gone
players, and there is always temptation to tarry long and lovingly
amid such chequered careers. But, like poor Joe, of Dickens, we must
keep moving on, and so leave Johnson and Baker for another actor
who waits to strut across the stage of these "Palmy Days." Thomas
Elrington is the new-comer; the same Elrington who sought to outshine
the tragic Barton Booth, without possessing either the genius or the
scholarship of that noble son of Melpomene. As a boy, Thomas was
apprenticed by an impecunious father to an upholsterer in Covent
Garden, but he cared more for the theatre than for his trade, and
was, no doubt, regarded by his employer as a future candidate for the
gallows.

* * * * *

"I remember when he was an apprentice," relates Chetwood, "we play'd
in several private plays; when we were preparing to act 'Sophonisba,
or Hannibal's Overthrow,' after I had wrote out my part of Massiva I
carried him the book of the play to study the part of King Masinissa.
I found him finishing a velvet cushion, and gave him the book:
but alas! before he could secrete it, his master (a hot, voluble
Frenchman), came in upon us, and the book was thrust under the velvet
of the cushion. His master, as usual, rated him for not working, with
a 'Morbleu! why a you not vark, Tom?' and stood over him so long that
I saw, with some mortification, the book irrecoverably stitch'd up in
the cushion never to be retriev'd till the cushion is worn to pieces.
Poor Tom cast many a desponding look upon me when he was finishing the
fate of the play, while every stitch went to both our hearts.

"His master observing our looks, turn'd to me, and with words that
broke their necks over each other for haste, abused both of us. The
most intelligible of his great number of words were Jack Pudenges, and
the like expressions of contempt. But our play was gone for ever.

"Another time," continues the biographer, "we were so bold to attempt
Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' where our 'prentice Tom had the part of the
Ghost, father to young Hamlet. His armour was composed of pasteboard,
neatly painted. The Frenchman had intelligence of what we were about,
and to our great surprise and mortification, made one of our audience.
The Ghost in its first appearance is dumb to Horatio. While these
scenes past, the Frenchman only muttered between his teeth, and we
were in hopes his passion would subside; but when our Ghost began his
first speech to