Sampson was irresistible; but Mackay was the Bailie of Sir Walter Scott, as he himself often most emphatically declared. Perhaps the highest compli ment ever paid to an actor was when the Great Unknown, at the dinner of the Edinburgh Theatrical Fund, threw aside his useless incognito, publicly owned himself the author of the works long believed to be his, and proposed the health of Mackay, in his character of the Bailie, in the following terms :— "I would fain dedicate a bumper to the health of one who has represented several of those characters of which I have endeavoured to give the skeleton, with a truth and liveliness for which I may well be grateful. I beg leave to propose the bealth of my friend Bailie Nicol Jarvie; and I am sure when the author of Waverley and Rob Roy drinks to Nicol Jarvie, it will be received with the just applause to which that gentleman has always been accustomed." The talents of Mackay were by no means confined to his representation of exclusively national characters. In Dominie Sampson, Cuddie Headrigg, Caleb Balderstone, Dalgetty, Richie Moniplies, Jock Howison, &c. &c., he was far beyond any of his contemporaries, and, in a large range of miscellaneous parts, equal to many in the foremost rank.

I

have seen him play Rolamo, in Clari, Old Dornton, in The Road to Ruin, and others of that cast, with a power and pathos which everybody acknowledged. I feel happy at an opportunity of bearing my feeble testimony to the merits of an old friend and confederate; and should these pages meet his eye, he will, I am sure, be pleased to find that I have not forgotten the days of "auld lang syne," or the many reminiscences of what occurred when we dressed in "propinquity" in the same room. I introduced him to the Dublin audience; and although (as, I gr eve to say, they seldom do) they did not fill the theatre, they felt his excellence, and applauded him to the echo. He has retired, happily, from the anxious avocations of theatrical drudgery, and is, I trust, what I always predicted he would be, "a warm little man." The last remaining of that "ould stock" is my first worthy employer and manager, William Murray, to whom I must, with an early opportunity, dedicate an exclusive leaf, which he is well worthy of, and which, I trust, he will

take as a tribute of old friendship. He, too, is about to retire (I wish I was!) and he leaves no actor like himself behind, in a long range of the most opposite characters.

There was, in the Edinburgh Theatre, at the time I have been alluding to, an actor, by name Denham, now dead, but who deserves to be remembered. I saw him first in a small country theatre, at Kelso, and recommended him strongly to Mr. Murray, who engaged him at a trifling salary on my showing, but soon promoted him when he discovered his merit. His Dandie Dinmont and Mucklebackit were masterly pieces of acting; and his King James, in The Fortunes of Nigel, delighted the author almost as much as the Bailie Jarvie of Mackay. It was unique, one of those unexpected coincidences you never dream of, and greatly assisted by a natural thickness of utterance, a sort of Northumbrian, or border burr (which Sir Walter Scott himself had), in exact keeping with the physical peculiarities of the British Solomon. Neither let poor old Duff be forgotten, who has so lately "shuffled off this mortal coil," and whose Dougal Creature was equally commended by the same high authority. Perhaps he wanted but the right opportunity, at the right moment, to have made him a great man. The curtain has fallen, and no human reasoning can now decide the question; but that he had talent of a high order, and in a varied line, is unquestionable. Why it was permitted to waste itself in obscurity and indigence, and to be extinguished, in the winter of life, in utter helplessness, we know not, and have no right to inquire, but all, if they choose, may deduce from thence a salutary lesson. I met him first in Edinburgh, when I joined that company in 1819. Everybody said he was a clever man; all he did was done like an artist. I saw George the Fourth applaud his Dougal warmly. I left him in Edinburgh in 1824, and I found him again in neglect and obscurity, discharged from the Haymarket, in London, in 1830. I was then mustering forces for my first campaign in Dublin, he enlisted under my banners, and never left them until he received the final summons of a more imperative commander.

