The play was Dr. Brown's _Barbarossa_, a good imitation of the _Mérope_ of Voltaire, in which Garrick had formerly acted Achmet, or Selim, now given to Master Betty. An occasional address was intended, and Mr. Charles Kemble attempted to speak it, but in vain. The play proceeded through the first act, but in dumb show. At length Barbarossa ordered Achmet to be brought before him; attention held the audience mute; not even a whisper could be heard, till Selim appeared. By the thunder of applause which ensued, he was not much moved; he bowed very respectfully, but with amazing self-possession, and in a few moments turned to his work with the intelligence of a veteran, and the youthful passion that alone could have accomplished a task so arduous. As a slave, he wore white pantaloons, a close and rather short russet jacket trimmed with sables, and a turban. "What first struck me," says Mr. Boaden, a trustworthy critic, "was that his voice had considerable power, and a depth of tone beyond his apparent age; at the same time it appeared heavy and unvaried. His great fault grew from want of careful tuition in the outset. In the provincial way, he dismissed the aspirate; and in closing syllables, ending in _m_ or _n_, he converted the vowel _i_ frequently into _e_, and sometimes more barbarously still into _u_. Whether he obtained this from careless speakers in Ireland or England, I cannot be sure; but this inaccuracy I remember to have sometimes heard even from Miss O'Neil. He was sometimes too rapid to be distinct, and at others too noisy for anything but rant. I found no peculiarities that denoted minute and happy studies. He spoke the speeches as I had always heard them spoken, and was therefore, only wrong where he laid vehement emphasis. The wonder was how any boy, who had just completed his _thirteenth year_, could catch passion, meaning, cadence, action, expression, and the discipline of the stage, in ten very different and arduous characters, so as to give the kind of pleasure in them that needed no indulgence, and which, from that very circumstance, heightened satisfaction into enthusiasm. Such were his performances of Tancred, Romeo, Frederick, Octavian, Hamlet, Osman, Achmet, Young Norval, &c."