Mr. Betterton was a man of great study and application; and, with respect to the subjects that employed his attention, he was as much a master of them as any man.  He was an excellent critic, more especially on Shakespear, and Fletcher.  Mr. Rowe, who was a good judge, and also studied the same authors with deep attention, gives this testimony in his favour, and celebrates, in the warmest manner, Betterton’s critical abilities.  His knowledge of Shakespear’s merit, gave him so strong, and so perfect an esteem for him, that he made a pilgrimage into Staffordshire to visit his tomb, and to collect whatever particulars tradition might have preserved in relation to his history; and these he freely communicated to the same friend, who candidly acknowledges, that the Memoirs of Shakespear’s Life he published, were the produce of that journey, and freely bestowed upon him by the collector.  Mr. Booth, who knew him only in his decline, frequently made mention of him, and said, he never saw him either off, or on the stage, without learning something from him; he frequently observed, that Mr. Betterton was no actor, but he put on his part with his clothes, and was the very man he undertook to be, ’till the play was over, and nothing more.  So exact was he in following nature, that the look of surprize he assumed in the character of Hamlet so astonished Booth (when he first personated the Ghost) as to disable him for some moments from going on.  He was so communicative, that in the most capital parts, he would enter into the grounds of his action, and explain, the principles of his art.  He was an admirable master of the action of the stage, considered as independent of sentiment; and knew perfectly the connection, and business of the scenes, so as to attract, preserve, and satisfy the attention of art audience:  An art extremely necessary to an actor, and very difficult to be attained.

What demonstrated his thorough skill in dramatic entertainments, was, his own performance, which was sufficient to establish a high reputation, independent of his other merit.  As he had the happiness to pass through life without reproach, a felicity few attain, so he was equally happy in the choice of a wife, with whom he spent his days in domestic quiet, though they were of very different tempers; he was naturally gay and chearful, she of a melancholy reserved disposition.  She was so strongly affected by his death, which was, in some measure, sudden, that she ran distracted, tho’ she appeared rather a prudent and constant, than a fond and passionate wife:  She was a great ornament to the stage, and her death, which happened soon after, was a public loss.