We will now bring him over the seas again, and suppose him in the counting-house in Birchin Lane, his protector satisfied with the returns of his factorage, and all going on so smoothly, that we may expect to find Mr. Liston at last an opulent merchant upon 'Change, as it is called. But see the turns of destiny! Upon a summer's excursion into Norfolk, in the year 1801, the accidental sight of pretty Sally Parker, as she was called (then in the Norwich com pany), diverted his inclinations at once from commerce; and he became, in the language of commonplace biography, stage-struck. Happy for the lovers of mirth was it that our hero took this turn; he might else have been to this hour that unentertaining character, a plodding London merchant.

We accordingly find him shortly after making his debut, as it is called, upon the Norwich boards, in the season of that year, being then in the twenty-second year of his age. Having a natural bent to tragedy, he chose the part of Pyrrhus, in the "Distressed Mother," to Sally Parker's Hermione. We find him afterwards as Barnwell, Altamont, Chamont, &c.; but, as if Nature had destined him to the sock, an unavoidable infirmity absolutely discapacitated him for tragedy. His person, at this latter period of which I have been speaking, was graceful, and even commanding; his countenance set to gravity; he had the power of arresting the attention of an audience at first sight almost beyond any other tragic actor. But he could not hold it. To understand this obstacle, we must go back a few years to those appalling reveries at Charnwood. Those illusions, which had vanished before the dissipation of a less recluse life and more free society, now in his solitary tragic studies, and amid the intense calls upon feeling incident to tragic acting, came back upon him with tenfold vividness. In the midst of some most pathetic passage (the parting of Jaffier with his dying friend, for instance), he would suddenly be surprised with a fit of violent horse-laughter. While the spectators were all sobbing before him with emotion, suddenly one of those grotesque faces would peep out upon him, and he could not resist the impulse. A

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se!" but":

no

timely excuse once or twice served his purpose; audiences could be expected to bear repeatedly this violation of the continuity of feeling. He describes them (the illusions) as so many demons haunting him, and paralyzing every effect. Even now, I am told, he cannot recite the famous soliloquy in "Hamlet," even in private, without immoderate bursts of laughter. However, what he had not force of reason sufficient to overcome, he had good sense enough to turn into emolument, and determined to make a commodity of his distemper. He prudently exchanged the buskin for the sock, and the illusions instantly eeased; or, if they occurred for a short season, by their very co-operation added a zest to his comic vein, some of his most catching faces being (as he expresses it) little more than transcripts and copies of those extraordinary phantasmata „brood at ca 7

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We have now drawn out our hero's existence to the period when he was about to meet, for the first time, the sympathies of a London audience. The particulars of his success since have been too much before our eyes to render a circumstantial detail of them expedient. I shall only mention, that Mr. Willoughby, his resentments having had time to subside, is at present one of the fastest friends of his old renegado factor; and that Mr. Liston's hopes of Miss Parker vanishing along with his unsuccessful suit to Melpomene, in the autumn of 1811 he married his present lady, by whom he has been blessed with one son, Philip, and two daughters, Ann and Angustina.

by AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN,

LINDA LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE "LONDON MAGAZINE.” 191d2url --rod reglerz

ARKEE, Mr. Editor. A word in your ear. me you are going to put me in print,in to publish my life. What is my life to you, sir?

