aqua fortis!" adding with an authoritative voice, which seemed to be borrowed from Jove's thunder, and loud enough "to fright the isle from its propriety," "Fill the glass, Sir! Am I not George Frederick Cooke? born to command ten thousand

slaves like thee!'

me at your peril!"

Fill the glass, I say, and refuse

Fill the glass, I

He was obeyed, and Melpomene wept the while! The whiskey acted that night instead of Cooke!

It was very suprising how Mr. Cooke escaped the rigorous chastisement which his offensive cup-valour so often merited. Impunity seemed his peculiar privilege under the most flagrant occasions.

The following instance of Christian-like meekness and forbearance occurred one night in Liverpool which is worthy of record. Cooke had appeared upon the stage one night while under the influence of the demon-drink. He was, as in most places, an immense favourite with the Liverpool audience, who fully appreciated his vast powers and were entirely disposed to regard the failings of the man as venial and accidental, while his intrinsic qualities were solid and positive; indulgence, therefore, to his one occasional infirmity was willingly shewn. But there are limits, unhappily, to human charity, and on the evening alluded to Cooke's dark hour o'ershadowed his professional and private excellences; he was, in fact, incapable of proceeding in his performance with bearable propriety, and public favour was suddenly obscured by public resentment

elicited by his disgusting state, and manifested at length by indications of a pretty general and expressive nature, which, dimmed as Cooke's perceptions were by his situation and the "potations pottle deep" which he had swallowed, proved comprehensive enough to his practised experience, and stepping forward to the stage lamps, with his powerful brow contracted with disdain, he addressed his reprovers in the following pithy sentence:

"What! do you hiss me?-hiss George Frederick Cooke?-you contemptible money-getters! you shall never again have the honour of hissing me! Farewell! I banish you And concentrating into one vast heap all the malice of his offended feelings, he added, after a pause of intense meaning, "There is not a brick in your dirty town but what is cemented by the blood of a negro !"

This shameful address was suffered without notice, and the utterer of it was allowed to retire without further manifestation of resentment — a moderation speaking volumes in proof of the good sense and good temper of the Liverpool public.

COOKE IN SHYLOCK.

THE great celebrity of this extraordinary actor did not render him forgetful of those "whose baser stars do shut them up in" the obscurity of a country theatre, and consequent poverty; he frequently exerted his rare talents gratuitously for his less gifted brethren of the sock and buskin in the provinces ; and when not engaged on the metropolitan stage, occasionally gave "a night" to the necessities of the poorer born."

On one of these benevolent occasions he had pledged himself to appear in some small town, in his celebrated part in the Merchant of Venice, wherein he was indeed

"The Jew

That Shakspeare drew."

On his arrival, on the morning of performance, Cooke found the "theatre" little better than a barn, and a genuine " Dunstable company" greeted him at rehearsal, during which the "Silvester Daggerwoods" of the building gave him a taste of their quality in their several new readings of the poet, and a foretaste of the joys in store for him at night, from the general imperfection of his co-adjutors, especially in the scene in which Salarino and Salanio taunt Shylock with his daughter's flight.

It appeared that this little community of "

poor

players"-poor in every sense-was numerically, as well as generally, weak, and incompetent in more ways than one, to the representation of a play of Shakspeare; it followed that several of the characters were obliged to be what is techichally called doubled. Thus the performer whose name appeared in the bills for the night, feathery Gratiano, was compelled, in the language of the turf, to carry weight, by the anonymous addition of Salanio to his first undertaking. In this Siamese union of two souls in one body, it happened, as in bodies politic, that the minister, to the general sustainment of his post, leaned to the most profitable side; and hence the supporter of the two-fold weight had devoted his best energies to the interests of the principal duty assigned him, and thought but little of the lesser and comparatively unimportant one so unfairly buckled on his back, until the moment when he was called upon to rehearse the scene with Mr. Cooke in the third act, where his deficiency was immediately noted by the Shylock of the night, who patiently and politely explained to him the necessity of Salanio being literally perfect in the few lines he had to utter in this particular scene; otherwise, as Shakspeare had therein indulged, as he often did, in a play upon words, unless the text in one instance was delivered correctly, and to the letter, Shylock could not proceed, as the point of his rejoinder entirely depended upon the precise words of the author. Mr. Cooke's explanation was listened to with defer

ence and respectful attention by the person addressed, and with a good disposition to do, justly, the great man's bidding. But the poor actor's head was too full of Gratiano's "infinite deal of nothing" to find room for the unwelcome Salanio, whose few words being clearly of no value to his own reputation in the play, he had but imperfectly considered in reference to another's.

It must here be remembered that Salarino, when he and Salanio are mischievously twitting the malevolent Jew with his daughter Jessica's flight, has to say, “I, for my part, knew the tailor that made the wings she flew withal;" to which Salanio remarks, "And Shylock, for his own part, knew the bird was fledged; and then it is the complexion of them all to leave their dam."

At rehearsal, the double, who did not know a single line, carelessly observed, in place of the above, "Ay, it is the way of them all to leave their father's house." "No, no, no!" exclaimed the discomfited star. "My dear Sir, don't you know the next line I have to speak? If you do not say, 'It is the complexion of them all to leave their dam,' how can I reply upon the word, and say, 'She's damned for it? If you omit the word dam, the whole sense of my next speech is confounded. You must utter the word dam, or I cannot reply at all." "True, Sir, I see," observed the well-intentioned double; "then I'll say it." He forthwith made several unsuccessful attempts to deliver the text; but ulti