I have always considered those combinations which are formed in the playhouse as acts of fraud or cruelty. He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public. He that hisses in malice or in sport is an oppressor and a robber. _Dr. Johnson’s Idler, No. 25._ _Master Payne’s performances concluded._ Of the characters represented by this young gentleman, those in which he has evinced greatest powers are Douglas, Tancred, and Romeo, while that in which he is least exceptionable, is Frederick in Lover’s Vows. In his Octavian, which followed next after Douglas, some of the pathetic passages were beautifully expressed. Mrs. Inchbald, in her prefatory remarks to the play of the Mountaineers, says, “_This true lover requires such peculiar art, such consummate skill in the delineation_, that it is probable his representative may have given an impression of the whole drama unfavourable to the author. Nor is this a reproach to the actor who fails; for such a person as Octavian would never have been created, had not Kemble been born some years before him. But, notwithstanding the difference of their ages, it is likely they will both depart this life at the same time.” While the difficulty of delineating Octavian, and the merit of a living performer of it are such, that it is scarcely possible to think of the play without thinking of Kemble, it has so happened that scarcely any character has been attempted by so many actors of all qualities--nor is there one in which so few have come off with actual disgrace. Men who could scarcely be endured in third or fourth rate parts, have selected Octavian to figure in, on their benefit nights. One man who was laughed at in every other character, was supposed by a misjudging audience to play Octavian well; nay, to our knowledge, was preferred to Hodgkinson and Cooper in it. The reason is plain: to the portraying of madness, the injudicious can imagine no limits. The more a madman raves and roars, the better; rags, slovenliness, and matted hair, and beard too, are the usual associates of awkwardness and vulgarity. Any man, therefore, who can rant and play the extravagant, no matter how ungracefully, may pass with some audiences for a very natural Octavian--an abominable absurdity! For these two reasons, Octavian is a very hazardous part for a performer who aims at substantial fame, to attempt. In Master Payne’s performance of it, there was no extravagance to censure; nothing that had the least tendency to enrol him among the Bedlamite butchers of the character, nor was there, on the other hand, a complete uniform delineation of Octavian to afford him the same rank in that, which criticism willingly allows him in some other characters.