Bannister, Charles or John, father or son,--the name had a pleasant sound in our fathers' ears. The elder was a bass singer, with a voice that would crack a window-pane. "A _pewtiful foice_! your father had," said a German Jew to the son; "so deep, so deep! He could go so low as a bull!" Handsome Jack played, in his salad days, with Garrick; in his glowing maturity, with Edmund Kean,--in whose brilliancy, as he said, he almost forgot his old master, David. John Bannister might have been a painter, but he chose to be a player; and, in his line, he was one of the best. He felt, and made feel; could exact tears as easily as laughter; and was never out of temper but once, when a critic denounced him for acting ill, on a night when he was too ill to act. For this malicious deed, the player recovered damages from his assailant. There was nothing he could not do _well_. There were many things he did inimitably. His Hamlet belonged to the first--a host of comic parts to the second category. His author was never dissatisfied with him, however exigent; and he engaged the immediate attention of the audience, by seeming to care nothing about it. Applause interrupted his speech--never his action. In depicting heartiness, ludicrous distress, grave or affected indifference, honest bravery, insurmountable cowardice, a spirited, young, or an enfeebled old fellow, yet impatient; mischievous boyishness, good-humoured vulgarity,--there was no one of his time who could equal him. In everything he acted he was natural, except in Mercutio, which, strangely enough, did not suit him;--he made of that elegant and vivacious gentleman, simply an honest, jolly fellow. In parts, combining tragedy and comedy, he was supreme. Such was his Walter; such, too, his Sheva,--though in some parts of the latter he was, perhaps, surpassed by Dowton. His features were highly expressive and flexible, and he had them in supreme command. In 1772, he played Calippus, in the "Grecian Daughter," and then had a time of probation; but, from 1778, when he played Zaphna, in "Mahomet," to 1815, when the curtain finally descended on him, as Walter,--a part which he created in 1793,--there was no more pleasant actor before an audience. Walpole thus speaks of the last-named part in the year just named:--