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exactly in the situation which tradition had assigned to it; mean, under the clerk's desk, as it stood in Milton's time. Every thing else is against it. What, then, it may be said, became of the actual coffin of the great Republican? He was burried in the year 1674, and the church was repaired eight years after the interment. Let us recollect, that the year 1682 was a year of violent contest. The sectarists were assailed in their city fastnesses, and threatened with a court persecution, at least as violent as their own former persecution to the court. The citizens had to struggle with a mayor, nominated, in fact, by the king, and who arbitrarily appointed their officers. Perhaps the elders of Cripplegate might apprehended some violation of the Poet's remains. What they had already seen in the case of the regicides, they might behold in the case of him, who certainly did not aid, but as certainly did justify all that they had done. Such an apprehension might change the situation of the coffin. If this be deemed a gratuitous and uncalled for supposition, it can only be so from the fair presumption, that a frame worn out by complicated disease was of easy decomposition; and that one hundred and sixteen years was a period adequate to the demoli tion of all but the literary remains of Milton.

Mr. Kemble took great trouble to inform himself upon the subject. Ellis the player showed to him the spoils he had brought away from the grave; and he went to Cripplegate, and I think he saw Mr. Neve, who had convinced himself, that the body so profaned was really Milton's. But on being shown the objections of Mr. Steevens, he said they were absolutely unanswerable; and he added, "Ill as the commentator has behaved to me, I always admired the force of his mind, and am happy that he has exerted it, as I think, triumphantly, on the present occasion." We had long after this an opportunity of reviving the subject, when Bacon's most enchanting bust of Milton was put up in the front of the north gallery. He walked with me into the city one Saturday morning and while the servants were cleaning the church for the Sunday's service, we took our seats in the opposite gallery, and enjoyed this triumph of the elder Bacon over Rysbrack, whose bust of the poet, auditor Benson at length contrived to get into Westminster Abbey. I hope he mentioned it to Mrs. Siddons, because her own knowledge both of sculpture and Milton merited such a gratification.

CHAPTER IV.

Season of 1790-1.-Mrs. Esten, her fine talents.-Mr. King replaced at Drury Lane, by Mr. Kemble.-Death of Edwin.-Grimace.-Mr. Kemble acts Charles Surface.--Mr. Munden's first appearance.-Mrs. Siddons re-engaged.Siege of Belgrade.-School for Arrogance.--Death of Beard. -Sketch of him.-Pantheon Opera.-Bate Dudley.-His Woodman.-O'Keefe.-Merry-Wild Oats.-Old Drury finally condemned.-Account of her last moments.-Old and Modern Theatres compared.--The Hon. F. North's Kentish Barons.-Next Door Neighbours.-Colman's Surrender of Calais.

THE first event of any theatrical importance in the winter season of 1790-1, was an acquisition of an enchanting woman and most interesting actress to the boards of Covent Garden. I allude to the performance of Mrs. Eston, in Rosalind, on the 20th of October. In her figure she was delicate, not tall, but graceful, and aware of the interest attached to the languor of sensibility. She had an eye that really did any thing that it pleased, aided by such lengthened fringes, as Byron or Moore have bestowed upon the beauties of warm climates. The daughters of Comedy have a Scylla and Charybdis in their art, like other people; and rarely pass with such perfect skill, as to be uninjured by either affectation or vulgarity. The highest refinement to a mixed audience, always savours of the former. A careless indulgence of mirth, and a desire to provoke excessive laughter, drops blamed, or unblamed, into the latter.

Mrs. Eston's mother was the once celebrated Mrs. Bennett, upon whose novels our ladies depended for all the interesting romance of upper life, and looked not always in vain for a charm against the morning's ennui. No man need be ashamed of such reading as could amuse our greatest statesmen; and I confess I am inclined to attribute greater merit to such inventions, than to productions of a graver character, but so constructed, as to be useless to the wise and repulsive to the unlearned. From this mother Mrs. Esten received her mental accomplishments-perhaps something of the novel adhered to her through life.

She had really produced a great sensation in Edinburgh. From the quality of her voice, her tragedy coloured a little after Mrs. Siddons. In comedy she seemed as if her effects would be as gay and brilliant as those of Miss Farren, did not some concealed uneasiness check the animal spirits, and whisper to the actress, that she herself was not happy. But this characteristic quality of Mrs. Esten was highly favourable to her in such a character as Rosalind. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of;" and passages out of number of a similar nature will crowd into the reader's memory to verify this remark. Her Indiana, a part seldom now before us, was given with infinite delicacy and grace. Her Monimia, her Ophelia, her Lady Townley, her Belvidera, all evinced more or less captivations in the actress; and after the two greatest names of her time, and as combining partially some of the excellencies of beth, I know nothing that ought to stand before Mrs. Esten. Again I must notice the eloquence of her eye, as the unrivalled magic, that perhaps compels me to this decision.

On the 23d of October, Mr. Kemble replaced Mr. King, in the business at Drury Lane, for which he was so qualified; but perhaps in doing so replaced him in those town habits which were so fatal to his fortune. After playing all night with a sharper, at a fashionable club, and losing every thing, KING discovered that he had been bubbled, and hinted his suspicions to his antagonist; who coolly said to him, "I always play with marked cards; why don't you?" King was happy in the new arrangement, for it gave him all the support in his art that he had been used to, without the mortification of a nominal management divested even of the shadow of authority.

