had been produced. There a
perfect boudoir of a green-room had been fitted up by Bartolozzi's
beautiful and witty daughter; and there Hook and Jerrold, Haynes Bayley
and A' Beckett had uttered their wittiest sayings. But the destiny of
the Olympic was indomitable. There was nae luck about the house; and
Eliza Vestris went bankrupt at last. Management after management tried
its fortunes in the doomed little house, but without success. Desperate
adventurers seized upon it as a last resource, or chose it as a place
wherein to consummate their ruin. The Olympic was contiguous to the
Insolvent Debtors' Court, in Portugal Street, and from the paint-pots of
the Olympic scene-room to the whitewash of the commercial tribunal there
was but one step.

It must have been in 1848 that the famous comedian, William Farren,
having realized a handsome fortune as an actor, essayed to lose a
considerable portion of his wealth by becoming a manager. He succeeded
in the last-named enterprise quite as completely as he had done in the
other: I mean, that he lost a large sum of money in the Olympic Theatre.
He played all kinds of pieces: among others, he gave the public two very
humorous burlesques, founded on Shakspeare's plays of "Macbeth" and "The
Merchant of Venice." The authors were two clever young Oxford men: Frank
Talfourd, the son of the poet-Judge,--father and son are, alas! both
dead,--and William Hale, the son of the well-known Archdeacon and Master
of the Charter-House. Shakspearian burlesques were no novelty to the
town. We had had enough and to spare of them. W. J. Hammond, the
original _Sam Weller_ in the dramatized version of "Pickwick," had made
people laugh in "Macbeth Travestie" and "Othello according to Act of
Parliament." The Olympic burlesques were slightly funnier, and not
nearly so coarse as their forerunners; but they were still of no
striking salience. Poorly mounted, feebly played,--save in one
particular,--they drew but thin houses. Gradually, however, you began to
hear at clubs and in critical coteries--at the Albion and the Garrick
and the Cafe de l'Europe, at Evans's and at Kilpack's, at the Reunion in
Maiden Lane and at Rules's oyster-room, where poor Albert Smith used to
reign supreme--rumors about a new actor. The new man was playing
_Macbeth_ and _Shylock_ in Talfourd and Hale's parodies. He was a little
stunted fellow, not very well-favored, not very young. Nobody--among the
bodies who were anybody--had ever