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“But there is something not natural in this everlasting acting; we want the real man.”

Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, whom you cannot, or will not see, under some adventitious trappings, which, nevertheless, sit not at all inconsistently upon him? What if it is the nature of some men to be highly artificial? The fault is least reprehensible in players. Cibber was his own Foppington, with almost as much wit as Vanburgh could add to it.

“My conceit of his person,”–it is Ben Jonson speaking of Lord Bacon,–“was never increased towards him by his place or honours. But I have, and do reverence him for the greatness, that was only proper to himself; in that he seemed to me ever one of the greatest men, that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that heaven would give him strength; for greatness he could not want.”

The quality here commended was scarcely less conspicuous in the subject of these idle reminiscences, than in my Lord Verulam. Those who have imagined that an unexpected elevation to the direction of a great London Theatre, affected the consequence of Elliston, or at all changed his nature, knew not the essential greatness of the man whom they disparage. It was my fortune to encounter him near St. Dunstan’s Church (which, with its punctual giants, is now no more than dust and a shadow), on the morning of his election to that high office. Grasping my hand with a look of significance, he only uttered,–“Have you heard the news?”–then with another look following up the blow, he subjoined, “I am the future Manager of Drury Lane Theatre.”–Breathless as he saw me, he stayed not for congratulation or reply, but mutely stalked away, leaving me to chew upon his new-blown dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to it. Expressive silence alone could muse his praise. This was in his great style.

But was he less great, (be witness, O ye Powers of Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Carthage the consular exile, and more recently transmuted for a more illustrious exile the barren constableship of Elba into an image of Imperial France), when, in melancholy after-years, again, much near the same spot, I met him, when that sceptre had been wrested from his hand, and his dominion was curtailed to the petty managership, and part proprietorship, of the small Olympic, his Elba? He still played nightly upon the boards of Drury, but in parts alas! allotted to him, not magnificently distributed by him. Waiving his great loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the sense of fallen material grandeur in the more liberal resentment of depreciations done to his more lofty intellectual pretensions, “Have you heard” (his customary exordium)–“have you heard,” said he, “how they treat me? they put me in comedy.” Thought I–but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal interruption–“where could they have put you better?” Then, after a pause–“Where I formerly played Romeo, I now play Mercutio,”–and so again he stalked away, neither staying, nor caring for, responses.

O, it was a rich scene,–but Sir A—- C—-, the best of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame narrative almost as well as he sets a fracture, alone could do justice to it–that I was witness to, in the tarnished room (that had once been green) of that same little Olympic. There, after his deposition from Imperial Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olympic Hill was his “highest heaven;” himself “Jove in his chair.” There he sat in state, while before him, on complaint of prompter, was brought for judgment–how shall I describe her?–one of those little tawdry things that flirt at the tails of choruses–a probationer for the town, in either of its senses–the pertest little drab–a dirty fringe and appendage of the lamps’ smoke–who, it seems, on some disapprobation expressed by a “highly respectable” audience, had precipitately quitted her station on the boards, and withdrawn her small talents in disgust.