heard of him before. Whence he came,
or what he was, none knew; but everybody came at last to care. For this
little stunted creature, with his hoarse voice and nervous gestures and
grotesque delivery, his snarls, his leers, his hunchings of the
shoulders, his contortions of the limbs, his gleaming of the eyes, and
his grindings of the teeth, was a genius. He became town-talk. He
speedily grew famous. He has been an English, I might almost say a
European, I might almost say a worldwide celebrity ever since; and his
name was FREDERICK ROBSON.

Eventually it was known, when the town grew inquisitive, and the critics
were compelled to ferret out his antecedents, that the new actor had
already attained middle age,--that he had been vegetating for years in
that obscurest and most miserable of all dramatic positions, the low
comedian of a country-theatre,--that he had come timidly to London and
accepted at a low salary the post of buffoon at a half-theatre
half-saloon in the City Road, called indifferently the "Grecian" and the
"Eagle," where he had danced and tumbled, and sung comic songs, and
delivered the dismal waggeries set down for him, without any marked
success, and almost without notice. He was a quiet, unassuming little
man, this Robson, seemingly without vanity and without ambition. He had
a wife and family to maintain, and drew his twenty-five or thirty
shillings weekly with perfect patience and resignation.

A weary period, however, elapsed between his appearance at the Olympic
and his realization of financial success. The critics and the
connoisseurs talked about him a long time before the public could be
persuaded to go and see him, or the manager to raise his salary. That
doomed house with the wooden portico was in the way. At last the
wretched remnant of the French seventy-four caught fire and was burned
to the ground. Its ill-luck was consistent to the last. A poor actor,
named Bender, had engaged the Olympic for a benefit. He was to pay
twenty pounds for the use of the house. He had just sold nineteen
pounds' worth of tickets, and trusted to the casual receipts at the door
for his profits. At a few minutes before six o'clock, having to play in
the first piece, he proceeded to the theatre, and entered his
dressing-room. By half-past six the whole house was in a blaze. Bender,
half undressed, had only time to save himself; and his coat, with the
nineteen pounds in the pocket, fell a prey to the flames. After