_Moody the Actor_ was an avaricious man. He once lent money to Mr. Brereton, the actor; Brereton did not return it immediately, and Moody waited with some degree of patience. At length, the first time Moody met him, he looked earnestly at him, and vented a kind of noise between a sigh and a groan. He repeated this interjection whenever he met Brereton, who at length was so annoyed, that he put his hand in his pocket and paid him. Moody took the money, and with a gentler aspect said, "Did I ask you for it, Billy?"--Speaking of Sheridan, Moody once said, "I have the highest respect for Mr. Sheridan; I honour his talents, and would do anything to show my friendship for him, but take his word."--_Taylor._ * * * * * _A Cruel Physiognomist._--Quin said of Macklin, "If God writes a legible hand, that fellow is a villain." At another time, Quin had the hardihood to say to Macklin himself, "Mr. Macklin, by the _lines_--I beg your pardon, sir--by the _cordage_ of your face, you should be hanged." * * * * * "_The Grand Pause._"--Macklin had three pauses in his acting--the first, moderate; the second, twice as long; but his last, or "grand pause," as he styled it, was so long, that the prompter, on one occasion, thinking his memory failed, repeated the cue (as it is technically called) several times, and at last so loud as to be heard by the audience. At length Macklin rushed from the stage, and knocked him down, exclaiming, "The fellow interrupted me in my grand pause!" _John Gilpin_.--Henderson, the actor, in his public readings, first brought into notice the humorous tale of John Gilpin, which he recited with such spirit and comic effect that it drew public attention to the poems of Cowper in general, which, excellent as they are, particularly _The Task_, were but little known at the time, though they are now justly in universal estimation. * * * * * _Bibb the Engraver._--Taylor relates: How Bibb supported himself, having relinquished engraving, it would be difficult to conceive, if he had not levied taxes upon all whom he knew, insomuch that, besides his title of Count, he acquired that of "Half-crown Bibb," by which appellation he was generally distinguished; and according to a rough, and, perhaps, fanciful estimate, he had borrowed at least 2,000_l._ in half-crowns. I remember to have met him on the day when the death of Dr. Johnson was announced in the newspapers, and, expressing my regret at the loss of so great a man, Bibb interrupted me, and spoke of him as a man of no genius, whose mind contained nothing but the lumber of learning. I was modestly beginning a panegyric upon the doctor, when he again interrupted me with, "Oh! never mind, that old blockhead. Have you such a thing as ninepence about you?" Luckily for him I had a little more. * * * * *