[F] I began this unadorned narrative on the 15th of January, 1801: twenty years have therefore elapsed since I lost my benefactor and my friend. In the interval I have wept a thousand times at the recollection of his goodness: I yet cherish his memory with filial respect: and at this distant period, my heart sinks within me at every repetition of his name.
[G] Many of these papers were distributed; the terms, which I extract from one of them, were these. "The work shall be printed in quarto (without notes) and be delivered to the subscribers in the month of December next."
"The price will be sixteen shillings in boards, half to be paid at the time of subscribing, the remainder on delivery of the book."
FOR THE MIRROR.
SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE MR. HODGKINSON.
(Continued from page 380.)
We have now brought the extraordinary personage who makes the subject of this memoir to that time of life when his character assumes a high rank, and his conduct an importance, which entitle him to a much more serious consideration from the reader. As a strict regard to truth forbids us to deny that, in common with all his fellow creatures, he deserves censure for some part of his conduct in life, so candour, and indeed common integrity, enjoin it upon us to accompany that acknowledgment with all such circumstances, and the reasonings upon them that occur to us, as may serve to extenuate the criminality of those acts, and to show that his misconduct was the natural, or rather the necessary and inevitable result of the circumstances to which he was exposed, and nothing more than the every-day issues of human infirmity. If in discharging the office of a biographer, and canvassing the character of the dead, we are compelled to utter truths that will be unwelcome to many a heart, and to speak lightly of the bad members of a profession for the good ones of which we have a high respect, let it be remembered that we do it perhaps reluctantly, but certainly in obedience to the imperious commands of a duty paramount to all form and ceremony, which dictates that truth must be investigated, no matter what galled jade may feel its withers wrung by it.
The indiscriminating, unjust, and illiberal spirit of persecution, with which actors have been followed up for ages, has not a greater enemy in any bosom upon earth than in ours; and we should not only libel the opinions we have uniformly avowed, but violate our conscientious persuasion, and suppress truth if we neglected to state that a multitude of the ladies and gentlemen of that profession, justly stand as high in moral character, as any of those who, in the other departments of life, are most conspicuous for virtue and nice honour. The time was, indeed, when instances of the kind were so very rare, that they were scarcely credited, and when the general maxim was, that the public had nothing to do with the private lives of performers. But now, when the spotless purity of successive actresses in England has so far diminished the prejudice entertained against the body, that actresses of irreproachable character are received into good company, and many of them even married into high families, a correspondent ambition on their part fills most ladies of the stage with an honourable spirit of emulation in the race of fame; while, on the other hand, the people exercise a very rigid scrutiny upon the stage, hold the actresses amenable for their private conduct, and declare that they will not suffer one who is notoriously vitious to come forward on the stage and make a mockery of discretion by uttering the precepts of virtue.