desist from annoying her: with this view she wrote some notes, to which an answer was returned she called upon him in person, but did not see him, though she was four times at his door. As the engagement was given only to ensnare, it was broken without much shame, and their connexion seems here to have terminated.

She does not appear, however, to have quite despaired of an engagement at the Norwich Theatre; and has two or three interviews, in consequence, with the harmonious, but not unprincipled, Griffith. In the mean time, however, she sees Mr. Inchbald (a man of great merit) two or three times a week, to the 26th of May, from which time he passed a great part of each day in her company, and seriously meditated in her a future wife. She had the advantage of his experience and advice in the framing any engagement with Griffith, of which she continued desirous; and he both counselled and consoled her in the disagreeable predicament as to Dodd. Her sister Slender had quitted London to pass a few days at Standingfield in her absence Mr. Inchbald was extremely assiduous, and on the 2nd of June declared his hopes of their speedy union. Mrs. Slender returned home on the 9th, probably hastened expressly on account of that event; and in the evening Mr. Rice, a Catholic priest, called and married her to Mr. Inchbald. On the 10th, Mr. Inchbald breakfasted with them, and they all

went to church, where they were again married according to the Protestant rites. They had company at dinner on that important day, but the happy pair were not in the usual style whisked immediately through the dust into the country. Sister Slender and she went quietly to the play in the evening, in defiance of all omens, to see Mr. Inchbald act Mr. Oakley in The Jealous Wife !'

The public in general little conceive the incessant occupation of an actor's time; the daily discipline of memory; the study of new characters; the morning rehearsals at the play-house, and the evening labours of performance, and that for hours in succession; his very toil the mere relaxation of others; what to the spectator is sport, but to the actor a scene of inquietude and exhaustion, irritated by rivalry, annoyed by prejudice, too frequently by wantonness and brutality cheered only by applause, not always liberally bestowed, and sometimes lavish where least deserved,-the idol or the puppet of the million. With such a profession Mrs. Inchbald was now connected, and hoped to be identified; and her husband might consider that her rising talent and most lovely person would, by steady perseverance, secure to them so many lucrative engagements, that, even in a worldly view, his marriage might be deemed the most fortunate occurrence of his life. He was himself in his thirty-seventh year, and his wife in

her nineteenth. They were both of them Roman Catholics, who professed the religion of their fathers, without much examination, or very scrupulous adherence to the discipline of their church.

Mr. Inchbald being engaged to act at Bristol, for that city he and his lovely wife set off on the evening of the 11th of June, 1772. The next day they met Mr. Dodd at Marlborough, who marked his petulance, perhaps his malice, by not wishing them joy upon their marriage. They were easily consoled. On their arrival at Bristol, they took lodgings near College Green, and found in the town many of the players with whom Mrs. Inchbald became acquainted at Bury. A calling acquaintance was kept up with such as they preferred, and there was no want of amusement; for, in addition to their walks in that delightful situation, Mrs. Inchbald frequently went to the rehearsals in the morning, and twice or thrice in the week enjoyed the play from the body of the house. To a week of the honey-moon she thought herself fully entitled, and therefore did not mix business with her pleasures; but on the 19th she absolutely began to write out the part of Cordelia. Whatever be the charms of a young débutante, it is a sign of modesty if she even borrows the virtues to heighten her beauty. Cordelia has become the appellative of filial piety. She is beloved for what she does, rather than what she says. Tate, in utter violation of her pure and

unpretending manners, has put into her mouth a stage rhodomontade about "the fierce Thunderer and the earth-born sons of Até." This has become an heir-loom to all possessors of the part, and, I am afraid, is thought the choicest bit of it by nineteen-twentieths of both actresses and audiences. The great magician alone could give voice and action to the divine Cordelia :-

"Patience and Sorrow strove

Which should express her goodliest. Once or twice
She heaved the name of father

Pantingly forth, as if it press'd her heart;

Cried, Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies! sisters!

Let Pity ne'er believe it!'-There she shook

The holy water from her heavenly eyes,

And clamour moisten'd: then away she started
To deal with grief alone."

Garrick thought Dr. Johnson's praise of Shakspeare elaborated only by the head; and, as he loved a strong expression, when speaking of his idol, he added, "When Shakspeare wrote, he dipped his pen in his own heart." Agreeably to the stage usage of his day and ours, this was taken from the French. There was a doctor of the Sorbonne who wrote of the action of God upon his creatures; and of this man the authors of the 'Nouveau Dictionnaire' still more daringly said, "Il trempe sa plume dans le sein de Dieu." "The first time," says Voltaire, "the Deity was ever compared to an ink-bottle."

To return whether the divinity of sound taste

VOL. I.

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yet stirred or not in the bosom of Mrs. Inchbald, and however she estimated the part of Cordelia, she was called upon to attend the severe indisposition of her future Lear; Mr. Inchbald was taken ill on the 27th, and the play was put off on the 29th on account of his indisposition. On the 1st of July he thought himself sufficiently recovered to be able to act Iachimo in Cymbeline;' but the next day he found that he had ventured too soon, and very unwillingly laid by a full week to gain his strength and resume his arduous business in the company. It does not appear that his wife pursued her professional studies now, with the requisite ardour. She had a numerous list of correspondents in London, and at Standingfield and its neighbourhood. To her brother George she sometimes wrote; to Edward not at all.

The honey-moon seems to have been religiously observed by our newly-married pair-but that over, they began to dine and drink tea out sparingly. Mr. Inchbald's performance of Oakley in "The Jealous Wife' had not been entirely forgotten since the wedding night. Among their acquaintance they numbered Mr. and Mrs. Hartley, and Mr. Inchbald seemed particularly attached to them. Now, we imagine from her expression, that, young and inexperienced as she was, our heroine, in a matter of mere meum and tuum, had rather a quick sight: she did not approve of their conduct, as she says: she most likely means that