We approach the forties, when Rouse, like Phelps with Shakespeare at Sadler’s Wells, had the audacity to present a whole series of operas in the City Road. If these representations were not brilliant, they were praiseworthy efforts, and a revelation to East Central London. Rouse had a good band and chorus; an excellent tenor in Frazer from Covent Garden Theatre; C. Horn, the composer of ‘Cherry Ripe,’ Russell Grover, and various passable prima donnas. {61b} Among the operas announced in the bills of the forties we find the _Barber of Seville_, the _Crown Diamonds_, _Don Giovanni_, _La Gazza Ladra_, and _Sonnambula_. In these attempts to improve the musical taste of the neighbourhood, Rouse is reported to have lost £2,000 yearly, but as the tavern brought him in about £5,000 a year he could well afford the experiment. At the Christmas of 1844, pantomime, which was to make the fame of the later Grecian theatre, found its place in the programme, and Richard Flexmore, a really agile, inventive, and humorous clown, made his appearance. A more remarkable actor, who joined the Grecian company about this time, and remained with it for five years, was Frederick Robson, who was given parts in the farces and vaudevilles. Robson’s great reputation dates from his performances at the Olympic from 1853 onwards, but at the Grecian he had already given an unmistakable taste of his quality. His famous song ‘Villikins and his Dinah’ was first heard at the Eagle. A man of strange physique, with a small body and a big head, he could do what he would with his audience—convulsing them with laughter by some outrageous drollery; thrilling them with ‘an electrical burst of passion or pathos, or holding them midway between terror and laughter as he performed some weirdly grotesque dance.’ {62a} In burlesque and extravaganza he displayed such passionate intensity that he seemed to give promise of a second Kean—yet a Kean he never became. A playgoer who saw him often has acutely suggested that ‘the very opportunity of exaggeration afforded by burlesque elicited the display of a quasi-tragic power which would have ceased if the condition of exaggeration were withdrawn.’ {62b} March 1, 1851, was memorable at the Eagle as the last night of the proprietorship of old Thomas Rouse. He died at Boulogne a year later (September 26, 1852). During his twenty-seven years of management he had done much to deserve the title of ‘Bravo’ Rouse, with which his audiences were wont to hail him. For one thing, he was never bored by his own entertainments, but used to sit, night after night, in a box or other conspicuous place—a symbol of order, armed with a big stick, which one fancies he would have used if necessary.