Longer known was Anthony Lee or Leigh, that industrious and mirthful player, who, in the score of years he was before the public--from 1672 to 1692--originated above thrice that number of characters. His masterpiece was Dryden's Spanish Friar, Dominique. How he _looked_ in that once famous part, may be seen by any one who can gain access to Knowle, where his portrait, painted for the Earl of Dorset, still hangs--and all but speaks. But we may see how Leigh looked by another portrait, painted in words, by Cibber. "In the canting, grave hypocrisy, of the Spanish Friar, Leigh stretched the veil of piety so thinly over him, that in every look, word, and motion, you saw a palpable, wicked slyness shine throughout it. Here he kept his vivacity demurely confined, till the pretended duty of his function demanded it: and then he exerted it with a choleric, sacerdotal insolence. I have never yet seen any one that has filled them" (the scenes of broad jests) "with half the truth and spirit of Leigh. I do not doubt but the poet's knowledge of Leigh's genius helped him to many a pleasant stroke of nature, which, without that knowledge, never might have entered into his conception." Leigh had the art of making pieces--dull to the reader, side-splitting mirth to an audience. In such pieces he and Nokes kept up the ball between them; but with the players perished also the plays. [Illustration: (Anthony Leigh.)] Less happy than Leigh was poor Matthew Medbourne, an actor of merit, and a young man of some learning, whose brief career was cut short by a too fervent zeal for his religion, which led him into a participation in the "Popish Plot." The testimony of Titus Oates caused his arrest, on the 26th of November 1678, and his death;--for poor Medbourne died of the Newgate rigour in the following March. He is memorable, as being the first who introduced Molière's "Tartuffe" on the English stage, in a close translation, which was acted in 1670, with remarkable success. Cibber's "Nonjuror" (1717), and Bickerstaffe's "Hypocrite" (1768), were only adaptations--the first of "Tartuffe," and the second of the "Nonjuror." Mr. Oxenford, however, reproduced the original in a more perfect form than Medbourne, in a translation in verse, which was brought out at the Haymarket, in 1851, with a success most honestly earned by all, and especially deserving on the part of Mr. Webster, who played the principal character.