It is exceedingly improbable that the mystery involved in these discrepancies and contradictions will now ever be cleared up in a satisfactory manner. One thing alone, amidst all the confusion and obscurity, seems certain; namely, that the Careys were in Richardson's company before Kean joined it, and that, whether or not he believed them to be his parents, he dropped their acquaintance when he threw off their authority. Raymond says that when Kean, after his marriage, visited Bartholomew Fair, he was recognised by Carey, who was standing on the parade of Richardson's theatre, and ran down the steps to greet him; the tragedian seemed mortified, treated the strolling actor coldly, and "slunk away, literally like a dog in a fair." In pondering the probabilities of the case, it is obvious that considerable allowance must be made for the obscurity which envelopes the origin of Kean's existence. Their only authority being Miss Tidswell, it is natural that the biographers should suppose the woman who passed for Kean's mother with Richardson and his company to be the Nancy Carey of her story, and mention her as Miss Carey. But the evidence of the bills, which cannot have been known to them, forces upon us the re-consideration of the story of Kean's parentage which has hitherto passed current. Miss Tidswell's story can be reconciled with the facts only by the hypothesis that Anne Carey, subsequently to Kean's birth, became the wife of H. Carey, the sameness of name being due to cousinship, or perhaps merely a coincidence. Kean's illegitimacy may have been known to Richardson, whose knowledge of the circumstance would explain the reason of his speaking of Mrs. Carey as the mother of Master Carey, while he says nothing to warrant the supposition that he regarded her husband as the lad's father. But everything about Kean's early life is mysterious and obscure. How and when did he acquire the classical lore which he seems to have possessed? Certainly not while he was roaming the streets of London, frequenting all the fairs, and practising flip-flaps; nor while travelling with Saunders, Scowton, and Richardson, and rejoicing in the cognomen of Mr. King Dick. As little likely does it seem that he could have acquired it at that subsequent period of his life when the leisure which his profession left him was passed in disreputable taverns, in low orgies with the worst companions. "You see this inequality in the bridge of my nose?" he once observed to Benson Hill, the author of a couple of amusing volumes of theatrical anecdotes and adventures. "It was dealt me by a demmed pewter pot, hurled from the hand of Jack Thurtell. We were borne, drunk and bleeding, to the watch-house, for the night. When I was taken out, washed, plastered, left to cogitate on any lie, of an accident in a stage fight, I told it, and was believed, for the next day I dined with the Bishop of Norwich."