When George the Fourth visited Edinburgh, in 1822, he selected Roy

Rob for the performance, on the night of his attending the theatre in state; partly as a national compliment, and partly as a personal distinction to Sir Walter Scott, who had taken much

OR,

Mr. Munro.

until

There was no after-piece; the doors opened at six, and the performances were to commence at eight, or as soon after as the king arrived, who was always punctual. The crowd began to assemble with the dawn of day; at twelve it came on to rain, and rained incessantly until six; but "no thought was there of dastard flight;" money was offered for place in the throng, and indignantly refused; the "serried phalanx" maintained their array the appointed hour, and within a few minutes after, the pit was densely packed; then arose from saturated garments a thick mist of damp and vapour, through which gas illuminations were but dimly seen, and which had scarcely dispersed when his Majesty entered his state box. We recollect looking out from the window of our dressing-room on that wet and wearied crowd, impatient and worn out, and saying to ourselves, as the highwayman did on his way to Ty. burn, and knowing we were to act the leading part in a very different sort of drama, "You need not hurry, there'll be no fun till I come."

Of the performers whose names ap pear in the bill we have copied, not more than eight are now alive.

The play of Rob Roy, up to this date, has been acted in Edinburgh nearly 400 times; and in the provin cial theatres of Scotland, more than one thousand. I remember seeing the 500th representation announced in a play-bill of Ryder's at Perth, dated as far back as 1829.

The week before the arrival of the King, all Scotland poured into Edinburgh. It was impossible to walk the streets without being jostled off the curbstones, but like sensible and well ordered lieges, as they are, they crowded the theatre nightly. In six evenings, with no auxiliary attraction, above £1,000 was taken to the two old national and worn out dramas of Rob Roy, and the Heart of Mid Lothian. Then came Edmund Kean, who had been engaged long before there was any intimation or idea of a royal visit, and the houses, if possible, were fuller still. The great tragedian, then in the full zenith of his fame and powers, was naturally much chagrined

that one of his plays was not selected on the night of the Royal Command, and expected Macbeth. I thought he would have chosen to study Rob Roy for the occasion, which he had an undoubted right to do if he pleased, but I was not sorry to find he had no such intention. He was impressed with a most unfounded notion that the sovereign was personally hostile to him, and said to me, in conversation on the subject, with epigrammatic bitterness, "I am a greater man than I ever expected to be,-I have a king for my enemy !"

With a

Some of the arrangements during the visit of George IV. to his northern capital gave rise to much talk at the time (people will talk), some criticism, and not a little astonishment. good deal to dazzle and astonish, there was also a large mixture of what was called by the profane "tomfoolery." Now that it has all passed into history, we think over these occurrences with cooler blood. Then the blood of the public exceeded fever heat, and the fever of the moment went to excite the whole nation into a belief that they were Highlanders. Why this was so, no one inquires now; but at the time, it looked very theatrical, and something overdone. We have heard it whispered that the King thought so himself; but the whisper was lost in the tumultuous acclamations, and the show and enthusiasm swept everything before them.

Among other "eccentricities of Edinburgh," his Majesty appeared in a kilt and blazing appointments of the Stuart tartan, on the morning of his grand levee at Holyrood House. That Prince Charles Edward, in 1745, should have assumed the Celtic costume was natural enough, seeing that his immediate supporters and adherents, in a disputed claim, were the Highland clans alone; but that George the Fourth should do so, in 1822, when representing the concentrated right of all the lineal claimants to the throne, as Queen Victoria does now, was surely an error in taste, if not in judgment. It was ministering to the vanity of a section, and at the expense of the majority. It seems a strange mistake to have persuaded the King, that the great barons and peers of Scotland, who in former ages constituted the pith and marrow of the kingdom, could be complimented by his wearing the

garb, which from early history they had always associated with the acts of lawless tribes and predatory invaders. In the ranks of the gallant 42nd, 79th, or 93rd, it looks equally comely and heroic; but in the halls of old Holyrood, except on the persons of the feudal chiefs and their retainers, it seemed like a theatrical mockery. It was also sadly diminished in consequence by more than one of its ill-chosen adopters. Some of the amateur Celts looked as if a breeze would have blown them far down the Firth of Forth; and more than one real Highlander of the Tails, when shouldered by the brawny yeomen of the borders, gave way, measuring his man, in muttering, but untranslatable indig

nation.

