The theatrical career of his ‘Young Roscius’ period amounted to this. He played at both houses in London from December 1804 to April 1805, in a wide range of characters, and supported by some of the first actors of the day. He then played in every town of importance throughout England and Scotland. He returned to London for the season 1805-6, and acted twenty-four nights at each theatre, at fifty guineas a night. Subsequently he acted in the country; and finally, he took leave of the stage at Bath in March 1808. Altogether, London possessed him but a few months. The madness which prevailed about him was ‘midsummer madness,’ though it was but a short fit. That he himself did not go mad is the great wonder. Princes of the blood called on him, the Lord Chancellor invited him, nobles had him day after day to dinner, and the King presented him to the Queen and Princesses in the room behind the Royal box. Ladies carried him off to the Park as those of Charles II.’s time did with Kynaston. When he was ill the sympathetic town rushed to read his bulletins with tremulous eagerness. Portraits of him abounded, presents were poured in upon him, poets and poetasters deafened the ear about him, misses patted his beautiful hair and asked ‘locks’ from him. The future King of France and Navarre, Count d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., witnessed his performance, in French, of ‘Zaphna,’ at Lady Percival’s; Gentleman Smith presented him with Garrick relics; Cambridge University gave ‘Roscius’ as the subject for the Brown Prize Medal, and the House of Commons adjourned, at the request of Pitt, in order to witness his ‘Hamlet.’ At the Westminster Latin Play (the ‘Adelphi’ of Terence) he was present in a sort of royal state, and the Archbishop of York all but publicly blest him. Some carping persons remarked that the boy was too ignorant to understand a word of the play that was acted in his presence. When it is remembered how Latin was and is pronounced at Westminster, it is not too much to say that Terence (had he been there) would not have understood much more of his own play than Master Betty did. The boy reigned triumphantly through his little day, and the professional critics generally praised to the skies his mental capacity as well as his bodily endowments. They discovered beauty in both, and it is to the boy’s credit that their praise did not render him conceited. He studied new parts, and his attention to business, his modesty, his boyish spirits in the green room, his docility, and the respect he paid to older artists, were among the items of the professional critic’s praise.