That crownpiece John had put into the hands of his mother, to keep. Having taken his resolution to leave Manchester, and seek his fortune, he went home, took the crown piece from the place where it was deposited, and getting up before break of day next morning, put on his best clothes, packed up a shirt, and took leave of Manchester. His first notion was to go to sea, to which end he took the road to Bristol, knowing that his master would, by means of the constant intercourse between Manchester and Liverpool, readily detect him if he went that road—an event more terrible to him than death; the penalty for runaway apprentices being very severe and disgraceful. It was on this occasion he dropped the name of Meadowcroft, and adopted the much less elegant one, of Hodgkinson.
Here the reader will naturally pause, in order to reflect upon the very extraordinary picture now presented to him. A boy of little more than fourteen years of age, unschooled; little better than illiterate; destitute of useful knowledge; cut off from parents, friends and connexions; and without any visible means of livelihood, rushing forward into a world of strangers, undismayed at the prospect before him; “full of life, and hope, and joy,” and, like the lark of a summer’s morning, caroling as he winged his way. Any reader who has felt the fears and anxieties of a parent when the dear boy of his heart has been for a short time missing, and remembers the pangs of doubt, the apprehension, the painful forebodings, nay, the despair itself into which an absence protracted beyond custom, and not to be accounted for, has thrown him, will be able, from a retrospect of his reflections on such an occasion, to imagine what must have been the danger of this boy, and what the courage he must have had to encounter it—and will, while pondering with admiration upon his fortitude and manliness, tremble for his fate. This writer once asked him if he was not horror-struck when he found himself in Bristol separated from all his friends, and well remembers his answer.—“No,” said he, “Though I was little instructed and no book-scholar, I was not ignorant. Young as I was, I had formed opinions of life from its pictures in plays and farces, and taken full measure of my situation. I knew that I had nothing to expect in Manchester, or any other place, but from my own exertions, and therefore thought that the sooner I set to work the better. Those whom you call my friends, could do little for me if they were ever so well disposed, and I cannot say much for their disposition. I looked upon them and their purposes respecting me, rather as clogs and fetters, than as aids; and I am convinced I was right. I had no fear, because I had health and strength to do several things to earn my bread, (I could sing if I could do nothing else) and never once lost sight of the persuasion that I should one time or other be something better than a pot-boy or a mechanic. Nor did I meet in my journey anything to discourage me. Some suspected me of being a runaway ’tis true, and looked severely at me; but I minded them not; and one man, a wagoner who carried me a whole night in his wagon, owned that he had taken me in gratuitously, for the purpose of having me delivered up; but that I fairly sung and talked him into a regard for me, during the night. Few charged me anything for what I eat, and I brought more than half my crown into Bristol with me. I had besides a pair of silver buckles in my shoes, and a silver seal to my watch.”
You had a watch then?—
“Yes—value sixpence, one of those they sell at fairs. I had bought it about half a year before—put a nice green riband to it, and a twopenny key.—This it was that got me the silver seal, and I’ll tell you how. The Sunday after I bought it, I stood in the aisle of the church, looked at the great clock, and pompously pulling out my pewter watch, and looking at it as proudly as it were a real one, affected to wind it up and set it, studiously comparing it with the church clock and putting it up to my ear. A Mr. ——,[5] a worthy man of some opulence, who lived near us and was in the habit of coming to our house to take his pint, came up to me and, with a serious air, pulling out his old gold watch, with a gold dial plate, gravely said to me, while he inwardly laughed—“Pray sir what is the time of the day by your watch,—let us see, do our watches agree, sir:” I blushed.—“Nay, said he, I do but jest with you my child—you must not be angry with me. Come, come; if you have not a gold watch, you shall have a silver seal to tie to your riband,” saying which he brought me home and, taking one from the drawer of a black inkstand, gave it to me. What had a boy to fear that had three shillings in his pocket, a silver seal hanging to his watch string, and a pair of large silver buckles in his shoes? nothing—at least so I thought at that time.”
(To be continued.)
[ PORTRAIT OF THE CELEBRATED BETTERTON.]
(Continued from page 140.)
Notwithstanding the extraordinary power he showed in blowing Alexander once more into a blaze of admiration, Betterton had so just a sense of what was true or false applause, that I have heard him say, he never thought any kind of it equal to an attentive silence; that there were many ways of deceiving an audience into a loud one; but to keep them hushed and quiet was an applause which only truth and merit could arrive at; of which art there never was an equal master to himself. From these various excellencies, he had so full a possession of the esteem and regard of his auditors, that, upon his entrance into every scene, he seemed to seize upon the eyes and ears of the giddy and inadvertent. To have talked or looked another way would then have been thought insensibility or ignorance. In all his soliloquies of moment, the strong intelligence of his attitude and aspect drew you into such an impatient gaze, and eager expectation, that you almost imbibed the sentiment with your eye, before the ear could reach it.
As Betterton is the centre to which all my observations upon action tend, you will give me leave, under his character, to enlarge upon that head. In the just delivery of poetical numbers, particularly where the sentiments are pathetic, it is scarce credible upon how minute an article of sound depends their greatest beauty or inaffection. The voice of a singer is not more strictly tied to time and tune than that of an actor in theatrical elocution. The least syllable too long, or too slightly dwelt upon in a period, depreciates it to nothing; which very syllable, if rightly touched, shall, like the heightening stroke of light from a master’s pencil, give life and spirit to the whole. I never heard a line in tragedy come from Betterton wherein my judgment, my ear, and my imagination were not fully satisfied, which, since his time I cannot equally say of any one actor whatsoever; not but it is possible to be much his inferior with great excellencies, which I shall observe in another place. Had it been practicable to have tied down the clattering hands of the ill judges who were commonly the majority of an audience, to what amazing perfection might the English theatre have arrived, with so just an actor as Betterton at the head of it! If what was truth only could have been applauded, how many noisy actors had shook their plumes with shame, who, from the injudicious approbation of the multitude, have bawled and strutted in the place of merit! If, therefore, the bare speaking voice has such allurements in it, how much less ought we to wonder, however we may lament, that the sweeter notes of vocal music should so have captivated even the politer world into an apostacy from sense to an idolatry of sound. Let us inquire whence this enchantment rises. I am afraid it may be too naturally accounted for: for when we complain that the finest music, purchased at such vast expense, is so often thrown away upon the most miserable poetry, we seem not to consider that when the movement of the air and the tone of the voice are exquisitely harmonious, though we regard not one word of what we hear, yet the power of the melody is so busy in the heart, that we naturally annex ideas to it of our own creation, and, in some sort, become ourselves the poet to the composer; and what poet is so dull as not to be charmed with the child of his own fancy? So that there is even a kind of language in agreeable sounds, which, like the aspect of beauty, without words, speaks and plays with the imagination. While this taste, therefore, is so naturally prevalent, I doubt, to propose remedies for it were but giving laws to the winds, or advice to inamoratos. And however gravely we may assert that profit ought always to be inseparable from the delight of the theatre; nay, admitting that the pleasure would be heightened by the uniting them, yet, while instruction is so little the concern of the auditor, how can we hope that so choice a commodity will come to a market where there is so seldom a demand for it?
It is not to the actor, therefore, but to the vitiated and low taste of the spectator that the corruptions of the stage, of what kind soever, have been owing. If the public, by whom they must live, had spirit enough to discountenance and declare against all the trash and fopperies they have been so frequently fond of, both the actors and the authors, to the best of their power, must naturally have served their daily table with sound and wholesome diet.—But I have not yet done with my article of elocution.