pitch upon a standard of personal accomplishments for her husband's friends which differed so much from his own; for my friend's dimensions at near as possibly approximate to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in his air or countenance. These are some of the mortifications which I have encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavour I shall therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of which married ladies are guilty,—of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice versa. I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. did not come home till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacca kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest behaviour and decorum: therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great good will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of

It

But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise to record the full-length English of their names to the terror of all such desperate offenders in future.

[This was originally printed as a portion of the concluding instalment of Elia's three contributions to the London Magazine, under the general heading of "The Old Actors." Appended to it in this Popular Centenary Edition is a paper which is unmistakably Charles Lamb's, but which has never, until now, been identified as his, one in which he celebrated, upon the very morrow of Joseph Shepherd Munden's Farewell, the disappearance from the stage of that inimitable comedian. This reclaimed theatrical notice from the pen of Elia will be found in every way worthy of being placed thus in direct juxtaposition with what is, beyond all doubt, one of the choicest effusions of the Master Essayist. As completing these tributes to his favourite actor, Charles Lamb's obituary notice of Munden is immediately afterwards given from the pages of the Athenæum.] NOT many nights ago I had come home from seeing this extraordinary performer in Cockletop; and when I retired to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest myself of it, by conjuring up the most opposite associations. I resolved to be

serious.

I raised up the gravest topics of life; private misery, public calamity. All would not do.

-There the antic sate

Mocking our state-

his queer visnomy-his bewildering costume-all the strange things which he had raked together--his serpentine rod, swagging about in his pocket-Cleopatra's tear, and the rest of his relics-O Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder commentary-till the passion of laughter, like grief in excess, relieved itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep which in the first instance it had driven away. But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall into slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing, assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but five hundred, were dancing before me, like the faces which, whether you will or no, come when you have been taking opium-all the strange combinations, which this strangest of all strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance into, from the day he came commissioned to dry up the tears of the town for the loss of the now almost forgotten Edwin. O for the power of the pencil to have fixed them when I awoke! A season or two since there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there should not be a Munden gallery. In richness and variety the latter would not fall far short of the former.

There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but what a one it is!) of Liston; but Munden has none that you can properly pin down, and call has. When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one, but legion. Not so much a comedian, as a company. If his name. could be multiplied like his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally makes faces: applied to any other person, the phrase is a mere figure, denoting certain modifications of the human countenance. Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. I should not be surprised to see him some day put out the head of a river horse; or come forth a pewit; or lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis.

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry-in Old Dorntondiffuse a glow of sentiment which has made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one man; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a people. I have seen some faint approaches to this sort of excellence in other players. But in the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no followers. The school of Munden began, and must end with himself.

Can any man wonder, like him? can any man see ghosts, like him? or fight with his own shadow-" SESSA -as he does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of Preston-where his alterations from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some Arabian Night were being acted before him. Who like him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a preternatural interest over the commonest daily-life objects? A table, or a joint stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory importance. You could not speak of it with more deference, if it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the commonplace materials of life, like primeval man with the sun and stars about him.

MUNDEN'S FAREWELL.

(The London Magazine, July, 1824.)

[Talfourd mentions, in regard to this farewell performance, that so densely crowded was the house, that Elia and his sister had to be accommodated with seats in the orchestra, adding that, during the course of the evening, his attention was called by Miss Kelly, from their upper box, to an incident then taking place, unobserved by the rest of the house, in that snug corner of the orchestra - Munden at the little flap door handing in a pot of porter, Lamb quaffing it to the dregs with a relish-the comedian looking on with inexpressible gusto, while the humorist was draining his tankard! Half a century afterwards, the editor of this Popular Centenary Edition has it from the lips of Miss Kelly (now, in the October of 1875. just entering the eightySixth year of her age) that she bears the incident still vividly in her remembrance, her impression being that that extra pot of porter was sent round by herself. Upon this occasion Mary Lamb, in the midst of her brother's grief for the loss of an old favourite, convulsed him with laughter by her punning exclamation, "Sic transit gloria Munden!"}

