Then for his humility, I find the testimony of Pepys sufficiently corroborated. It may have been politic in him, as a young man, to repair to Mr. Cowley's lodgings in town, and ask from that author his particular views with regard to the Colonel Jolly in the "Cutter of Coleman Street," which had been intrusted to the young actor; but the politic humility of 1661 was, in fact, the practised modesty of his life. In the very meridian of his fame, he, and Mrs. Barry also, were as ready to take instruction respecting the characters of Jaffier and Belvidera, from poor battered Otway, as they subsequently were from that very fine gentleman, Mr. Congreve, when they were cast for the hero and heroine of his comedies. Even to bombastic Rowe, who hardly knew his own reasons for language put on the lips of his characters, they listened with deference; and, at another period, "Sir John and Lady Brute" were not undertaken by them till they had conferred with the author, solid Vanbrugh. The mention of these last personages reminds me of a domestic circumstance of interest respecting Betterton. He and Mrs. Barry acted the principal characters in "The Provoked Wife;" the part of Lady Fancyfull was played by Mrs. Bowman. This young lady was the adopted child of the Bettertons, and the daughter of a friend (Sir Frederick Watson, Bart.) whose indiscretion or ill-luck had scattered that fortune the laying of the foundation of which is recorded by Pepys. To the sire Betterton had intrusted the bulk of his little wealth as a commercial venture to the East Indies. A ruinous failure ensued, and I know of nothing which puts the private life of the actor in so pleasing a light, as the fact of his adopting the child of the wholly ruined man who had nearly ruined _him_. He gave her all he had to bestow, careful instruction in his art; and the lady became an actress of merit. This merit, added to considerable personal charms, won for her the homage of Bowman, a player who became, in course of time, the father of the stage, though he never grew, confessedly, old. In after years, he would converse freely enough of his wife and her second father, Betterton; but if you asked the carefully-dressed Mr. Bowman anything with respect to his age, no other reply was to be had from him than--"Sir, it is very well!" From what has been previously stated, it will be readily believed that the earnestness of Betterton continued to the last. Severely disciplined, as he had been by Davenant, he subjected himself to the same discipline to the very close; and he was not pleased to see it disregarded or relaxed by younger actors whom late and gay "last nights" brought ill and incompetent to rehearsal. Those actors might have reaped valuable instruction out of the harvest of old Thomas's experience and wisdom, had they been so minded.