There was the unheard-of sum of four hundred pounds in that old Crow Street Theatre on that November night. The university students in the gallery, who generally made it rattle with their wit, were silent as soon as the curtain rose. The Dublin audience was by no means an audience easy to please, or one that would befool itself by passing mediocrity with the stamp of genius upon it. ‘Douglas,’ too, is a tragedy that must be attentively listened to, to be enjoyed, and enjoyment is out of the question if the poetry of the piece be a lost beauty to the deliverer of the lines. On this night, Dublin ratified the Belfast verdict. The graceful boy excited the utmost enthusiasm, and the manager offered him an engagement at an increasing salary, for any number of years. The offer was wisely declined by Master Betty’s father, and the ‘Infant Roscius’ went on his bright career. He played one other part, admirably suited to him in every respect, Prince Arthur, in ‘King John,’ and he fairly drowned the house in tears with it. Frederick, in ‘Lovers’ Vows,’ and Romeo, were only a trifle beyond his age, not at all beyond his grasp, though love-making was the circumstance which he could the least satisfactorily portray. A boy sighing like furnace to young beauty must have seemed as ridiculous as a Juliet of fifty, looking older than the Nurse, and who, one would think, ought to be ashamed of herself to be out in a balcony at that time of night, talking nonsense with that young fellow with a feather in his cap and a sword on his thigh! Dublin wits made fun of Master Betty’s wooing, and were epigrammatic upon it in the style of Martial, and saucy actresses seized the same theme to air their saucy wit. These casters of stones from the roadside could not impede the boy’s triumph. He produced immense effect, even in Thomson’s dreary ‘Tancred,’ but I am sorry to find it asserted that he acted Hamlet, after learning the part in three days. The great Betterton, greatest of the great masters of their art, used to say that he had acted Hamlet and studied it for fifty years, and had not got to the bottom of its philosophy even then. However, the boy’s remarkable gifts made his Hamlet successful. There was a rare comedian who played with him, Richard Jones, with a cast in one eye. Accomplished Dick, whose only serious fault was excess in peppermint lozenges, acted Osric, Count Cassel, and Mercutio, in three of the pieces in which Master Betty played the principal characters. What a glorious true comedian was Dick! After delighting a whole generation with his comedy, Jones retired. He taught clergymen to read the Lord’s Prayer as if they were in earnest, and to deliver the messages of the Gospel as if they believed in them; and in this way Dick Jones did as much for the church as any of the bishops or archbishops of his time.