she had a moment's business. He went to the side of her carriage, "There, Mr. Garrick,"

said Lady Coventry, "I put into your hands a

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play, which the best judges tell me will do “honour to you and the author." It was not necessary for her to say more: "Those eyes "that tell us what the sun is made of," as Dr. Young says in one of his tragedies, had all the power of persuasion, and even of command; Garrick obeyed, as if she had been a tenth muse, and prepared the play with the utmost dispatch. He, in the character of Virginius, Mossop in that of Appius, and Mrs. Cibber in Virginia, deserved the compliment paid to them by the author in his preface. The representation was attended by another advantage. Mrs. Yates, at that time Mrs. Graham, made her first appearance on the English stage, in the part of Marcia, and by her extraordi

nary beauty, and an early promise of great talents, helped to give attraction to the piece. But the great stroke which crowned it with success, (which will appear almost incredible) was Garrick's manner of uttering two words. Claudius, the iniquitous tool of the Decemvir, claims Virginia, as a slave born in his house. He pleads his cause before Appius on his tribunal. During that time, Garrick, re-presenting Virginius, stood on the opposite side of the scene, next to the stage-door, with his arms folded across his breast, his eyes rivetted to the ground, like a mute and lifeless statue. Being told at length that the tyrant is willing to hear him, he continued for some time in the same attitude, his countenance expressing a variety of passions, and the spectators fixed in ardent gaze. By slow degrees he raised his head; he paused; he turned round

in the slowest manner, till his eyes fixed on Claudius; he still remained silent, and after looking eagerly at the impostor, he uttered in a low tone of voice, that spoke the fullness of a broken heart, "Thou traitor!" The whole audience was electrified; they felt the impression, and a thunder of applause testified their delight. Pliny the elder, speaking of certain minerals, says, nature is never more fully displayed than in the minutest objects. This remark may be applied to the nice touches of such an actor as Garrick. Rerum natura nusquam magis quam in minimis tota est.

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CHAP.

CHAP. XXII.

CREUSA, a Tragedy, by WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, Esq.-The Subject far removed in the dark Ages of Antiquity-It is fabulously treated by EURIPIDES in his Tragedy of IONDACIER'S Opinion of the Greek Play-PERE BRUMOY has translated it-His Judgement and Observations on the Fable —Mr. WHITEHEAD has given it an Air of Historical Truth -SCALIGER'S Dramatic Rules-WHITEHEAD an exact Observer of these Rules-The Catastrophe is brought about with great Skill-GARRICK IN ALETES, Mossor in XUTHUSMrs. PRITCHARD in CREUSA,

IN the month of April 1754, Mr. Whitehead, the author of the Roman Father, put his tragedy of Creusa into rehearsal. This was at a late part of the season, but the author was going to travel with a young nobleman, and probably wished to carry his fame along

with him. In a short advertisement, he tells

us, that his subject is so ancient, so slightly

mentioned by historians, and so fabulously treated by Euripides in his tragedy of Ion that he thought himself at liberty to make the story his own. Some glaring circumstances he was obliged to adhere to, and he endeavoured to render them probable. Dacier, in the Notes to his translation of Aristotle's Art of Poetry*, makes mention of the Ion of Euripides, and, with his usual good sense, observes, that Merope, recognizing her son in the moment when she was going to kill him, is an incident highly commended by the great master critic; he adds, that Euripides wrote a tragedy, in which the mother is on the point of killing her son, whom she does not know, while, at the same time, the Chap. xv. Note 6.

son,