Teazle happened to drop her fan, there was a race among the male performers to pick it up and present it to her; but Mr. Smith got the start of them all and delivered it to her with such unaffected ease and elegance that the audience were struck with the incident and strongly expressed their applause." Before the fall of the curtain he spoke an address written for the occasion containing the lines: At friendship's call, ne'er to be heard in vain, Of Garrick, whom he had first seen at Goodman's Fields in 1740, Smith always spoke with enthusiasm, while confessing that he held. his old master Spranger Barry to have been in certain characters quite equal to Garrick, and in love scenes even superior to him. "Garrick," writes Smith, in one of the letters of his old age, "with all natural graces and perfections, must ever, in my now decaying judgment, stand alone, 'the front of Jove himself.' Among the chief blessings of my life I ever held the greatest to be, that I was bred at Eton and born in the days of Garrick." Yet we may gather from that rather oppressive collection of letters, the Garrick Correspondence, that the actor was not always on the best terms with his manager. It was Garrick's misfortune, however, to be unceasingly engaged in tiffs and squabbles and controversies with the members of his company; and perhaps the players may be fairly considered as a class prone to take offence upon light provocation, unduly sensitive, and curiously irritable. Smith's letters are sprigged with quotations from Horace and Ovid, by way of exhibition of his classical attainments, his University training. He offers his services in regard to the Jubilee to take place in Shakespeare's honour, under Garrick's management, at Stratford-upon-Avon. Garrick allots him the character of Richard. Smith writes: "The post and dress you allot me will be most agreeable to me. If I recollect right, the hat I wear in Richard is very shabby. . . . The hat Mr. Powell used in King John is a good one, and I should suppose might be had with the ornaments in it; if not I should be glad of yours. . . . You will excuse me mentioning these particulars, as the motive is that I may appear to the best advantage in your train." Richard it seems was to appear in King John's hat! In 1773 Smith had quarrelled with Colman, at Covent Garden, and was in treaty with Garrick for an engagement at Drury Lane; while contemplating the project then on foot for the establishment of a third theatre which might prize highly Mr. Smith's services. Garrick writes sharply: "All matters of business are indeed at an end between them. Mr. G. wishes that they had never begun." Smith replies penitently: "That you are very angry with me is too evident; that I have never done anything intentionally to deserve your anger is not less true. If to have idolised you deserves your resentment, no one can have been more guilty than your very sincere and faithful humble servant." The quarrel relates to Mr. Smith's terms. Is his salary to be twelve guineas or twelve pounds? "When we conversed about the subject," writes Garrick, "and you began to stand upon terms, which surprised me much, I stopped your conversation and handed you over to my brother [George Garrick]; he settles our money matters, for I hate to make bargains, and was sorry that you had any to make; to be short, you were offered what you had at Covent Garden, and refused it." From Smith's explanation, Garrick seems to have been needlessly peremptory. "I have never thought of making terms with you," writes Smith, "I have never refused the terms I had at Covent Garden, nor should I had they been offered. I have had for three years past twelve guineas; and Mr. George Garrick never proposed more than twelve pounds; nor did he give me any hint of the probability of my situation being mended." Manager and actor arrange their difficulties at last, and Smith forwards a list of all the parts he can recollect to have played. These are fifty-two in all, and all of importance. As Boaden notes: "These fifty-two characters in which Mr. Smith could be ready at a short notice, amount with their cues and directions to probably five-and-twenty thousand lines; the words of which are to be kept in their exact places and are presented by the memory with all their associations of place on the stage, action, emphasis, and expression. . . . This is achieved too not by a man of plodding scholastic habits; Mr. Smith delighted in the table, the chase, and the race-course. No profession that we know displays the powers of memory equally with that of the actor." The list furnished by Geneste credits Smith with 150 parts! In one of his letters Smith takes the opportunity of mentioning, that he has wasted thirteen pounds in weight, and should he be disengaged at the theatre, doubts not his being qualified to ride at Newmarket in the October meeting. Upon another occasion he writes to Garrick : "As you have been at Newmarket I hope you will now and then step down to the meetings, and that I shall hear you proposed at the first Jockey Club. God bless you." By and by he was to have other difficulties and discussions with his manager. Smith had become desperately enamoured of the eautiful Mrs. Hartley, of Covent Garden Theatre, with whom he had been playing in Dublin. He gives way to much raving and ranting about his Rosamond. At first he is anxious that she should retain her engagement at Covent Garden; "though it will be irksome to be at different theatres, yet I think it will in some measure take off suspicion." But soon he is urgent that she should be engaged with him at Drury Lane. "I would not leave my Rose for both the English patents. Reason is a beggar, and passion shuts the door against him. I am Antony from top to toe, only, thank God! somewhat younger. You will perhaps say old enough to be wiser," &c., &c. To Garrick he writes: "You could not possibly expect me to remain with you unless you could have engaged us both." And Mr. Garrick is requested "to do all that is proper" to check any suspicions poor Mrs. Smith may entertain touching her husband's indiscretions and misdeeds. Garrick does not engage the lady, and Smith meditates returning to Covent Garden; finds fault with his dressing room, with the terms of his engagement, and with his employment at Drury