for ever (which means during my engagement) the attempts to injure me. I pledged myself to perform the trip, as I had in London, and on that rest my hopes of refuting the charges brought against me. In short, I triumphed, and the Yankees have evinced their good sense in bearing with good humour the jokes against them. The Militia Muster Folk, and Uncle Ben (ditto Judge), went as well as in England." By the way, the militia scene is not a whit more highly coloured than Mrs. Butler's description of the same squad; and something should be allowed for the licence of a song, though in Mathews's case it was not requisite.

The change of climate, and the severity of the voyage out and home, shattered Mr. Mathews's constitution, weakened by the arduous exertions in the peculiar branch of his profession. He landed at Liverpool, and it may be added that he but reached the shores which gave him birth, to go to "that bourne whence no traveller returns." He lay ill for some days at Liverpool; thence he was removed to a friend's at Crick, near Daventry, where he slightly recovered. He was then removed to Devonport for change of air, where last of all came death. His disease was ossification of the heart, under which he had laboured for some years.

About eighteen years previously, Mr. Mathews broke his leg, having been, with Mr. Terry, thrown out of his gig. The lameness caused by attempting to walk and act too soon afterwards painfully impeded his movements: this infirmity increased with his years; yet any sympathizing inquiry respecting it was disliked by Mr. Mathews.

Mr. Mathews was twice married. His first lady was Miss E. K. Strong, of Exeter, who had written a novel or two, and poems that enjoyed some provincial celebrity. She was united to Mr. Mathews in 1797 (just after the bridegroom was of age), and died of consumption in the spring of 1802. In the following year, Mr. Mathews married Miss Jackson, half-sister to Miss Fanny Kelley, who has just quitted the stage. Mrs. Mathews, who left the stage many years since, was an agreeable singer, and the original Fanny in Killing no Murder. She accompanied Mr. Mathews in his last passage to America, and lived to lament his loss, with an only son, the popular actor.

The genius of Mr. Mathews was of a peculiar kind, and of greater rarity than we have time or space to illustrate. It has been well asked, "Who that has seen him can forget

him? Who that has not can have no idea of his powers." People who had not seen him could seldom understand how one person amused an audience for three hours, when a whole company so often fail to effect that object. Seated before a small green-covered table, with two reflecting lamps, this master of his art, by aid of a few articles of dress for disguise, would assume a dozen characters, changing look, manner, voice, and every other delineation as rapidly as he put on the dress. He had Protean features, the natural expression of which was serious, though he succeeded better in portraying the ludicrous than the grave: he could twinkle his eyes, and give with them the rich leer and roll of broad humour, while every other feature curled and beamed with smile and laugh that were delightfully contageous. Before the strong light of his table lamps, his face had a rosy, jocund freshness, with ease and flexibility, which never reminded you of effort in his changes to please you. Indeed, it was by this ease and absence of effort that he carried his audience with him. There was no over-listening on their part to catch his touches of humour, nor was there any apparent excitement on his part (save on a few fitting occasions) to produce them. Seated in· the convenient area of the Adelphi Theatre, you could hear his anecdotes as comfortably as you would listen to a pleasant fellow at a large table. Alas! how he was wont to set that table on a roar. To us, the main secret of his success lay in telling a story, an art in which so few persons excel; for, we often caught ourselves in cachinatory ecstasies at some anecdote or bon mot as old as the time of Joe Miller.

It would be an almost endless task to select examples of excellence from his performances, in which all the powers of pleasing were so strongly concentrated. We have said that he succeeded best in the ludicrous; yet he occasionally worked up pathos to an almost painful pitch. Witness his portrait of Monsieur Mallet, the distressed, affectionate Frenchman, whose woful face you could scarcely believe of the same features as had just before thrown you into convulsive laughter. Persons who visited Mathews with the prepossession that they should not be entertained, must often have found themselves, ere parting, in the condition of Dr. Johnson, when he was resolved not to be pleased with Foote, until the dog was so very comical, that the doctor was obliged to lay down his knife and fork, throw himself back in his chair, and fairly laugh it out with the rest. In scenes of

highly-wrought passion, as in portraying the recklessness of vice, and its attendant despair, Mr. Mathews was powerfully effective; though such portraits were neither coarse with caricature, nor deformed by vulgarity. Indeed, decorum was never overstepped in any of Mr. Mathews's motley-minded performances; for, in his portraits from low life, we had all its grotesqueness with its vulgarities suppressed, and its wit without its indelicacies. The vraisemblance was unique, as in the coach-cad; the perfection of which you had only to step to the entrance of the theatre to test.

