He was but seventeen, when his brilliant folly led him to run away from home, and tempt fortune, by playing Oroonoko, in Dublin. The Irish audiences confirmed the judgment of the Westminster critics, and the intelligent lad moved the hands of the men and the hearts of the women, without a check, during a glorious three years of probation. And yet he narrowly escaped failure, through a ridiculous accident, when, in 1698, he made his _début_ as Oroonoko. It was a sultry night in June. While waiting to go on, before his last scene, he inadvertently wiped his darkened face, and the lamp-black thereon came off in streaks. On entering on the stage, unconscious of the countenance he presented, he was saluted with a roar of laughter, and became much confused. The generous laughers then sustained him by loud applause. But Booth was disturbed by this accident, and to obviate its repetition, he went on, the next night, in a crape mask, made by an actress to fit close to his face. Unfortunately, in the first scene the mask slipped, and the new audience were as hilarious as the old. "I looked like a magpie," said Barton; "but they lamp-blacked me for the rest of the night, and I was flayed before I could get it off again." The mishap of the first night did not affect his triumph; this was so complete that Ashbury, the "master," made him a present of five guineas; bright forerunners of the fifty that were to be placed in his hands by delighted Bolingbroke. The hitherto penniless player was now fairly on the first step of the ascent it was his to accomplish. When he subsequently passed through Lancashire to London, in 1701, his fame had gone before him; he reached the capital with his manly beauty to gain him additional favour, with a heavy purse, and a steady conviction of even better fortune to come. With such a personage, his hitherto angry kinsmen were, of course, reconciled forthwith.