So shall we all look - kings and keysars- |(though, substantially, scarcely less a vapour stripped for the last voyage. than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, Drury,) as but of so many echoes, natural pleasant, and thrice pleasant shade! with re-percussions, and results to be expected my parting thanks for many a heavy hour of from the assumed extravagancies of thy life lightened by thy harmless extravaganzas, secondary or mock life, nightly upon a stage public or domestic. - 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

Rhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, leaving to his two brethren the heavy calendars - honest Rhadamanth, always partial to players, weighing their parti-coloured existence here upon earth, that conducts to masques and merry-makings

making account of the few foibles, that may have shaded thy real life as we call it,

in the Theatre Royal of Proserpine.

PLAUDITO, ET VALETO.

ELLISTONIANA.

My acquaintance with the pleasant crea- would be superfluous. With his blended ture, 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.

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 sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto for that time a palace; so wherever Elliston walked, sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and set up his portable playhouse at corners of streets, and in the marketplaces. Upon flintiest pavements he trod To descant upon his merits as a comedian the boards still; and if his theme chanced to

be passionate, the green baize carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet. Now this was hearty, and showed a love for his art. So Apelles always painted-in thought. So G. D. always poetises. I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors

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own Foppington, with almost as much wit as Vanbrugh could add to it.

"My conceit of his person," it is Ben Jonson speaking of Lord Bacon,-"was never increased towards him by his place or honours. But I have, and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself; in that he seemed to me ever one of the greatest men, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that Heaven would give him strength; for greatness he could not want."

and some of them of Elliston's own stamp who shall have agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake or a coxcomb, through the two or three hours of their dramatic existence; but no sooner does the curtain fall with its leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their faculties. The quality here commended was scarcely They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable less conspicuous in the subject of these idle to their families, servants, &c. Another reminiscences than in my Lord Verulam. shall have been expanding your heart with Those who have imagined that an unexpected generous deeds and sentiments, till it even elevation to the direction of a great London beats with yearnings of universal sympathy; Theatre affected the consequence of Elliston, you absolutely long to go home and do some or at all changed his nature, knew not the good action. The play seems tedious, till essential greatness of the man whom they you can get fairly out of the house, and disparage. It was my fortune to encounter realise your laudable intentions. At length him near St. Dunstan's Church (which, with the final bell rings, and this cordial repre- its punctual giants, is now no more than sentative of all that is amiable in human breasts steps forth- a miser. Elliston was more of a piece. Did he play Ranger? and did Ranger fill the general bosom of the town with satisfaction? why should he not be Ranger, and diffuse the same cordial satisfaction among his private circles? with his temperament, his animal spirits, his goodnature, his follies perchance, could he do better than identify himself with his impersonation? Are we to like a pleasant rake, or coxcomb, on the stage, and give ourselves airs of aversion for the identical character, presented to us in actual life? or what would the performer have gained by divesting himself of the impersonation? Could the man Elliston have been essentially different from his part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously, in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, and 'scape-goat trickeries of his prototype?

dust and a shadow), on the morning of his election to that high office. Grasping my hand with a look of significance, he only uttered, "Have you heard the news?" — then, with another look following up the blow, he subjoined, "I am the future Manager of Drury Lane Theatre." ― Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for congratulation or reply, but mutely stalked away, leaving me to chew upon his newblown dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to it. Expressive silence alone could muse his praise. This was in his great style.

But was he less great, (be witness, O ye Powers of Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the consular exile, and more recently transmuted, for a more illustrious exile, the barren constableship of Elba into an image of Imperial France), when, in melancholy after-years, again, much near the same spot, I met him, when that sceptre had been wrested from his hand, and his dominion was curtailed to the petty managership, and part proprietorship, of the small Olympic, his Elba? He still played nightly upon the boards of Drury, but in parts, alas! allotted to him, not magnificently distributed by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense of fallen material grandeur in the more liberal resentment of

'Twas the identical argument à fortiori which the son of Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his lance, to persuade him to take his destiny with a good grace. "I too am mortal." And it is to be believed that in both cases the rhetoric missed of its

depreciations done to his more lofty intellectual pretensions, "Have you heard" (his customary exordium)—“have you heard," said he, "how they treat me? they put me in comedy." Thought I-but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal interruption-" where could they have put you better?" Then, application for want of a proper understandafter a pause"Where I formerly played ing with the faculties of the respective reciRomeo, I now play Mercutio," and so again pients. he stalked away, neither staying, nor caring for responses.

grandeur.

"Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was courteously conducting me over the O, it was a rich scene, but Sir A-benches of his Surrey Theatre, the last C―, the best of story-tellers and surgeons, retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning who mends a lame narrative almost as well as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice to it, that I was a witness to, in the tarnished room (that had once been green) of that same little Olympic. There, after his deposition from imperial Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his "highest heaven;" himself "Jove in his chair." There he sat in state, while before him, on complaint of prompter, was brought for judgment-how shall I describe her?one of those little tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses-a probationer for the town, in either of its senses the pertest little draba dirty fringe and appendage of the lamp's smoke-who, it seems, on some disapprobation expressed by a "highly respectable" audience, had precipitately quitted her station on the boards, and withdrawn her small talents in disgust.

Those who knew Elliston, will know the manner in which he pronounced the latter sentence of the few words I am about to record. One proud day to me he took his roast mutton with us in the Temple, to which I had superadded a preliminary haddock. After a rather plentiful partaking of the meagre banquet, not unrefreshed with the humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility of the fare, observing that for my own part I never ate but one dish at dinner. "I too never eat but one thing at dinner,"- was his reply—then after a pause- reckoning fish as nothing." The manner was all. It was as if by one peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all the savory esculents, which the pleasant and nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours forth upon poor humans from her watery bosom. This was greatness, tempered with considerate tenderness to the feelings of his scanty but welcoming entertainer.

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"And how dare you," said her manager,assuming a censorial severity, which would have crushed the confidence of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful Rebel herself of Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William her professional caprices-I verily believe, Elliston! and not lessened in thy death, if he thought her standing before him "how report speak truly, which says that thou dare you, Madam, withdraw yourself, without didst direct that thy mortal remains should a notice, from your theatrical duties ?" "I repose under no inscription but one of pure was hissed, Sir." “And you have the pre- Latinity. Classical was thy bringing up! sumption to decide upon the taste of the and beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed. town?" "I don't know that, Sir, but I will which, connecting the man with the boy, never stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder took thee back to thy latest exercise of of young Confidence — when gathering up imagination, to the days when, undreaming his features into one significant mass of of Theatres and Managerships, thou wert wonder, pity, and expostulatory indignation a scholar, and an early ripe one, under the - in a lesson never to have been lost upon a roofs builded by the munificent and pious creature less forward than she who stood be- Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. fore him-his words were these: "They have In elegies, that shall silence this crude prose, hissed me." they shall celebrate thy praise.

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THE OLD MARGATE HOY.

of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable ambassador between sea and land! - whose sailor-trousers did not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter apron over them, with thy neat-figured practice in

I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said so before) at one or other of the Universities. Next to these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the neighbourhood of Henley affords in abundance, on the banks of my beloved Thames. But somehow or other my cousin contrives thy culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have to wheedle me, once in three or four seasons, to a watering-place. Old attachments cling to her in spite of experience. We have been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a third, and are at this moment doing dreary penance at Hastings!-and all because we were happy many years ago for a brief week at Margate. That was our first sea-side experiment, and many circumstances combined to make it the most agreeable holiday of my life. We had neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been from home so long together in company.

Can I forget thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy weather-beaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough accommodations-ill exchanged for the foppery and fresh-water niceness of the modern steam-packet? To the winds and waves thou committedst thy goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of magic fumes and spells, and boiling caldrons. With the gales of heaven thou wentest swimmingly; or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy course was natural, not forced, as in a hotbed; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with sulphureous smoke- a great sea chimera, chimneying and furnacing the deep; or liker to that fire-god parching up Scamander.