Lane. Then there is some trouble about the entertainment of the Jubilee, reproduced by Garrick at his theatre. Smith declines to appear as Benedick in the procession. Garrick inquires: "Would your wearing a domino and mask, to take turn about with me in walking down the stage, be an injury to your importance?" Smith replies: "Rather than submit to it I would forego the advantage of the stage, which, thank God! notwithstanding the Morning Post, I am not quite indebted to for bread.... It is now too late for me to appear as Benedick in the procession, as I never undertook anything of the kind, and am totally unacquainted with the business. . . . . You may perhaps think me impertinent in my objecting, as you yourself condescend to do it. You, sir, are too considerable in every respect to suffer by it; I am not. If my feelings are absurd I hope you will pardon them." The Morning Post, it may be noted, was in those times rather an unscrupulous organ; it was edited by Garrick's friend, "the fighting parson," Bate Dudley, and was said to be employed as a means of coercing the players, and especially those engaged at Drury Lane. .... Smith's last letter to Garrick is dated 10th June, 1776, the date of Garrick's retirement, and bears his endorsement, "Mr. Smith's farewell note upon my leaving the stage." Smith writes: "As a visit at this time might probably interrupt your attention to more material affairs, I beg leave in this manner to offer my farewell. I am desirous that the little theatrical disagreements we have had may be attributed to a (perhaps) false delicacy in my temper, rather than any other cause, and therefore hope they may be forgotten. As a private man I am under obligations to you which I shall ever remember gratefully. The only returns I have to make are my best wishes for your long enjoyment of health and happiness; to these permit me to add my respects to Mrs. Garrick, and my hopes that you will do me the favour to believe me, Sir, your sincere and obliged humble servant.” In his old age Smith was wont to exclaim: "As to Garrick, my utmost ambition as an actor was to be thought worthy to hold up his train. . . . . I can never speak of him but with idolatry.” Hoppner's portrait was presented to the nation by the late Mr. Serjeant Taddy in 1837. Other portraits of Smith, notably one by Mortimer, are possessed by the Garrick Club. George Beaumont, famous as an amateur landscape-painter and a And his friend Sir patron of artists and of the fine arts, persuaded Mr. Jackson, the Royal Academician, to journey down to Bury to paint a portrait of Mr. Smith when he was over eighty years of age. Taylor relates that he saw the actor on the occasion of his last visit to London but a short time before his death. Under the zealous convoy of Sir George, the veteran had been brought to the green room of Drury Lane. He was received with most affectionate respect by the actors present. They rose as he entered and thronged round him, "all emulous to testify their esteem and veneration." He corresponded with Taylor to the last, sending up to London now and then copies of verses of his own composing, with translations from Horace and Juvenal, "which fully evinced his taste and scholarship." In his memoirs (1806), Cumberland speaks of Smith as his "old friend and contemporary," and testifies cordially to his merits. "I had known him at the University, as an undergraduate of St. John's College. . . . . As his friend I have lived with him and shared his gentlemanly hospitalities; as his author I have witnessed his abilities, and profited by his support; and though I have lost sight of him ever since his retirement from the stage, yet I have ever retained at heart an interest in his welfare; and as he and I are too nearly of an age to flatter ourselves that we have any long continuance to come upon the stage of this life, I beg leave to make this public profession of my sincere regard for him, and to pay the tribute of my plaudits now, before he makes his final exit and the curtain drops." DUTTON COOK. 633 D TABLE-TALK. UNMAIL RAISE and the Valley of Wythburn are threatened next year with an invasion which has excited the indignation not only of the principal dwellers in one of the loveliest nooks in the very heart of the English lake district, but has awakened painful surprise and determined opposition all over the country, wherever the love of natural beauty, and the reverence for famous men whose footsteps have doubly hallowed it, are not yet quite extinct. A ruthless piece of vandalism is contemplated which it is to be hoped may yet be baffled by a firm and united resistance. Parliament is to be asked in the approaching session to empower the Manchester Corporation to turn the beautiful lake of Thirlmere into a reservoir for supplying with water, not Manchester alone-for that city, they own, has an ample supply for the next twenty years to come-but the various towns en route. Only dire and extreme necessity, and an absolute impossibility of obtaining water elsewhere, could justify this proposal. Neither of these conditions fortunately exists. "Not one tithe," as Mr. Somervell, the chief and indefatigable opponent of the scheme, has pointed out, "of the moorlands available for the water supply of Manchester, between the Lune and South Lancashire, has been utilised as yet.” To carry out the scheme proposed a huge embankment would have to be reared to the height of at least 70 feet, thus lengthening the lake from 2 to 4 miles, and deepening it to the extent of 60 or 70 feet. This would have the effect of placing under water the whole valley, and the beauties of the spot would be buried in a deep dark reservoir. "It is the intention of the Waterworks Committee," naïvely remarks the Cumberland Times, "to substitute for the present tortuous up-and-down track a straight road cut on a level line around the slopes of Helvellyn. Below it the lake, enlarged to more than twice its present dimensions, will assume a grandeur of appearance in more striking accordance with its majestic surroundings. How THE VALLEY WILL LOOK IN THE DRY SUMMER SEASON, WHEN THE RESERVOIR IS HALF EMPTIED, HAS YET TO BE ASCERTAINED." Another ground of opposition to the scheme is its danger as well as its unsightliness. In the very possible and even probable event of |