the cudgels coincided with the beats of the music and the movements of the feet. Then commenced the involutions, evolutions, interlacings, and unwindings, every one striking at the person with whom the movement brought him face to face, and the sounds of the sticks_supplying the hookings in reels. It was a stirring, but apparently confused spectacle, which, when the music was good and the dancing combatants kept time, strongly interested and excited the lookers-on. The steps, which we have forgotten, could not have been difficult, for we mastered them, or it (perhaps there was but one) a most exceptional case.

This war-dance is (or was) performed to a martial tune, resembling Brian Borumha's march in some respects. We hope the air will not be forgotten. A Lough-na-Piastha friend, we, and a skilful musician having lately held a séance, L. na P., taking a fiddle, played the three parts most accurately by ear, a musical score being as unmeaning to his eyes as a sheet of Assyrian wedge-letters to ours. M. D. suspended it on his musical bars as he (L. na P.) gave it utterance on the Cremona, and the spirit-stirring march is safe.

Some are of opinion that the exercise is a far-off echo of the Pyrrhic sword-and-buckler dance; others, that the old Anglo-Saxon gleemen and tumblers were acquainted with it; others, that, like the Rinka Fadha, it has been bequeathed to us by the Druids-one dance being a preparatory exordium to a campaign, the other a tribute of gratitude to the gods for victory. The fag-end of an article is not the place to come to a decision, or even to a display of the arguments. But as the tune to which the movements are made is intensely Celtic in character, there is a strong presumption that it has descended to us in some shape from the days of Oscar and Goll, along with Maybushes, Midsummer_bonfires, and tricks on All-Hallow Eve.

Among some dim recollections of ours are scattered the "Tobies," whose ruling superstition was a belief in the virtue of eggs collected at Easter. They were not much respected in general. They dressed themselves as fantastically as they could in scraps of drapery of all descriptions, went in companies

of from four to six, and demanded from disturbed housekeepers, their spare eggs. As they approached farm houses, in the absence of the men-kind, their appearance was not agreeable in the eyes of the women. Their habitat was the eastern portion of the county of Wexford. We do not recollect seeing them west of the Slaney. It was once our lot to see in their corps, as fine a specimen of a young fellow as could be met with, a profusion of rags hanging round him, in the most picturesque disorder, and his manly, sun-burnt features glowing with careless enjoyment. They occasionally sang and danced, but rarely went to the expense of a paid musician. They did not remain together so long as the mummers or the Mayboys. Having collected a sufficient stock of eggs, they made their feast. Under happy circumstances, they converted part of their hoard into whisky, by our modern system of double barter; got flat cakes and butter for the trouble of asking, and roasted their eggs. Any other chance delicacies that came in the way were not rejected, and at the termination of the festival, and the separation of the allies, the usages of sober and polite society were not in request.

Very different were the pleidhogues, or village-reunions of little boys and girls, whose school days were not yet at an end. Fifty years since, after the dinner on Shrove-Tuesday, a piece of the boiled meat was fastened pretty high in the chimney, and there it remained, well impregnated with smoke, till Easter Sunday morning, not a bit of similar food having been consumed in the family in the interim.

During the last week of Lent no one dreamed of eating an egg. So eggs in abundance graced the Easter breakfast table, and on Easter Monday the little men and women under thirteen years of age, assembled in some dry sheltery ditch or quarry-hole, bringing their supplies of griddlecakes, eggs, butter, dry sticks or turf, and egg-spoons, fashioned by themselves, of ash or oak boughs, or any suitable chance splinters that had come in their way. A roaring fire was soon made, the eggs roasted, and the social meal proceeded. The seven weeks of Lent were cheered by con

versations concerning this Easter jollification, and allusions to its past enjoyment did not cease or flag from Easter Tuesday till Whitsuntide.

Not so low in public esteem as the Tobies, but many degrees under the Mayboys and mummers, were the wrenboys, who, in our youth, flourished in the eastern portion of the county. No doubt we have seen, and been among, parties of boys who lost much time, on St. Stephen's Day, in searching for a little dhruleen (wren), through the furze bushes, generally without success, but on the solitary occasion when the chase was successful, and we had secured the lifeless body of the poor little thing (it was accidentally killed), in a holly bush, we only serenaded our own families and Father Murphy's niece. She insisted on treating us to some beer. The most courageous of the party ventured to taste it, but incontinently spluttered it out, and took to his heels. No other was found hardy enough to try its flavour.

