bills of the play--then say "we ne'er shall look upon his like again,"
(the greatest, though perhaps the most equivocal, tribute ever paid to
genius,) but a few months reconcile them to the loss; they approve the
successor, though they deplore the change, "and though the present they
regret, they are grateful for the past." Then comes your actor's second
farewell--his final exit--and "last of all comes death." A line or two in
a newspaper tells you that Munden died on Monday last. One exclaims "I
thought he had been dead these seven years;" but another, of more grateful
and reflective temperament, throws down the "_diurnal_" to lament the
death of the man as he had hitherto regretted the loss of the actor. His
former regret too is resuscitated. A mere paragraph rounds the little life
of your actor, his entrances and exits, and he who "appeared" on one stage
in 1790, as Sir Francis Gripe and Jemmy Jumps, disappeared from that
greater stage, or all the world, as Joseph Munden. We have often thought
these _farewells_ of actors must be with them dismal affairs, especially
in old age. They must remind them of a last farewell, and we know

The sense of death is most in apprehension.

But, is this fitting for the obituary of a _comic_ actor? Yes, we reply,
and as both are but occasions of appeal to the passions, we may think the
death of a tragedian less striking than the former, since all tragedies
end with death, and death in itself is but a scene of tragedy. Is any
lament of Shakspeare's heroes more touching than his apostrophe to the
scull of Yorick, the King's jester, the mad fellow that poured a flagon of
Rhenish on the clown's head: "a fellow of infinite jest; of most excellent
fancy. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of
merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock
your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?"