The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 08 (of 12) (part 3 of 4)

The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 08 (of 12) (part 3 of 4)

To return from this digression. With all the purity and simplicity, Miss O’Neill possessed the utmost force of tragedy. Her soul was like the sea, calm, beautiful, smiling, smooth, and yielding; but the storm of adversity lashed it into foam, laid bare its centre, or heaved its billows against the skies. She could repose on gentleness, or dissolve in tenderness, and at the same time give herself up to all the agonies of woe. She could express fond affection, pity, rage, despair, madness. She felt all these passions in their simple and undefinable elements only. She felt them as a woman,—as a mistress, as a wife, a mother, or a friend. She seemed to have the most exquisite sense of the pressure of those soft ties, that were woven round her heart, and that bound her to her place in society; and the rending them asunder appeared to give a proportionable revulsion to her frame, and disorder to her thoughts. There was nothing in her acting of a preternatural or ideal cast—that could lift the mind above mortality, or might be fancied to descend from another sphere. But she gave the full, the true, and unalloyed expression, to all that is common, obvious, and heart-felt in the charities of private life, and in the conflict of female virtue and attachment with the hardest trials and intolerable griefs. She did not work herself up to the extremity of passion, by questioning with her own thoughts; or raise herself above circumstances, by ascending the platform of imagination; or arm herself against fate, by strengthening her will to meet it: no, she yielded to calamity, she gave herself up entire, and with entire devotion, to her unconquerable despair:—it was the tide of anguish swelling in her own breast, that overflowed to the breasts of the audience, and filled their eyes with tears as the loud torrent projects itself from the cliff to the abyss below, and bears everything before it in its resistless course. The source of her command over public sympathy, lay, in short, in the intense conception, and unrestrained expression, of what she, and every other woman, of natural sensibility would feel in given circumstances, in which she, and every other woman, was liable to be placed. Her Belvidera, Isabella, Mrs. Beverley, etc. were all characters of this strictly feminine class of heroines, and she played them to the life. They were made of softness and suffering. We recollect the first time we saw her in Belvidera, when the manner in which she threw herself into the arms of Jaffier, before they part, was as if her heart would have leaped out of her bosom, if she had not done so. It staggered the spectator like a blow. Again, her first meeting with Biron, in Isabella, was no less admirable and impressive. She looked at, she saw, she knew him: her surprise, her joy were painted in her face, and woke every nerve to rapture. She seemed to have perfected all that her art could do. But the sudden alteration of her look and manner, the shuddering and recoil within herself, when she recovers from her surprise, and recollects her situation, married to another,—at once on the verge of ecstacy and perdition,—baffled description, and threw all that she had before done in the shade,—‘like to another morn, risen on mid noon.’ We could mention many other instances, but they are still too fresh in the memory of our readers to make it necessary. It must be confessed, as perhaps the only drawback on Miss O’Neill’s merit, or on the pleasure derived from seeing her, that she sometimes carried the expression of grief, or agony of mind, to a degree of physical horror that could hardly be borne. Her shrieks, in the concluding scenes of some of her parts, were like those of mandrakes, and you stopped your ears against them: her looks were of ‘moody madness, laughing wild, amidst severest woe,’ and you turned your eyes from them; for they seemed to sear like the lightening. Her eye-balls rolled in her head: her words rattled in her throat. This was carrying reality too far. The sufferings of the body are no longer proper for dramatic exhibition when they become objects of painful attention in themselves, and are not merely indications of what passes in the mind—comments and interpreters of the moral sense within. The effect was the more ungrateful from the very contrast (as we before hinted) between this lady’s form and delicate complexion, and the violent conflict into which she was thrown. She seemed like the little flower, not the knotted oak, contending with the pitiless storm. There appeared no reason why she should ‘mar that whiter skin of her’s than snow, or monumental alabaster,’ or rend and dishevel, with ruthless hand, those graceful locks, fairer than the opening day. But these were faults arising from pushing truth and nature to an excess, and we should, at present, be glad to see ‘the best virtues’ of others make even an approach to them. Her common style of speaking had a certain mild and equable intonation, not quite free from manner, but in the more impassioned parts, she became proportionably natural, bold, and varied. In comedy, Miss O’Neill did not, in our judgment, excel: her forte was the serious. Had we never seen her play anything but Lady Teazle, we should not have felt the regret at parting with her, which we now do, in common with every lover of genius, and of the genuine drama.

