a poet called Calisto, or the Chaste Nymph, written by Mr Crown at the desire of Queen Catherine to comfort Charles II. was to be performed at court by persons of the greatest distinction, our English Roius was employed to instruct the gentlemen, and Mrs Betterton honoured with the tutorage of the ladies, among whom were the two princesses Mary and Anne, daughters of the duke of York, both of whom succeeded to the crown of these realms. In grateful remembrance of which, the latter of them, when queen, settled a pension of £100 per annum on her old instructors.

In 1693, Mr Betterton having founded the inclinations of a select number of the actors whom he found ready to join with him, obtained, through the influence of the earl of Dorset, the royal licence for acting in a separate theatre; and was very soon enabled, by the voluntary subscriptions of many persons of quality, to erect a new playhouse within the walls of the Tennis-Court in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. To this step Mr Betterton is said to have been induced, partly by ill treatment from the managers, and partly with a view to repair, by the more enlarged profits of a manager, the loss of his whole fortune (upwards of £2000), which he had undergone in the year 1692, by adventuring it in a commercial scheme to the East Indies. Be this, however, as it will, the new theatre opened in 1695 with Mr Congreve's Love for Love, the success of which was amazingly great. Yet in a few years it appeared that the profits arising from this theatre, opposed as it was by all the strength of Cibber's and Vanbrugh's writings at the other house, were very insignificant; and Mr Betterton growing now into the infirmities of age, and labouring under violent attacks of the gout, he gladly quitted at once the fatigues of management and the hurry of the stage.

The public, however, who retained a grateful sense of the pleasure they had frequently received from this theatrical veteran, and sensible of the narrowness of his circumstances, resolved to continue the marks of their esteem by giving him a benefit. On the 7th of April 1700 the comedy of Love for Love was performed for this purpose, in which this gentleman himself, though then upwards of 70 years of age, acted the youthful part of Valentine; as in the September following he did that of Hamlet, his performance of which the author of the Tatler has taken a particular notice of. On the former occasion, those very eminent performers, Mrs Barry, Mrs Bracegirdle, and Mr Doggett, who had all quitted the stage some years before, in gratitude to one whom they had had so many obligations to, acted the parts of Angelica, Mrs Trail, and Ben; and Mr Rowe wrote an epilogue for that night, which was spoken by the two ladies, supporting between them this once powerful supporter of the English stage. The profits of this night are said to have amounted to upwards of £500. The prices having been raised to the same that the operas and oratorios are at present; and when the curtain drew up, almost as large an audience appearing behind as before it.

The next winter Mr Betterton was prevailed on by Mr Owen M'Swinney, then manager of the opera-house in the Hay-market (at which plays were acted four times a week) to continue performing, though but seldom. In consequence of which, in the ensuing spring, viz., on the 25th of April 1710, another play was given out for this gentleman's benefit, viz. The Betterton Maid's Tragedy of Beaumont and Fletcher, in which he himself performed his celebrated part of Melanthus. This, however, was the last time of his appearing upon the stage. For having been suddenly seized with the gout, and being impatient at the thoughts of disappointing his friends, he made use of outward applications to reduce the swellings of his feet, which enabled him to walk on the stage, though obliged to have his foot in a slipper. But although he acted that day with unusual spirit and briskness, and met with universal applause, yet he paid very dear for this tribute he had paid to the public; for the fomentations he had made use of occasioning a revulsion of the gouty humour to the nobler parts, threw the distemper up into his head, and terminated his life on the 28th of that month. On the 2d of May his body was interred with much ceremony in the cloister of Westminster, and great honour paid to his memory by his friend the Tatler, who has related in a very pathetic, and at the same time the most dignified manner, the proceedings of the ceremonial. As an author, Mr Betterton had a considerable degree of merit. His dramatic works are,

1. Amorous Widow, a comedy. 2. Didoefian, a dramatic opera. 3. Masque in the Opera of the Prophets. 4. Revenge, a comedy. 5. Unjust Judge, a tragedy. 6. Woman made a justice, a comedy. As an actor, he was certainly one of the greatest of either his own or any other age; but those who are delirious of having him painted out in the most lively colours to their imagination, we must refer to the description given of him by his contemporary and friend Colley Cibber, in the Apology for his own life.