in of rich, hearty, jocose humour, and with great breadth of effect
and excellent colour, the sailor Ben, in _Love for Love_. The
resemblance was in mental characteristics, not physique--for Dogget was
a slight and sprightly man, whereas Fisher could represent majesty as
well as frolic. After he went to Daly's theatre he manifested a
surprising range of faculty. He first appeared there on October 28,
1872, as Mr. Dornton, in _The Road to Ruin_, and on November 19,
following, he acted Falstaff for the first time. He presented there the
other Shakespearean parts of Leonatus, Armado, and Malvolio--the last of
these being a model of fidelity to the poet, and now a classic in
reputation. He also assumed Adam and Jaques. He presented the living
image of Shakespeare himself, in _Yorick_, and his large, broad, stately
style gave weight to Don Manuel, in _She Would and She Wouldn't_; to
that apt type of the refined British aristocrat, Sir Geoffrey Champneys,
in _Our Boys_; and to many a noble father or benevolent uncle of the
adapted French society drama. Just as Dogget was supreme in such parts
as Fondlewife, so was Fisher superb in the uxorious husband whom the
demure child-wife bamboozles, in the comedies of Moliere. No man has
ever better depicted than he did a sweet nature shocked by calamity and
bowed down with grief, or, as in Joe Chirrup, in _Elfie_, manliness
chastened by affliction and ennobled by true love: yet his impersonation
of Fagin was only second to that of J.W. Wallack, Jr.; his Moody, in
_The Country Girl_, was almost tragic in its grim and grizzled
wretchedness and snarling wrath; and I have seen him assume to
perfection the gaunt figure and crazy mood of Noah Learoyd, in _The Long
Strike_, and make that personality a terrible embodiment of menace. From
the time he first acted the comic Major Vavasour, in _Henry Dunbar_, no
actor of equal quaintness has trod our stage. He died on June 11, 1891,
and was buried at Woodlawn.

XXVI.

MRS. G.H. GILBERT.

Students of the English stage find in books on that subject abundant
information about the tragedy queens of the early drama, and much
likewise, though naturally somewhat less (because comedy is more
difficult to discuss than tragedy), about the comedy queens. Mrs. Cibber
still discomfits the melting Mrs. Porter by a tenderness even greater
than the best of Belvideras could dispense. Mrs. Bracegirdle and Mrs.
Oldfield still stand confronted on the hist