But it is high time that we should turn from the actors we have lost, to those that still remain amongst us.—Among the novelties of the season are, of course, the two Pantomimes, which, lest we should forget them at last, we shall mention in the first place. We cannot say that we exactly relish the taking Don Quixote as the subject of a Pantomime. The knight was battered and bruised enough in his life-time, without undergoing a gratuitous penance at this time of day. With all our good-will to Mr. Grimaldi, we have a greater affection for Sancho Panza, and do not want to see him metamorphosed into anything but himself. Indeed we cannot spoil Don Quixote; but neither need we try to do it.—Jack and the Bean Stalk is the legitimate growth of the Christmas holidays, and the winter Theatres. The wonders of the necromancer are equalled by the surprising arts of the mechanist. The favoured Bean Stalk grows and ascends the skies, as it did to our infant imaginations, and as if it would never have done growing; and Ogres and Ogresses become familiar to our senses, as to our early fears, in the enchanted palace of Drury-lane Theatre. Seeing is sometimes believing. It is worth going to a good Pantomime, if it was for no other reason than to hear the children from school laugh at it, till they are ready to split their sides. What we can no longer enjoy, or wonder at ourselves, it is well to take at the rebound, in the reflection of happy faces, and in the echo of joyous mirth. These little real folks are even better than the fantastical beings, and poetic visions, we see upon the stage!

We are sorry we cannot say anything to reverse the judgment passed upon a new comedy, called Gallantry, or Adventures at Madrid, brought out at this Theatre in the beginning of the month. It was a comedy of intrigue; and, in conformity with the idea of this style of invention, was decorated with a wearisome display of Spanish costume, and enriched with an unmeaning catalogue of enamoured Dons, and disdainful or neglected Donnas. The plot was intricate, so as to become unintelligible, mechanical, and improbable. Every contrivance ‘had its brother, and half the story just reflects the other.’ There was a strange and insurmountable coincidence of antithetical blunders and epigrammatic accidents. The author’s invention seemed to run on all fours, to cut out the different compartments of his fable, like the figures in a country-dance, to answer to one another: or he made all his characters turn the tables on one another, without knowing it. Thus, if a lady sends a letter very innocently to the lover of another, her own lover writes a letter to the mistress of his imaginary rival; if an old fellow falls in love with a young lady, this turns out to be his son’s intended bride; and in this manner the game of cross-purposes is easily kept up, and the plot is diversified by the rule of contraries throughout. There was little attempt at wit in this piece (what little there is was flat and shallow, as well as gross), and there was no attempt at interest or sentiment, except in the character of Constantia, which was well played by Mrs. West, but very ill supported by the author. Mr. Barnard was her lover; and we must say that this gentleman spoils any intrigue in which he is engaged, if it soars above a chambermaid. He plays an impudent, self-sufficient valet, with good emphasis and discretion, or can get through an under-steward very well; but he cannot act the hero or look the gentleman. There is a cast of parts, for which Mr. Barnard is really qualified; and we are unwilling to see him taken out of them, both for his sake and our own. The play was altogether ill got up: it indeed called out the strength of the house, but there was either nothing for them to do, or their parts became them as little as their dresses. Mr. Harley, for instance, who is always so lively in himself, and who so often enlivens others, was put to play a villainous grave Spanish Don, who is full of stratagem and deliberate knavery; and he popped, and wriggled, and fidgetted on and off the stage, nodding his airy plumes, and shaking the powdered locks, in which he had been bedizened out, like the figure of Pug we have seen at Bartlemy-Fair, or in Hogarth’s picture of the same little chuckling favourite, in Fashion in High Life. The fault was not in Mr. Harley, who always does his best to please, but in the cut of his clothes, and the cast of his part. Russel had no business in the play. He looked like an Alguazil, not like a Madrid gallant. Instead of meddling with the Spanish cavalier, and strutting about with a feather in his hat and a sword by his side, he should be At Home every night of his life, in Jerry Sneak: he is abroad in almost every other character! Munden made nothing of an amorous, superannuated, wheedling old lord: and, making nothing of the part ‘as it was set down for him,’ he tried, now and then, to thrust in a little caricature of his own, and to insinuate a bye-joke to the galleries. Munden’s is not ‘the courtier’s or the lover’s melancholy;’ but a quaint, fantastical, uncouth, irresistible humour of his own, and he must be strangely grouped, or disposed of, on the theatrical canvass, to lose all his effect. Munden is not a sickly, vapid, decayed inamorato, fit to make his approaches to his mistress’s eyebrows, in good set terms, or with cringing manners: he is a sturdy grotesque—a wild exotic, not a faded passion flower. He does not belong to any class, fashionable or vulgar. He is himself alone: and should only personate those extraordinary and marked characters, that Gilray painted, and O’Keeffe drew. Dowton and Knight were pieces of supererogation in the comedy of Gallantry; and Mrs. Harlowe is only happy in those parts which are meant to be unequivocally repulsive. Miss Kelly was neatly tucked up, in a Spanish bodice and petticoat; and had to carry several messages on or off the stage, in which she succeeded. The play languished on to the end of the fifth act, and then died a natural death. The only chance which it had of escaping was from one or two dramatic situations, borrowed from well-known plays, but disfigured and deprived of their effect, that they might pass for new. One of these was, where Mrs. West, as Constantia, retires from her antiquated lover (Munden) on his knees, in the middle of a speech, profuse of sentiments and compliments, and leaves her maid, Mrs. Harlowe, to receive the reversion of his protestations: the old gallant not discovering his mistake, till he is interrupted by the entrance of company. Mrs. Edwin delivered an Epilogue with some spirit, but its appeals to the favour of the audience only bespoke repeated condemnation. After the curtain dropped, Mr. Elliston, who had performed a part in the piece, came forward to announce that it was withdrawn; but, in submitting to the pleasure of the House, he seemed disposed to dispute the soundness of their taste. He said, ‘It was a difficult thing to write a good comedy; perhaps a more difficult thing to judge of one.’ Critics as we are, we cannot make up our minds to that opinion. Or we might say in answer, ‘It is an easy thing to write a bad comedy; a more easy thing to judge of one.’[39] Be that as it may (for we do not wish to be drawn into a literary or metaphysical controversy with the present manager of Drury Lane,) we do not see what it was to the purpose. Does Mr. Elliston mean to infer, that, because it is a difficult thing to judge of a good comedy, he is a better judge than anyone else, or than the great majority of the audience, who had pronounced sentence upon this? Suppose the comedy had succeeded, as completely as it failed, and that a single individual in the pit had got up to say, that he differed from everyone present, and that his uncalled-for opinion was to be put in competition with the voice of the House, would not Mr. Elliston have thought it a great piece of impertinence and presumption? Why then should he commit the same folly himself?

