Public regrets are showered about your
great actor, and by some he is forgotten with the last trump of his praise.
He "retires:" that is, he looks out for a cottage in the country, far
removed from his former sphere of action, (as plain John Fawcett did the
other day,) or he diverges to a snug box in the suburbs of London, still
lingering about the great stage, as did honest Joseph Munden about seven
years since. People in the boxes or pit look out for his successor in the
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.
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