Genre:

Miscellaneous, Reportage

Subjects:

Steam-power, Engineering, Discovery

    The writer reflects of this comic actor: 'To use a simile from modern mechanics, we may term Mr. Mathews the Steam-engine of the Stage; he draws with an eighty-horse power, and by himself does more than the force of all the rest put together could accomplish'. The article includes a report of Mathews's latest entertainment, called 'Invitations'. Mathews reportedly stated a hope to his audience 'that if ever he had succeeded in Macadamizing the road to mirth, or in throwing a bridge over the gulf of sorrow, he might still continue to experience their patronage'. He also told his audience, that in thinking of a subject for his new entertainment, he had been assisted by chance, 'which afforded an answer to the inquiries of Sir Isaac Newton, by the fall of an apple'. (163)