he gods. The limp of Hephaestus could not have called laughter
so unquenchable from their lips. It is no trifle to set Englishmen
laughing, but once you have done it, you can hardly stop them. Act after
act of the beautiful love-play was performed without one sign of satiety
from the seers of it. The laughter rather swelled in volume. Romeo died
in so ludicrous a way that a cry of 'encore arose and the death was
actually twice repeated. At the fall of the curtain there was prolonged
applause. Mr. Coates came forward, and the good-humoured public pelted
him with fragments of the benches. One splinter struck his right temple,
inflicting a scar, of which Mr. Coates was, in his old age, not a little
proud. Such is the traditional account of this curious debut. Mr. Pryse
Gordon, however, in his memoirs tells another tale. He professes to
have seen nothing peculiar in Romeo's dress, save its display of fine
diamonds, and to have admired the whole interpretation. The attitude
of the audience he attributes to a hostile cabal. John R. and Hunter H.
Robinson, in their memoir of Romeo Coates, echo Mr. Pryse Gordon's tale.
They would have done well to weigh their authorities more accurately.

I had often wondered at this discrepancy between document and tradition.
Last spring, when I was in Bath for a few days, my mind brooded
especially on the question. Indeed, Bath, with her faded memories, her
tristesse, drives one to reverie. Fashion no longer smiles from her
windows nor dances in her sunshine, and in her deserted parks the
invalids build up their constitutions. Now and again, as one of the
frequent chairs glided past me, I wondered if its shadowy freight were
the ghost of poor Romeo. I felt sure that the traditional account of his
debut was mainly correct. How could it, indeed, be false? Tradition is
always a safer guide to truth than is the tale of one man. I might amuse
myself here, in Bath, by verifying my notion of the debut or proving it
false.

One morning I was walking through a narrow street in the western quarter
of Bath, and came to the window of a very little shop, which was full
of dusty books, prints and engravings. I spied in one corner of it the
discoloured print of a queer, lean figure, posturing in a garden. In one
hand this figure held a snuff-box, in the other an opera-hat. Its sharp
features and wide grin, flanked by luxuriant whiskers, looked strange
under a Caroline wig. Above it was a balcony and a lady