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Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their coy reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of anything like contempt) to the raw questions, which we of the great city would be ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of this or that strange naval implement? 'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou shade of refuge between us and them, conciliating interpreter

been of inland nurture heretofore—a master cook of Eastcheap? How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain; here, there, like another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations - not to assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that untried motion might haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And when the o'erwashing billows drove us below deck (for it was far gone in October, and we had stiff and blowing weather), how did thy officious ministerings, still catering for our comfort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more cordial conversation, alleviate the closeness and the confinement of thy else (truth to say) not very savoury, nor very inviting little cabin?

With these additaments to boot, we had on board a fellow-passenger, whose discourse in verity might have beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores. He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned young man, remarkably handsome, with an officerlike assurance, and an insuppressible volubility of assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest liar I had met with then, or since. He was none of your hesitating, half-storytellers (a most painful description of mortals) who go on sounding your belief, and only giving you as much as they see you can swallow at a time—the nibbling pick-pockets of your patience - but one who committed downright, daylight depredations upon his neighbour's faith. He did not stand shivering upon the brink, but was a hearty, thoroughpaced liar, and plunged at once into the depths of your credulity. I partly believe,

that he had actually sailed through the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became necessary to make a stand. And here I must do justice to the good sense and intrepidity of one of our party, a youth, that had hitherto been one of his most deferential auditors, who, from his recent reading, made bold to assure the gentleman, that there must be some mistake, as "the Colossus in question had been destroyed long since;" to whose opinion, delivered with all modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede thus much, that the "the figure was indeed a little damaged." This was the only opposi tion he met with, and it did not at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with his fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow with still more complacency than ever, confirmed, as it were, by the extreme candour of that concession. With these prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in sight of the Reculvers, which one of our own company (having been the voyage before) immediately recognising, and pointing out to us, was considered by us as no ordinary seaman.

he made pretty sure of his company. Not hardying more and more in his triumphs many rich, not many wise, or learned, com- over our simplicity) he went on to affirm posed at that time the common stowage of a Margate packet. We were, I am afraid, a set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our enemies give it a worse name) as Aldermanbury, or Watling-street, at that time of day could have supplied. There might be an exception or two among us, but scorn to make any invidious distinctions among such a jolly, companionable ship's company, as those were whom I sailed with. Something too must be conceded to the Genius Loci. Had the confident fellow told us half the legends on land, which he favoured us with on the other element, I flatter myself the good sense of most of us would have revolted. But we were in a new world, with everything unfamiliar about us, and the time and place disposed us to the reception of any prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has obliterated from my memory much of his wild fablings; and the rest would appear but dull, as written, and to be read on shore. He had been Aide-de-camp (among other rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian Prince, and at one blow had stricken off the head of the King of Carimania on horseback. He, of course, married the Prince's daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the politics of that court, combining with the loss of his consort, was the reason of his quitting Persia; but, with the rapidity of a magician, he transported himself, along with his hearers, back to England, where we still found him in the confidence of great ladies. There was some story of a princess Elizabeth, if I remember having intrusted to his care an us, but not of us. He heard the bell of extraordinary casket of jewels, upon some dinner ring without stirring; and when extraordinary occasion-but, as I am not some of us pulled out our private stores certain of the name or circumstance at this our cold meat and our salads - he produced distance of time, I must leave it to the none, and seemed to want none. Only a Royal daughters of England to settle the solitary biscuit he had laid in; provision for honour among themselves in private. I the one or two days and nights, to which cannot call to mind half his pleasant wonders; these vessels then were oftentimes obliged but I perfectly remember, that in the course to prolong their voyage. Upon a nearer of his travels he had seen a phoenix; and he acquaintance with him, which he seemed obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error, neither to court nor decline, we learned that that there is but one of that species at a time, he was going to Margate, with the hope of assuring us that they were not uncommon in being admitted into the Infirmary there for some parts of Upper Egypt. Hitherto he sea-bathing. His disease was a scrofula, had found the most implicit listeners. His which appeared to have eaten all over him. dreaming fancies had transported us beyond He expressed great hopes of a cure; and the "ignorant present." But when (still when we asked him, whether he had any

All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a different character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, very infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on the sea, with a smile; and, if he caught now and then some snatches of these wild legends, it was by accident, and they seemed not to concern him. The waves to him whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one, being with