and could therefore afford to indulge his spleen thus liberally.
“Cato” was played every day for a month (Mondays excepted) to constantly crowded houses. It came at the close of the season, a sort of splendid aftercrop, bringing a gain to the management almost equal to two fruitful seasons in one year. In the summer, the Drury Lane actors played “Cato” at Oxford with remarkable success. The gownsmen demanded admittance in crowds at twelve o’clock at noon, and hundreds went away unable to obtain room. The Vice-chancellor publicly thanked the players “for the decency and order observed by our whole society,” says Cibber; adding, significantly, “an honour which had not been always paid upon the same occasions.” The actors received double salaries, and the managers were still enabled to pay fifty pounds as a contribution towards the repair of St. Mary’s church. Indeed the London and Oxford profits together brought to each manager the handsome sum of fifteen hundred pounds.
The most important of Booth’s successors in the rôle of “Cato” were Quin, Sheridan, and, lastly, Kemble. On the occasion of Quin’s first appearance in the character, he modestly announced in the bills that Cato would be attempted by Mr. Quin. Nevertheless, he so roused the audience by his powerful acting in the scene where Cato extols his dead son, brought in upon a bier, with the words, “Thanks to the gods, my boy has done his duty!” that the house rang with acclamations of “Booth outdone!” while the famous soliloquy, “It must be so—Plato, thou reasonest well!” was vehemently encored! Still he must have been rather pompous and blatant in his style, he was so bent on giving intense sonority to his elocution. He pronounced the letter a broad and open. Garrick sounded it more like an e. When Quin, as Coriolanus, ordered the centurions to lower their fasces as a tribute of respect to Volumnia, the actors thought he said their faces, and commenced to bow their heads, greatly to the amusement of the house. A Welsh actor, named Williams, playing a messenger, and delivering the line, “Cæsar sends health to Cato,” pronounced it “Keeto,” greatly to the wrath of Quin, who burst out with “Would he had sent a better messenger!” This led, unhappily, to serious consequences. Williams, deeply incensed, vowed vengeance, and attacked Quin under the Piazza, on his return from the tavern to his lodgings. Quin drew, and they fought desperately, Williams receiving a mortal wound. Quin was tried at the Old Bailey, and a verdict of Manslaughter was returned. Mr. Sheridan is said to have played the part “with fine classical taste; excelling in the level declamatory portions.” John Kemble was perhaps the first to represent “Cato” correctly as to costume, though it was some time before he deemed it necessary to be particular in that respect. His first appearance in London was as Hamlet, when he wore a black velvet court suit, with a star and riband, and long hair, powdered but dishevelled.
With Mr. Kemble playing “Cato” to the Portius of Mr. Young, the pronunciation difficulty was revived. The former would call Rome, Room; the latter adhered to the more ordinary pronunciation of the word. Neither would give way, and the pit laughed at and applauded each actor by turns as he came to the contested word and rendered it in his own fashion. Kemble’s manner of pronouncing, indeed, was at all times eccentric. He called “innocent,” innocint; “conscience,” conshince; “virtue,” varchue; “fierce,” furse; “beard,” bird; “thy,” the; and “odious,” “hideous,” and “perfidious,” became ojus, hijjus, and perfijjus. But Kemble was the last “Cato,”—”The last of the Romans!”
Time is a great iconoclast—reverses all sort of verdicts. What has become of “Cato”? as a poem? as a play? In his day it did much to raise Addison’s fame: it does little to support it now. Johnson calls it the noblest production of Addison’s genius. Macaulay places it long after the masterpieces of the Attic stage, after the Elizabethan dramatists, after Schiller, Alfieri, Voltaire, Corneille, Racine. In truth, Addison, in spite of his refinedly sensitive organisation and his great knowledge and appreciation of human nature, produced a play without feeling and without nature—a literary bas-relief, carven out of cold and colourless stone—its only recommendations, that it was right according to rule, and fashioned accurately after classical patterns. It gave London a month’s excitement, and has since supplied the world with some trite quotations—that is all. It is melancholy to think that Mr. John Dennis’s coarse criticisms were probably just. Addison made no reply to them. As Pope said, he was best avenged, as the sun was in the fable upon the bats and owls, by shining on. Perhaps Addison would have been thankful if Pope had been equally reticent. He published an unwise reply, called “The Frenzy of John Dennis.” Addison publicly disclaimed all share in it, and Pope, bitterly hurt, was his friend no more.
THE ORIGINS OF THE LAKE OF GIDDEN.
In the island of Rugen, in the Baltic, may be seen the Lake Gidden, the origin of which, according to a popular tradition, was as follows.
There once lived in the island two women, one of whom was charitable and compassionate, and the other hard-hearted and avaricious. One evening, in the midst of a tempest of wind and rain, a poor old man, dressed as a beggar, presented himself at the cottage of the ill-disposed woman, and begged for a bit of bread and a night’s lodging. This woman was rich, but for all that she refused to relieve him, and roughly drove him away. The old man next went to the other woman who was poor. She received him with kindness, and shared with him her last morsel of bread. He passed the night under her roof, and in the morning, on thanking her for her goodness, he said:
“In return for your hospitality, you will, for a whole day, have in abundance whatever you may first take in hand.”
The woman smiled, taking the speech for a good-natured jest, expressive of the wayfarer’s gratitude. After accompanying the old man for a