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raised. A hustling sort of expostulation and explanation ensued; which terminated in our being obliged to withdraw, along with Kean and four or five of the party, into an adjoining room, where we were made to comprehend the outrageous violation committed by this grand master of the association against the rigid law, of which he was the founder, that no stranger could be admitted into the society without a formal introduction, and a regular accordance to its sacred regulations.

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In short, we each entered our name in an expansive register, got a printed card in return, paid two or three pounds for fees, took a mock oath, blindfolded, on an old book of ballads, and were then announced as members, in due form, of the notorious association, or club, or fraternity, called collectively "The Wolves."

Among the three-score persons composing this assembly I did not recognize a face, with but one exception, and that in the person of a comedian named Oxberry, at whose performance of Justice Greedy, in "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," I had heartily laughed a few nights before. I had no notion of what sort of company I was in. Indeed. I had no clear conception of anything but lights, looking-glasses, bottles, and decanters. I remember that Kean, from the head of the table which had been reserved for him, stammered a speech in return for his health being drunk; and that I, and my two brother novices who sat beside me, laughed in such immoderate ill-breeding at the whole adventure, that we soon became ashamed of ourselves, and by a simultaneous movement left the room.

When I heard next morning some particulars about "The Wolves,' and that the place of their orgies was a tavern off the Strand, called "the Coal-Hole," I was thoroughly out of conceit with my friend Kean's convivial pursuits. I, however, gave him full credit for his unwillingness to tell the sort of place he was about to introduce me to; and, as if by tacit consent, we neither of us ever mentioned it to the other afterwards.

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It was at this period that I was initiated by Kean into another species of society, to know something of which I had a great curiosity. I remembered the advice given in one of Lord Bacon's essays to see and observe in great cities, triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows," and I thought that a boxing-match, or prize-fight, came fairly into the et cæteras. I therefore expressed a wish to Kean to be present at one of these exhibitions; and an opportunity soon offered. He was in high reputation with " the fancy," as one of its most liberal patrons, and a distinguished amateur. I frequently saw at his house some of its chief professors, Mendoza, Richmond the Black, and others, with whom he used to have sparring bouts in his dining parlour. He had early intimation of all the fights to come, and was, I believe, an attendant at most of them. The battle which he took me to see was between a man named Curtis (afterwards killed in another of those encounters) and one who bore the sobriquet of "West Country Dick." The place of action was close to a village about ten miles from town on the western road. We rode there together, I being mounted on one of Kean's handsome and spirited horses. Great honours were paid to him on the field, of which I, as his friend, partook. We were admitted within the ring close to the combatants, before the fight began; and a number of introductions took place between

Kean, myself, and the titled and untitled patricians and plebeians who composed the motley throng. To say nothing of the former, I was presented in form to Mister Jackson, to Cribb, Oliver, Scroggins, and others.

I do not mean to describe the battle: suffice it to say, it greatly excited me, and I by no means felt the disgust I had anticipated. I was neither assaulted nor insulted; nor was my pocket picked; nor did I encounter any of the mishaps commonly incidental to so blackguard a combination. I returned to town well satisfied with this Midsummer day's entertainment, but have never, from that day to this, repeated the experiment.

On my next visit to London the year following, (1817,) I found Kean just as I left him when I quitted England for France after the circumstances above stated. He was going on in the same apparent round of home respectability and, no doubt, of tavern dissipation. I dined several times at his house. I there met, as usual, extremely good company. But Miss Plumtree, Miss Spence, a novelist, Miss Benger, a woman of higher talents, and Captain Glascock, author of "The Naval Sketch Book," were the only persons then or since connected with literature whom I recollect to have seen at these parties. Kean's associates were not certainly hommes de lettres. I never dreamt at the time of being classed among the tribe. His wife liked to have people of ton, and, when she could, of title, at her house. He seemed to endure, rather than take pride in them; and always behaved with great decorum and good manners. But when the company took leave, and he was free, his hours of enjoyment began; and I fancy he often slept from home. Among the dinner company, Alderman and Mrs. Cox always had a place. She was so little remarkable in any way that I can scarcely remember her appearance. She had nothing attractive about her, certainly, either as to person or manners.

