At the outset of his career he led the usual life of an itinerant actor. There is a tradition that in the course of his wanderings he once played before George IV at Windsor. After several years in the provinces, he made his first London appearance in 1831 at the Pavilion Theatre as Wormwood in "The Lottery Ticket", in which part he was much admired, and which he then acted there upward of fifty consecutive times. John Liston was then the reigning favourite in London (Joseph Shepherd Munden, who died in 1832, being in decadence), and next to Liston stood John Reeve, upon whom it is thought that the earlier style of Burton was in a measure founded.