some conference.  With what an air did he reach down the volume, dispassionately giving his opinion upon the worth of the work in question, and launching out into a dissertation on its comparative merits with those of certain publications of a similar stamp, its rivals! his enchanted customers fairly hanging on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence.  So have I seen a gentleman in comedy acting the shopman.  So Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street.  I admired the histrionic art, by which he contrived to carry clean away every notion of disgrace, from the occupation he had so generously submitted to; and from that hour I judged him, with no after repentance, to be a person, with whom it would be a felicity to be more acquainted.

To descant upon his merits as a Comedian would be superfluous.  With his blended private and professional habits alone I have to do; that harmonious fusion of the manners of the player into those of every day life, which brought the stage boards into streets, and dining-parlours, and kept up the play when the play was ended.—­“I like Wrench,” a friend was saying to him one day, “because he is the same natural, easy creature, on the stage, that he is off.”  “My case exactly,” retorted Elliston—­with a charming forgetfulness, that the converse of a proposition does not always lead to the same conclusion—­“I am the same person off the stage that I am on.”  The inference, at first sight, seems identical; but examine it a little, and it confesses only, that the one performer was never, and the other always, acting.

And in truth this was the charm of Elliston’s private deportment.  You had a spirited performance always going on before your eyes, with nothing to pay.  As where a monarch takes up his casual abode for a night, the poorest hovel which he honours by his sleeping in it, becomes ipso facto for that time a palace; so where-ever Elliston walked, sate, or stood still, there was the theatre.  He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and galleries, and set up his portable playhouse at corners of streets, and in the market-places.  Upon flintiest pavements he trod the boards still; and if his theme chanced to be passionate, the green baize carpet of tragedy spontaneously rose beneath his feet.  Now this was hearty, and showed a love for his art.  So Apelles always painted—­in thought.  So G.D. always poetises.  I hate a lukewarm artist.  I have known actors—­and some of them of Elliston’s own stamp—­who shall have agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake or a coxcomb, through the two or three hours of their dramatic existence; but no sooner does the curtain fall with its leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to seize on all their faculties.  They emerge sour, morose persons, intolerable to their families, servants, &c.  Another shall have been expanding your heart with generous deeds and sentiments, till it even beats with yearnings of universal sympathy;