At Covent Garden there have been two new debutants, Mr. Nathan as Henry Bertram, in Guy Mannering, and Miss Wensley as Rosalind. The first was a decided failure. We do not know what Mr. Nathan’s powers of voice or execution in a room may be: but he has evidently not the capacity of sending out a sufficient volume of articulate sound to fill a large theatre: neither is his manner of speaking, nor his action, at all fitted for the stage. Miss Wensley’s Rosalind was well received, and has been repeated. Her face and figure are agreeable; her voice has considerable sweetness and flexibility; and her manner of performing the part itself, was arch, graceful, and lively; though this young lady (who we understand had not appeared before on any stage) was withheld from giving herself up entirely to the character, by a natural and amiable timidity. We heartily wish she may succeed, and have no fear but she will.[40] Miss Tree has lately made a valuable addition to the musical strength of Covent Garden. She sings delightfully in company with Miss Stephens; and in the Comedy of Errors almost puzzles the town, as she does Antipholis of Syracuse, which to prefer: Magis pares quam similes. She is quite different, both in quality of voice and style of execution, from our old favourite; and it is this difference that completes the charm of their singing. Her tones are as firm, deep, and mellow, as Miss Stephens’s are clear and sweet. Her ear is as true as it is possible to be; and the sustained manner in which she dwells upon a note, is as delightful as the airy fluttering grace with which Miss Stephens varies, and sportively plays with it. The singing of the one may be compared perhaps to a continued stream of honeyed sound, while that of the other is like the tremulous bubbles that float and rise above its surface. Or Miss Tree’s singing has the consistency, the lengthened tenuity or breadth of tone, drawn from a well-strung violin, as Miss Stephens’s resembles the light, liquid, echoing accompaniments of the harp or lute. Of both together, it may be said, when they join their efforts in a single composition, that ‘All is grace above, while all is strength below.’ It is a treat to which of late we have been seldom accustomed.

