"From him succeeding Richard took the cue; Garrick, however, was not generous enough to allow of the young tailor's excellence; and in Bayes he used to caricature Ryan's manner by delivering the passage beginning with "Your bed of love from dangers will I free," in a sharp tone and lengthened, hesitating manner. Quin showed more regard for the ex-tailor, by giving his farewell performance on the Bath stage (in 'Falstaff;' Henry IV.), not for his own, but for Ryan's benefit. This was in 1752. The receipts were so great, that Ryan applied to Quin, in a subsequent year, to repeat the performance. "I would play for you, if I could," wrote the generous old fellow in reply, "but I will not whistle Falstaff for you. I have willed you £1000. If you want money, you may have that; and so save my executors trouble." Ryan had years before this met with an accident, which is so characteristic of the times that I may here recount it without apology. It was an accident which made such services as those rendered him by Quin highly acceptable. He had been playing Scipio in 'Sophonisba,' at Covent Garden, and was passing down Great Queen-street, about midnight, when one from among a group of footmen stepped off the pavement, followed him into the road, and, as the actor turned round, discharged a pistol close to his face, bidding him at the same time "Stand and deliver!" The robber plundered the player only of his sword, and that he dropped in the street. As he was unbuckling it from Ryan's side, the latter said, "Friend you have killed me, but I forgive you." The watch, too polite to intrude upon the pleasures of the thieves, picked up their victim, and conveyed him to the house of a neighbouring surgeon, who found that his patient had half his teeth shot out, and his face and jawbone much shattered. Of course, he was incapable of playing Loveless, in 'Love's Last Shift,' as he was announced to do, on the 17th of the same month. A benefit was got up for the wounded ex-tailor on the 19th. Everybody loved him, and public and players exerted themselves in his behalf. The play was 'The Provoked Husband.' Royalty patronized it; and many who could not attend, sent chéques on their bankers as their representatives. Ryan lay for some little much doubted whether time in a deplorable state, and it was very he would ever be able to articulate again. The public looked with sympathy upon their favourite actor; and when, on the 26th of the following month, April, he made his appearance in a new part, that of Bellair, in the 'Double Deceit,' great was the delight of the playgoers to find that "their esteemed Ryan," as he was called, was little, if any, the worse in speech, spirits, or gracefulness, and that the footpad's pistol had not destroyed the man for whom Garrick himself had shown respect, by at once imitating and caricaturing him. Ryan however never did perfectly recover, although he retained his position on the stage for many years longer. It was probably more necessity than inclination that kept him on the stage till 1760, in which year he died, after playing the lovers in tragedy and the fine gentlemen in Comedy for more than thirty years. The line which he took was subsequently ably filled by Charles Kemble, and for something like the same period. But Charles Kemble had, naturally, advantages which Ryan did not at first possess, and which he only slowly acquired. The former however was the subject of much critical ridicule when he first appeared, so awkward was he in spite of his natural advantages. If Ryan never became thoroughly graceful, he was always perfectly easy; and, notwithstanding a harsh and dissonant voice, he could, like Edmund Kean, so manage that organ as to create good effect out of its very defects. He had, with some slight extravagance, excellent judgment, sense, and feeling; and Johnson could not have said to the honest tailor turned actor, as he did sneeringly to Garrick, that Punch had no feeling. In scenes where Comedy trenched upon the domain of the sister Muse by the exhibition of profound emotion, Ryan was very great; and probably no actor has so nearly resembled him in this respect as Mr. Robson, whose origin is as modestly respectable as Ryan's was. They who can recollect Elliston, as he played, in his latter days, the genial Rover, may have some idea of what Ryan was, when he grew old, in Captain Plume-namely, defiant of age, and full of the natural assumption of a spirit that seemed backed by the strength which was not there, but which had a substitute in irresistible goodwill. The gay and graceful Woodward was a contemporary of Ryan's; and though he was not originally a tailor, he was a pupil of "Merchant Tailors'," and, if I mistake not, head scholar there in his youth. One good consequence resulting therefrom was, that Woodward never had a benefit without active and liberal patronage on the part of that establishment, which felt itself honoured at ranking so distinguished an actor among its celebrities; and distinguished, indeed, was Harry Woodward. Since his time the part of Bobadil has never been justly represented; it may be said to have died with him. At a period when correct costume was not cared for, he was ever careful regarding the proprieties of dress; and, more fortunate than Ryan, he sustained the assaults of Time without letting the consequent ravages be Charles Matthews is, in many respects, exactly what Woodward is said to have been; but Woodward could play a far wider range of characters. His scamps were perfect for their cool impudence; his modern fops, for their brazen impertinence; his fops of earlier days, for their elegant rascality; his every-day simpletons, for their vulgar stolidity; his mock-brave heroes, for their stupendous but ever-suspected courage; and his Shakespearian light characters, for their truly Shakespearian spirit. He was gracefully shaped, and bore a serious dignity of countenance, but he was no sooner before the footlights than a ripple of funny emotion seemed to roll over his face; and this, with the tones of a capital stage voice, never failed to arouse a laughter which was inextinguishable until the green curtain separated the old pupil of Merchant Tailors' from his ecstatic audience. seen. The younger Rich used, like Foote, to ridicule actors who had abandoned other professions for the stage, and generally on the ground of their ignorance. But neither Ryan, the actual tailor, nor Woodward, the "Merchant Tailor," ever exhibited so much ignorance as Rich and Foote themselves. Rich always confounded the words turbot and turban; and he was once heard to insist upon the necessity of "laying the empharsis on the adjutant." Foote had more wit than Rich, but not more wisdom. "I almost forget my own name," said the latter, by way of apology for calling Foote by no other appellation than "Mr." "Well," remarked Foote, "I knew you couldn't write your name, but I didn't suppose you could forget it." The latter displayed his own ignorance when he laughed at the idea of a ghost taking a corporal oath. He forgot that such an oath was so called because it was taken on the corporale, or cloth which covers the elements in the Sacrament. But even tailors on the stage would be nothing if the poets did not write for them; and here is a poet-tailor to our hand, doing honour to two crafts. PAUL WHITEHEAD, THE POET TAILOR. "He lived a poet in this town HEYWOOD: Fair Maid of the Exchange. AMONG the tailors who have been authors, Paul Whitehead takes a very respectable rank; which is more, I am sorry to say, than he does among men. The career of the two Whiteheads has a moral in it. William, the son of a Cambridge baker, was, like Paul, the tailor's son, a most successful tuft-hunter; but then he hunted chiefly after patricians of principle,-of good principle. William was a gentle lad; he walked through the university of his native city with quiet credit, and passed into Lord Grey's family as private tutor; where he taught mildly, and wrote classical tragedies of so soporific a nature, that the reading of them might safely be recommended to the sleepless by hypnologists. William the baker was a highly respectable and never-too-soon-to-be-forgotten individual. It is otherwise with roystering Paul the tailor. Chapel-yard, Holborn, was the cradle (in 1709) of this boisterous and biting poet. His father would have been content to see him take measures to follow his example; but as Hervagault, the first pseudo-Dauphin, quitted his father's board to make assault upon |