allowed that she could produce astonishment deep and thrilling. The effect of her question, as Lady Randolph, in "Douglas," to the peasant, respecting the child, "Was he alive?" was perhaps never surpassed on the stage. Bannister told me that it made rows of spectators start from their seats. Mr. Boaden, I conceive, has been over anxious to make it appear that Mrs. Crawford's mode of uttering this query, or, as he says, of screaming it, was unnatural, and that it succeeded merely as a tour de force, or stage trick. The actress's violence, he alleges, was out of nature, because Lady Randolph could not anticipate any hope that her son was still alive, even if the peasant had answered yes; since she immediately afterwards accuses him of having killed the infant. But this is arguing as if a mother in agony about a lost child could calculate as coolly as a chess-player about the moving of a pawn. Lady Randolph palpably utters that question in a state of transport, as if the life or death of her hopes depended on the instant answer. The inconsistency of her still supposing him dead, though she had heard that he was found alive, is beautifully true to nature. It is fear, rushing in phrenzy to precipitate conclusions. That Mrs. Siddons could dispense with extreme vehemence in this interrogation, only shews the perfection of her acting in other points. Her Lady Randolph was altogether a more sustained and harmonious performance than Mrs. Crawford's. But I believe that she avoided her rival's vehemence of manner in this instance, not from thinking that it was unnatural, but from the fear of being taxed with imitation. Mrs. Crawford died as late as 1801, and was buried near her second husband, Barry, in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. In this retrospect of Mrs. Siddons's predecessors, I have omitted the names of several actresses, highly distinguished for their general powers, and partially successful even in tragedy; such as Mrs. Woffington, Anne Bellamy, and others. But as my object, in this digression, was only to advert to names of the first-rate tragic grade, I fear the reader may tax me with a fault the opposite of omission, namely, my having mentioned one or two actresses who were more famous on the comic than the graver stage-I allude to Bracegirdle and Oldfield. Still, however, let me state, in apology, that general tradition represents the former as a beautiful tragic performer, and that the Oldfield could have been no second-rate who could throw enchantment around Thomson's dramatic poetry. CONTENTS. Mrs. Siddons plays Isabella, in the "Fatal Marriage," |