Mathews's powers of mimicry were unrivalled. He seized upon eccentric points of character, and portrayed them with astonishing felicity. Yet he did not require any person to be strongly marked, to take him off. We cannot say of him, as Johnson said of Foote, "he is like a painter who can draw the portrait of a man who has a wen on his face, and who is, therefore, easily known." On the contrary, Mathews not only gave you something different from himself, but he possessed the rare art of extracting his personal nature from his assumptions; and he was Sir Fretful or Morbleu, without one shade of Mathews about him. His imitations were perfection. "They were," as Sir Walter Scott once said to Lord Byron, "imitations of the mind to those who had the key; but, as the majority had it not, they were contented with admiring those of the person, and pronounced him a mimic, who ought to be considered an accurate and philosophical observer of human nature, blessed with the rare talent of identifying himself with the minds of others." This is high praise from so high a hand as Scott; but Mathews's imitation of Curran we believe to justify it: Scott said it could hardly be called an imitation-"it is a continuation, and is inimitable." But, because Mathews was an imitator, we are not to deny him the claim of originality, the designs for all his At Homes being furnished by himself, though written by others. Hence, almost all his dramatis personce were creations of his fancy, and he was, therefore, as much an actor as Garrick could have been. The finish of his sketches was as surprising as their vigour, and his extreme versatility more extraordinary than both. No man since Garrick ever went through such a range of characters. We need not search far for parallels; as in Mathews's success in Buskin, and Garrick's ruse to load the coach to Versailles, by personating different passengers.

CHARACTERISTIC SKETCHES, PORTRAITS,
INCIDENTS, AND ANECDOTES.

LEIGH HUNT'S PORTRAIT OF CHARLES MATHEWS.
"Among the visitors at Sydenham" (says Mr. Hunt) "was
Mr. Mathews, the comedian. I have had the pleasure of seeing
him there more than once, and of witnessing his imitations,
which, admirable as they are on the stage, are still more so in
a private room. Once in a way his wife used to come with
him, with her handsome eyes, and charitably make tea for us.
The other day I had the pleasure of seeing them at their own
table; and I thought while Time, with unusual courtesy, had
spared the countenance of the one, he had given more force
and interest to that of the other, in the very ploughing of it
up. Strong lines have been cut, and the face has stood them
well. I have seldom been more surprised than in coming
close to Mr. Mathews on that occasion, and on seeing the
bust that he has in his gallery of his friend, Mr. Liston.
Some of these comic actors, like comic writers, are as unfarci-
cal as can be imagined in their interior. The taste for humour
comes to them by the force of contrast. The last time I had
seen Mr. Mathews, his face appeared to me insignificant to
what it was then. On the former occasions, he looked like
an irritable indoor-pet: on the latter, he seemed to have been
grappling with the world, and to have got vigour by it. His
face had looked out upon the Atlantic, and said to the old
waves, 'Buffet on;
I have seen trouble as well as you.' The
paralytic affection, or whatever it was, that had twisted his
mouth when young, had formerly appeared to be the master
of his face, and given it a character of indecision and alarm.
It now seemed a minor thing; a twist in a piece of old oak.
And what a bust was Mr. Liston! The mouth and chin, with
the throat under it, hung like an old bag: but the upper part
of the head is as fine as possible; and there is a speculation,
a look-out, and even an elevation of character in it, as unlike
the Liston on the stage, as Lear to King Pippin. One
might imagine Laberius with such a face.

"One morning, after stopping all night, I was getting up

VOL. I.

17

to breakfast, when I heard the noise of a little boy having his face washed. Our host was a merry bachelor, and to the rosiness of a priest might, for aught I know, have added the paternity; but I had never heard of it, and still less expected to find a child in his house. More obvious and obstreporous proofs, however, of the existence of a boy with a dirty face could not have been met with. You heard the child crying and objecting; then the woman remonstrating; then the cries of the child were snubbed and swallowed up in the hard towel; and at intervals out came his voice bubbling and deploring, and was again swallowed up. At breakfast, the child being pitied, I ventured to speak about it, and was laughing and sympathising in perfect good faith, when Mr. Mathews came in, and I found that the little urchin was he. The same morning he gave us his immortal imitation of old Tate Wilkinson, patentee of the York Theatre. Tate had been a little too merry, and was very melancholy in old age. He had a wandering mind, and a decrepit body; and being manager of a theatre, a husband, and a ratcatcher, he would speak in his wanderings, a variety of wretchedness.' He would interweave, for instance, all at once, the subjects of a new engagement at this theatre, the rats, a veal pie, Garrick and Mrs. Siddons, and Mrs. Tate and the doctor. I do not pretend to give a specimen. Mr. Mathews alone can do it."

6

MATHEWS'S BEAUTY.

All who witnessed Mr. Mathews's characteristic "Entertainments," can likewise bear testimony to the varieties of indications of enjoyment in his audience: he could, indeed, as readily transfix them with pathos as set them on a roar. Upon one occasion, Mr. Mathews was performing in a neat little ball-room in a country town, when the ecstasy of the lady-patroness of the evening knew no bounds. She was a person of great consequence in the town, and the centre of the little circle in which she moved. She was a plump, rosyfaced, joyous-looking person; and, moreover, distinguished by a large bespangled turban, and diamond ear-rings. She talked very loud, and was evidently elated at the "treat she declared she was prepared to receive, upon which expectancy she chatted with much volubility to everybody in turn,