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My acquaintance wi<var>..</var>th the pleasant creature, whose loss we all deplore, was but slight.My first introdu to E., which afterwards ripened into an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, was over a ter of the Leamington Spa Library, then newly entered upon by a branch of his family. E., whom nothing misbecame -- to auspicate, I suppose, the filial , a a going with a lustre -- was serving in person two damsels fair, who had e into the bbr></abbr>shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publication, but iy to have a sight of the illustrious shopman, hoping some ference. With what an air did he reach down the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion upon the worth of the work iion, and laung out into a dissertation on its parative merits with those of certain publications of a similar stamp, its rivals! his ented ers fairly hanging on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence. So have I seen a gentleman in edy ag the shop-man. So Lovelace sold his gloves in High Street. I admired the histrionic art, by which he trived to carry away every notion of disgrace, from the occupation he had so generously submitted to; and from that hour I judged him, with no after repentao be a person, with whom it would be a felicity to be more acquainted.
To dest upon his merits as a edian 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, a 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, oage, that he is off." "My case exactly," retorted Elliston -- with a charming fetfulness, that the verse of a proposition does not always lead to the same clusion -- " I am the same person off the stage that I am on." The infere first sight, seems identical; but exami a little, and it fesses only, that the one performer was never, and the other always, ag.
And in truth this was the charm of Ellistons private deportment. You had a 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, bees ipso facto for that time a palace; so whereever Elliston walked, sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, a up his portable playhouse at ers of streets, and in the market-places. Upon fli pavements he trod the boards still; and if his theme ced to be passiohe green baize carpet edy spontaneously rose beh his feet. Now this was hearty, and showed a love for his art. So Apelles alainted -- in thought. So G. D. aloetises. I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors -- and some of them of Ellistons own stamp -- who shall have agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake or a b, 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. They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their families, servants, &other shall have been expanding your heart with generous deeds aiments, till it eves with yearnings of universal sympathy; you absolutely long to go home, and do some good a. The play seems tedious, till you get fairly out of the house, and realise your laudable iions. At length the final bell rings, and this cordial representative of all that is amiable in humas 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 satisfa? why should he not be Ranger, and diffuse the same cordial satisfaong his private circles? with his temperament, his animal spirits, his good-nature, his follies perce, could hbbr></abbr>e do better thaify himself with his impersonation? Are we to like a pleasant rake, or b, oage, and give ourselves airs of aversion for the identical character preseo 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?
"But there is something not natural in this everlasting ag; we want the real man."
Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, whom you ot, or will not see, under some adventitious trappings, whievertheless, sit not at all insistently upon him? What if it is the nature of some men to he highly artificial? The fault is least reprehensible in players. Cibber was his own Foppington, with almost as much wit as Vanburgh could add to it.
"My ceit of his person," it is Ben Jonson speaking of Lord Ba, -- " 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 bad been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that heaven would give him strength; freatness he could not want."
The quality here ended was scarcely less spicuous in the subject of these idle reminisces, than in my Lord Verulam. Those who have imagihat an ued elevation to the dire of a great Londore, affected the sequence of Elliston,, or at all ged his nature, knew not the essential greatness of the man whom they disparage. It was my fortuo enter him near St. Dunstans Church (which, with its punctual giants, is now no more than dust and a shadow), on the m of his ele to that high office. Grasping my hand with a look of significe, he only uttered, -- " Have you heard the news? then with another look following up the <u></u>blow, he subjoined, "I am the future Manager of Drury Laheatre." -- Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for gratulation or reply, but mutely stalked away, leavio chew upon his new-blown dig leisure. In faothing 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 sular exile, and more retly transmuted for a more illustrious exile, the barren stableship of Elba into an image of Imperial France), when, in melancholy after-years, again, muear the same spot, I met him, when that sceptre had beeed 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 magnifitly distributed by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, and magnifitly sinking the sense of fallen material grandeur in the more liberal rese of depreciations doo his more lofty intellectual pretensions, "Have you heard" (his ary exordium) -- "have you heard," said he, "how they treat me? they put me in edy." Thought I -- but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal interruption -- "where could they have put you better ?" Then, after a pause -- "Where I formerly played Romeo, I now play Mercutio," -- and so agaialked away, her staying, nor g for, responses.
O, it was a rich se, -- but Sir A---- C---- ,the best of storytellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative almost as well as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice to it -- that I was wito, iarnished room (that had once been green) of that same little Olympic. There, after his deposition from Imperial Drury, he substituted a throhat Olympic Hill was his "highest heaven;" himself "Jove in his chair." There he sat in state, while before him, on plaint 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, iher of its senses -- the pertest little drab -- a dirty fringe and appendage of the lamps 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.
"And how dare you," said her Manager -- assuming a sorial severity which would have crushed the fidence of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful Rebel herself of her professional caprices -- I verily believe, he thought her standing before him -- " how dare you, Madam, withdraw yourself, without a notice, from your theatrical duties?" "I was hissed, Sir." "And you have the presumption to decide upoaste of the town ?" "I dont know that, Sir, but I will and to be hissed," was the subjoinder of young fidence -- when gathering up his features into one signifit mass of wonder, pity, and expostulatory indignation -- in a lesson o have been lost upon a creature less forward than she who stood before him -- his words were these: "They have hissed me."
`Twas the identical argument a fortiori, which the son of Peleus uses to Ly trembling under his lao 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 application, for want of a proper uanding with the faculties of the respective recipients.
"Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was courteously dug me over the benches of his Surrey Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning grandeur.
Those who knew Elliston, will know the manner in which he pronouhe latter sentence of the few words I am about to record. One proud day to me he took his roast mutton with us iemple, to which I had superadded a preliminary haddock. After a rather plentiful partaking of the meagre ba, not unrefreshed with the humbler sort of liquors, I made a sort of apology for the humility of the fare, that for my own part I e but of one dish at dinner. "I too never eat but ohing at dinner " -- was his reply -- then after a pause "<samp></samp>reing fish as nothing." The manner was all. It was as if by one peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihilation of all the savory ests, which the pleasant and nutritious-food-giving O pours forth upon poor humans from her watery bosom. This was greatness, tempered with siderate tendero the feelings of his sty but weliertainer.
Great wert thou in thy life, Robert William Elliston! and not lessened in thy death, if report speak truly, which says that thou didst direct that thy mortal remains should repose under no inscription but one of pure Latinity. Classical was thy bringing up! aiful was the feeling on thy last bed, which, eg the man with the boy, took thee ba thy latest exercise of imagination, to the days when, undreaming of Theatres and Managerships, thou wert a scholar, and an early ripe one, uhe roofs builded by the munifit and pious Colet. For thee the Pauline Muses weep. In elegies, that shall silehis crude prose, they shall celebrate thy praise.
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