call him his friend. As a proof of his attachment to that great man, it may be mentioned, without staying to apologize for noticing so minute a fact, that the only occasion on which he consented to give a second edition of the Morning Chronicle, was the arrival of news announcing that mournful triumph, the battle of Trafalgar.

In all the relations of private life, the conduct of Mr. Perry was marked with that rectitude of feeling and warmth of heart for which he was distinguished in his public capacity. He had the happiness to maintain his aged parents in comfort, and to bring up the orphan family of his sister by her first marriage. She was afterwards married for the second time to the celebrated Professor Porson, and died in 1796. Throughout the whole period during which Mr. Porson survived her, the concern which Mr. Perry uniformly testified in all the wayward fortunes of that singularly eminent scholar, whose character resembled that which Pope has given of Gay - " in wit a man, simplicity a child," - was truly fraternal.

In 1798, Mr. Perry married Miss Anne Hull, a young lady of most amiable accomplishments, with whom he lived in much happiness for many years. She brought him eight children, one of whom died young; the eldest, a daughter of very promising talents, was carried off at the age of fourteen, by the rupture of a blood-vessel, in the arms of her mother; and this disastrous event gave a shock to that lady's constitution which she never recovered. Symptoms of a decline having appeared, she took a voyage to Lisbon with the hope of restoration in a milder climate; on her return in 1814, she was taken prisoner by an Algerine frigate, and after suffering much in the voyage after her release, she sunk under her complaint soon after she was landed at Bourdeaux.

This bereavement was a severe trial to Mr. Perry, but he bore it as became a man, and probably derived occasional consolation from the society of his friends, and from those literary pursuits for which the possession of an ample fortune now afforded him augmented facilities. He had a large and well-selected library: and his collection of scarce and curious books, for which he had a taste that continually urged him to augment his store of these rarities, probably, in no small degree, beguiled the loneliness of his domestic retirement. In the circle of his surviving children, he found a more interesting and effectual source of consolation.

His health, originally strong, and rarely interrupted, was at length undermined by an internal disease which baffled all human skill, and required him to undergo very painful operations to procure even temporary relief. This affliction he bore with fortitude and even cheerfulness, as if anxious to dispel the painful solicitude of those around him. He expired at his house at Brighton on the 6th of December, 1821, in the 65th year of his age, leaving a name which will ever be respected by all true friends of constitutional liberty.

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392

No. XXVI.

MR. JOHN EMERY,

OF THE THEATRE ROYAL, COVENT-GARDEN.

THIS deservedly popular actor was born at Sunderland, H the county of Durham, on the 22d of December, 1777. He received the rudiments of his education at Ecclesfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where he doubtless acquired that knowledge of the dialect for which he was afterwards so much celebrated. He may almost be said to have been born an actor, as both his parents were of that profession, and had attained some degree of provincial celebrity. His father originally designed him for the orchestra, probably in consequence of his early aptitude in acquiring a knowledge of music, which was such, that when only twelve years of age, he was engaged by Mr. Bernard of the Brighton theatre, as an instrumental performer. The stirrings of ambition, however, rendered him uneasy in a post so subordinate; and scorning to remain among the votaries of a mere auxiliary science, he determined to woo the comic muse, and aspire to Thespian honours. The part which he either chose or accepted for his debut, was perhaps, of all others, the most oddly suited to his tender years: - it was neither young Norval, nor little Pickle, nor Tom Thumb, - but old Crazy, the bellman, in Peeping Tom. He imitated with such exact fidelity, the palsied gait, the tremulous accent, in short, " the second childishness," of fourscore, as to give the Brighton audience a high opinion of his dawning abilities, and hold forth a fair augury of his future eminence.

The period of his noviciate was passed chiefly among the country theatres in the Kent and Sussex districts, and was chequered by no small share of the vicissitudes incident to the life of an itinerant actor. With these, of course, he had been familiar from his cradle, and therefore they could give him very little concern: they affected him merely as varieties in that strange medley of fiction and reality in which players may be said to exist. When he had passed his fifteenth year, he obtained an engagement in the York company, under the eccentric Tate Wilkinson, who assumed a whimsical notoriety, by styling himself " The Wandering Patentee." Emery grew rapidly in favour with the good people of Yorkhire, and acquired an increasing share of popularity by his just conception of character in the personification of old men. He also extended the range of his histrionic qualifications by that close observation of provincial habits and manners, which afterwards enabled him to exhibit so lively and natural a portraiture of Yorkshire clowns and grooms. Tate Wilkinson, who, with all his oddities, was an excellent judge of dramatic merit, seems to have foreseen his future advancement, and spoke of him as "a great actor," a phrase by which, according to Mathews, he used to anticipate the celebrity of his youthful favourites.

It was chiefly by his talent for delineating old age that Emery gained the notice of the London managers, who at first probably regarded his skill in the representation of rustics as a secondary accomplishment. In the twenty-first year of his age he was engaged by Mr. Harris, of Covent Garden Theatre, for three years, at a rising salary; and in 1798 he made his first appearance before a London audience, on which occasion he selected the very opposite characters of Frank Oatland, in A Cure for the Heart Ache, and of Lovegold, in the Miser. The applause which he received was an earnest of that constant favour with which the public ever afterwards regarded his exertions for their amusement.

Of the series of parts in which he gained such extensive celebrity, some were expressly written for him, and others he made exclusively his own. They are all of them so freshly remembered, that it would be superfluous, if not impertinent, to notice them in detail. His rustic characters may be considered as divided into two classes; the prevailing feature of the one being an honest credulous simplicity; that of the other, a sort of homely yet civil effrontery, mixed with a large share of low cunning. As examples of the former class may be noticed, the part of Dan, in Mr. Colman's comedy of John Bull; and that of Lump, in the farce of the Review, by the same author. One of his best specimens of the latter class, was his slight but very effective sketch of Sam, a Yorkshire waiter, in Raising the Wind, with which may be mentioned his more elaborate portraiture of Sharpset, in the opera of The Slave. In these, and other exhibitions of the knowing Yorkshireman, his dialect was awfully genuine; and his very posture, with his feet rather wide asunder, the toes turned in, and one hand in his waistcoat pocket, portended the roguery of jockeyship. The costume and all the minor accessories were in perfect keeping with the general design, and rendered his scenic efforts in this line of acting comparable, for their truth to nature, with the most successful achievements of Morland's pencil.

Amidst his happiest displays of humour or of simplicity, this truly original actor occasionally disclosed a latent excellence in what may be called the pathos of humble life. This faculty was brought into full exercise by Morton, who, in his comedy called the School of Reform, introduced the part of Tyke expressly for him. It was that of a hardened reprobate, in whom the darkest shades of iniquity were relieved by some gleams of virtuous feeling: and whose reformation was finely brought about by an incident of the most affecting kind. Emery performed this character with an energy at times appalling, and with a pathos in the softer scenes, which never failed to draw tears from the audience. Indeed it may, without exaggeration, be said that his performance of this part was poetic; and that in some particular passages he exhibited, in his way, an energy and a feeling not unworthy of the genius