The walks looked like a masquerade scene at a time of high carnival, and bad taste reigned undisturbed. Reformers however sought to amend it; and Paul Whitehead, the tailor-poet, used to say that the taste of the nation depended upon Garrick! Davy’s own taste was very questionable in some respects, for he played Macbeth in the then costume of a general officer, with scarlet coat, gold lace, and a tail-wig. All the other actors were attired in similar dresses; and if Malcolm, on seeing Rosse at a distance, exclaimed, “My countryman!” he was quite right to exclaim, on seeing an English recruiting sergeant advance, “and yet I know him not!” But Rosse might have said as much of Malcolm. It was Macklin who first put Macbeth and all the characters into national costume, when he played the chief character himself, in 1773; and all the thanks he got for it was in the remark that he looked like a drunken Scotch piper—which he did. But Macbeth in kilts is nearly as great an anomaly as when he is in the uniform of a brigadier-general; and even Mr. Charles Kean, though he exhibited the Thane short-petticoated, seemed glad to get into long clothes and propriety as soon as the Thane had grown into a king. Macklin was a comedian rather than a tragedian, and it is singular that it is to another comic actor we owe the correct dressing of Othello. It was in the latter character that Foote made his first appearance in London, at the Haymarket, in 1744. He was announced as a “gentleman” whose Othello “will be new dressed, after the manner of his country.” Mr. Wright would now play the character with about as much propriety and equal success, or the want of it. Foote is said to have looked very much like the black boy with the tea-kettle in Hogarth’s ‘Marriage à la Mode.’ “Bring the tea-kettle and lamp!” was Quin’s exclamation, when he saw Garrick enter, blacked as Othello. And we may note that, at this time, if a stage-manager were not acting in any piece represented during the evening, he was exempted from coming before the audience, whatever confusion might reign in the house. He was said to be not dressed. Austin never so much offended Garrick as when he bought a cast-off dress, the exact counterpart of that worn by Garrick himself in Lothario, and in which Austin intended to accompany Roscius on the stage. It was assumed on purpose to annoy Garrick, who wanted Austin to increase the number of companions who should surround the gallant, gay Lothario; and Austin’s method of obedience made Davy eager to excuse his humble friend’s attendance.