Walpole was accustomed to describe Garrick as a mere machine, in whom the power to express Shakspeare's words with propriety, was absurdly held to be a merit! "On the night of Powell's first appearance, the audience," says Walpole, "not content with clapping, stood up and shouted." Walpole adds, that Powell had been clerk to Sir Robert Ladbroke, and "so clever in business, that his master would have taken him in as a partner; but he had an impulse for the stage. His figure is fine, and voice most sonorous, as they say, but I wait for the rebound of his fame, and till I can get in, but at present all the boxes are taken for a month." Walpole suppresses the fact that Garrick had not only selected Powell as his substitute, in his absence, but had carefully instructed him in the part of Philaster, and thereby helped him to the triumphant position which the younger actor, then twenty-eight years of age, held during the first of his few seasons, from 1763 to 1768, the year of poor Powell's death. No new tragic poet of eminence now arose, nor did any old one increase his reputation. Home is supposed to have been thinking of the siege of Berwick when, in his "Siege of Aquileia," he pourtrayed our Edward under the figure of Maximin. Brooke's boasted purity of language and sentiment in _his_ "Earl of Essex" was playfully crushed by Johnson. "Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free," was a line cited for its beauty, by Sheridan, the actor. "Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat," was the stupid comment of the lexicographer. Farce flourished within this period,--supplied by the Rev. Mr. Townley, Garrick, Foote, Colman, and Murphy, the last of whom increased his fame by such comedies as the bustling, and yet monotonously bustling, "All in the Wrong," and the "Way to Keep Him." The authors of this period sought to correct faults and not to laugh at them. This, perhaps, gives a didactic turn to the plays of Murphy and Mrs. Sheridan, which renders them somewhat heavy when compared with the comedies of those who were rather among the wits, than the teachers, of their days. But a new brilliancy, too, was to be found in the later writers. Colman's "Jealous Wife," in which Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard were the Mr. and Mrs. Oakley, and the "Clandestine Marriage," principally Colman's, but in which Garrick had a share, were full of this brilliancy. With the exception of Hoadley's "Suspicious Husband," no modern comedy had such success as these. Every great actor still tries Mr. Oakley, and the noblest of old beaux has been the heritage only of the most finished of our comedians, from King, with whom it originated, down to Farren, with whom it seems to have died.