A benefit was got up for the wounded ex-tailor on the 19th. Everybody loved him, and public and players exerted themselves in his behalf. The play was ‘The Provoked Husband.’ Royalty patronized it; and many who could not attend, sent cheques on their bankers as their representatives. Ryan lay for some little time in a deplorable state, and it was very much doubted whether he would ever be able to articulate again. The public looked with sympathy upon their favourite actor; and when, on the 26th of the following month, April, he made his appearance in a new part, that of Bellair, in the ‘Double Deceit,’ great was the delight of the playgoers to find that “their esteemed Ryan,” as he was called, was little, if any, the worse in speech, spirits, or gracefulness, and that the footpad’s pistol had not destroyed the man for whom Garrick himself had shown respect, by at once imitating and caricaturing him. Ryan however never did perfectly recover, although he retained his position on the stage for many years longer. It was probably more necessity than inclination that kept him on the stage till 1760, in which year he died, after playing the lovers in Tragedy and the fine gentlemen in Comedy for more than thirty years. The line which he took was subsequently ably filled by Charles Kemble, and for something like the same period. But Charles Kemble had, naturally, advantages which Ryan did not at first possess, and which he only slowly acquired. The former however was the subject of much critical ridicule when he first appeared, so awkward was he in spite of his natural advantages. If Ryan never became thoroughly graceful, he was always perfectly easy; and, notwithstanding a harsh and dissonant voice, he could, like Edmund Kean, so manage that organ as to create good effect out of its very defects. He had, with some slight extravagance, excellent judgement, sense, and feeling; and Johnson could not have said to the honest tailor turned actor, as he did sneeringly to Garrick, that Punch had _no_ feeling. In scenes where Comedy trenched upon the domain of the sister Muse by the exhibition of profound emotion, Ryan was very great; and probably no actor has so nearly resembled him in this respect as Mr. Robson, whose origin is as modestly respectable as Ryan’s was. They who can recollect Elliston, as he played, in his latter days, the genial Rover, may have some idea of what Ryan was, when he grew old, in Captain Plume,—namely, defiant of age, and full of the natural assumption of a spirit that seemed backed by the strength which was not there, but which had a substitute in irresistible goodwill.