walk were furnished with a tent-bed, two tables, half-a-dozen chairs, and a carpet as much too scanty for the boards as Sheridan's "rivulet of rhyme" for its "meadow of margin :" to these the elder Colman added about ten pounds' worth of law books, which had been given to him in his own Lincoln's Inn days, by Lord Bath; then enjoining the son to work hard, the father left town upon a party of pleasure. Colman had sent his son to Switzerland to get him away from a certain Miss Catherine Morris, an actress, of the Haymarket company: this answered for a time, but no sooner had the father left the son in the Temple, than he set off with Miss Morris to Gretna Green, and was there married in 1784; and four years after, with the father's sanction, they were publicly married at Chelsea church. In the same staircase with Colman, in the Temple, lived the witty Jekyll, who seeing in Colman's chambers a round cage with a squirrel in it, looked for a minute or two at the little animal which was performing the same operation as a man in the treadmill, and then quietly said, "Ah! poor devil! he is going the Home Circuit," the locality, the Temple, favouring this technical joke. On the morning young Colman began his studies, Dec. 20, 1784, he was interrupted by the intelligence that the funeral procession of the great Dr. Johnson was on its way from his late residence, Bolt-court, through Fleet-street, to Westminster Abbey ; Colman threw down his pen, and ran forth to see the procession, which was much less splendid and imposing than the sepulchral pomp of Garrick five years before. ILLNESS OF COLMAN THE ELDER. HIS DEATH. In the autumn of 1785, Colman, while at Margate, repelled the gout by repeated bathing in the sea, which, however, not only paralysed his body, but distempered his brain. His melancholy disorder was a hemiplegia; but from its earliest sparks in 1785, till it blazed forth unequivocally in June 1789, an interval of rather more than three and a half years, and again from the last-mentioned year to the time of his time. Those who feed there are accommodated with wooden trenchers instead of plates, and previously to the dinner, oysters are served up by way of prologue to the play. Eating the oysters, or going into the Hall without eating them if you please, and then departing to dine elsewhere, is quite sufficient for term-keeping.-Memoirs of the Colman Family. A A decease, there was nothing of that "second childishness and mere oblivion" which his biographers have attached to his memory. It was found necessary to place Mr. Colman under proper care at Paddington; and the management of the theatre devolved upon his son. Colman died at Paddington on the 14th of August, 1794, at the age of 62. A few hours before he expired, he was seized with violent spasms, and these were succeeded by a melancholy stupor, in which he drew his last breath. His abilities as a dramatist, his punctuality as a manager, and his liberal encouragement to other writers for the stage,were remarkable. He produced nearly forty dramas-some of them of high merit: the Jealous Wife, 1761; and the Clandestine Marriage, 1766, are his most admired comedies, and keep possession of the stage to this day. Even his petite pieces are strong in character; and his management secured to the Haymarket Theatre the patronage of the fashionable world during the height of summer. To sagacity, (says Peake,) in discovering the talent of his performers, he joined the inclination and ability to display them to every advantage. To him, Mr. Henderson, Miss Farren, Mr. Bannister, Mr. George, Mrs. Wells, and Mr. Edwin, owed their introduction to a London audience. There is a portrait of Colman by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in the Garrick Club collection. BONNELL THORNTON AND GEORGE COLMAN. Bonnell Thornton, who appears to have been held in high reputation by his contemporaries in Westminster School, had, among his associates Churchill, the satirist; William Cowper, the moral poet; George Colman, and Robert Lloyd. They all, (except Churchill,) together with three other Westminster men, one of them, Joseph Hill, Cowper's correspondent, composed the Nonsense Club; and from Thornton's intimacy with Cowper, who was only two years his junior, and with Colman, he became acquainted with the others. But it was with Colman that Thornton was more particu larly associated. They had been intimate, notwithstanding the disparity of eight years in their standing at Oxford, where Thornton probably kept his residence for a longer period than usual, and their intimacy was continued after they removed to London. Thornton took the degree of M.A. in 1750; and as his father, an apothecary in Maiden-lane, Covent Garden, intended him for the profession of medicine, he proceeded M.B. 1754. He and Colman began the Connoisseur in January, this year, whilst the latter was still an undergraduate, under the fictitious name of Mr. Town, critic and censor-general. The title Connoisseur, now generally applied to a judge of the fine arts, was by Colman and Thornton, employed in the sense of a critic on the manners and minor morals of mankind; and to this acceptation of the term the motto which they