In addition to the music of the Opera, the following Songs, &c., will be introduced:

"Smile, my Rosina," (Mozart's Don Giovanni), by Count Almaviva. "The Orange Bower," duett, by Rosina and Marcellina.

“Hope is still a fair deceiver " (composed by Edward Fitzwilliam), by Marcellina.

"Cold deceiver, fare thee well" (from J. Barnett's Farinelli),

by Rosina.

75

CHAPTER VII.

SOME CELEBRATED AMATEUR ACTORS.

THERE is always a certain amount of fascination connected with the early history of distinguished persons, in whatever sphere of life their lots may have been cast; and this is more especially the case with those who have been in any way associated with the stage. It may safely be asserted that in all the wide and extensive range of biography, the life of an actor is that which is most eagerly read and most thoroughly appreciated. It is well known that many who have become celebrated as professional actors have drifted into that position from having in early life shown an irrepressible love of dramatic excitement, which led them eagerly to seek opportunities for exercising their talents in private theatrical

performances, before adopting the profession of an actor. Although the lives of many such may have been written, yet the particulars of their early and strictly amateur days have been either altogether ignored, or have received but very slight attention. Indeed, it is perhaps not too much to say that the "Biography of the most celebrated amateur actors" has yet to be written, a circumstance the more noticeable considering the double attraction which the subject undoubtedly possesses.

Wherever the dramatic tendency has thus early discovered itself, notwithstanding the vigilance of the head of the family, opportunities for the exercise and development of the latent talent have been eagerly, and often successfully sought; and there are but comparatively few domestic circles that have been wholly free from more or less pronounced cases of the histrionic epidemic. The stage-struck hero has, indeed, been not unfrequently the subject of very considerable anxiety to the household, and has been the cause of a large amount of persistent ingenuity in the effort to nip the objectionable talent in the bud.

The names of the various amateurs who first

performed Henry Purcell's tragic opera of Dido and Eneas have not been handed down to posterity, but the fact of this first English opera having been written for and played by amateurs is worthy of notice in this place. All that is known of the history of this opera seems to be contained in the following circumstances connected with its first presentation, which are quoted from Sir John Hawkins's History of Music:

"One Mr. Josias Priest, a celebrated dancingmaster and a composer of stage dances, kept a boarding-school for young gentlewomen in Leicester Fields. The nature of his profession inclining him to dramatic representations, he got Tate to write, and Purcell to set to music, a little drama called Dido and Eneas. The exhibition of this little piece by the young gentlewomen of the school, to a select audience of their parents and friends, was attended with general applause, no small part whereof was considered the due of Purcell."

The late Professor Edward Taylor speaks of Henry Purcell as "the father of the English Lyric Drama," and the performance mentioned above has peculiar significance as being un

doubtedly the first amateur performance of an opera in England.

In some cases, no doubt, the adoption of the dramatic profession has been more than encouraged by family surroundings; but in many, and by far the majority of instances, the attractions which the sock and buskin have offered, have been stoutly and persistently opposed by the guardians of the young Roscius. The celebrated Mathews's, both father and son, occur to the mind as noteworthy examples.

The elder Charles Mathews thus writes:

"I was educated at Merchant Taylor's School, and Elliston at St. Paul's. In the evenings we became school-fellows, inasmuch as we were taught French by a Parisian lady of the name of Coterille. She had a small but select school, and at the Christmas holidays improved the boys by getting up English plays, much to the annoyance of my father, who was a preacher of Lady Huntingdon's connection. But for this circumstance, most probably I should never have commenced actor."

At fourteen years of age, the elder, although scarcely less celebrated, Charles Mathews was apprenticed to his father, who kept a bookseller's