1831.] Afair'< in General. 197 



labours of this indefatigable beauty, what is the dull and narrow versa- 

 tility of all the Renards unhanged ? 



Elliston gone, at last ! gay, clever, impudent, giddy Elliston ! The 

 man of contradictions, the best and the worst comedian of his time ; the 

 best and the worst manager ; the best and the worst companion ; the 

 best and the worst schemer, dead or alive ; a man who was riuned by his 

 own dexterity ; and who, if he had but half his talent for doing every 

 thing, and could have escaped his determination to do every thing at 

 oncp, might have been among the opulent of the age. 



He was born in Bloomsbury, in the year 1774, and his uncle. Doctor 

 Elliston, Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, charged himself 

 with his education, — but the stage, Avhich has been the pleasing cause of 

 ruin to so many others, lured him ti'om the University, and brought him 

 before the public — he having, with JVIathews and several other votaries 

 of the drama, performed in private, much to their own satisfaction, long 

 previously. 



The field of his early fame was Bath, where he became the reigning- 

 favourite, and where he married JMiss Rundell, a dancing-mistress of 

 great beauty — by her he had nine children. She died in 1821. 



His first London appearance was at the Haymarket, where he run 

 through all the favourite comic characters triumphantly. He then tried 

 tragedy, and played some things capitally, failed desperately in others, 

 but was not the less a favourite. He had a spirit that dashed at all kinds 

 of the drama, and we have seen him play JMacheath, and play it shewily, 

 though he had a voice which might have been engendered between 

 Munden and INfacready. But he had vivacity, a front, and an inex- 

 haustible self-possession, which carried him through all. He died of his 

 contempt for the common rules of life, and might have lived a hundred 

 years, if he had exhibited common care of an iron constitution. The 

 " John Bullj" in an article on the deceased manager, says, strikingly and 

 truly, of his talents and his career: 



" There was a joyousness in his manner, a vivacity in his action, and a 

 humourousness of expression in his eye and countenance, which combined to 

 place him in the first ranks of the corps dramatique. 



" Elliston, however, would rule; and accordingly he took a lease of that 

 overwhelming calamity, Drury-lane Theatre, which, in due course of time, ex- 

 hausted his means, and he eventually fell to the Surrey Theatre, which he 

 managed, after his way, for seven years ; but we apprehend with very little bene- 

 ficial result to himself. He had his follies, ])erhaps his vices — but not more than 

 fall to the lot of thousands of others ; and there was a certain degree of inflation 

 in his manner of treating small matters, which, no doubt, will hereafter furnish 

 food for the theatrical historian — at present we have only to record his death, 

 which, in common with the rest of his admirers, of which class we profess our- 

 selves to be, we most sincerely lament. 



Professor Southey is the literary Briareus of his day ; only that he 

 has five hundred hands for the old proportion. He is the Pythagorean 

 philosopher, who made music infinite out of the hammer and anvil. 

 He is the alchymist, who turns saw-dust into lignum vitae, ladies' slip- 

 pers into sandal-wood, the Sermons of Tillotson, over which our grcat- 

 graiuinidthers died of yawning, into capital articles on existing politics ; 

 and ])lays Dr. Sacheverel incognito, without the fear of the Commons 

 before Iiis eye, or of finding a William Dolben in any Bishop, or Epis* 



