choly, mistrustful, and jealous, which increased with his years; and his penuriousness was such, that, although his circumstances were affluent, he could scarcely suffer himself to use even the common necessaries of life. He contrived the building of the College of physicians and the monument on Fish-Street Hill, London, and was often employed in designing other buildings. His writings consist of the Cutlerian lectures on mechanics; several descriptions of philosophical instruments, and some philosophical collections. Waller, his successor in the secretaryship of the Royal society, published a selection of his posthumous works. Some of the fundamental doctrines of modern chemistry are hinted at in his Micrographia' which was first published in 1664, and in his 6 Lampas,' which appeared in 1667. He appears to have given much of his attention to the improvement of telegraphic communications, of which, however, the marquess of Worcester had unquestionably given the first hint. To Hooke also we are indebted for the invention of the wheel-barometer, the universal joint, the screw-divided quadrant, telescopic sights for astronomical instruments, and sundry pieces of watch and clock machinery. Hooke does not appear to have been one of the most amiable of men; and he has been charged with laying claim to the inventions and discoveries of others. His first employment of the conical pendulum was no less ingenious than original. He employed it to represent the mutual gravitation of the planets, a fact which he had previously announced in his writings and lectures. He conceived that a force perfectly analogous to that of gravity on the surface of our earth operated on the surface of the moon and of Jupiter; and he inferred that it was the same power which maintained the orbicular form of the sun and the other planets. He inferred the law of a universal gravitation of the larger bodies of our system towards the sun; and that it was not the body of the earth, but the centre of gravity of the earth and the moon, which traced out an elliptical path around the sun. He therefore invented a conical pendulum whose tendency to assume a vertical position represented the gravitation towards the sun, and which was projected at right angles to the vertical plane; and then he showed experimentally how the different proportions of the projectile and centripetal tendencies produced various degrees of eccentricity in the orbit. He then added another pendulum, which he made to describe a cone round the first, while the first was describing a cone round the vertical line, and endeavoured to fix what point between them described the ellipse. The experiment failed, but the idea was highly ingenious. It was left for Sir Isaac Newton to determine the true law of gravitation, which would produce the description of an ellipse round the assigned focus. Thomas Betterton. BORN A. D. 1635.-DIED A. D. 1710. WHATEVER opinions may be entertained as to the effect of theatrical entertainments on public morals, it is certain that the stage has exercised a powerful influence over English. literature, and it will be expected that a few at least of our pages shall be devoted to some brief notices of the principal histrionic artists that have appeared amongst us. We possess almost no authentic materials for the memoirs of any of the English players who flourished previous to the days of Thomas Betterton. This actor was born in Tothill-street, Westminster, in August, 1635. His father was undercook to Charles I. The boy's fondness for reading induced his father to apprentice him to one Rhodes, a bookseller, near Charing-cross. This Rhodes had been wardrobekeeper to the theatre in Blackfriars, and about the year 1659, he obtained a license for a company of players, for whose performances he fitted up the cockpit in Drury-lane. All his actors were new hands, and the two principal of them were two apprentices of his own, Betterton, and Kynaston. The former, having a strong sonorous voice and manly bearing, was selected for the leading male parts in the plays which Rhodes's company performed; the latter was better adapted, in his slight handsome person and soft pronunciation, to sustain the female parts of the drama. It was not until after the Restoration that the gravity of English morals was so far relaxed as to allow of women appearing on the stage. In the spring of 1662, Rhodes's company was placed under the superintendence of Sir William Davenant, and assumed the title of the duke of York's company: his majesty had the other companies collected into one establishment, under the name of the king's company. These two establishments greatly interested the court and nobility, and afforded abundant employment to their royal patrons by their continual disputes and wranglings. They were both liberally patronised, however. Cibber says, that plays having been so long prohibited, people came to them now with greater eagerness, like folks after a long fast to a great feast; and that the introduction of women to the stage was felt to be a great improvement on the former practice of having the female parts borne by boys or young men of effeminate aspect and manners. He takes notice also of a rule which was laid down for the prevention of disputes