phoscophornio and Rigdum Funnidos." The character and style of the two biographers are, indeed, as strongly contrasted as sock and buskin; Mr. Boaden being grave, critical, full, and laudably accurate, serious in the most lively information which he communicates, and treating comedy itself as if it were a very solemn affair; while on the other hand, there is nothing so serious as to render Michael Kelly so. He has spent all his life among the lovers of laugh and fun, choice spirits, whom Time cannot exhaust, and who make good the boast of Anacreon, and are merry in spite of misfortune and gray hairs. Betwixt merits so various, how shall the critic decide? Were we to spend a morning in looking over Garrick's dramatic collection at the Museum, we should certainly wish to have Mr. Boaden with us to spare us repeated references to the Biographia Dramatica. But, in the evening, we fear we should be graceless enough to prefer Kelly's comic gossip, rich in song and jest, qualified by a touch of the traveller, and (what we never object to) a dash of the brogue. We do not, however, undervalue the solid English pudding of Mr. Boaden, though we have a special relish for the souflé of Seignor Kelly. Or, rather, we would address them with the impartiality of Sir John, the jolly deer-stealing priest of Waltham, towards the rival publicans, his comrades. "Neighbours Banks, of Waltham, and Goodman Smug, the honest smith of Edmonton, as I dwell betwixt you both, at Enfield, I know the taste of both your alehouses-they are good both, smart both." To continue Sir John's metaphor, the beverage supplied by Mr. Kelly is a fine brisk species of vivacious bottled beer, like that unquestionably with which Beau Tibbs regaled the duke, as we are informed by the sage Lien Chi Altangi, in the Citizen of the World. Boaden, on the other hand, draws us a double flagon of old English liquor, not the sophisticated potion which the vulgar denominate heavy wet, but Anno Domini, regularly dated and regularly tapped, like that which honest Boniface ate and drank, and upon which he always slept. Allowing precedence to be due to the more dignified person, we advert first to the Memoirs of John Kemble, combined as they are with a history of the stage from the time of Garrick to the present period. A great deal of curious information is accumulated in these two volumes, by a man who has had the best opportunities of collecting the dramatic history of the last half century. We cannot, however, altogether approve of his blending the Memoirs of Kemble with an account of the theatre, so general, diffuse, and disproportioned in length to the pages which the life of his proper hero occupies. The fore-ground and back-ground are too extensive for the principal figure. We might have been very glad to have possessed the work arranged in two separate departments, one containing the memoirs, the other the history of the stage. The present plan has rendered unavoidable the mingling the account of this distinguished man of talent with that of many ordinary performers, of whom we either never heard before, or never wish to hear again. Mr. Boaden, we have no doubt, has been just in his estimate of these subordinate persons;-but there are many whom he might have dismissed like Virgil with a single "fortemque," and whom he ought not to have suffered to crowd the scene which they never adorned, and on which they are not now, perhaps, remembered at all. A man should have some title beyond mere respectability before he is handed up to fame. "What shall an honest man do in my closet?" says Caius, and what business has a merely respectable man in our library? say we. We think it is John Dunton in his Life and Errors, who, in a history of the literature of Boston, the capital of New England, which he visited in the course of his wanderings, gives not only an account of authors, publishers, retail booksellers, and printers, but descends to stationers and bookbinders, has a few flying hints on printers' devils, and makes us unnecessarily acquainted with every one of these respectable persons as necessary appendages to literary history. We are far from quarrelling with the minute information conveyed by Mr. Boaden in a miscellaneous manner, somewhat similar to that of Dunton, but we wish it had been a little better arranged, and more connected in its topics than by the mere category of time. The history of Kemble is divided into so many detached pieces, that it seems like the body of an old man cut and ready for Medea's kettle. We will endeavour to collect some of the scattered fragments, so as to form from Mr. Boaden's work, assisted by our own recollections, a full length portrait, though on a reduced scale, of one of the best actors, most accomplished artists, and most kind and worthy men, that ever commanded the admiration of the public, and the esteem of his friends. John Philip Kemble was born 1st February, 1757, at Prescot, in Lancashire. The family from which he derived his origin was ancient and respectable; but ruined, we have heard him say, in the great Civil War of the seventeenth century, for their adherence to King Charles during that contest. His father was manager of a provincial company of actors; so that the members of this highly gifted race, who have attained such distinguished eminence, seem to have been dedicated to the stage from their birth upwards. Unquestionably, the natural bent of their minds must have leaned towards the family profession, of which they felt the full fascination, while its disadvantages, as being in ordinary cases considered a step lower than the more grave and established courses of life, could not occur as an objection to those who saw the art daily practised by the