BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 203
excited feelings too powerful to be repressed. When this ill-fated family bade
adieu to our shores, they carried with them the grateful benedictions of the poor
and the respect of all men of all, parties, who honour mitifortune, when ennobled
by virtue.
No. CCXLI.
MR. CLINCH AND MRS. YATES,
IN THE CHARACTERS OF THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF BRAGANZA.
THOUGHan actor of considerable merit, we are not aware that any biographical
notice of MR. CLINCH is to be found. He appears to have played in Edinburgh
during three seasons only; first, in the winter and summer of 1785, and
again in the winter of 1786. Early in January of the former year he was
announced as forming one of the corps dramatique ;I but he did not come forward
till the end of February, when we find his arrival thus noticed :-“ Mr.
Clinch, from the Theatre Royal, Dublin, who has been 60 long expected here,
is arrived, and is to appear in the part of Othello on Monday.”
The manner in which he acquitted himself on his (‘ first appearance in this
kingdom ” is recorded in the following critique of his performance :-
‘‘ This character has always been considered as a most ardnous one, from the variety of
qualifications it requires in the actor. * * Mr. Clinch, with a figure happily suited to
the part, and a voice powerful and agreeably modulated, entered into the spirit of the muchinjured
Moor in a manner that deeply interested the audience, and exhibited in lively colours
the tortures of him
‘Who doats, yet doubts ; suspects, yet strongly loves.’
The passages in which E. Clinch particularly excelled were that in which Iago makea the
first impression on him, and in that beautiful speech beginning-
‘- Had it pleased heaven
To try me with affliction-had it rained
All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head-
Steeped me in poverty to the very lips-
Given to captivity me and my hopes-
I should have found in some place of my soul
A drop of patience.’
Though we do not think that the declamatory parts in the beginning of the play were 80 well
sustained as those scenes in which Othello is ‘ perplexed in the extreme,’ yet Clinch‘s performance,
taken altogether, was a piece of excellent acting, and amply entitled him to the
applause bestowed by a genteel, numerous, and, what is not RO often the case, an attentive
audience.”
During his first season Mr. Clinch enacted Castalio, in the Unhappy Marriage
; Alexander, in the Rival Queens ; the Duke of Braganza, etc.
Scottish Stage.”
1 The Theatre WBS then under the management of Mr. Jackson, author of a “Historp of the