Of Barry's wardrobe, he seems to have parted only with the "bonnet, bow, and quiver, for Douglas;" but Mrs. Barry's was left in Crow Street. It consisted of a black velvet dress and train; nine silk and satin dresses, of various hues, all trained; numerous other dresses, of inferior material; and "a pair of shepherd's breeches," which Boaden thinks were designed "for the dear woman's own Rosalind, no doubt."
The only known portraits of Barry represent him as Timon and Macheath. They were taken before he entered upon his last ten years, in London;—years of gradual, noble, but irresistible decay. Like Betterton, Barry suffered excruciatingly from attacks of gout; but, like Betterton, and John Kemble in this respect resembled them both,—he performed in defiance of physical pain: mind triumphing over matter.
On the 8th of October 1776, he played Jaffier to the Pierre of Aikin, and the Belvidera of his wife. He was then only fifty-seven years of age; but there was a wreck of all his qualities,—save indomitable will. The noble vessel only existed in ruins, but it presented a majestic spectacle still. Barry, on the stage, was almost as effective as he had ever been; but, off the charmed ground, he succumbed to infirmity and lay insensible, or struggling, or waiting mournfully for renewal of strength between the acts. He continued ill for many weeks, during which his chief characters passed into the hands of Lewis, the great-grandson of Harley's secretary, Erasmus Lewis, but himself the son of a London linendraper. Lewis, who had now been three years on the London stage, played Hamlet, and Norval, Chamont, Mirabel, Young Bevil, and Lord Townley; but on the 28th of November, Barry roused himself, as if unwilling that the young actor, who had excelled Mossop in Dublin, should overcome, in London, the player who had competed, not always vainly, with Garrick. On that night, as I have already recorded, he played Evander to his wife's Euphrasia, in the "Grecian Daughter;" but he never played or spoke on the stage again. On January 10th, 1777, he died, to the great regret of a world of friends and admirers, and to the awakening of much poetry of various quality. One of the anonymous sons of the Muse, in a quarto poem, remarks:—
"Scarcely recovered from the stroke severe,
When Garrick fled from our admiring eyes,
Resolv'd no more the Drama's sons to cheer,
To make that stroke more fatal,—Barry dies.
He dies: and with him sense and taste retreat;
For, who can now conceive the Poet's fire?
Express the just? the natural? the great?