On the 30th of the same month, Covent Garden lost, if not in value, yet in utility, more than Drury Lane acquiredEdwin died. This singular being was the absolute victim of sottish intemperance. I have seen him brought to the stagedoor at the bottom of a chaise, senseless and motionless. Poor Brandon, on these occasions, was the practising physician of the theatre. If the clothes could be put upon him, and he was pushed on to the lamps, he rubbed his stupid eyes for a minute, consciousness and brilliant humour awakened together, and his acting seemed only the richer for the bestial indulgence that had overwhelmed him. His last performance was at the Haymarket Theatre, always the palace of jocularity,-there, on the 2d of August, he acted the Gregory Gubbins of the battle of Hexham, and announced unconsciously the wonderful alteration that came upon him. On the 6th

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of November they buried him in the church-yard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and near to the grave of Shuter, an actor of voluptuous broad-faced humour, who had little in common with Edwin. The fun of Edwin was of a coyer nature, that would be wooed and not unsought be won,"you waited for it, but were never disappointed. He classed, I imagine, rather with Weston, and Weston seems to have had the fortune of our own Liston in his face, that no earthly being could see it without being thrown into convulsive fits of laughter.

I take the liberty to remark, that however agreeable it. may be to excite this burst of laughter, it is in reality little flattering to the actor; it is natural distortion or pure grimace; features below the standard of just expression, or gestures silly and even indecent, that for the most part excite it. The great fame of the actor can only arise from just delineation of character. A proper estimate of the art itself, or a rational self esteem, should equally lead a man to disdain what a mere trick can acquire, and the exhibition of personal debasement usually provokes. A great actor forbad his children to see him in his farcical characters; he therefore thought that mummery degraded him.

On the 10th of November Mr. Kemble acted, for the first time in London, the part of Charles Surface in the School for Scandal. I should better have liked to see him in Joseph. However, although the public never admired the performance, he told me himself that Mr. Sheridan complimented him with having entirely executed his design. I confess I a little doubted the sincerity of the declaration, and well knowing the author's peculiar anxiety to keep up the strength of his cast, I can forgive the finesse by which he strove to retain the greatest name in his theatre in the hero of his greatest production. When I say above, that I had rather have seen Mr. Kemble in Joseph, I would guard against any implied preference of him to Palmer; that actor's representation of this sentimental hypocrite was as perfect a thing as even King's Lord Ogleby, or Parsons's Corbaccio.

On December 2d, Mr. Munden, an actor of great provincial celebrity, made his first bow at Covent Garden Theatre, in the character of Sir Francis Gripe, in the Busy Body. Since the days of Shuter nothing had been so rich, for Wilson was not a tithe of him ;-and his mind seemed teeming with every surprise of comic humour; which his features expressed by an incessant diversity of playful action, and his utterance conveyed in an articulation of much force and neatness. He was received by a very crowded house with triumphant

applause; and, with the proper confidence of a great master in his art, he acted in the farce also, the facetious Jemmy Jumps. Here he felt some little alarm from the recent impression of poor Edwin; but he was above imitation, and played from himself so peculiarly and divertingly, that he pleased even those who could not think him equal to Edwin; and although the latter was a master in musical science, Munden sang the Fair-haired Laddie in a style so powerful, as to show that burletta had gained in him nearly as much as comedy.

Mr. Kemble now announced that Mrs. Siddons was reengaged at Drury Lane. By his own energy, the house had suffered little from her absence.-She had, in various places during her tour, gained money along with the grand object, health; and strengthened a number of honourable connexions by paying visits to our nobility at their mansions in the country. After an absence therefore of two years, our great actress returned to Isabella on the 7th of December, and the Grecian Daughter on the 14th. The admirers of genius crowded again as usual about her standard, though the manager only called upon her three times in the whole month of December.

On the 1st day of the new year he was ready with the Siege of Belgrade, to employ all his musical strength, under such a composer at Storace, and Cobb had tried to equal the effect of his own Haunted Tower in situations of operatic effect. The letter duet, introduced in the present opera, perfectly enchanted the audience.

Mr. Holcroft has occasionally been mentioned as a very assiduous writer for the stage. He was studious in modern languages, and saw the English use to be made of French comedies, though he did not succeed so well as Murphy in their naturalization. On the 4th of February he produced, at Covent Garden theatre, his School for Arrogance, and the critics of the day. "being sand-blind, high-gravel-blind," could only fancy that the original play was French. Topham had now lost the powerful hand which sustained the World newspaper; and though Mr. Este was eccentric in point of style, yet he was a scholar, a gentleman, and a man of general reading; and with respect to theatricals, he really understood the subject; was conversant with foreign stages, as well as our own; and actually threw out in his rapid hints, rather than essays, much good remark and refined taste.

Holcroft had merely followed Mrs. Inchbald into the comic theatre of Destouches, and brought away Le Glorieux ; drest him in English drugget, and compelled him to speak prose,