The professional artists used, by some means, to secure a live wren, and secure it by a string to the twig of an ivy or holly-bush, and, enlivened by the strains of an earpiercing fife, invade the quiet of strong farmers' houses, and dance and shout and sing the well-known legend, beginning

"The wran, the wran, the king of all birds,

St. Stephens's day was caught in the furze," &c., &c.

Then hands would be taken, and steps performed round the bouchal na dhruleen, who capered away in his best style, shaking the bush and the poor prisoner in unison. They generally succeeded in extracting meal or malt, i. e., drink or money; and the day's labours ended with a carouse, for detailing the mysteries of which we have no relish.

In most boys under fifteen, pity for the sufferings of small animals is a mere exception. Still, among country boys, the feelings and lives of robins and wrens are respected, and the merry little brown bird would be suffered to enjoy its Christmas holidays only for this confounded legend:When the Jews were in search of St. Stephen, they lost their labour for a long time, till, on passing by a clump of furze-bushes, they observed a couple of wrens flying in and out, and chattering in a most unaccountable manner. They had the curiosity to pull a bush aside, and there they discovered the saint concealed. What more reasonable than to punish the poor little dhruleen of the nineteenth century, for the crime of his ancestors, committed in the first?

THIS celebrated comedian died nine years and three weeks before the appearance of Garrick at Goodman's Fields, in October, 1741. His talents and theatrical position were of the highest class. There were also some noble qualities in his private character, and a tinge of romance in more than one incident of his life, which call for notice, independently of his professional excellence. Very soon after his death, a memoir of this actor was published by Slow, said to

be written by a person who called himself Daniel O'Bryan, Esq., and claimed to have been his schoolfellow and particular intimate from a very early period. Another account was published in 1733. The latter was written by Curll, the bookseller, of Rose-street, Covent Garden, who dedicated it to Mrs. Wilks, denounced all rival attempts, and claimed exclusive authenticity in the following testimonial, appended to his preface: -"Bow-street, Covent Garden, Octo

ber 16, 1732. Whereas two false and scandalous pamphlets have been injuriously published by one Rayner and Slow, under the title of Memoirs,' &c., and Authentic Memoirs,' &c., of the late Mr. Wilks; this is to assure the public that the genuine account of Mr. Wilks's family, &c., will be printed only for, and published by, Mr. Curll, with all convenient speed. Signed, Mary Wilks, his relict. M. F. Shaw, his daughter-inlaw."

This same respectable bibliopolist, Edmund Curll, was fined and imprisoned by the Court of King's Bench for publishing obscene books. For a repetition of the same offence, aggravated by defamation, he stood in the pillory at Charing Cross, and had his ears cropped-according to Pope (Dunciad, Book II.), in March, 1728; and was, moreover, tossed in a blanket and soundly scourged by the scholars of Westminster. He complained loudly of Pope's statements as being libellous and untrue, saying that he was pilloried, not in March, but in February, and that he was tossed, not in a blanket, but in a rug. Dr. Arbuthnot denominated him one of the new terrors of death, from his constant habit of printing the life and last will and testament of every deceased individual of eminence before they were cold in their graves. These records were generally fabricated for the occasion. Curll's excuse was that he could not get daily bread without daily books.

Colley Cibber, in his far-famed "Apology for his own Life," speaks of Wilks with less warmth than his undoubted talents deserved; but the ancient laureate wrote with the animus of a brother manager who fancied he had been brow-beaten by his confrere, and with the splenetic vanity of an old coxcomb, who thought more of himself than of the most gifted of his contemporaries. Davies, in his "Dramatic Miscellanies," gives many illustrative instances which indicate the extent and versatility of Wilks's powers. Addison, in the Spectator, and Sir Richard Steele, in the Tatler, mention him with high encomiums. Finally, Galt includes him, in an elaborate memoir, in his "Lives of the Players." All these different accounts abound in variations, discrepancies, and contradictions, both

as regards matters of fact and questions of critical opinion. We shall balance our ample materials according to their probable value, and endeavour to extract from the mass a veritable biography. We may find much not to be depended on; but a great authority, Dr. Johnson, says, there is no book so utterly contemptible but that something may be found in it worth preserving. Even systematic exaggerators and distorters occasionally blunder into truth. The difficulty lies in eliminating the two grains of wheat from the waggon load of tares; and then, again, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, the profit is not worth the trouble.