THE regular playgoers ought to put on mourning, for the king of broad comedy is dead to the drama !-Alas!-Munden is no more!-give sorrow vent. He may yet walk the town, pace the pavement in a seeming existence-eat, drink, and nod to his friends in all the affectation of life-but Munden, --the Munden-Munden, who with the bunch of countenances, the bouquet of faces, is gone for ever from the lamps, and, as far as comedy is concerned, is as dead as Garrick ! When an actor retires (we will put the suicide as mildly. as possible) how many worthy persons perish with him!- With Munden, --Sir Peter Teazle must experience a shock-Sir Robert Bramble gives up the ghost. – Crack ceases to breathe. Without Munden what becomes of Dozey? Where shall we seek Jemmy Jumps? Nipperkin and a thousand of such admirable fooleries fall to nothing, and the departure therefore of such an actor as Munden is a dramatic calamity. On the night that this inestimable humourist took farewell of the public, he also took his benefit:-a benefit in which the public assuredly did not participate. The play was Coleman's Poor Gentleman, with Tom Dibdin's farce of Past Ten o'Clock. Reader, we all know Munden in Sir Robert Bramble, and Old Tobacco complexioned Dozey; -we all have seen the old hearty baronet in his light sky-blue coat and genteel cocked hat; and we have all seen the weather-beaten old pensioner, Dear Old Dozey, tacking about the stage in that intense blue sea livery-drunk as heart could wish, and right valorous in memory. On this night Munden seemed like the Gladiator "to rally life's whole energies to die," and as we were present at this great display of his powers, and as this will be the last opportunity that will ever be afforded us to speak of this admirable performer, we shall "consecrate," as Old John Buncle says, "a paragraph to him."

The house was full,-full-pshaw ! that's an empty word!-The house was stuffed, crammed with people-crammed from the swing door of the pit to the back seat in the banished one shilling. A quart of audience may be said (vintner-like, may it be said) to have been squeezed into a pint of theatre. Every hearty play-going Londoner, who remembered Munden years agone, mustered up his courage and his money for this benefit-and middle-aged people were therefore by no means scarce. The comedy chosen for the occasion, is one that travels a long way without a guard;-it is not until the third or fourth act, we think, that Sir Robert Bramble appears on the stage. When he entered, his reception was earnest,-noisy,-outrageous, waving of hats and handkerchiefs,-deafening shouts,-clamorous beating of sticks, -all the various ways in which the heart is accustomed to manifest its joy were had recourse to on this occasion. Mrs. Bamfield worked away with a sixpenny fan till she scudded only under bare poles. Mr. Whittington wore out the ferule

of a new nine-and-sixpenny umbrella. joyful occasion.

Gratitude did great damage on the

The old performer, the veteran, as he appropriately called himself in the farewell speech, was plainly overcome; he pressed his hands together, he planted one solidly on his breast, he bowed, he sidled, he cried! When the no se subsided (which it invariably does at last) the comedy proceeded, and Munden gave an admirable picture of the rich, eccentric, charitable old bachelor baronet, who goes about with Humphrey Dobbin at his heels, and philanthropy in his heart. How crustily and yet how kindly he takes Humphrey's contradictions! How readily he puts himself into an attitude for arguing! How tenderly he gives a loose to his heart on the apprehension of Frederick's duel. In truth he played Sir Robert in his very ripest manner, and it was impossible not to feel in the very midst of pleasure regret that Munden should then be before us for the last time.

In the farce he became richer and richer; Old Dozey is a plant from Greenwich. The bronzed face-and neck to match-the long curtain of a coat-the straggling white hair-the propensity, the determined attachment to grog,are all from Greenwich. Munden, as Dozey, seems never to have been out of action, sun, and drink. He looks (alas he looked) fireproof. His face and throat were dried like a raisin, and his legs walked under the rum-and-water with all the indecision which that inestimable beverage usually inspires. It is truly tacking, not walking. He steers at a table, and the tide of grog now and then bears him off the point. On this night, he seemed to us to be doomed to fall in action, and we therefore looked at him, as some of the Victory's crew are said to have gazed upon Nelson, with a consciousness that his ardour and his uniform were worn for the last time. In the scene where Dozey describes a sea fight, the actor never was greater, and he seemed the personification of an old seventy-four! His coat hung like a flag at his poop! His phiz was not a whit less highly coloured than one of those lustrous visages which generally superintend the head of a ship! There was something cumbrous, indecisive, and awful in his veerings! Once afloat, it appeared impossible for him to come to his moorings; once at anchor, it did not seem an easy thing to get him under weigh!

The time, however, came for the fall of the curtain, and for the fall of Munden! The farce of the night was finished. The farce of the long forty years' play was over! He stepped forward, not as Dozey, but as Munden, and we heard him address us from the stage for the last time. He trusted, unwisely we think, to a written paper. He read of "heart-felt recollections," and "indelible impressions." He stammered, and he pressed his heart,-and put on his spectacles, and blundered his written gratitudes, -and wiped his eyes, and bowed-and stood, and at last staggered away for ever! The plan of his farewell was bad, but the long life of excellence which really made his farewell pathetic, overcame all defects, and the people and Joe Munden parted like lovers! Well! Farewell to the Rich Old Heart! May thy retirement be as full of repose, as thy public life was full of excellence! We must all have our farewell benefits in our turn.

THE DEATH OF MUNDEN.

(The Athenæum, 11th February, 1832.)

[A facsimile, from the original manuscript, is given upon the opposite page. Especial note should be taken of the underlining touches of the pen-suggestive of the very inflections of the voice, the twinkling eyes, and the dimpling lines about the mouth of the master humorist ]

YOUR Communication to me of the death of Munden made me weep. Now,