LIFE

OF

EDMUND KEAN.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE -MATERNAL ANCESTRYABANDONED BY HIS MOTHER-ADOPTED BY MISS TIDSWELL-PUT OUT ΤΟ NURSE-HIS APPEARANCE (WHEN A CHILD) AT DRURY LANE THEA

TRE-RECITES RICHARD III. INTRODUCED ΤΟ MRS. CLARKE-EXHIBITS AT HER House.

IT is a custom of authors, when compiling the history of any one of their great men, to usher in his achievements by some magnificent preamble. In this, the writer, not satisfied with the simple merits of his hero,

inflicts upon him a long and unprofitable pedigree; tracing his ancestry, without help from heralds or affidavits, straight up to the times of Fingal, or the Flood. We shall venture to deviate from this ancient custom.

For

We are of opinion, that a heavy genealogical foundation is by no means necessary to support a great man's fame. Other persons, we admit, take a different view of the subject. The Chinese, for instance, (who excel even the Welsh in this respect,) derive their kings and conquerors lineally from the moon. our own parts, we should be content to refer to "The Man" in it. Under these impressions, we take leave, upon the present occasion, to tell simply the truth. And should we be accused, hereafter, of having done this at the expense of our tragedian, why "Be chesm!" (as the Persians cry out,) "On our eyes be it!" We are willing to endure all the obloquy that shall attach to such an original proceeding.

Our prologue, it will be seen, is very brief. That done, we will now proceed to facts.

The birth and parentage of EDMUND KEAN are, apparently, equally unknown. It would have been easy, indeed, from the handsome quantity of materials before us, to have rendered a very satisfactory account of our hero's origin; but we have refrained. Indeed, we feel bound in honour, to declare our belief, that no such information exists as his biographers can use with entire confidence. One statement is perpetually opposed to another, and date after date is encountered by denials, and sometimes utterly refuted by subsequent well established facts. Without impeaching the veracity of his historians, we may fairly doubt the fidelity of their memories. And, in regard to the accounts given by Kean himself, (to say nothing of their differing from each other,) he was at once so fond of mystification, and so oblivious or

careless of all truth relating to his childhood, that no reliance whatever can be placed upon them.

And, it is not very important, in the history of the remarkable man whose acts we are now about to record, that we should be enabled to specify the precise day and hour of his birth. Enough is known of the general course of his childhood, to assist us in ascribing to certain accidents of fortune, much of the good and evil of his after life.

From his personal appearance at different periods, it is scarcely possible to imagine the year of his birth to have been later than 1787. Miss Tidswell, indeed, places it in 1789; but we think she must have mistaken the year; for he was playing in tragedy, comedy, opera, farce, pantomime, and every line of character, in the early part of 1804, at Sheerness; so that he must at that time

have been at least seventeen years old. In 1806 he was (in Mr. Morris's phrase)

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quite a young man," acting man's parts at the Haymarket theatre; and in 1808, when he was married, he bore the appearance of a man of two or three and twenty years of age. In fact, he was under an engagement to marry a young girl in Scotland, as early as the year 1805; a piece of ambition that he would scarcely have been guilty of at the immature age of sixteen years.

We cannot, as we have said, speak with certainty either as to his parentage or birth; but, according to the best conclusions we are able to form, from the conflicting evidence before us, Edmund Kean was the son of one Edmund Kean, by Ann Carey, and was born in the year 1787. Edmund Kean, the supposed father, was in the employ of a Mr. Wilmot, the builder of the Royalty theatre, and whilst occupied there, became intimate