There is no doubt that Mrs. Cibber had the handsomer, more silver-tongued, and tender lover. She seemed to listen to him in a sort of modest ecstasy; while Miss Bellamy, eager love in her eyes, rapture in her heart, and amorous impatience in every expression, was ready to fling herself into Romeo's arms. In Barry's Romeo, the critics laud his harmony of feature, his melting eyes, and his unequalled plaintiveness of voice. In the garden scenes of the second and fourth acts, and in the first part of the scene in the tomb, were Barry's most effective points. Garrick's great scenes were with the Friar and the Apothecary. Miss Bellamy declared that in the scene with the Friar alone was Garrick superior to Barry; Macklin swore that Barry excelled his rival in every scene. The Juliets, too, divided the public judgment. Some were taken by the amorous rapture, the loveliness, and the natural style of Bellamy; others were moved by the grander beauty, the force, and the tragic expression of distress and despair which distinguished Mrs. Cibber. Perhaps, after all, the truest idea of the two Romeos may be gathered from the remark of a lady who did not pretend to be a critic, and who was guided by her feelings. "Had I been Juliet," she said, "to Garrick's Romeo,--so ardent and impassioned was he, I should have expected that he would have _come up_ to me in the balcony; but had I been Juliet to Barry's Romeo, so tender, so eloquent, and so seductive was he, I should certainly have _gone down_ to him!" Respectively, Barry acted Romeo twenty-three, Garrick nineteen times this season,--a season of which there is nothing more to be said, save that Garrick created the part of Gil Blas, in Moore's comedy of that name, and that he produced Mallet's version of "Alfred"--playing the king. At this time, the poets were not inspired, or managers could dispense with them, so attractive were the old actors in old pieces, with new actors--Shuter, Palmer, and Miss Macklin--aiding them. Thus, in the season 1751-52, Covent Garden, save in a burletta called the "Oracle," relied on its stock-pieces; and Drury only produced Foote's farce, "Taste," in which Worsdale, the painter, who kept, starved, beat, and lived upon Laetitia Pilkington, played Lady Pentweazle, with humorous effect;--and "Eugenia," a tragedy, by the Rev. Dr. Francis, the father of Sir Philip, in which there was the coarseness of sentiment, but none of the beauty of language or tenderness of feeling of Otway. Yet it was approved by Chesterfield, who sneered at the pit and gallery as "common people who must have objects that strike the senses, and are only moved by the sufferings they see, and even then must be dyed with the blood." But this is untrue, although my lord said it, for Johnson's "Irene" failed because of the strangling of the heroine in presence of the audience; and it was only tolerated, during its brief run, after the killing was described and not performed. [Illustration: (Mr. Mossop)]