THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.

(continued.)

ELLISTONIANA.

My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose loss we all deplore, was but slight.

My first introduction to Elliston, 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. Elliston, 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

VOL. IV.

B

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 I have seen a gentleman in comedy acting the shopman. So Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. I admired the historic 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 a night, the poorest hovel which he honours by his