On the second of May, his corpse was with much ceremony interred in Westminster Abbey, and the excellent author of the Tatler, has given such an account of the solemnity of it, as will outlast the Abbey itself. And it is no small mortification to us, that it is inconsistent with our proposed bounds, to transcribe the whole: It is writ with a noble spirit; there is in it an air of solemnity and grandeur; the thoughts rise naturally from one another; they fill the mind with an awful dread, and consecrate Mr. Betterton to immortality, with the warmth of friendship, heightened by admiration. As to the character of this great man in his profession, the reader need but reflect on Mr. Colley Cibber's account here inserted, who was well qualified to judge, and who, in his History of the Stage, has drawn the most striking pictures that ever were exhibited; even the famous lord Clarendon, whose great excellence is characterising, is not more happy in that particular, than the Laureat; no one can read his portraits of the players, without imagining he sees the very actors before his eyes, their air, their attitudes, their gesticulations. Mr. Betterton was a man of great study and application; and, with respect to the subjects that employed his attention, he was as much a master of them as any man. He was an excellent critic, more especially on Shakespear, and Fletcher. Mr. Rowe, who was a good judge, and also studied the same authors with deep attention, gives this testimony in his favour, and celebrates, in the warmest manner, Betterton's critical abilities. His knowledge of Shakespear's merit, gave him so strong, and so perfect an esteem for him, that he made a pilgrimage into Staffordshire to visit his tomb, and to collect whatever particulars tradition might have preserved in relation to his history; and these he freely communicated to the same friend, who candidly acknowledges, that the Memoirs of Shakespear's Life he published, were the produce of that journey, and freely bestowed upon him by the collector. Mr. Booth, who knew him only in his decline, frequently made mention of him, and said, he never saw him either off, or on the stage, without learning something from him; he frequently observed, that Mr. Betterton was no actor, but he put on his part with his clothes, and was the very man he undertook to be, 'till the play was over, and nothing more. So exact was he in following nature, that the look of surprize he assumed in the character of Hamlet so astonished Booth (when he first personated the Ghost) as to disable him for some moments from going on. He was so communicative, that in the most capital parts, he would enter into the grounds of his action, and explain, the principles of his art. He was an admirable master of the action of the stage, considered as independent of sentiment; and knew perfectly the connection, and business of the scenes, so as to attract, preserve, and satisfy the attention of art