Joyous retire! so bounteous Heav'n ordains.
There we may dwell in peace.
There bless the rising morn, and flow'ry field,
Charm'd with the guiltless sports the woods and waters yield."
But neither the married nor the professional life of Booth was destined to be of long continuance. His health began to give way before he was forty. The managers hoped they had found a fair substitute for him in the actor Elrington. Tom Elrington subsequently became so great a favourite with the Dublin audience that they remembered his Bajazet as preferable to that of Barry or Mossop, on the ground that in that character his voice could be heard beyond the Blind Quay, whereas that of the other-named actors was not audible outside the house! Elrington had none of the scholar-like training of Booth. He was originally apprentice to an upholsterer in Covent Garden, was wont to attend plays unknown to his master, and to act in them privately, and with equal lack of sanction. His master was a vivacious Frenchman, who, one day, came upon him as, under the instruction of Chetwood, he was studying a part in some stilted and ranting tragedy. The stage-struck apprentice, in his agitation, sewed his book up inside the cushion, on which he was at work, "while he and Chetwood exchanged many a desponding look, and every stitch went to both their hearts." The offenders escaped detection; but on another occasion the Frenchman came upon his apprentice as he was enacting the Ghost in "Hamlet," when he laid the spirit, with irresistible effect of his good right arm. Elrington was, from the beginning, a sort of "copper Booth." His first appearance on the stage, at Drury Lane, in 1709, was in Oroonoko, the character in which Booth had made his coup d'essai in Dublin. He was ambitious, too, and had influential support. When Cibber refused to allow him to play Torrismond, while Elrington was yet young, a noble friend of the actor asked the manager to assign cause for the refusal. Colley was not at a loss. "It is not with us as with you, my Lord," said he; "your Lordship is sensible that there is no difficulty in filling places at court, you cannot be at a loss for persons to act their part there; but I assure you, it is quite otherwise in our theatrical world. If we should invest people with characters they should be unable to support, we should be undone."
Elrington, after a few years of success in Dublin, boldly attempted to take rank in London with Booth himself. He began the attempt in his favourite part of Bajazet, Booth playing Tamerlane. The latter, we are told by Victor, "being in full force, and perhaps animated by a spirit of emulation towards the new Bajazet, exerted all his powers; and Elrington owned to his friends that, never having felt the force of such an actor, he was not aware that it was in the power of mortal to soar so much above him and shrink him into nothing." Booth was quite satisfied with his own success, for he complimented Elrington on his, adding that his Bajazet was ten times as good as that of Mills, who had pretensions to play the character. The compliment was not ill-deserved, for Elrington possessed many of the natural and some of the acquired qualifications of Booth, whom perhaps he equalled in Oroonoko. He undoubtedly excelled Mills in Zanga, of which the latter was the original representative. After Dr. Young had seen Elrington play it, he went round, shook him cordially by the hand, thanked him heartily, and declared he had never seen the part done such justice to as by him; "acknowledging, with some regret," says Dr. Lewis, "that Mills did but growl and mouth the character." Such was the actor who became for a time Booth's "double," and might have become his rival. During the illness of the latter, in 1728-29, Elrington, we are told, was the principal support of tragedy in Drury Lane. At that time, says Davies, "the managers were so well convinced of his importance to them, that they offered him his own conditions, if he would engage with them for a term of years." Elrington replied, "I am truly sensible of the value of your offer, but in Ireland I am so well rewarded for my services that I cannot think of leaving it on any consideration. There is not a gentleman's house to which I am not a welcome visitor."
