acting Macbeth at Drury Lane; and, in the "cauldron scene," he engaged
some children to personate the supernatural beings summoned by the
witches from that weird vessel. Little Edmund with his irons was the
cause of a ridiculous accident, and the attempt to embody the ghostly
forms was abruptly abandoned. But the child seems to have been
pardoned for his blunder, and for a short time was permitted by the
manager to appear in one or two children's parts. Little did the
dignified manager imagine that the child--who was one of his
cauldron of imps in _Macbeth_--was to become, twenty years later, his
formidable rival--formidable enough to oust almost the representative
of the Classical school from the supremacy he had hitherto enjoyed on
the Tragic stage. In Orange Court, Leicester Square, where Holcroft,
the author of _The Road to Ruin_, was born, Edmund Kean received
his first education. Scanty enough it was, for it had scarcely begun
before his wretched mother stepped in and claimed him; and, after her
re-appearance, his education seems to have been of a most spasmodic
character. Hitherto, the child's experience of life had been hard
enough. When only eight years of age he ran away to Portsmouth, and
shipped himself on board a ship bound to Madeira. But he found his
new life harder than that from which he had escaped, and, by dint of
feigning deafness and lameness, he succeeded in procuring his removal
to an hospital at Madeira, whence, the doctors finding his case
yielded to no remedies, the authorities kindly shipped him again to
England. He insisted on being deaf and lame: indeed, so deaf that in
a violent thunder-storm he remained perfectly unmoved, explaining his
composure by declaring that he could not hear any noise at all. From
Portsmouth he made his way on foot to London. On presenting himself
at the wretched lodgings where his mother lived, he found that she had
gone away with Richardson's troupe. Penniless and half-starving, he
suddenly thought of his uncle, Moses Kean, who lived in Lisle Street,