the country, and which would make foreigners doubt whether we had any police to check the licentious exhibitions before alluded to.

"The alteration of hours, dress, and manners has also much contributed to an evil, I fear beyond all cure. I beg it to be held in mind that I am not endeavouring to produce remedies for this mischief, but merely attempting to trace its progress to the present hour. The size of the old theatre of Drury Lane must be in the remembrance of many; it was small in comparison with that of Covent Garden. A modern audience would be surprised to hear how the public were accommodated forty years ago. The side boxes were few in number, and very incommodious, especially when the frequenters of those boxes ever appeared in them in full dresses, the women in hoops of various dimensions, and the men with swords and habiliments calculated to deny convenient space to their neighbours. Frocks were admitted into the front boxes; but they were not usually worn by gentlemen in the evening: women of the town quietly took their station in the upper boxes, called the green boxes; and men whom it did not suit either to be at the expense of dress, or who had not time to equip themselves as before described, resorted to the pit. This of course comprehended a large description of persons, such as belonged to the inns of court, men of liberal pursuits and professions; and who by a uniform attendance at the playhouse became competent judges of the drama.

"Their situation in the pit enabled them to hear and to observe. Their habits of life led them to an acquaintance with the authors and actors of the day; the latter were not ignorant they were continually before a tribunal that made itself respected, and whose sentence conferred fame or censure; and they were convinced that negligence, ebriety, and buffoonery would not be suffered to pass unnoticed and unpunished. Garrick's voice with that of many others of his troop reached, without effort, the deepest parts of the front boxes, nor was lost even in the farthest rows of the galleries. The general custom of wearing swords, was certainly productive of spilling blood before resentment found time to cool; but as far as the theatre was concerned it was instrumental to decorum: the scene was hardly ever

disconcerted by noisy quarrels, blows, or such indecencies as we now witness; the weapon was at hand, and the appeal to it was rather more serious than to the fist, and enabled the weakest to contend with the most athletic. Women of the town were never permitted in the boxes below stairs, with the single exception of the beautiful Kitty Fisher, whose appearance occasioned great dismay among all the frequenters, male and female, of the hitherto unpolluted front boxes.

"Many, not long dead, could not only recollect the principal actors who preceded Garrick, but were able to convey a strong idea, and afford a conception of the ancient declamation, and mode of repeating verse; their enunciation was more sonorous, lofty, and what we should term bombastic. This may serve to explain what Cibber means when he desires a young actor more to tone his words, and from which Garrick made a bold departure. Ryan was long left upon the stage to afford something explanatory of the old method of declaiming; it had to the ear a trembling sound and great monotony; but he was very old and perhaps but imperfectly detailed what our ancestors (no contemptible judges) were known to have approved. The stage formerly seemed to have commanded more universal interest than at present; it appeared to have been a fashion among all ranks to be able to quote most of the striking passages of the tragic poets of their day; particularly those of Lee and Dryden. Shakspeare became more familiar to an English audience by Garrick's bringing so many and so perpetually his plays before it, and by excelling in so many of his characters-many persons of all ranks knew almost all the best scenes of Dryden by heart. These circumstances with many others, incline me to believe that the beauties of the author and the merits of the player were much more constantly than in these days the topics of discourse and of observation; the natural consequence of hearing accurately, and of being able to compare not only one actor with another, but with himself, was a perpetual stimulus to the latter to exert himself, and not to trifle with the audience. Yates, upon the whole, almost a perfect comedian, would sometimes be negligent in learning his part, but I seldom recollect his requiring the prompter's aid, without receiving a hint from the audience; he requi

red it too often; and if this did not effectually correct the imperfection in him, yet it was an excellent lesson to others, who would not have been treated with the same lenity.

"Garrick, when manager, besides indulging an honest love of fame, had other motives for appearing as frequently as he did upon the stage. His attention to the theatre produced the strictest discipline in his troops, and he has continually after performing a part of exertion and fatigue in the play, appeared again in a humorous character in the farce, such as Lethe, Miss in her Teens, the Guardian, and many others, and most admirabły was he assisted in the comedies and after-pieces, by the greatest number of truly comic actors that the public were ever amused by. One play, “Every Man in his Humour," had all the characters filled by performers that induced one almost to fancy that the part was expressly written for the principal actor to whom it was consigned, from Garrick's Kitely down to Cobb the watercarrier: it is sufficient to name Woodward, Yates, Shuter, Vaughan, Palmer; the rest may be found in some editions of the play printed in Garrick's time. The tragedy that came the nearest to this comedy as to the excellent casting of the parts was Venice Preserved: Garrick in Jaffier-Mossop, Pierre; and Mrs. Cibber, Belvidera. Notwithstanding I have witnessed great effects of grief produced by Mrs. Siddons in that character, yet by no means so violent or general as by the former actress. But here I turn again to the size of the theatre, where none could feel inconvenience, for all heard, as well as saw; now a large proportion of the audience can do neither, and consequently this historical observation decides nothing of the comparative merit of these two actresses. In Mrs. Cibber certainly was to be found more feminine sweetness, besides a voice that went directly to the heart: in other respects, she might perhaps want that commanding and majestic style demanded for the terrific characters of Lady Macbeth, or of Constance in King John: in the latter I have never seen Mrs. Yates surpassed: nor in Isabella Mrs. Siddons.

"The audience formerly, and in the times I am alluding to, were contented to attend favourite performances and performers under much inconvenience, and would be now called disfigure