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Be It was now that I began to perceive in Kean (what had not, perhaps, become established during my former visit to London) an evident affectation of singularity, an overstrained boldness of demeanour, a rage for being conspicuous, not merely as an actor, but as a man. was still much sought after by the aristocracy, who were proud of showing such a "lion" in their social menageries. He made it a boast that he refused their invitations, and despised their patronage; and that he knew they meant him no honour by those distinctions, which were only so many negative tributes offered to their own importance.

There was, no doubt, much truth in this. The theory was good. The vice consisted in Kean's method of acting on it. There is a wide line between the servility to rank which degrades too many men of talent in England, and the fierce contempt of it assumed by some few others. It requires but small intellect to see through the general motives of aristocratical patronage; but much tact and knowledge of life are essential to hold it at its just value, and turn it to real account. Kean, from the o circumstances of his whole career until this period, had no opportunity of acquiring such knowledge; and nature had not given him that prompt sentiment des convenances which some French writer considers the great test of genius.

Kean thought that as he would not fawn upon title, he must necessarily shun every one who was a lord" merely because he was one. His impatient vanity made him see but himself alone in the large com

panies, where he was, no doubt, an attractive object; and he took alarm at being exhibited as a show. He did not appreciate the advantages which a man less self-enamoured finds in the mansions of the great, those shrines of the glorious works of art, those arenas where the collision of learning, taste, and talent brings forth a galaxy of brilliant things not to be met with elsewhere. If this atmosphere occasionally intoxicates those who are not born in it, it is a tribute paid by Nature to civilization but he who sacrifices his independence to exist in it on sufferance would be more respectable, though less refined, had he lived obscure, and died in his native sphere, be that ever so lowly.

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Kean grew angry at the haughty condescension lavished on him by his noble entertainers. A man of more sense, or one better bred, would have admitted and smiled at it. If a portion of the English nobility fancy themselves formed of a different clay, or breathed into by a purer essence, than the class just below it in the social scale, it is chiefly from the adoration offered to it by that very class. Who can blame the aristocracy, which, seeing the servility, contemns the sycophants? To one who has lived much abroad, and known society in an aspect of rational and graduated equality (so to express it), the 66 exclusive arrogance at home is more melancholy than irritating. The "fantastic tricks" played, at a crisis like this, may be indeed wept at, both by angels and men, in pity for the death-struggle in which they originate.

Kean had not the discrimination to distinguish, perhaps not the good luck to meet with, any of the delightful exceptions to the general rule. The only "lord" he could tolerate was Lord Byron,-a fatal fancy on his part, if, as I have reason to think, the example of the poet influenced most banefully the conduct of the actor. That Byron himself was discontented with his greatness is very certain,-a humiliating caprice of Nature. Unsatisfied with celebrity almost unbounded, he panted for distinction of a far less noble kind. Sated with admiration, he longed to excite wonder. Fame was not enough for him; his ambition was too big for the sphere assigned him by fate. In forcing it beyond that, the recoil was a death-stroke to both his reputation and his happiness.

Who will refuse to see an analogy in character between Byron and his avowed archetype, Buonaparte? It must be sympathy which leads to imitation. And what Byron was to Buonaparte, Kean most assuredly was to Byron. My readers must not be startled by the rapprochement, nor think that the greatest conqueror of the age is degraded by forming one in the trinity of fame with the greatest poet and the greatest actor. And, after all, which was most a stage-player of the three? Was not the political world the great theatre of Napoleon's deeds-the social world of Byron's doings? Did not both act a part from first to last? and was not Kean more an actor in the broad gaze of London life than on the narrow boards of Drury Lane? The generic signs of genius were common to them all; and they were undoubtedly of the same species of mind. Had their relative positions been reversed, their individual career had most probably been the samé, or nearly so. Reckless, restless, adventurous, intemperate; brain-fevered by success, desperate in reverse; seeking to outdo their own destiny for good; and rushing upon dangers and difficulties, which they delighted first to make, and then to plunge within.

Napoleon in Egypt, Byron in Greece, Kean in Canada,-each at the head of his wild and half-savage tribe,-present analogies which the shades of the sceptered soldier and the laurelled lord must not take fright at. They were each, on their several stages, acting the self-same part-straining for the world's applause, not labouring for their own delight; and though there was more greatness in the one instance, and more glory in the other, the inspiration was, perhaps, precisely similar in all. The grand distinction in favour of Napoleon was, all through, not that he was an emperor, but that he was an original. Byron was an extravagant copy; Kean an absurd one.

