Foote before a London audience, which was so thoroughly deceived as to indulge in cries of "Bravo, Foote!" and such comments as What fine spirits Sam's in to-night." All the while the original who was being so wonderfully copied sat concealed in his private box, hugely enjoying the hoax. Perhaps the most interesting of all these stories is the familiar one concerning the seductive Woffington, which John Bernard can give us.

On his first visit to Dublin with Foote, they were engaged by Barry and Mossop to give their entertainments on the alternate nights with Peg Woffington's performances. Foote considered that it would be an attractive feature in the bill, if he announced an imitation of the above lady by Wilkinson; but the design coming to her ears, she sent Sam an abusive note acquainting him that if he attempted to take her off she had some friends in Dublin who would oblige him to take himself off. Foote showed this epistle to his companion, who, nothing daunted, proposed that instead of an "imitation" they would give a scene from Alexander the Great in character, Foote mimicing Barry in the hero, and Wilkinson, Mrs. W. as Roxana. Preparations were accordingly made, and their bills published: what gave greater zest to the announcement was, that Alexander the Great had been played the night before. Among the flood of spectators came Peg in person, and seated herself in the stage box, not only to enlist the audience in her favor, and silence Foote

by her appearance (which was truly beautiful), but if anything occurred to give the wink to a party of young Irish in the pit, who would rise up to execute immediate vengeance on the mimics. Sam and Tate were thus

treading on the surface of a secret mine.

When Foote appeared, as he could present no resemblance to Barry but in manner and accent, the surprise was necessarily transferred to the entrance of his companion, a tall and dignified female, something like the original in face, but so like in figure and deportment that the spectators glanced their eyes from box to stage and stage to box, to convince themselves of Mrs. W.'s identity. Peg herself was not the least astonished, and her myrmidons below were uncertain how to act.

Foote commenced the scene sufficiently like Barry to have procured applause, had not Tate thrown himself into one of Peg's favorite attitudes meanwhile, and diverted the attention. Eye and ear were now directed to the latter, and the first tone of his voice drew a thundering response from the lips of his auditors. As he proceeded the effect increased; the house was electrified; his enemies were overpowered, and Peg herself set the seal of his talents by beating her fan to pieces on the beading of the boxes.*

Probably no one who ever had to do with the theatrical profession had more personal peculiarities than this same Tate Wilkinson. A sweeping assertion, considering the curious characteristics of many a player * Retrospections of the Stage.

and manager, past or present, but it is at least certain that the intimate friends of the mimic bore eloquent testimony to his remarkable habits and individuality. He had a sweet way, for instance, of going into the gallery of his theatre and there hissing with the utmost vehemence any player who had refused to take his advice on some point of acting, and it is said that on one unexpected occasion he made his sibilant objections so unbearable to the occupants of the upper tier that he was ignominiously hustled out of his own house into the street.

The most amusing of all his eccentricities was a fondness for rambling on in his conversation and going from one topic to another with an irrelevancy that caused the greatest wonderment from those who were not familiar with this little weakness. "Sir," he once wandered on aimlessly to Michael Kelly, “Barry, sir, was as much superior to Garrick in Romeo as York Minster is to a Methodist chapel-not but I think that if lobster sauce is not well made, a turbot is n't eatable, let it be ever so firm. Then there's that Miss Reynolds why she, sir, fancies herself a singer, but she is quite a squalini, sir! A nuisance, sir! going about my house the whole of the day roaring out The Soldier tired of War's Alarms, ah! she has tired me and alarmed the whole neighborhood; not but when rabbits are young and tender they are very nice eating. There was Mrs. Barry, for example; Mrs. Barry was very fine and very majestic in Zenobia; Barry in the