SELECT BIOGRAPHY.

THE LATE MR. MUNDEN.

(With Recollections.)

Great actors have two lives, or rather they have double deaths. Their leave-taking of the public, their "retirement," as biographers call it, is one death; since a playgoer then considers an actor dead "to all intents and purposes"—a very non est. 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. They must remind them of a last farewell, and we know

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?"

Munden was the son of a poulterer in Brooke's Market, Holborn, where he was born in the year 1758. His father died soon afterwards, leaving his widow with slender means, and Munden was thrust upon the world to seek his fortune at twelve years of age. He was placed in an apothecary's shop, but soon left it for an attorney's office. Perhaps, like Dr. Wolcot, he fancied the clinking of the pestle and mortar said "Kill 'em again! kill 'em again." From the attorney's office, he "fell off," as Hamlet's Ghost would say, to a law-stationer's shop, and became "a hackney writer:" the technicality needs not explanation: to hack at anything is neither the road to fame nor a good meal. He was apprenticed in Chancery Lane: his master died and was succeeded by an older man, of the square-toed fraternity, who taxed Munden with being a Macaroni more than a tradesman. Munden, in consequence, parted from his master, and once more returned to the office of a solicitor. They who remember Munden, a staid-dressing man in later years, may smile at his early observance of the glass of fashion.

Munden's style of acting was exuberant with humour. His face was his fortune: it was all changeful nature: his eye glistened and rolled, and lit up alternately every corner of his laughing face: "then the eternal tortuosities of his nose, and the alarming descent of his chin, contrasted, as it eternally was, with the portentous rise of his eyebrows." He has been blamed for grimace, but it should be remembered that many of his characters verged on caricatures. That he could play comic characters chastely was amply shown in his Polonius; and touch the finer feelings of our nature was exemplified in his Old Dornton, in Holcroft's catching play of the Road to Ruin. The fine discrimination evinced by Munden in the grief and joy of the exclamations "Who would be a father," and "Who would not be a father," will not soon be forgotten. We think we see and hear his stout figure, in black, with florid face, and powdered hair, his raised and clasped hands,—rushing out of the lockup-house scene in all the fervid extasy of a father rejoicing at the escape of his son from destruction. In Crack, Dozey, Nipperkin, and other drunken characters, his drollery was irresistible. His intoxication displayed as much discrimination as his pathetic performances. Who can forget his stare in being detected in his fuddling as Dozey, and his plea for drinking to "wa-ash down your honour's health:" or his anti-polarity as Nipperkin, when his very legs seemed drunk beneath him; his attempt to set down the keg would stagger the disbelievers of perpetual motion. Again, who did not relish the richness of his voice, and the arch crispness which he gave to some words, while others came not trippingly off his tongue, but lingered and jarred with an effect which accounts for so many imitators. His mouth had a peculiar twist, somewhat resembling that of Mathews, which at times almost forbad his plain speaking.

We have seen that Munden was

As he ripened, he became tinged with the old gentlemanly vice. He almost made penury his hobby. Oxberry's widow asked him, after his retirement, to play for her benefit: he said he could not, but that, if ever he performed again, he would present her with 100l. It is related of him too, that a friend asking him for a keepsake, he exchanged his old cotton umbrella for his friend's silk one. Elliston and Munden were on good terms, though men of very opposite habits. Munden had played twelve nights for Elliston at Leamington. The manager had his wine, and the actor his brandy and water, in the greenroom; before leaving the town, Munden sent for his bill at the next tavern—14 glasses as many shillings. He asked Elliston to contribute 3s. which the manager refused to do, as Munden had drunk his wine; "but," retorted Munden, screwing his features up to the very point of exaction, "Sip-pings, remember sip-pings," alluding to Elliston's occasional visits to his glass, while he was playing his part. It is said too, though we know not how truly, that Munden was once seen, walking to Kentish Town, with four mackerel, suspended from his fingers by a twig, he having purchased the fish at a low price in Clare-Market. But this is venial: for a string of fish is one of the parcels which John Wilkes said, a gentleman may carry. Munden was a willing diner-out, and his conviviality made him a welcome guest at any board. His hospitality at home was unbounded; and above all, he has left an exemplary character for honesty and integrity: he was one of those

Mr. Munden has left a widow, a son, and a daughter to share his well-earned fortune.