MR. KEAN’S CORIOLANUS.—Mr. Kean’s acting is not of the patrician order; he is one of the people, and what might be termed a radical performer. He can do all that may become a man ‘of our infirmity,’ ‘to relish all as sharply, passioned as we;’ but he cannot play a God, or one who fancies himself a God, and who is sublime, not in the strength of his own feelings, but in his contempt for those of others, and in his imaginary superiority to them. That is, he cannot play Coriolanus so well as he plays some other characters, or as we have seen it played often. Wherever there was a struggle of feelings, a momentary ebullition of pity, or remorse, or anguish, wherever nature resumed her wonted rights, Mr. Kean was equal to himself, and superior to every one else; but the prevailing characteristics of the part are inordinate self-opinion, and haughty elevation of soul, that aspire above competition or controul, as the tall rock lifts its head above the skies, and is not bent or shattered by the storm, beautiful in its unconquered strength, terrible in its unaltered repose. Mr. Kean, instead of ‘keeping his state,’ instead of remaining fixed and immoveable (for the most part) on his pedestal of pride, seemed impatient of this mock-dignity, this still-life assumption of superiority; burst too often from the trammels of precedent, and the routine of etiquette, which should have confined him; and descended into the common arena of man, to make good his pretensions by the energy with which he contended for them, and to prove the hollowness of his supposed indifference to the opinion of others by the excessive significance and studied variations of the scorn and disgust he expressed for it. The intolerable airs and aristocratical pretensions of which he is the slave, and to which he falls a victim, did not seem legitimate in him, but upstart, turbulent, and vulgar. Thus his haughty answer to the mob who banish him—‘I banish you’—was given with all the virulence of execration, and rage of impotent despair, as if he had to strain every nerve and faculty of soul to shake off the contamination of their hated power over him, instead of being delivered with calm, majestic self-possession, as if he remained rooted to the spot, and his least motion, word, or look, must scatter them like chaff or scum from his presence! The most effective scene was that in which he stands for the Consulship, and begs for ‘the most sweet voices’ of the people whom he loathes; and the most ineffective was that in which he is reluctantly reconciled to, and over-come by the entreaties of, his mother. This decisive and affecting interview passed off as if nothing had happened, and was conducted with diplomatic gravity and skill. The casting of the other parts was a climax in bathos. Mr. Gattie was Menenius, the friend of Coriolanus, and Mr. Penley Tullus Aufidius, his mortal foe. Mr. Pope should have played the part. One would think there were processions and ovations enough in this play, as it was acted in John Kemble’s time; but besides these, there were introduced others of the same sort, some of which were lengthened out as if they would reach all the way to the Circus; and there was a sham-fight, of melodramatic effect, in the second scene, in which Mr. Kean had like to have lost his voice. There was throughout a continual din of—

‘Guns, drums, trumpets, blunderbuss, and thunder.’

or what was very like it. In the middle of an important scene, the tinkling of the stage-bell was employed to announce a flourish of trumpets—a thing which even Mr. Glossup would not hear of, whatever the act of parliament might say to enforce such a puppet-show accompaniment. There is very bad management in all this; and yet Mr. Elliston is the manager.

No. III

[March, 1820.

MINOR THEATRES.—This is a subject on which we shall treat, with satisfaction to ourselves, and, we hope, to the edification of the reader. Indeed, we are not a little vain of the article we propose to write on this occasion; and we feel the pen in our hands flutter its feathered down with more than its usual specific levity, at the thought of the idle, careless career before it. No Theatre-Royal oppresses the imagination, and entombs it in a mausoleum of massy pride; no manager’s pompous pretensions choak up the lively current of our blood: no long-announced performance, big with expectation, comes to nothing, and yet compels us gravely to record its failure, and compose its epitaph. We have here ‘ample scope and verge enough;’ we pick and chuse as we will, light where we please, and stay no longer than we have a mind—saying ‘this I like, that I loath, as one picks pears:’—hover over the Surry Theatre; or snatch a grace beyond the reach of art from the Miss Dennett’s at the Adelphi; or take a peep (like the Devil upon Two Sticks) at Mr. Booth at the Cobourg—and one peep is sufficient:—Or stretch our legs and strain our fancies (as a pure voluntary exercise of dramatic faith and charity) as far as Mr. Rae and the East London, where Mrs. Gould (late Miss Burrell), makes fine work with Don Giovanni and the Furies! We are not, in this case, to be ‘constrained by mastery.’—Escaped from under the more immediate inspection of the Lord Chamberlain’s eye, fastidious objections, formal method, regular details, strict moral censure, cannot be expected at our hands: our ‘speculative and officed instruments’ may be well laid aside for a time. At sight of the purlieus of taste, and suburbs of the drama, criticism ‘clappeth his wings, and straitway he is gone!’ In short, we feel it as our bounden duty to strike a truce with gravity, and give a furlough to fancy; and, in entering on this part of our subject, to let our thoughts wander over it, sport and trifle with it at pleasure, like the butter-fly of whom Spenser largely and loftily sings in his Muiopotmos.—

‘There he arriving, round about doth fly From bed to bed, from one to other border, And takes survey, with curious busy eye, Of every flower and herb there set in order; Now this, now that he tasteth tenderly, Yet none of them he rudely doth disorder, Nor with his feet their silken leaves deface, But pastures on the pleasures of each place.

