consider to have now a sort of antiquarian interest, and bear some curious features of stage history. When she first acted Cordelia to the Lear of her friend Digges, the play-bill, or, as it might be equally well named, show-bill, thus set out that immortal drama:

"King Lear and his three Daughters,

written by Shakespear:

Containing the good old King's division of the Crown between his three daughters--the ambition of the bastard Edmund-the flight and feign'd madness of the virtuous Edgar-the base ingratitude of the old King's two daughters, Goneril and Regan-the piety and virtue of his youngest daughter Cordelia-her love for Edgar -the distress, sorrow and frenzy of the poor King, who was turn'd out in the night to wander by the barbarity of his children—the loyalty of the good Duke of Gloster-the loss of his eyes by the inhuman sentence of Regan's husbandthe war raised by Cordelia to restore her unhappy father-their defeat and imprisonment-the old King's sudden restoration, and the just punishment of vice and reward of virtue."

We think this remarkably well done: and to whom would the detail of such a fable not be ad captandum? It is not Shakspeare's play, in which poetical and moral justice are equally rejected;

but then it leaves no impressive horror like the great original, the last scene of which is more Homeric than any other, ancient or modern.

To Digges's Lear (very good) Beynon was the Edgar, and Mr. Inchbald, Albany: Mrs. Inchbald then, and constantly, Cordelia. The Gentleman-Usher was acted by Mr. Death, who would have figured more in the original play.

We think the reader will like to be informed how Mrs. Inchbald was sustained when in the York company. In Tamerlane,' Tate Wilkinson the manager was the Bajazet, and Cummins the Tamerlane to her Aspasia; and, with the appointment literally of Destiny, Mr. Oram performed Omar. This was in March, 1778.

On the 24th of August, 1779, at York, [to begin as soon as the Race is over] the first of all objects in the mortal course of a Yorkshireman, we have 'King Henry IV. with the Humors of Sir John Falstaff.'-Falstaff, Wilkinson; Prince of Wales, Kemble; Hotspur, Cummins. Lady Percy fell to the lot of Mrs. Inchbald, and her husband, as Poins, attended Kemble in his idleness. A pantomime followed, called 'Harlequin Salamander,' in which Dicky Suett performed the Clown.

LEWIS was then on the road to fame and fortune, and was announced for the Friday following in some tragedy; a better farce still, Who's the Dupe,' was at the same time in rehearsal.

On the 8th of April, 1780, Mrs. Inchbald for the benefit of her step-son, George Inchbald, acted Hamlet, George himself being her Horatio. Suett (a country trick) played both Rosencrantz and the Grave-digger. The joy of the galleries to see him in Goodman Delver's dozen waistcoats, after as an ambassador he had been put to sudden death by the King of England, may be readily conceived.

We will now look at the Covent Garden company on her accession to it. That very masterly actor Henderson was at the head of the company; and she had the pleasure of studying his natural manner on the stage, and became a visitor at his house in Buckingham Street. She was the first Constantia to his Don John in The Chances ;' Miss Younge was, and merited well to be, the second: a very superior part. When, for the first time in town, he acted Wolsey, Mrs. Inchbald's beauty recommended her to Anne Bullen; Miss Younge's Katherine was one of her finest achievements. Mrs. Kennedy sang to her in her dying slumbers. Clarke was King Henry; Wroughton, Buckingham. The Spanish Friar,' after a lapse of six years, revived in Henderson, and in him only. Wroughton and Lewis were the Torrismond and Lorenzo; Quick, the Gomez; Mrs. Inchbald, the Leonora. Nan Catley was still vocal, and in Thomas and Sally,' the farce, by particular de

sire, performed Dorcas; Mrs. Martyr, Sally, for the first time.

Richard the Third by Henderson was a very powerful, if not heroic, representation of that assassin. Mrs. Inchbald was the Queen. When the day following he acted King Lear, Miss Younge was his Cordelia, as she had been Garrick's; Lewis, Edgar.

Mrs. Yates performed occasionally, and in ‘The Fair Penitent,' Mrs. Inchbald as Lavinia had an opportunity of improving her own Calista. The same opportunity was given to her in Measure for Measure,' when Henderson, playing the Duke, Mrs. Yates was the true Isabella to her gentle Mariana. The pantomime at this time, in which poor Mrs. Inchbald was expected to walk, was called 'Harlequin Freemason;' the procession here was of all the Grand Masters, from the Creation. No doubt a numerous body, but yet she might plead here a Salique exemption.

She readily acted Charlotte in 'The Gamester' to Henderson's Beverley; and the tender sorrows of his wife had the pathos of Miss Younge, and required no more, until Siddons subsequently showed how much had been overlooked, by eyes. not so aquiline as her own.

The favourite comedy during her first season was certainly The Belles Stratagem,' to which proud distinction many things concurred. "In the first place," says Mrs. Inchbald herself, "when

she had become a rival authoress, and a critic, the dialogue is very good, abounding in excellent satire, with a most perfect description of the modes and manners of the fashionable world." She goes on to mark the prominent novelties of character with suitable praise. The reader, who remembers that she aided Wroughton in the display of Sir George and Lady Frances Touchwood, may like to read her opinion of the characters; thus she expresses it:-" The love of Sir George and his wife is fervent, yet reasonable; they are fond, but not foolish; and with all their extreme delicacy of opinion, never once express their thoughts, either in ranting, affected, or insipid sentences." But there was yet an additional charm, which perhaps balanced the genius of the authoress of the comedy, and the merits of the performers, in the minds of the audiences of those days; it was the compliment uttered by Saville to Queen Charlotte: "Lady Frances was born to be the ornament of courts. She is sufficiently alarmed not to wander beyond the reach of her protector; and from the British court the most tenderly anxious husband could not wish to banish his wife. Bid her keep in her eye the bright example who presides there; the splendour of whose rank yields to the superior lustre of her virtue." Let us add to this praise by one elegant writer, whom we had the honour to know intimately, that, in spite of the changes of opinion, Mrs. Inchbald, to renchérir