We are flattered by the elegant and witty letter of E. C. Suck friendly communications form the most agreeable sweets of our labour. If E. C. will have it that fish can dance, it shall be so, but not in the presence of her husband, unless he is a river god, or, what is a more easy metamorphose on his birth-day, half seas over. Agreeing then that they can foot it and hands across, we must deny their "inability to sing."-Aristotle says that the Scarus is not mute; therefore he may if he likes. The third stanza was probably not correctly transcribed.

The idea which Leopold "fondly indulges," has this month been gratified.

We are surprised that Incognito should complain of being " in the dark."-It is the place he has chosen.

I. Cy's apology is quite sufficient.

It can never be our interest to reject what is good, and that the sense of O. C. T. should have coincided with our judgment is very agreeable to us.

Many thanks to J. P. S. for his learned and ingenious Legal Critique on Gifford's Massinger. It belongs to the " British Stage;” but it came late, and we have, rather than delay the gratification of our readers, inserted it in the "Miscellany."

We are obliged to Mr. Pratt. His request was not in time.

W. M. T-t may rely on our sending his "storm fiend" to the devil, i. e. the printer, and his “sensibility" shall not be lost.

The Sonnet to Capel Lofft, Esq. and an Ode by the same, have also been received.

Q. merits, and will always receive, our "attention." The poetry was not in time.

The Proprietor of the Mirror requests his friend Q. Z. from whom he has received so many communications, to let him know her address. A delightful poem, by Bloomfield, is unavoidably postponed till next month.

J. C-y requests us to give him a head, and to forgive him two-pence. The postage is his, but the portrait of Mr. Denman we cannot afford. He begs us also to announce the death of Mr. Gifford," the father of the stage."

Errata in the Memoir of Montgomery, in Number I.

Page 8, line 30, after the words “attending the publication," read “ only."! 9, the last line, for "correspond" read" corresponded."

10, in the stanza quoted, for "hill" read "rill.""

In the last line of the Memoir, for "him" read "me."

In this Number.

Page 177, line 16, for "Sotherby" read "Sotheby." 178,...... 7, for "Thealina" read " Thealma."

Engrard from an original drawing by De Wilde

Miss Bolton.

Published by Pernor, Ilood & Sharpe. Poultry 31 March 1807.

MONTHLY MIRROR,

FOR

MARCH, 1807.

SKETCH OF

THE LIFE OF MISS BOLTON.

[With a Portrait.]

BIOGRAPHY is, for the most part, so nearly allied to history, that he who undertakes to give an account of a public life, has in ge neral little to do but to extract from journals, and gather from current report, a few leading facts for his composition. Such a work is comparatively easy; for battles, parliamentary debates, and adventurous frolics, the principal incidents in most public lives, are soon amplified by detail, and illustrated by metaphor: but to enter on the recapitulation of private virtues is a task arduous to the narrator, and too often unentertaining to the reader; for people in general, with all their love of the rare and of the wonderful, have not yet learned to admire one of the rarest and most wonderful phænomena in human life, a private character completely amiable. The public, they cry, have nothing to do with private virtues, for those are matters between an individual and his conscience, not between an individual and society. We deny it :-those virtues are matters between an individual and society. The stream that flows unseen among the grass, diffuses, perhaps, more fertility in its course, than the river that sweeps across a province, and thunders in a hundred cataracts.

Mr. and Mrs. Bolton, the parents of the fair debûtante who is the subject of the present sketch, during the earlier years of their daughter's life, resided at Stockwell. There Miss Bolton continued till about a twelvemonth ago, when her singing-master announced her musical proficience to be such as entitled her to hope for considerable advantage from the employment of her vocal abilities. She therefore determined to exert them as a private professor, and last winter, at the request of several distinguished friends, she made her appearance at the concerts in Hanover Square and Willis's rooms, where she met with a reception the most flattering and delightful.

That ingenious and scientific musician, Mr. Lanza, was at this time Miss Bolton's master, and not Mr. Wear, who is the leader of the Covent Garden band, and who, in several of the daily prints, ran away with the credit of this successful pupil. Mr. Lanza, in the beginning of last September, informed Miss Bolton that Mr. Harris, the manager of Covent Garden theatre, had expressed a desire to hear her, and had even appointed a time for that purpose. With a diffidence very natural to her character, but on this occasion extremely unnecessary, she for some time persisted in a refusal, until, being pressed by her friends, and feeling a sort of security in what she most erroneously supposed to be her own entire inability, she reluctantly consented to essay her voice in the theatre. The flattering opinion of Mr. Harris, and the confirmation of Mr. Kemble, who soon after arrived in town, succeeded in encouraging her to the awful attempt of dramatic exhibition; and she entered on her theatrical career, persuaded "that a respectable character is not the less, but perhaps the more honourable, for being placed in a public point of view."

At her first appearance she was evidently unacquainted with what is called the business of the stage, insomuch that one of her friends recommended it to her to procure some instruction on that subject; but she answered, with that modest enthusiasm so natural and so requisite to genius, "Nay, the instruction that I shall gather in the course of my professional duties, will surely be sufficient; for if I can teach myself to feel the characters, nature will teach me to act them."

On Wednesday, the 8th of October, 1806, she made her first appearance on any stage as Polly, in the Beggars' Opera. At that time she had seen in her life but five plays, three at a period of childhood, and two in the course of the preceding winter: but it is rather remarkable that she never was present at a representation of any of the pieces in which she has acted herself. The applause with which she was greeted, by an overflowing audience, was confirmed by many subsequent repetitions of the Beggars' Opera, by the revival of Love in a Village, and by other performances, in all of which she attracted very numerous audiences, and in all of which she was received with that loud and universal applause which proclaimed the general opinion of her merit. The compass of her voice, the sweetness of her tones, and the taste and correctness of her style, procured for her the highest admiration as a singer; and though, as an actress, her want of