betwixt the two companies: namely, that no play which was acted at one house should ever be attempted at the other. All the principal plays of Shakspeare, Fletcher, Jonson, and the other dramatists, were divided betwixt the two companies, so that while Hart had the uncontrolled range of, and grew great in, Othello, Betterton was no less fortunate in the exclusive possession of Hamlet.' It is said that in the character of the prince of Denmark-in which, according to all contemporary evidence, Betterton was uncommonly splendid-that See Apology. player had the advantage of Davenant's tuition, who had himself been instructed by Shakspeare as to the proper mode of embodying his conceptions on the stage. "You have seen,' says Cibber, "a Hamlet, perhaps, who, on the first appearance of his father's spirit, has thrown himself into all the straining vociferation requisite to express rage and fury; and the house has thundered with applause, though the misguided actor was all the while, as Shakspeare terms it, 'tearing a passion into rags.' I am the more bold to offer you this particular instance, because the late Mr Addison, while I sat by him to see this scene acted, made the same observation: asking me with some surprise if I thought Hamlet should be in so violent a passion with the ghost, which, though it might have astonished, had not provoked him. For you may observe that in his beautiful speech, the passion never rises beyond an almost breathless astonishment, or an impatience limited by filial reverence to inquire into the suspected wrongs that may have raised him from his peaceful tomb, and a desire to know what a spirit so seemingly distressed might wish or enjoin a sorrowful son to execute towards his future quiet in the grave. This was the light into which Betterton threw this scene, which he opened with a pause of mute amazement, then rising slowly to a solemn trembling voice, he made the ghost equally terrible to the spectator as to himself; and, in the descriptive part of the natural emotions which the ghastly vision gave him, the boldness of his expostulation was still governed by decency,-manly but not braving,-his voice never rising into that seeming outrage or wild defiance of what he naturally revered. But, alas! to preserve this medium between mouthing and meaning too little,-to keep the attention more pleasingly awake by a tempered spirit than by mere vehemence of voice,is, of all the master-strokes of an actor, the most difficult to reach. In this, none yet have equalled Betterton. He that feels not himself the passion he would raise will talk to a sleeping audience; but this never was the fault of Betterton." The reader may be gratified to contrast this description, as we may consider it, of Betterton's style of acting in the prime of life, with the following account of his appearance on the stage when no less than seventy-four years of age. "Had you seen him to night," says a correspondent of the Tatler, “ you had seen the force of action in perfection. Your admired Mr Betterton behaved himself so well that, though now about seventy-four, he acted youth, and, by the prevalent power of proper manner, gesture, and voice, appeared through the whole drama a young man of great expectation, vivacity, and enterprise. The soliloquy, where he began the celebrated sentence of To be, or not to be,'-the expostulation, where he explains with his mother in her closet,—the noble ardour, after seeing his father's ghost,-and his generous distress for the death of Ophelia, —are each of them circumstances which dwell strongly upon the minds of the audience, and would certainly affect their behaviour on any parallel occasions in their own lives." These are strong attestations to the merits of this early actor; but they are surpassed by the following paragraph from the author of The Lick at the Laureate.' "I have lately," says that anonymous writer, "been told by a gentleman who has frequently seen Betterton perform Hamlet, that he observed his countenance, which was naturally ruddy and sanguine, in the scene of the third act, where his father's ghost appears, through the violent and sudden emotion of amazement and horror, turn instantly as pale as his neckcloth, when his whole body seemed to be affected with a tremour inexpressible so that had his father's ghost actually risen before him, he could not have been seized with more real agonies. And this was felt so strongly by the audience that the blood seemed to shudder in their veins likewise, and they in some measure partook of the astonishment and horror with which they saw this excellent actor affected." In the course of 1663, Betterton married a lady of great talent who had joined his own company as an actress, and was one of the first, if not the first female performer, that came upon the English stage. The principal characters sustained by her were those of Ianthe in the siege of Rhodes, Ophelia, Juliet, Queen Catherine, and Lady Macbeth. The last was her best character. She is supposed to have died about 1712. On the death of Sir William Davenant, Betterton obtained the principal management of the Duke's company; and in 1682, when a union was formed between the two rival companies, Mr Betterton was still continued in the