On the day of the grand entry, two private societies, the Celtic Club and the Royal Archers, occupied distinguished posts, immediately near the royal person. The gallant Scots' Greys, still glowing with the laurels of Waterloo, were pushed a little into the background; while a Highland clan immediately followed the state carriage, their pipers bursting with loyalty, and ready as the followers of the car of Juggernaut to die under the wheels of their idol, but in perfect innocence skirling forth an old Jacobite tune, which sounded very like—

"Geordie sits in Charlie's chair,

De'il tak him that put him there."

But nobody minded particulars, and the meaning was the same, although the mode of showing it was a little contradictory. When Queen Victoria visited Dublin, in 1849-and seeing how all Ireland rushed madly up to the metropolis, as erst they did to Edinburgh, on a similar occasion

with the remembrance of what occurred there fully before me, I collected my company, and opened the theatre, getting also first-rate auxiliary aid, in the persons of Mrs. Fitzwilliam, Wallack, and Buckstone. We brought out eleven new pieces, in as many nights. Circumstances interfered to prevent my being honoured with a command, and the experiment ended in a loss of £250. There was no inducing any one to think there was a place of in-door amusement in the city, while there was so much attraction in the streets, and it was impossible to foresee the unprecedented enthusiasm which multiplied illuminations every night during her Majesty's stay.

DR. JOHNSON, a great authority, delivers it as his opinion, that no book was ever yet printed so thoroughly worthless but that something useful may be extracted from its pages-"two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff," as Bassanio says, in the Merchant of Venice, of the conversation of his friend Gratiano. Whether they are

worth the sifting is another question. The result, in many cases, will chance to resemble the working of the Wicklow Gold Mines, which left the speculators with a heavy loss of time and outlay. The Doctor, it was said, possessed a faculty of turning over the leaves of any book he appeared to be reading, with seeming carelessness, and at the same time of extracting, without the labour of continuous perusal, all that was important. If we adopt his proposition, we shall find the converse equally demonstrable. The worst writers may have their moments of inspiration, but the best contain unworthy passages. Their flights are unequal. Apollo sometimes relaxes the strings of his bow; Homer indulges in occasional naps, and Milton becomes prosy and almost unreadable. Who, that speaks candidly, has not yawned over passages in the latter books of "Paradise Lost," and toiled through them more as a consummation than a "labour of love;" a sort of incumbent duty or work of necessity, rather than a voluntary recreation. The soundest authors, poets in especial, become occasionally turgid or tiresome. Horace allows the plea of drowsiness in a long poem,* but he nowhere tolerates extravagance or bombast. Amazing and almost incredible specimens of the latter quality may be quoted from the most celebrated poets and dramatists. Even the unapproachable Shakspere is not entirely divested of this blemish, as we shall have occasion to show. The truth of the hypothesis we are assuming can only be borne out by illustrative examples. A few selections, taken at random, may be found both amusing and applicable.

Dryden furnishes, perhaps, as many cases as any great writer on the list. Here are two or three from his poems.

Speaking of the final judgment, he uses this strange imagery:

"When rattling bones together fly

From the four corners of the sky."

And in the " Annus Mirabilis," describing the English armament, he

says:

"To see this fleet upon the ocean move

Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies, And Heaven, as if there wanted lights above,

For tapers bade two glaring comets rise."

In the tragedy of the Conquest of Granada, we find the following gradation of extravagances, working up to a fine climax of absurdity :—

"OSMYN.

While we indulge our common happiness,
He is forgot, by whom we all possess ;
The brave Almanzor, to whose arms we owe
All that we did, and all that we shall do;
Who like a tempest that outrides the wind,
Made a just battle ere the bodies joined.

ABDALLA.

His victories we scarce could keep in view, Or polish them as fast as he rough drew.

ABDIMILECH.

Fate after him below with pain did move, And Victory could scarce keep pace above. Death did at length so many slain forget, And lost the tale, and took 'em by the great."

Contrast these passages with the following very magnificent one from Palemon and Arcite, and it becomes difficult to suppose that both could have proceeded from the same parent brain. The poet describes a series of paintings from va rious well-known subjects, which adorn a temple of Diana erected for the grand combat or tournament given by Theseus at Athens, winding up with a description of a female in the pangs of maternity:

"Before her lay a woman in her throes, Who called Lucina's aid her burden to disclose.

