_The Sp.-F.M._ Right--we'll give yer a look in presently--it'll be a
little change for the Ole Man--trades's somethin' cruel _'ere_!

* * * * *

HIS MAD-JESTY AT THE LYCEUM.

Except when HENRY IRVING impersonated the hapless victim of false
imprisonment in the Bastille, whence he issued forth after twenty
years of durance, never has he been so curiously and wonderfully
made-up as now, when he represents _Lear_, monarch of all he surveys.
Bless thee, HENRY, how art thou transformed!

[Illustration: Rather mixed. Mr. Irving as "Ophe-Lear."]

Sure such a _King Lear_ was never seen on any stage, so perfect in
appearance, so entirely the ideal of SHAKSPEARE'S ancient King.
It must have been a vision of IRVING in this character that the
divinely-inspired poet and dramatist saw when he had a _Lear_ in his
eye. For a moment, too, he reminded me of BOOTH--the "General," not
the "particular" American tragedian,--and when he appeared in thunder,
lightning, hail, and rain, he suggested an embodiment of the "_Moses_"
of MICHAEL ANGELO.

A strange weird play; much for an audience, and more for an actor, all
on his own shoulders, to bear. A one-part play it is too, for of the
sweet _Cordelia_,--and sweet did ELLEN TERRY look and so tenderly did
she play!--little is seen or heard. With _Goneril_ and _Regan_, the
two proud and wicked sisters,--associated in the mind of the modernest
British Public with Messrs. HERBERT CAMPBELL and HARRY NICHOLLS, as is