to the verge of ungentility, with Churchill's compliment still burnishing upon her gay honeycomb lips. There are the two Bannisters, and Sedgwick, and Kelly, and Dignum (Diggy), and the by-gone features of Mrs. Ward, matchless in Lady Loverule; and the collective majesty of the whole Kemble family; and (Shakspeare's woman) Dora Jordan; and, by her, two antics, who, in former and in latter days, have chiefly beguiled us of our griefs; whose portraits we shall strive to recall, for the sympathy of those who may not have had the benefit of viewing the matchless Highgate collection.*

DEAR SIR, I read your account of this unfortunate being, and his forlorn piece of self-history,† with that smile of half-interest which the annals of insignificance excite, till I came to where he says, "I was bound ap

*Here follows, in the article as originally published, the well-known masterly pen-and-ink portraits of Suett and Munden. The article on Suett, Lamb incorporated into the " Essay on some of the old Actors:" that on Munden, he reprinted as a separate chapter in the first series of the Essays of Elia. - EDITOR.

"Memoirs of the Life of Benjamin Starkey, late of London, but now an inmate of the Freemen's Hospital in Newcastle. Written by himself. With a portrait of the author, and a fac-simile of his handwriting. Printed and sold by William Hall, Great Market, Newcastle." 1818. 12mo, pp. 14.