All this the painter drew with such command,

That Nature snatch'd the pencil from his hand,

Asham'd and angry that his art could

feign,

And mend the tortures of a mother's pain."

Ben Jonson becomes very wild indeed, when he exchanges his "learned sock," as Milton calls it, for the cothurnus of Tragedy. In Sejanus his Fall, we find this description of the potent minister's importance, by himself :— "Great and high

The world knows only two, that's Rome and I!

My roof receives me not, 'tis air I tread,
And at each step I feel my advanc'd head
Knock out a star in Heaven!"

Horace must have foreseen this flight, with the eye of prophecy, when he says "sublimi feriam sidera vertice;" or, what is more palpable, the erudite scholiast has copied the idea of the Roman poet without acknowledging it. The two next are from Catiline his Conspiracie. Just before the last bat

tle joins, Catiline addresses his com

panions :

"Methinks I see death and the furies waiting What we will do, and all the heavens at leisure

For the great spectacle. Draw then your
swords;

And if our destiny envy our virtue
The honour of the day, yet let us care
To sell ourselves at such a price as may
Undo the world to buy us, and make Fate
While she tempts ours to fear her own es-
tate."

The prodigies that attended the conflict, with the result, are thus described:

"The furies stood on hills Circling the place, and trembled to see men Do more than they; whilst Pity left the field Griev'd for that side that in so bad a cause, They knew not what a crime their valour was. The sun stood still, and was, behind the cloud The battle made, seen sweating to drive up His frighted horse, whom still the noise drove backward."

The state of terror ascribed here to the horse, reminds us of the lion quoted by Martinus Scriblerus

"He roared so loud, and looked so wondrous grim,

His very shadow durst not follow him."

There was a poet called Sylvester, contemporary with Ben Johnson, well considered in his day, and better remembered now by a rhyming wager, rather too free for our pages, than by his poetry, of which the following may be taken as a sample :—

"Now when the winter's keener breath began To crystallize the Baltick Ocean,

To glaze the lakes, to bridle up the floods, And periwig with snow the bald-pate woods."

In the "Orlando Innamorato" of "Boiardo," occurs a passage, which, with some mixture of humour, has seldom been equalled in absurdity. Here it is, original and translated. The translation will be found tolerably faithful, though not assuming to reach the terse expression of the original. The poet is speaking of Orlando's celebrated sword, Durlindana, which has just sliced an adversary in two, from occiput to os-coccygis, at a single blow:

"Tanto era nel suo taglio graziosa,
Che quasi insieme tagliava, cuciva,
E'l suo ferire appena si sentiva.
Onde ora avendo a traverso tagliato
Questo Pagan, lo fa si destramente,
Che l'un pezzo in su l'altro, suggelato
Rimase, senza muoversi niente;
E come avien, quand' uno e riscaldato
Che le ferite per allor non sente,
Cosi colui, del colpo non accorto,
Andava combattendo, ed era morto."

"So keen and so polite this matchless steel, The wound it gave, the wounded scarce could feel,

And when it struck, it almost seemed to heal.
Thus when Orlando split his Pagan foe,
With such dexterity he aim'd the blow,
The path his sword had made, so nicely clos'd,
That on one half the other still repos'd.
And as while rage inflates each boiling vein,
The ardent warrior loses sense of pain,
So this bold Pagan, after he was sped,
Went fighting on, not knowing he was dead."

Blackmore's "endless line" contains almost endless specimens of pure fustian; but as no one ever did, does, can, or will read his poems, so called, one instance must suffice-as the pedant in Hierocles carried a single brick in his pocket, to show the materials of which his houses were composed. The reader will, we have no doubt, think, as Prince Polignac did, when asked to bring Charles X. (then Count D'Artois) to see a second representation of Stephen Kemble's Macbeth, "Ah, ah! No, no! once of such fun is too much." The passage subjoined occurs in Blackmore's poem of "Job:"

"The hills forget they're fixed, and in their fright

Cast off their weight, and ease themselves for flight;

The woods, with terror winged, outfly the wind,

And leave the heavy, panting hills behind."