parents whom they were accustomed to love and honour. But Mr. Roger Kemble, the father of John, sensible of the disadvantages attending his own profession, resolved to give his son a classical education, designing him, it is believed, to take orders in the Roman Catholic church. Accordingly, John Philip Kemble received his first instructions at a Catholic seminary at Sedgely Park in Staffordshire, and was a student for two or three years at the College of Douay, where he attracted attention by the gracefulness of his person, the strength of his memory, and the beauty of his recitation. During all the time which he spent at these early studies his own secret determination was always to become a performer. He felt the strong vocation for the pleasing art in which he was destined to attain excellence, and never, we have heard him say, was tempted to swerve from his purpose even when his prospects appeared least promising. At the outset they were sufficiently gloomy. He returned to England, and found his father disappointed and angry on learning that his thoughts were fixed upon the stage. "He might be allowed," says Mr. Boaden, "to feel some mortification at his son's choice; for what was then to predict the great and lasting eminence to which he attained?" But the impulse was not to be withstood, John Kemble acted as his first part Theodosius, in the tragedy so called, at Woolverhampton, 8th January, 1776. Dramatic excellence is of slow growth, and requires long and severe study; it is enough if first appearances be received as promising. The characteristic peculiarity of Kemble's performance was not of a kind to advance him to popularity with a more rapid pace than usual. With all the requisites for a fine player, and especially with a profound study of his art, and reverence for its difficulties, it must have required habit to familiarize him with the exertion of his own powers. The requisite mellowness and flexibility which make the actor seem at home in his part, were in his case slowly acquired, and until he was possessed of these, his manner, afterwards so graceful, must have seemed stiff; above all, his voice, the strength of which was never equal to his other powers, must have sounded harsh and unharmonious ere he knew how to reserve and husband its efforts. We can conceive him, like the giant in Frankenstein, working awkwardly enough until he had acquired a complete acquaintance with his own powers and the mode of using them to advantage. Cer The apprenticeship to the stage is in most instances, as we have already noticed, a severe one. Mr. Boaden is too grave to relate any of the minor misfortunes and hardships which his hero was subjected to in his noviciate, and repels, with some asperity, an account of Kemble and his companion breaking a gentleman's orchard near Gloucester. tainly in Shakspeare's life by Aldiborontiphoscophornio the dear-stealing anecdote would have been sunk from mere love of decorum. Rigdum Funnidos is more communicative, and hints at our friend's having banqueted on turnips and peas in the open fields for want of better commons. There are gripes and indigestion in the very thoughts of the uncooked pulse; and we can conceive that Kemble, who was reasonably, though moderately attached to better cheer, did not relish the circumstances which reduced him to sauce his banquet by a speech from Timon. "Oh! a root-dear thanks! Dry up thy marrows, vines, and plough-torn lees; The honest Kelly has, moreover, told us that in extremity of distress, Kemble once personated a Methodist preacher; the thing may have happened-but from what we know of John Kemble's opinions on religious subjects, we are sure that those who listened to the exhortation must have departed improved in heart and understanding. He was incapable of mocking, under any circumstances, the mysteries of religion. In 1778, like Robinson Crusoe in his escape from the raging ocean, Kemble began to touch ground. He was that year engaged in a respectable company maintained at York, under the management of Tate Wilkinson, famous as an imitator himself, and as the subject of imitation in others -possessed of considerable judgment and taste-and whose well-selected company was often draughted to recruit the metropolitan theatres. Here Kemble's importance began to be felt, yet he still continued to act such parts as Captain Plume, and others ill suited to his powers. We are not sure that this necessity is, at an early period of the profession, to be accounted a disadvantage. It prevents the ideas and exertions of a young performer being too much narrowed by a single cast of characters, and may operate in that respect, like the care taken by professors of gymnastics, to cause their pupils to bring into play successively the different sets of muscles by exertions of a kind appropriate to each. Young actors may be benefited too by attempts which are unsuccessful, as teaching them the bounds and character of their own powers, which they may otherwise suppose as unlimited as their ambition. There is even a wholesome lesson to be learned in experiencing the severity of an audience; for while it represses presumption, it also shows the timid that thunder often admonishes without killing. At York, John Kemble became for the first time acquainted with his princely friend and patron, the late Duke of Northumberland, whose munificence makes such a distinguished figure in his history. The officer on duty, belonging to a squadron of dragoons lying in York at the time, had somewhat bluntly refused to permit a few of the soldiers to attend the theatre on occasion of some procession in which their appearance was desired. Kemble wrote to Lord Percy, who commanded the squadron, and his request |