O'Keeffe remarks, that it is a method with an old stager, who knows the advantageous points of his art, "to stand back out of the level with the actor who is on with him, and thus he displays his own full figure and face to the audience; but when two knowing ones are on together, each plays the trick upon the other. I was much diverted," he adds, "with seeing Macklin and Sheridan, in Othello and Iago, at this work; both endeavouring to keep back; they at last got together, up against the back scene. Barry was too much impassioned to attend to such devices." Edmund Kean is said to have practised this trick when playing with actors or actresses taller than himself; but in so doing he was only putting himself on an equality with his taller colleague. I remember when, in my boyish days, the actors of the Théâtre Français used to take me behind the scenes, observing that when Talma was seated on the stage by the side of Mademoiselle Duchesnois, the seat of his chair was gradually raised towards the back, like a driving-box, and thus enabled him to appear as tall as that ugly and able lady. Garrick, too, had his chair-trick in "Hamlet." When the Ghost appeared between the young Dane and his mother, Garrick, starting from his chair, used always to overturn the latter,--which was differently constructed from that used by the Queen. The legs of the actor's chair were, in fact, tapered to a point, and placed so far under the seat, that it fell with a touch. Dr. Burney seems to think that "the elocution of Garrick and Mrs. Cibber was but exquisite trickery, and that a notation of their tones for a sort of musical declamation would be a good practical lesson for inferior actors, and would be the means of conveying it" (the notation) "to posterity, who will so frequently meet with their names and eulogiums in the history of the stage, and be curious to know in what manner they acquired such universal admiration." Very young children on the stage are sometimes as difficult to manage as "sagacious dogs," and other animals. The tricks resorted to, in order to preserve propriety, are amusing. When Mrs. Siddons was selected to play Venus, in Garrick's revived "Jubilee" (for which she was sneeringly called "Garrick's Venus"), she had little Tom Dibdin for Cupid. They were seated in the front of the stage; and it was necessary that the son of the goddess should smile in his mother's face,--but Tom was too much cowed to take any liberty of that sort. Whereupon Venus looked fondly on him and asked, in a stage whisper, if he loved sugar-plumbs?--and what sort? and wouldn't he like some of the best quality when the piece was over? At all which, Cupid's face expanded into wreathed smiles, and he gazed on Venus with a laughing admiration,--in mental anticipation of the sweets in the hereafter. In 1785, Mrs. Siddons was the Tragic Muse in the "Jubilee," in which the Venus was represented by Mrs. Crouch, who might have smitten with jealousy Anadyomene herself.