66

Robert Wilks was born at Rathfarnham, near Dublin, either in 1665, 1666, or 1670. The three years are severally given by different biographers. It appears, from the age stated on his portrait by Ellys, engraved in 1807, and published by Mathews and Leigh, in a periodical called the Cabinet," that he died in his sixtyseventh year, which places his birth at the earliest of the periods named above; but it seems most probable that the latest is the true date. He descended from ancestors of distinction long settled at Bromsgrove, in Worcestershire, where Judge Wilks, his grandfather, raised a troop of horse at his own expense, for the service of Charles the First, during the civil wars between the King and the Parliament. In the cause of this unfortunate, but misguided monarch, the family suffered so much that the father of the subject of our memoir, Edward Wilks, with his wife and the scanty remains of what had once been a handsome patrimonial fortune, removed to the Irish metropolis. There he supported himself by the trade of stuff-weaving; his usual residence and place of business being in Meath-street, in the Liberty; a much more important locality in those days than it is now. This fact is abundantly testified by the existing remains of handsome hall-doors and ornamented stair-cases which the curious in archæology may still discover there. It has been said that Edward Wilks, the father, obtained, through the interest of some Irish friends, the post, in the Herald's office, of one of the pursuivants to the Lord Lieutenant. more than doubtful. He had three

But this is

sons, Edward, Robert, and William. Robert obtained a clerkship under Mr. Southwell, at that time Irish Secretary-at-War. His penmanship was singularly elegant, and this appears to have been his principal qualification for a desk life, which in all other points accorded ill with the natural vivacity of his temperament. Upon the breaking out of King James's wars in Ireland, young Wilks was forced into the army by Captain Bourke, but was exempted from military duty by being made clerk to the camp. When he returned to his ordinary avocation at Dublin Castle, he contracted an intimacy with an old actor named Richards, a relic of Sir William Davenant's company, and being in the habit of reading the corresponding speeches when his friend was studying and rehearsing a part, Richards complimented him so often upon the powers he displayed in such efforts, that prompted also by his constitutional buoyancy, he began to imbibe a passion for the drama. This interfered with his official employments, and led to remonstrance and reprimand on the part of his superiors. He first indulged his growing propensity by a private performance of Torrismond, in Dryden's "Spanish Friar." His reception in this essay led to his public appearance as Othello, towards the end of 1691, when the theatre, which had been closed during the war, reopened under Joseph Ashbury. Wilks, at a subsequent period, told Chetwood that his success in this performance satisfied every one but himself. Ashbury, who played Iago, complimented him highly; and Ashbury was not only the principal actor of his time, but accounted to be the best teacher of the rudiments of acting in the three kingdoms. When Nat. Lee's" Mithridates" was acted, by the Courtiers, at Whitehall, in Charles the Second's reign, he taught the Princess, afterwards Queen Anne, the part of Semandra, and also prompted and conducted the whole performance. He was appointed Master of the Revels and Patentee of the Dublin theatre in 1682, and held both offices until his death, at a very advanced age, in 1720.

O'Bryan says that Wilks was turned out of the Secretary-at-War's office for neglect of duty. Colley Cibber tells us that he had it from Wilks's

own mouth that he voluntarily resigned his place and prospects from an infatuated desire to try his chances on the stage, and that the person who supplied the situation he had given up realized from thence a fortune of fifty thousand pounds. Cibber, moralizing on this act of headstrong folly, says "Here you have a much stronger instance of an extravagant passion than that which I have elsewhere shown in myself. I only quitted my hopes of being preferred to a similar post; but Wilks yielded up his actual possession for the imaginary happiness which the life of an actor presented to him; and though possibly we might both have bettered ourselves in a more honourable station, yet whether superior fortunes might have equally gratified our vanity, the universal passion of mankind, may admit of a question."

