lf an enviable position upon the Dublin stage. For the youth had
all the qualities that went toward the formation of a fine actor; he
possessed keen dramatic instinct, poetic sensibility, a beautiful
voice, a handsome person, and, above all, a dogged ambition. In after
years, when his health began to fail and the sweets of success had,
perhaps, become a trifle cloying, the tragedian often went through
a part in a perfunctory manner.[A] But those early days in Ireland
marked the sunrise of his genius--a time no less noble, in its
freshness and promise, than the later glory of the noontide--and there
was in his performance nothing but youthful ardour and devotion.

[Footnote A: He (Booth) would play his best to a single man in the pit
whom he recognised as a playgoer, and a judge of acting; but to an
unappreciating audience he could exhibit an almost contemptuous
disinclination to exert himself. On one occasion of this sort he was
made painfully sensible of his mistake and a note was addressed to him
from the stage-box, the purport of which was to know whether he
was acting for his own diversion or in the service and for the
entertainment of the public? On another occasion, with a thin house
and a cold audience, he was languidly going through one of his usually
grandest impersonations, namely, Pyrrhus. At his very dullest scene he
started into the utmost brilliancy and effectiveness. His eye had just
previously detected in the pit a gentleman, named Stanyan, the
friend of Addison and Steele, and the correspondent of the Earl of
Manchester. Stanyan was an accomplished man and a judicious critic.
Booth played to him, with the utmost care and corresponding success.
"No, no!" he exclaimed, as he passed behind the scenes, "I will not
have it said at Button's that Barton Booth is losing his powers!"--DR.
DORAN.]

With that ardour, only whetted by his popularity in Dublin, Barton
travelled to London (1701), and there offered respectful incense at
the shrine of Betterton. 'Twas a shrine at which the public still
worshipped; and when Roscius extended a helping hand to the kneeling
postulant, and brought him before the patrons of Lincoln's Inn Fields,
the success of Booth seemed assured. The latter never forgot the
generosity and kindly interest of his idol, and he spoke with all the
sincerity of gratitude when he once said: "When I acted the Ghost with
Betterton (as Hamlet), instead of my awing him, he terrified me. But
divinity