nd to prune from those which do not absolutely, on the whole, promote the interests of vice, such scenes of licentiousness and liberty, as a redundancy of wit and too great liveliness of imagination have induced some of our comic writers to indulge themselves in, and to which the sympathetic disposition of our age of gallantry and intrigue has given sanction. The purity of the English stage has certainly been much more fully established during the administration of this theatrical minister, than it had ever been during preceding managements. He seems to have carried his modest, moral, chaste, and pious principles with him into the very management of the theatre itself, and refused performers from that obloquy which stuck on the profession. Of those who were accounted blackguards, unworthy the association of the world, he made gentlemen, united them with society, and introduced them to all the domestic comforts of life. The theatre was no longer esteemed the receptacle of all vice; and the moral, the serious, the religious part of mankind, did not hesitate to partake of the rational entertainment of a play, and pass a cheerful evening undefiled with the licentiousness, and uncorrupted by the immorality, of the exhibition.

Nowwithstanding the numberless and laborious avocations attendant on his profession as an actor, and his station as a manager; yet still his active genius was perpetually bursting forth in various little productions in the dramatic and poetical way, whose merit cannot but make us regret his want of time for the pursuance of more extensive and important works. It is certain that his merit as an author is not of the first magnitude: but his great knowledge of men and manners, of stage effect, and his happy turn for lively and striking satire, made him generally successful; and his prologues and epilogues in particular, which are almost innumerable, possess such a degree of happiness, both in the conception and execution, as to stand unequalled. His Ode on the death of Mr Pelham ran through four editions in less than six weeks. His Ode on Shakespeare is a masterly piece of poetry; and when delivered by himself, was a most capital exhibition. His alterations of Shakespeare and other authors have been at times successful, and at times exploded. The cutting out the gravediggers scene from Hamlet will never be forgotten to him by the inhabitants of the gallery at Drury. Though necessary to the chasteness of the scene, they cannot bear to lose so much true sterling wit and humour; and it must be owned, that exuberances of that kind, though they hurt the uniformity, yet increase the luxuriance of the tree. Among his alterations the following are part: Every Man in his Humour, altered from Ben Jonson; Romeo and Juliet, Winter's Tale, Catherine and Petruchio, Cymbeline, Hamlet, &c., altered and made up from Shakespeare; Gamesters, a comedy, from Shirley; Isabella, from Southerne. To these we add, as original productions, The Farmer's Return, and Linco's Travels, interludes; Guardian, Lethe, Lying Valet, Miss in her Teens, Male Coquet, Irish Widow, and other comedies in two acts; Enchanter, a musical entertainment; Lilliput: the Christmas Tale is ascribed to him, and many others.

We now bring him to the period of his retirement in the spring of 1776; when, full of fame, with the acquirement of a splendid fortune, and growing into Garrison years, he thought proper to seek the vale of life, to enjoy that dignified and honourable ease which was compatible with his public situation, and which he had so well earned by the activity and the merits of his dramatic reign. But very short indeed was the period allotted to him for this precious enjoyment: for on the 20th of January 1779, he departed this life; leaving no one rival in excellence upon earth to compensate for his loss, or a hope of our ever meeting with his like again.