They tell print, sir; What is

it to you whether I ever lived at all? My life is a very good life, sir. I am insured at the Pelican, sir. I am threescore years and six,-six; mark me, sir; but I can play Polonius, which, I believe, few of your corre―correspondents can do, sir. I suspect tricks, sir: I smell a rat; I do, I do. You would cog the die upon us; you would, you would, sir. But I will forestall you, sir. You would be deriving me from William the Conqueror, with a murrain to you. It is no such thing, sir. The town shall know better, sir. They begin to smoke your flams, sir. Liston may be born where he pleases, sir; but I will not be born at Lup-Lupton Magna for anybody's pleasure, sir. My son and I have looked over the great map of Kent together, and we can find no such place as you would palm upon us, sir; palm upon us, I say. Neither Magna nor Parva, as my son says, and he knows Latin, sir; Latin. If you write my life true, sir, you must set down, that I, Joseph Munden, comedian, came into the world upon Allhallows Day, Anno Domini, 1759-1759; no sooner nor later, sir; and I saw the first light-the first light, remember, sir, at Stoke Pogis-Stoke Pogis, comitatu Bucks, and not at Lup-Lup Magna, which I believe to be no better than moonshine-moonshine; do you mark me, sir? I wonder you can put such flim-flams upon us, sir; I do, I do. It does not become you, sir; I say it, I say it. And my father was an honest tradesman, sir: he dealt in malt and hops, sir; and was a corporation-man, sir; and of the Church of England, sir, and no Presbyterian; nor Ana→→ Anabaptist, sir; however you may be disposed to make honest people believe to the contrary, sir. Your bams are found out, sir. The town will be your stale-puts no longer, sir; and you must not send us jolly fellows, sir,-we that are comedians, sir,-you must not send us into groves and char charnwoods a moping, sir. Neither charns, nor charnel-houses, sir. It is not our constitution, sir: I tell it you-I tell it you. I was a droll dog from my cradle. came into the world tittering, and the midwife tittered, and the gossips spilt their caudle with tittering; and, when I was brought to the font, the parson could not christen me

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for tittering. So I was never more than half baptized. And, when I was little Joey, I made 'em all titter; there was not a melancholy face to be seen in Pogis. Pure nature, sir. I was born a comedian. Old Screwup, the undertaker, could tell you, sir, if he were living. Why, I was obliged to be locked up every time there was to be a funeral at Pogis. I was-I was, sir. I used to grimace at the mutes, as he called it, and put 'em out with my mops and my mows, till they couldn't stand at a door for me. And when I was locked up, with nothing but a cat in my company, I followed my bent with trying to make her laugh; and sometimes she would, and sometimes she would And my schoolmaster could make nothing of me: I had only to thrust my tongue in my cheek-in my cheek, sir, and the rod dropped from his fingers; and so my education was limited, sir. And I grew up a young fellow, and it was thought convenient to enter me upon some course of life that should make me serious; but it wouldn't do, sir. And I was articled to a dry-salter. My father gave forty pounds premium with me, sir. I can show the indent

not.

dent-dentures, sir. But I was born to be a comedian, sir: so I ran away, and listed with the players, sir: and I topt my parts at Amersham and Gerrard's Cross, and played my own father to his face, in his own town of Pogis, in the part of Gripe, when I was not full seventeen years of age; and he did not know me again, but he knew me afterwards; and then he laughed, and I laughed, and, what is better, the dry-salter laughed, and gave me up my articles for the joke's sake: so that I came into court afterwards with clean hands-with clean hands-do you see, sir?

[Here the manuscript becomes illegible for two or three sheets onwards, which we presume to be occasioned by the absence of Mr. Munden, jun., who clearly transcribed it for the press thus far. The rest (with the exception of the concluding paragraph, which is seemingly resumed in the first handwriting) appears to contain a confused account of some lawsuit, in which the elder Munden was engaged; with a circumstantial history of the proceedings

of a case of breach of promise of marriage, made to or by (we cannot pick out which) Jemima Munden, spinster; probably the comedian's cousin, for it does not appear he had any sister; with a few dates, rather better preserved, of this great actor's engagements, as "Cheltenham (spelt Cheltnam), 1776;” "Bath, 1779;" "London, 1789;" fogether with stage anecdotes of Messrs. Edwin, Wilson, Lee, Lewis, &c.; over which we have strained our eyes to no purpose, in the hope of presenting something amusing to the public. Towards the end, the manuscript brightens up a little, as we said, and concludes in the following manner :]

stood before them for six and thirty years [we suspect that Mr. Munden is here speaking of his final leavetaking of the stage], and to be dismissed at last. But I was heart-whole to the last, sir. What though a few drops did course themselves down the old veteran's cheeks: who could help it, sir? I was a giant that night, sir; and could have played fifty parts, each as arduous as Dozy. My faculties were never better, sir. But I was to be laid upon the shelf. It did not suit the public to laugh with their old servant any longer, sir. [Here some moisture has blotted a sentence or two.] But I can play Polonius still, sir; I can, I can.

Your servant, sir,