In costume and in stage diet, Barry was the reverse of Mossop. Near ninety years ago, the former played Othello in a gold-laced scarlet suit, small cocked hat, and knee-breeches, with silk stockings, which then displayed his gouty legs. His wife, as Desdemona, wore, more correctly, a fascinating Italian costume, and looked as captivating as the decaying actor looked grotesque. Barry did not vary his diet according to the part he had to play. It was his invariable custom, after acting, to sup on boiled fowl. His house, first in Broad Street, then in Norfolk, and lastly in Cecil Street, was visited by the good among the great. Such was Henry Pelham, himself an inelegant but frank speaker in Parliament, who had a great admiration for Barry's graceful elocution. The actor was in possession of all his powers, and his voice was at its sweetest, when he had this honest statesman for friend. Henry Pelham died in 1754, when Barry and Miss Nossiter were playing Romeo and Juliet, with the relish of real lovers. Long before that, however, player and minister had been friends, but it was the player, the Mark Antony, of the stage, whose vain-glory made wreck of their friendship. Pelham invited himself to sup with Barry, and the actor treated his guest as one prince might another. He invariably did the honours of his table with great elegance; but on this occasion there was a magnificent ostentation which offended Pelham. "I could not have given a more splendid supper myself," he remarked; and he would never consent to be Barry's guest again. Of the nineteen characters, of which he was the original actor, there stands out, more celebrated than the rest, Mahomet, in Johnson's "Irene;" Young Norval, in London (in the white puckered satin suit); and Evander, in the "Grecian Daughter." The last was a masterpiece of impersonation, and Barry drew tears as copiously in this part as ever his great rival did in King Lear, in which, by the way, Garrick's too frequent use of his white pocket-handkerchief was looked upon by the critics as bathos, with respect to the act; and an anachronism, with regard to the article! "Were interred, in a private manner, in the cloysters, Westminster, the remains of Spranger Barry, late of Covent Garden Theatre." Such is the simple farewell, a week after his death, of the public papers, to young Douglas, old Evander, the silver-toned actor. Macklin was one of the funeral procession from Cecil Street to the cloisters. Looking into the grave, he murmured, "Poor Spranger!" and when some one would fain have led the old man away, he said mournfully, "Sir, I am at my rehearsal. Do not disturb my reverie!"[117]