Mrs. Oldfield, Wilks, and Booth, like Colley Cibber, though they appeared towards the close of the seventeenth, really belong to the eighteenth century, and I shall defer noticing them till my readers and I arrive at that latter period. The rest will require but a few words. Young Horden was a handsome and promising actor, who died of a brawl at the Rose Tavern, Covent Garden. He and two or three comrades were quaffing their wine, and laughing, at the bar, when some fine gentlemen, in an adjacent room, affecting to be disturbed by the gaiety of the players, rudely ordered them to be quiet. The actors returned an answer which brought blood to the cheek, fierce words to the lips, hand to the sword, and a resulting fight, in which the handsome Hildebrand was slain by a Captain Burgess. The captain was carried to the Gate-house, from which, says the _Protestant Mercury_, he was rescued at night, "by a dozen or more of fellows with short clubs and pistols." So ended, in 1696, Hildebrand Horden, not without the sympathy of loving women, who went in masks, and some without the vizard, to look upon and weep over his handsome, shrouded corpse. A couple of paragraphs in Luttrell's Diary conclude Horden's luckless story: "Saturday, 17th October, Mr. John Pitts was tried at the session for killing Mr. Horden, the player, and acquitted, he being no ways accessary thereto, more than being in company when 'twas done." On Tuesday, 30th November 1697, the diarist writes: "Captain Burgess, _who killed_ Mr. Horden, the player, has obtained his Majesty's pardon." Of Mrs. Cibber, it can only be said that she was the wife of a great, and of Bullock, that he was the father of a good, actor. To Johnson no more praise can be awarded than to Bullock.[48] William[49] Mills deserves a word or two more of notice than these last. He was on the stage from 1696 to 1737,[50] and though only a "solid" actor, he excelled Cibber, in Corvino, in Jonson's "Volpone;" surpassed Smith in the part of Pierre, and was only second to Quin, in Volpone himself. His Ventidius, in Dryden's tragedy, "All for Love," to Booth's Anthony, is praised for its natural display of the true spirit of a rough and generous soldier. Of his original parts, the chief were Jack Stanmore, in "Oroonoko;" Aimwell, in the "Beaux Stratagem;" Charles, in the "Busy Body;" Pylades, in the "Distressed Mother;" Colonel Briton, in the "Wonder;" Zanga, in the "Revenge;" and Manly, in the "Provoked Husband." That some of these were beyond his powers is certain; but he owed his being cast for them to the friendship of Wilks, when the latter was manager. To a like cause may be ascribed the circumstance of his having the same salary as Betterton, £4 per week, and £1 for his wife; but this was not till after Betterton's death.