perplexity, the bland and benevolent Dean, in Dandy Dick, could ever have been the bantering companion of Romeo and truculent adversary of fiery Tybalt. Yet this contrast but faintly indicates the versatile character of his mind. Fisher was upon the American stage for thirty-eight years, from August 30, 1852, when he came forth at Burton's theatre as Ferment. Later he went to Wallack's, and in 1872 he joined Daly's company, in which he remained till 1890. It may be conjectured that in some respects he resembled that fine comedian Thomas Dogget, to whom Sir Godfrey Kneller, the painter, said, “I can only copy Nature from the originals before me, while you vary them at pleasure and yet preserve the likeness." Like Dogget he played, in a vein of rich, hearty, jocose humour, and with great breadth of effect and excellent colour, the sailor Ben, in Love for Love. The resemblance was in mental characteristics, not physiquefor Dogget was a slight and sprightly man, whereas Fisher could represent majesty as well as frolic. After he went to Daly's theatre he manifested a surprising range of faculty. He first appeared there on October 28, 1872, as Mr. Dorn

ton, in The Road to Ruin, and on November 19, following, he acted Falstaff for the first time. He presented there the other Shakespearean parts of Leonatus, Armado, and Malvolio the last of these being a model of fidelity to the poet, and now a classic in reputation. He also assumed Adam and Jaques. He presented the living image of Shakespeare himself, in Yorick, and his large, broad, stately style gave weight to Don Manuel, in She Would and She Wouldn't; to that apt type of the refined British aristocrat, Sir Geoffrey Champneys, in Our Boys; and to many a noble father or benevolent uncle of the adapted French society drama. Just as Dogget was supreme in such parts as Fondlewife, so was Fisher superb in the uxorious husband whom the demure child-wife bamboozles, in the comedies of Molière. No man has ever better depicted than he did a sweet nature shocked by calamity and bowed down with grief, or, as in Joe Chirrup, in Elfie, manliness chastened by affliction and ennobled by true love: yet his impersonation of Fagin was only second to that of J. W. Wallack, Jr.; his Moody, in The Country Girl, was almost tragic in its grim and grizzled wretchedness and

snarling wrath; and I have seen him assume to perfection the gaunt figure and crazy mood of Noah Learoyd, in The Long Strike, and make that personality a terrible embodiment of menace, From the time he first acted the comic Major Vavasour, in Henry Dunbar, no actor of equal quaintness has trod our stage. He died on June 11, 1891, and was buried at Woodlawn.

XXVI.

STU

MRS. G. H. GILBERT.

TUDENTS of the English stage find in books on that subject abundant information about the tragedy queens of the early drama, and much likewise, though naturally somewhat less (because comedy is more difficult to discuss than tragedy), about the comedy queens. Mrs. Cibber still discomfits the melting Mrs. Porter by a tenderness even greater than the best of Belvideras could dispense. Mrs. Bracegirdle and Mrs. Oldfield still stand confronted on the historic page, and still their battle continues year after year. All readers know the sleepy voice and horrid sigh of Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth's awful scene of haunted somnambulism; the unexampled and unexcelled grandeur of Mrs. Yates in Medea; the infinite pathos of Mrs. Dancer (she that became in succession Mrs. Spranger Barry and Mrs. Crawford) and her memorable scream, as Lady Ran

dolph, at "Was he alive?"; the comparative discomfiture of both those ladies by Mrs. Siddons, with her wonderful, wailing cry, as Isabella, "O, my Biron, my Biron," her overwhelming Lady Macbeth and her imperial Queen Katharine. The brilliant story of Peg Woffington and the sad fate of Mrs. Robinson, the triumphant career of Mrs. Abington and the melancholy collapse of Mrs. Jordan - all those things, and many more, are duly set down in the chronicles. But the books are comparatively silent about the Old Women of the stage an artistic line no less delightful than useful, of which Mrs. G. H. Gilbert is a sterling and brilliant representative. Mrs. Jefferson, the great-grandmother of the comedian Joseph Jefferson, who died of laughter, on the stage (1766-68), might fitly be mentioned as the dramatic ancestor of such actresses as Mrs. Gilbert. She was a woman of great loveliness of character and of great talent for the portrayal of "old women," and likewise of certain " old men in comedy. "She had," says Tate Wilkinson, one of the best dispositions that ever harboured in a human breast"; and he adds that she was one of the most elegant women ever beheld." Mrs. Gilbert

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