But if we take the closing scenes of the three,-St. Helena, Missolonghi, Richmond; and it requires no overstretch of fancy to trace the parallel,-Kean had the great advantage, in the assuaging farewell of an only child, and the embraces of an injured but relenting wife, from which latter the premature death of his had debarred Napoleon, and which distance alone (let us hope) denied to Byron.

Even though Kean, in the early summer of his celebrity, rejected with violent (and also, be it allowed, with vulgar) scorn the proffered society of the great, he might wisely, at this epoch, have retired into the simple range of the middle classes, with the respectable reserve of a Kemble, a Young, or a Macready. He might, like them, have been an honour to his profession, the founder of his family's fortune; and today, and for many days to come, alive, and well, and happy. But he had been inoculated with the rage for notoriety; and that he was resolved to obtain, even at the price of ruin-and to seek, even in the depths of disrepute.

What were the particulars of his conduct at this time I had no opportunities of learning, and no desire to learn. I was sorry to see him so evidently drop off from his more respectable connexions. The "evil days" on which he fell I was soon out of the way of knowing the details of; but I heard much of his extravagance,-his feats of horsemanship and boatmanship-wonderful journeys and rowing-matches-freaks of unseemly presumption with regard to authors-affairs of gallantryThames prize-wherries-a tame lion-and a secretary. By the aid of many a foolish accessory, poor Kean was gaining his object and wasting his means; filling the penny trumpet of an ignoble fame; squandering the fine revenue arising from his professional receipts; and losing, one by one, his grieved supporters, who clung to him long, in spite of the frantic obstinacy with which he tore himself away. And all this I maintain to have been foreign from the ruling tendencies of his mind. Early impressions may perhaps have deceived me; but I can never forget the modest, unassuming demeanour, and the respectable and industrious conduct of Kean, when I first knew him, before false taste and a bad example taught him an unreal estimate of renown.

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And now the public began to grow discontented with the notoriously libertine life which Kean led. He had never, I believe, yet disappointed a London audience, but on one occasion. The circumstances of this one he often related to me. He had gone to dine somewhere about ten miles from town with some old friends of early days, players, of course, fully intending to be at the theatre in time for the evening's perform

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But temptation and the bottle were too strong for him; he outstayed his time, got drunk, and lost all recollection of Shakspeare, Shylock, Drury Lane, and the duties they entailed on him. His friends, frightened at the indiscretion they had caused, despatched Kean's servant, with his empty chariot, and a well-framed story, that the horses had been frightened, near the village where Kean had dined, at a flock of geese by the road-side; that the carriage was upset, and the unfortunate tragedian's shoulder dislocated. This story was repeated from the stage by the manager; and the rising indignation of the audience (who had suffered the entertainments to be commenced by the farce) was instantly calmed down into commiseration and regret.

The following morning Kean was shocked and bewildered at discovering the truth of his situation. But how must his embarrassment have been increased on learning that several gentlemen had already arrived from town to make anxious inquiries for him? He jumped out of bed, and, to his infinite affright, he saw, amongst the carriages, those of Sir Francis Burdett, Mr. Whitbread, and others of his leading friends, whose regard for him brought them to see into his situation in person. Luckily for him, his old associates, the actors, had, with great presence of mind and practised effrontery, carried on the deception of the preceding night. The village apothecary lent himself to it, and, with a grave countenance, confirmed the report; and Kean himself was obliged to become a party, nolens volens, in the hoax. His chamber was accordingly darkened, his face whitened, his arm bandaged. A few of the most distinguished inquirers were admitted to his bed-side: no one discovered the cheat; and, to crown it completely, he appeared, in an incredibly short time, on the boards of old Drury again, the public being carefully informed that his respect and gratitude towards them urged him to risk the exertion, notwithstanding his imperfect convalescence, and to go through the arduous parts of Richard, Macbeth, and Othello, on three successive nights, with his arm in a sling!

This circumstance occurred before I renewed my acquaintance with Kean in London, in 1817; but he could not so successfully conceal the open irregularities of his life. His professional reputation remained long at its great elevation; but his moral fame was fast sinking. He, by degrees, disgusted those who had been his firmest upholders; he dropped, little by little, out of the best society; and I believe it was only at his own house, where several persons of great respectability continued to visit, that he saw any company but the dissipated dregs of "Life in London."

(To be concluded in our next.)

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