122 NINE YEARS OF AN ACTOR'S LIFE. 



is ever some bar to perfection ; for the possession of an accomplish- 

 ment is always counterpoised by some defect. Hence it is, that 

 singers, dancers, and fiddlers, with few exceptions, are noted for their 

 mental imbecility. What but a weakness, bordering on fatuity, 

 could induce Miss Paton to connect herself with Wood ? As the 

 wife of Lord Lennox she was pitied and admired ; as the wife of 

 Wood she is still admired but suspected. Luckily for her, a Bri- 

 tish audience (to its shame) ever has been indulgent to moral delin- 

 quents." 



T. P. COOKE. " At Stamford the inimitable T. P. Cooke com- 

 menced his engagements for that place, Nottingham, and Derby. I 

 had seen many whose sailors were called excellent by good judges, 

 and I anticipated in Cooke's William, &c. a superior modification 

 of the same style; but he annihilated my previous ideas of nautical 

 perfection, and I wondered a vile imitation of nature ever passed 

 current with me. All sailors, save Cooke, are land lubbers, he is a 

 son of the sea, a very amphibious animal; his hands are used like 

 fins, and he moves on the shore like a fish out of water; but see him 

 in imagination aboard, and he walks as if the plank and the blue 

 wave were beneath him. Not less efficient, though less natural por- 

 traitures, are his Brigand, and Monster; the Monster being a 

 wonderful embodying of the demon, in the Frankenstein of Mrs. 

 Shelley. One part of this terrible display of pantomimic power is 

 the finest performance ever witnessed it is where the monster dis- 

 covers the blindness of De Lancy, and expresses * Hideous as I am, 

 I am yet happier than this poor wretch, for I can look on the beau- 

 tiful sky, and the fields and flowers ! ' ' 



MACREADY. " Macready shows nothing but the becoming pride 

 of a gentleman ; and, if actors were more accommodating, he would 

 be less irritable. As an actor he is faultless, for he conceives with 

 judgment, and executes with truth. He is Virginius, and Hamlet, 

 and Tell, as completely as if the souls of his heroes had entered him 

 when he assumed the garb of each character. Nothing could rouse 

 him from his identity in the scene, if the actors were only perfect ; 

 not even the uproar of an overflowing half-price, than which the 

 confusion of Babel is not more confounding. Once, however, I saw 

 him at fault in the Shrewsbury theatre, in William Tell. The 

 Shrewsbury butchers are proverbially a noisy crew, and on the 

 night of his benefit the crowd and confusion were so terrific, Ma- 

 cready ' struck dead* in player parlance ; and after many unsuccess- 

 ful efforts, nbt;iiiu:d :i jvan^e in the storm, and ;K!<!I< <-<<! hi- friend- 



