SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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ROMEO COATES.


What was Kemble, Cooke, Kean, or Young, to the celebrated Diamond Coates,
who, about twenty years since, shared with little Betty the admiration of
the town? Never shall I forget his representation of Lothario at the
Haymarket Theatre, for his own pleasure, as he accurately termed it; and
certainly the then rising fame of Liston was greatly endangered by his
Barbadoes rival. Never had Garrick or Kemble, in their best times, so
largely excited the public attention and curiosity. The very remotest nooks
of the galleries were filled by fashion, while in a stage-box sat the
performer's notorious friend, the Baron Ferdinand Geramb.

Coates's lean Quixotic form, being duly clothed in velvets and in silks,
and his bonnet richly fraught with diamonds, (whence his appellation,) his
entrance on the stage was greeted by such a general crowing, (in allusion
to the large cocks, which as his crest adorned his harness,) that the angry
and affronted Lothario drew his sword upon the audience, and actually
challenged the rude and boisterous inhabitants of the galleries,
_seriatim_, or _en masse_, to combat on the stage. Solemn silence, as the
consequence of mock fear, immediately succeeded. The great actor, after the
overture had ceased, amused himself for some time with the baron, ere he