condescended to indulge the wishes of an anxiously expectant audience. At
length he commenced; his appeals to his heart were made by an application
of the left hand so disproportionably lower than the "seat of life" has
been supposed to be placed; his contracted pronunciation of the word
"breach," and other new readings and actings, kept the house in a right
joyous humour, until the climax of all mirth was attained by the dying
scene of "the gallant and the gay;" but who shall describe the prolonged
agonies of the dark seducer! his platted hair escaping from the comb that
held it, and the dark crineous cordage that flapped upon his shoulders in
the convulsions of his dying moments, and the cries of the people for
medical aid to accomplish his eternal exit. Then, when in his last throes
his bonnet fell, it was miraculous to see the defunct arise, and after he
had spread a nice handkerchief on the stage, and there deposited his
head-dress, free from impurity, philosophically resume his dead condition;
but it was not yet over, for the exigent audience, not content "that when
the man were dead, why there an end," insisted on a repetition of the awful
scene, which the highly flattered corpse executed three several times to
the gratification of the cruel and torment-loving assembly.

Coates, too, was destined to participate somewhat in the celebrated fête in
honour of the Bourbons in 1811. Having no opportunity of learning in the
West Indies the propriety of being presented at court, ere he could be upon
a more intimate footing with the prince, he was less astonished than
delighted at the reception of an invitation on that occasion to Carlton
house. What was the fame acquired by his cockleshell curricle, (by the
way, the very neatest thing seen in London before or since;) his scenic
reputation; all the applause attending the perfection of histrionic art;
the flatteries of Billy Finch, (a sort of kidnapper of juvenile actors and
actresses, of the O. P. and P. S. in Russell-court;) the sanction of a
Petersham; the intimacy of a Barrymore; even the polite endurance of a