3dly. _His personal deformity._--When the _Richard_ of Mr. Cooke makes allusions to his own _form_, they seem accompanied with _unmixed distaste_ and _pain_, like some obtrusive and _haunting_ idea--But surely the _Richard_ of Shakespeare mingles in these allusions a perpetual reference to his own powers and capacities, by which he is enabled to surmount these petty objections; and the joy of a defect _conquered_, or _turned_ into an advantage, is one cause of these very allusions, and of the satisfaction, with which his mind recurs to them. These allusions themselves are made in an ironical and good humoured spirit of exaggeration--the most bitter of them are to be found in his self-congratulating soliloquy spoken in the very moment and crisis of joyful exultation on the success of his unheard of courtship.--No _partial excellence_ can satisfy for this absence of a _just general conception_--otherwise we are inclined to admit, that, in the delivery of _single sentences_, in a _new_ and often _felicitous_ light thrown upon _old_ and _hitherto misconstrued_ passages, no actor that we have seen has gone beyond Mr. Cooke. He is always _alive_ to the scene before him; and by the _fire_ and _novelty_ of his manner, he seems likely to infuse some _warm blood_ into the _frozen declamatory stile_, into which our theatres have for some time past been degenerating. II.--GRAND STATE BED Ever since an account of the Marquis of Exeter's Grand State Bed appeared in the fashionable world, grandeur in this article of furniture has become quite the rage. Among others the Lord Mayor feeling for the dignity of the city of London, has petitioned the Corporation for one of great splendour to be placed in the Mansion-house, _at the City's expence_. We have been favoured with a description of this magnificent state bed, the choice of his Lordship. The body is formed by the callipee, or under shell of a large turtle, carved in mahogany, and sufficiently capacious to receive two well-fed people. The callipash, or upper shell, forms the canopy. The posts are four gigantic figures richly gilt: two of them accurate copies of Gog and Magog; the other two represent Sir William Walworth and the last man in armour. Cupids with custards are the supporters. The curtains are of mazarine purple, and curiously wrought with the series of the idle and industrious apprentice from Hogarth, in gold embroidery: but the vallens exceed description; _there_, the various incidents in the life of Whittington are painted. The mice in one of the compartments are done so much to the life, that his Lordship's cat, who is an accurate judge of mice, was deceived. The quilt is of fashionable patchwork figures, the description of which we shall not anticipate, as, we understand, Mr. Birch has obtained a sketch of it for his large Twelfth Cake. The whole is worthy of the taste of the first Magistrate of the first City in the world. III.--FABLE FOR TWELFTH DAY