it altogether.  Religious zealotry, strenuous and stubborn, however narrow, had fostered, and parliamentary enactments had warranted, hostility of the most uncompromising kind to the player and his profession.  To many he was still, his new liberty and privileges notwithstanding, but “a son of Belial”—­ever of near kin to the rogue and the vagabond, with the stocks and the whipping-post still in his immediate neighbourhood, let him turn which way he would.  And then, certainly, his occupation had its seamy side.  With this the satirists, who loved censure rather for its wounding than its healing properties, made great play.  They were never tired of pointing out and ridiculing the rents in the stroller’s coat; his shifts, trials, misfortunes, follies, were subjects for ceaseless derision.  What Grub Street and “penny-a-lining” have been to the vocation of letters, strolling and “barn-strutting” became to the histrionic profession—­an excuse for scorn, underrating, and mirth, more or less bitter.

Still strolling had its charms.  To the beginner it afforded a kind of informal apprenticeship, with the advantage that while a learner of its mysteries, he could yet style himself a full member of the profession of the stage, and share in its profits.  He was at once bud and flower.  What though the floor of a ruined barn saw his first crude efforts, might not the walls of a patent theatre resound by-and-by with delighted applause, tribute to his genius?  It was a free, frank, open vocation he had adopted; it was unprotected and unrestricted by legislative provisions in the way of certificates, passes, examinations, and diplomas.  There was no need of ticket, or voucher, or preparation of any kind to obtain admission to the ranks of the players.  “Can you shout?” a manager once inquired of a novice.  “Then only shout in the right places, and you’ll do.”  No doubt this implied that even in the matter of shouting some science is involved.  And there may be men who cannot shout at all, let the places be right or wrong.  Still the stage can find room and subsistence of a sort for all, even for mutes.  But carry a banner, walk in a procession, or form one of a crowd, and you may still call yourself actor, though not an actor of a high class, certainly.  The histrionic calling is a ladder of many rungs.  Remain on the lowest or mount to the highest—­it is only a question of degree—­you are a player all the same.

The Thespian army had no need of a recruiting-sergeant or a press-gang to reinforce its ranks.  There have always been amateurs lured by the mere spectacle of the foot-lights, as moths by a candle.  Crabbe’s description of the strollers in his “Borough” was a favourite passage with Sir Walter Scott, and was often read to him in his last fatal illness: 

    Of various men these marching troops are made,
    Pen-spurning clerks and lads contemning trade;
    Waiters and servants by confinement teased,
    And youths of wealth by dissipation eased;
    With feeling nymphs who, such resource at hand,
    Scorn to obey the rigour of command, &c. &c.