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<h3>SARAH SIDDONS.</h3> [BORN 1755. DIED 1831.] CUNNINGHAM. <ANTIMG src="images/it.jpg" alt="T" width-obs="78" height-obs="72" class="floatl" />HIS unrivalled actress, born in 1755, was, like her brother John Kemble, led upon the boards at a very early age; so young indeed was she, that the rustic audience, offended at her infantile appearance, began to hoot and hiss her off, when her mother Mrs Kemble, herself an actress, led her to the front of the stage, and made her repeat the fable of the boys and the frogs, which she did in such a manner as appeased the critics, and insured a favourable reception for her ever after. In her eighteenth year, she married Mr Siddons, an actor in her father's company; and the young couple soon after took an engagement to act at Cheltenham. "At that time," says Mr Campbell, "the Hon. Miss Boyle, the daughter of Lord Dungarvon, a most accomplished woman, and authoress of several pleasing poems, one of which, an "Ode to the Poppy," was published by Charlotte Smith, happened to be at Cheltenham. She had come accompanied by her mother and her mother's second husband, the Earl of Aylesbury. One morning that she and some other fashionables went to the box-keeper's office, they were told that the tragedy to be performed that evening was "Venice Preserved." They all laughed heartily, and promised themselves a treat of the ludicrous in the misrepresentation of the piece. Some one who overheard their mirth, kindly reported it to Mrs Siddons. She had the part of Belvidera allotted to her, and prepared for the performance of it with no very enviable feelings. It may be doubted whether Otway had imagined in Belvidera a personage more to be pitied than her representative now thought herself. The rabble in "Venice Preserved" showed compassion for the heroine; and when they saw her feather-bed put up to auction, "governed their roaring throats, and grumbled pity." But our actress anticipated refined scorners more pitiless than the rabble, and the prospect was certainly calculated to prepare her more for the madness than the dignity of her part. In spite of much agitation, however, she got through it. About the middle of the piece, she heard some unusual and apparently suppressed noises, and therefore concluded that the fashionables were in the full enjoyment of their anticipated amusement, tittering and laughing, as she thought, with unmerciful derision. She went home, after the play, grievously mortified. Next day, however, Mr Siddons met in the street Lord Aylesbury, who inquired after Mrs Siddons' health, and expressed not only his own admiration of her last night's exquisite acting, but related its effects on the ladies of his party. They had wept, he said, so excessively, that they were unpresentable in the morning, and were confined to their rooms with headaches. Mr Siddons hastened home to gladden his fair spouse with this intelligence. Miss Boyle soon afterwards visited Mrs Siddons at her lodgings, took the deepest interest in her fortunes, and continued her ardent friend till her death. She married Lord O'Neil of Shanes Castle, in Ireland. It is no wonder that Mrs Siddons dwells with tenderness, in her memoranda, on the name of this earliest encourager of her genius. Miss Boyle was a beauty of the first order, and gifted with a similar mind, as her poetry and patronage of the hitherto unnoticed actress evince." A rumour of the newly-discovered genius having reached Garrick, Mrs Siddons began, through his patronage, that career of success which is so well known. Mrs Siddons undoubtedly possessed the highest order of poetical conception for the purposes of stage delivery; yet, like her brother, not a little of the impression she produced was owing to her great physical powers, and the commanding dignity of her person. In her most violent scenes, the majesty of her mien was pre-eminent; and even when prostrate on the stage, she still lay graceful and sublime. As Madame de Sta�l says of her in her "Corrine," "L'actrice la plus noble dans ses mani�res, Madame Siddons, ne perd rien de sa dignit� quand elle se prosterne contre terre." Of her Lady Macbeth, which all critics now allow to be her chef d'&oelig;uvre, Lord Byron said: "It was something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow; passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. In coming on in the sleeping scene, her eyes were open, but their sense was shut; she was like a person bewildered—her lips moved involuntarily, all her gestures seemed mechanical; she glided off and on the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in that character was an event in every one's life never to be forgotten." "It was impossible," says an able critic, "for those who beheld Mrs Siddons in Lady Macbeth, to imagine the embodied in any other shape. That tall, commanding, and majestic figure; that face, so sternly beautiful, with its firm lips and large dark eyes; that brow, capacious of a wild world of thought, overshadowed by a still gloom of coal-black hair; that low, clear-measured, deep voice, audible in whispers, so portentously expressive of strength of will, and a will to evil; the stately tread of those feet, the motions of those arms and hands, seeming moulded for empiry—all those distinguished the Thane's wife from other women, to our senses, our soul, and our imagination, as if nature had made Siddons for Shakspeare's sake, that she might impersonate to the height his sublimest and most dreadful creation. Charles Lamb may smile—and his smile is ever pleasant—but we are neither afraid nor ashamed to say that we never read the tragedy—and we have read it a thousand and one nights—without seeing and hearing that Lady Macbeth—our study becoming the stage—and 'out damned spot,' a shuddering sigh, terrifying us in the imagined presence of a breathless crowd of sympathising spirits. That sleep-walker, in the power of her guilt, would not suffer us to be alone in our closet. Noiseless her gliding steps, and all alone in her haunted unrest, we saw her wringing her hands before a gazing multitude; their eyes, how unlike to hers! and we drew dread from the quaking all around us, not unmingled with a sense of the magnificent, breathed from the passion that held the great assemblage mute and motionless—yet not quite—that sea of heads all lulled; but the lull darkened as by the shadow of a cloud surcharged with thunder." <div class="figcenter p4"> <ANTIMG src="images/i043.jpg" width-obs="162" height-obs="15" alt="Decoration" /></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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