friendship, heightened by admiration.

As to the character of this great man in his profession, the reader need
but reflect on Mr. Colley Cibber's account here inserted, who was well
qualified to judge, and who, in his History of the Stage, has drawn the
most striking pictures that ever were exhibited; even the famous lord
Clarendon, whose great excellence is characterising, is not more happy
in that particular, than the Laureat; no one can read his portraits of
the players, without imagining he sees the very actors before his eyes,
their air, their attitudes, their gesticulations.

Mr. Betterton was a man of great study and application; and, with
respect to the subjects that employed his attention, he was as much a
master of them as any man. He was an excellent critic, more especially
on Shakespear, and Fletcher. Mr. Rowe, who was a good judge, and also
studied the same authors with deep attention, gives this testimony in
his favour, and celebrates, in the warmest manner, Betterton's critical
abilities. His knowledge of Shakespear's merit, gave him so strong,
and so perfect an esteem for him, that he made a pilgrimage into
Staffordshire to visit his tomb, and to collect whatever particulars
tradition might have preserved in relation to his history; and these he
freely communicated to the same friend, who candidly acknowledges, that
the Memoirs of Shakespear's Life he published, were the produce of that
journey, and freely bestowed upon him by the collector. Mr. Booth, who
knew him only in his decline, frequently made mention of him, and said,
he never saw him either off, or on the stage, without learning something
from him; he frequently observed, that Mr. Betterton was no actor, but
he put on his part with his clothes, and was the very man he undertook
to be, 'till the play was over, and nothing more. So exact was he in
following nature, that the look of surprize he assumed in the character
of Hamlet so astonished Booth (when he first personated the Ghost) as
to disable him for some moments from going on. He was so communicative,
that in the most capital parts, he would enter into the grounds of his
action, and explain, the principles of his art. He was an admirable
master of the action of the stage, considered as independent of
sentiment; and knew perfectly the connection, and business of the
scenes, so as to attract, preserve, and satisfy the attention of art
audience: An art extremely necessary to an actor, and ve