direction. But in 1690 a new patent was issued, the terms of which dissatisfied him. He applied to the earl of Dorset, and, through his influence, obtained an independent license for himself, and a few of the best players who adhered to him, under which they built a new theatre in Portugal-street, Lincoln's inn, which was opened in April, 1695, with Congreve's comedy of Love for Love. This speculation turned out unfortunate, and Betterton sold his shares, and resigned his management to Sir John Vanbrugh, who erected a new theatre in the Haymarket, in which Betterton accepted an engagement as an actor only. Old age, disease, and misfortune, had sadly reduced Betterton by this time; but he continued occasionally to act with all the fire and vivacity of youth; and such was the esteem in which he was held by the public, that on the occasion of a benefit being announced for him, in the month of April, 1710, the proceeds exceeded one thousand pounds. The effort, however, though most successful, was fatal to Betterton. He had been labouring under a fit of gout for some time previous to his appearance in public; and the exertion which he made on this occasion determined the disease to his head. He died within three days from the date of this performance. His remains were deposited, with much funeral pomp, in the cloisters of Westminster abbey. Sir Richard Steele attended the ceremony, and has described it in one of his Tatlers with great beauty and force of moral reflection. Betterton's authority on all points connected with the drama, appears to have been regarded as paramount by even the most gifted of his contemporaries. In the preface to Don Sebastian,' Dryden says: "About 1200 lines have been cut off from this tragedy since it was first delivered to the actors. They were indeed so judiciously lopped by Mr Betterton, to whose care and excellent action I am equally obliged, that the connection of the story was not lost." Betterton was the author of a comedy, entitled 'The Woman made a Justice.' His alterations and adaptations to the stage are more successful performances than his original pieces. No. 167. Dr Henry Aldrich. BORN A. D. 1647.-DIED A. D. 1710. In addition to an unusual diversity of talent, Dean Aldrich exhibited such eminence in each of the pursuits to which he devoted himself, that his reputation would have been great and well-merited though it had rested but upon a single basis. At the same time that he was greatly distinguishing himself as a polemical writer, a polite scholar, a theologian, a profound critic, an architect, and a man of sound judgment and exquisite taste in arts, science, and literature in general, he became so profound in the theory and practice of music, that his compositions, particularly for the church, equal in number and excellence those of the greatest masters of his time. He was born at Westminster in the year 1647, and was educated under Dr Busby, then master of Westminster school. After the usual course of preparation, he entered Christ-church college, Oxford, and subsequently took orders. Distinguished for his profound knowledge and extensive learning, he soon became a tutor of his college, and in that capacity acquired much fame. In February, 1681, he was installed canon of Christ-church, and very shortly after he accumulated the degrees of bachelor and doctor in divinity. Among those clergymen who, at this period, distinguished themselves by their zealous opposition to the church of Rome, Aldrich bore a considerable part; indeed Burnet classes him with the more eminent divines, "who managed and directed this controversial war." Of the manner in which the clergy conducted their side of the argument, he thus writes: "They examined all the points of popery with a solidity of judgment, a clearness of arguing, a depth of learning, and a vivacity of writing, far beyond any thing that had before that time appeared in our language. The truth is, they were very unequally yoked; for, though they are justly to be reckoned among the best writers that have appeared on the protestant side, those they wrote against were certainly among the weakest that had ever appeared on the popish side." He says, further, "that popery was never so well understood by the nation, as it came to be upon this occasion." Dr Aldrich, in short, made himself so conspicuous by his merits in this and other respects, that, at the Revolution, when Massey, the popish dean of Christ-church, fled beyond sea, the deanery was conferred upon him. Thus having passed through the whole series of academic honours, and acquired a high reputation for learning both as a student and a tutor, his excellence of character and pleasing deportment, as master of the college, attracted the esteem and love of all its members. His own attachment to the university induced the exercise of all his energies, the employment of ail his various talents, for the promotion of its honour and fame. To support its credit for attention to classical studies, he made it his practice, in imitation of Dr Fell, to edit and publish annually some Greek author, as a new year's present to the students of his house. Epictetus, Theophrastus, Plato, Xenophon, and to whom he thus gave his attention. Plutarch, were among the writers |