But Wilks committed even a greater act of imprudence than giving up his clerkship, with its prospective advantages. He fell in love, and married clandestinely the daughter of a neighbour, each being under twenty. His theatrical salary of one pound, Irish currency, per week-Anglice, sixteen and eight pence-being his sole provision for the expenses of conjugal life. His wife continued to reside under her paternal roof until appearances betrayed her position, and her father taxing her with the fact, she confessed her marriage with Robert Wilks. The old man in his rage turned her out of doors, with savage rebukes, and impounded her entire stock of wearing apparel, notwithstanding the urgent intercession of her more relenting mother. Wilks conveyed her to his own father's house in Meath-street, where they were kindly received by Mrs. Wilks, senior, but she failed to reconcile her husband to the circumstance she was compelled to communicate; and he also refused to allow the young couple a single night's shelter under his roof. He even declared to his wife that if she ever invited the outcasts or gave them any assistance, without his consent, such conduct would lead to an inevitable separation between themselves. Wilks Père was evidently a hard man. His son had been guilty of compound indiscretion,

he had been heedless in his duty, he had disappointed the family hopes,

but he had committed no positive crime, and no imputation whatever could be cast on the object of his choice. The elder Mrs. Wilks, before the ejected couple left the house, took an opportunity of slipping three guineas privately into her son's hand, as an earnest of sympathy, exhorted him to treat his wife tenderly, and promised to do all that lay in her power to pacify her husband and obtain their pardon. Young Wilks, driven to despair, appealed to Mr. Secretary Southwell to restore him to the situation he had forfeited; but although this entreaty failed, a quarter's salary was immediately paid to him.

The case, with its accompanying details, furnished Dublin with a topic of conversation for the usual nine days; and reaching the ears of Mr. Cope, an eminent goldsmith, he informed his wife that if she had no objection he would take the young unfortunates into his house. Mrs. Cope joyfully seconded her husband's philanthropy, and together they sought out the sufferers and brought them home in a carriage. For more than a year they were entertained free of all expense, and with as much care as if they had been the children of their hospitable friends. The episode is romantic enough for fiction, although unquestionably true, and vindicates the spontaneous generosity of the human heart, in contrast to the vindictive influences by which it is too often clouded.

Wilks finding the Irish theatre not the El Dorado he had sanguinely anticipated, turned his thoughts towards London, encouraged by his friend Richards, who proffered an introduction to Betterton, and urged him strongly to make the attempt. Mr. Cope and his wife were very unwilling to part with him, but finding his determination fixed, united their endeavours to assist with the necessary funds. They applied to Wilks's father, and actually prevailed on him to give twenty guineas. Perhaps he was glad to get rid of them at so small a sacrifice. Cope himself not only released the young actor from all expenses incurred by keeping his family, but made Mrs. Wilks a present of five guineas at her departure. Her own father continued deaf both to affection and charity, refused to advance a

shilling, and accompanied the denial with oaths and imprecations. She endured all with uncomplaining meekness, praying for the welfare of her parents, and for their conversion to better feeling, for her mother had by this time become as rigid as her father, and even, it was said, goaded him against her.

Wilks having arrived in London, with his wife and infant child, late in the summer of 1692, immediately presented himself to Betterton, furnished with the credentials from Richards, and was favourably received. The veteran recommended him to Christopher Rich, then manager of Drurylane, who enrolled him in his company, at the handsome salary of fifteen shillings a week, stipulating, however, that he was to allow ten shillings per month out of it to Harris, a dancing master, for teaching him that indispensable accomplishment. The terms of this contract seem quite incredible to a generation familiar with the nightly salaries of £50 and £100, which we know to be far from uncommon in this present age, called by many mourners over the past, the lower empire of legitimate art. But we know also that the great Betterton never reached a higher stipend than eighty shillings per week.

Wilks either selected, or had prescribed to him, a very insignificant part for his first appearance in London-Lysippus in the "Maid's Tragedy." It suited his youthful appearance, but afforded no scope for the display of talent. Betterton performed Melantius; and when that experienced practitioner came to address him on the battlements, the dignity of his manner impressed the novice with such respect that he hesitated and could scarcely articulate the little he had to say in reply. Betterton noticed his confusion, and encouraged him afterwards by observing, "Young man, this fear does not ill become you, for a horse that sets out at the top of his speed will soon be jaded." The anecdote bears some resemblance to one recorded of the renowned French tragedian, Lekain, and a recruit who was acting his confidant, in a powerful scene, and had to respond to a very impassioned burst at a given time, but remained dumb. "Why don't you speak ? What are you about ?" muttered, im