Booth has been called indolent, but he was never so when in health, and before a fitting audience. On one thin night, indeed, he was enacting Othello rather languidly, but he suddenly began to exert himself to the utmost, in the great scene of the third act. On coming off the stage, he was asked the cause of this sudden effort. "I saw an Oxford man in the pit," he answered, "for whose judgment I had more respect than for that of the rest of the audience;" and he played the Moor to that one but efficient judge. Some causes of languor may, perhaps, be traced to the too warm patronage he received, or rather friendship, at the hands of the nobility. It was no uncommon thing for "a carriage and six" to be in waiting for him—the equipage of some court friend—which conveyed him, in what was then considered the brief period of three hours to Windsor, and back again the next day in time for play or rehearsal. This agitated sort of life seriously affected his health; and on one occasion his recovery was despaired of. But the public favourite was restored to the town; and learned Mattaire celebrated the event in a Latin ode, in which he did honour to the memory of Betterton, and the living and invigorated genius of Booth. That genius was not so perfect as that of his great predecessor. When able to go to the theatre, though not yet able to perform, he saw Wilks play two of his parts,—Jaffier and Hastings,—and heard the applause which was awarded to his efforts; and the sound was ungrateful to the ears of the philosophical and unimpassioned Cato. But Jaffier was one of his triumphs; and he whose tenderness, pity, and terror had touched the hearts of a whole audience, was painfully affected at the triumph of another, though achieved by different means.
One of the secrets of his own success, lay, undoubtedly, in his education, feeling, and judgment. It may be readily seen from Aaron Hill's rather elaborate criticism, that he was an actor who made "points;" "he could soften and slide over, with an elegant negligence, the improprieties of a part he acted; while, on the contrary, he could dwell with energy upon the beauties, as if he exerted a latent spirit, which he kept back for such an occasion, that he might alarm, awaken, and transport, in those places only which were worthy of his best exertions." This was really to depend on "points;" and was, perhaps, a defect in a player of whom it has been said, that he had learning to understand perfectly what it was his part to speak, and judgment to know how it agreed or disagreed with his character. The following, by Hill, is as graphic as anything in Cibber:—"Booth had a talent at discovering the passions, where they lay hid in some celebrated parts, by the injudicious practice of other actors; when he had discovered, he soon grew able to express them; and his secret of attaining this great lesson of the theatre, was an adaptation of his look to his voice, by which artful imitation of nature, the variations in the sounds of his words gave propriety to every change in his countenance. So that it was Mr. Booth's peculiar felicity to be heard and seen the same; whether as the pleased, the grieved, the pitying, the reproachful, or the angry. One would be almost tempted to borrow the aid of a very bold figure, and to express this excellency the more significantly, by permission to affirm, that the Blind might have seen him in his voice, and the Deaf have heard him in his visage."
In his later years, says a critic, "his merit as an actor was unrivalled, and even so extraordinary, as to be almost beyond the reach of envy." His Othello, Cato, and his Polydore, in the "Orphan," in which he was never equalled, were long the theme of admiration to his survivors, as were in a less degree his sorrowing and not roaring Lear, his manly yet not blustering Hotspur. Dickey Brass and Dorimant, Wildair and Sir Charles Easy,[130] Pinchwife, Manley, and Young Bevil, were among the best of his essays in comedy,—where, however, he was surpassed by Wilks. "But then, I believe," says a critic, "no one will say he did not appear the fine gentleman in the character of Bevil, in the 'Conscious Lovers.' It is said that he once played Falstaff in the presence of Queen Anne, 'to the delight of the whole audience.'"
Aaron Hill, curiously statistical, states, that by the peculiar delivery of certain sentiments in Cato, Booth was always sure of obtaining from eighteen to twenty rounds of applause during the evening,—marks of approval, both of matter and manner. Like Betterton, he abounded in feeling. There was nothing of the stolidity of "Punch" in either of them. Betterton is said to have sometimes turned as "white as his neck-cloth," on seeing his father's ghost; while Booth, when playing the ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, was once so horror-stricken at his distraught aspect, as to be too disconcerted to proceed, for a while, in his part. Either actor, however, knew how far to safely yield themselves to feeling. Judgment was always within call; the head ready to control the heart, however wildly it might be impelled by the latter. Baron, the French actor, did not know better than they, that while rules may teach the actor not to raise his arms above his head, he will do well to break the rule, if passion carry him that way. "Passion," as Baron remarked, "knows more than art."