chose, pointedly alludes, and is still further opened by the subsequent paraphrase as given in their last number: Non de villis domibusve alienis, Nec male necne Lepos saltet: sed quod magis ad nos Who better knows to build, or who to dance, The literary alliance of Thornton and Colman continued unimpaired by jealousy during the whole work; and Southey remarks, "Beaumont and Fletcher present what is probably the only parallel instance of literary co-operation so complete that the portions written by the respective parties are undistinguishable." In their closing paper, they themselves declare, that "We have not only joined in the work taken altogether, but almost every single paper is the joint production of both; and as we have laboured equally in erecting the fabric, we cannot pretend that any one particular part is the sole workmanship of either." Both Cowper and Lloyd assisted them in the work, which was concluded on the 30th of September, 1756; and a sixth edition of it in four volumes, was published in 1774. These facts, together with the subsequent union and cordiality that existed between the authors as to the translation of Plautus, form a complete refutation of the story of George Colman the Younger, that his father was dissatisfied with his colleague's behaviour during the publication of the Connoisseur; and it should also be remembered that the younger Colman only professes to have gathered this statement from a conversation which, when he was a boy in the under-school at Westminster, he overheard between his father and Mr. Jackson, the Oxford printer. Thornton and Colman continued their association.in London, and became two of the original proprietors of the St. James's Chronicle, a newspaper, which they soon invested with a literary character far superior to that of its contemporaries. They also published together Selections from the Poems of Eminent Ladies, with a short Notice on their Lives; a new edition of which appeared in 1774. Thornton also contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers, especially the Public Advertiser; and published, at different times, several humorous pieces. His burlesque Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, entitled the Salt Box, was set to music by Dr. Burney, and actually produced at Ranelagh, in 1762, to a crowded audience. Dr. Johnson is said to have been a very great admirer of it, and was wont to repeat parts of it. In 1768, he published his Battle of the Wigs, or an additional Canto to Dr. Garth's "Dispensary," in ridicule of the disputes between the Fellows and Licentiates of the College of Physicians. In 1767, appeared the first part of Thornton's translation of the comedies of Plautus: it contained seven plays, one of which, "The Merchant," was the work of his old colleague, Colman; and another of Mr. Warner, of Woodford, Essex, who, after Thornton's death, completed the work in five volumes. Thornton dedicated his seven plays to Colman, with an affectionate allusion to their ancient alliance in these words: "I can never forget the time when our literary amusements were so intimately blended, that we seemed to have one invention, one sentiment, one expression." "I shall never repent my having dipt my pen in ink, since it gave me an opportunity of cultivating a social as well as a literary connexion with you." And, after regretting that they were not again actual partners in the undertaking, he adds, "I confess, in the pride of my heart, that one great inducement for my engaging in this task was the hope that our names would be mentioned together as the translators of Terence and Plautus though I cannot aspire to an equal share of reputation with the author of the Jealous Wife, or the joint author of the Clandestine Marriage. To the merits of the translation there is the testimony of Southey, who says: "Thornton's part is, as far as it goes, one of the best versions in our language from any ancient author. The skill with which he has compensated, by correspondent playfulness of wit, for what it was impossible to translate, is perhaps unrivalled." Mr. Forster remarks upon this knot of Westminsters: "Literature had become a bond of union with these youths before they left the Westminster cloisters. The Table Talk tells of the little poets at Westminster,' and how they strive 'to set a distich upon six and five.' Even the boredom of school exercises, more rife in English composition then than since, did not check the scribbling propensity. All the lads we have named had a decisive turn that way; and little Colman, emulating his betters, addressed his cousin Pulteney from the fifth form with the air of a literary veteran.”—Biographical Essays: Charles Churchill. COLMAN'S PROLOGUES. Colman was very successful in writing prologues and epilogues, and occasional addresses. He is well remembered for his Epilogue to the School for Scandal, for which Garrick wrote the Prologue. Equally felicitous was Colman's Prologue upon the re-opening of the Haymarket Theatre, after it had been elegantly re-decorated: in the course of this address we have this pleasant glance at the histrionic glories of the old Haymarket: age, What though our house be threescore years of |