What more felicity can fall to creature Than to enjoy Delight with Liberty, And to be lord of all the works of Nature, To reign in th’ air from earth to highest sky: To feed on flowers, and weeds of glorious feature, To take whatever thing doth please the eye? Who rests not pleased with such happiness, Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness!’

If we could but once realise this idea of a butterfly-critic extracting sweets from flowers and turning gall to honey, we might well hope to soar above the Grub-street race, and confound, by the novelty of our appearance, and the gaiety of our flight, the idle conjectures of ignorant or malicious pretenders in entomology!

Besides, having once got out of the vortex of prejudice and fashion, that surrounds our large Winter Theatres, what is there to hinder us (or what shall) from dropping down from the verge of the metropolis into the haunts of the provincial drama;—from taking coach to Bath or Brighton, or visiting the Land’s-End, or giving an account of Botany-bay theatricals, or the establishment of a new theatre at Venezuela? One reason that makes the Minor Theatres interesting is, that they are the connecting link, that lets us down, by an easy transition, from the highest pomp and proudest display of the Thespian art, to its first rudiments and helpless infancy.—With conscious happy retrospect, they lead the eye back, along the vista of the imagination, to the village barn, or travelling booth, or old-fashioned town-hall, or more genteel assembly-room, in which Momus first unmasked to us his fairy revels, and introduced us, for the first time in our lives, to that strange anomaly in existence, that fanciful reality, that gay waking dream, a company of strolling players! Sit still, draw close together, hold in your breath—not a word, not a whisper—the laugh is ready to start away, ‘like greyhound on the slip,’ the big tear of wonder and expectation is ready to steal down ‘the full eyes and fair cheeks of childhood,’ almost before the time. Only another moment, and amidst blazing tapers, and the dancing sounds of music, and light throbbing hearts, and eager looks, the curtain rises, and the picture of the world appears before us in all its glory and in all its freshness. Life throws its gaudy shadow across the stage; Hope shakes his many-coloured wings, ‘embalmed with odours;’ Joy claps his hands, and laughs in a hundred happy faces. Oh childish fancy, what a mighty empire is thine; what endless creations thou buildest out of nothing; what ‘a wide O’ indeed, thou chusest to act thy thoughts, and unrivalled feats upon! Thou art better than the gilt trophy that decks the funeral pall of kings; thou art brighter than the costly mace that precedes them on their coronation-day. Thy fearfullest visions are enviable happiness; thy wildest fictions are the solidest truths. Thou art the only reality. All other possessions mock our idle grasp: but thou performest by promising; thy smile is fruition; thy blandishments are all that we can fairly call our own; thou art the balm of life, the heaven of childhood, the poet’s idol, and the player’s pride! The world is but thy painting; and the stage is thine enchanted mirror.—When it first displays its shining surface to our view, how glad, how surprised are we! We have no thought of any deception in the scene, no wish but to realize it ourselves with inconsiderate haste and fond impatience. We say to the air-drawn gorgeous phantom, ‘Come, let me clutch thee!’ A new sense comes upon us, the scales fall off our eyes, and the scenes of life start out in endless quick succession crowded with men and women-actors, such as we see before us—comparable to ‘those gay creatures of the element, that live in the rainbow, and play i’ th’ plighted clouds!’ Happy are we who look on and admire; and happy, we think, must they be who are so looked at and admired; and sometimes we begin to feel uneasy till we can ourselves mingle in the gay, busy, talking, fluttering, powdered, painted, perfumed, peruked, quaintly-accoutred throng of coxcombs and coquettes,—of tragedy heroes or heroines,—in good earnest; or turn stage-players and represent them in jest, with all the impertinent and consequential airs of the originals!

It is no insignificant epoch in one’s life the first time that odd-looking thing, a play-bill, is left at our door in a little market-town in the country (say W—m in S——shire). The Manager, somewhat fatter and more erect, ‘as Manager beseems,’ than the rest of his Company, with more of the man of business, and not less of the coxcomb, in his strut and manner, knocks at the door with the end of a walking cane (a badge of office!) and a bundle of papers under his arm; presents one of them printed in large capitals, with a respectful bow and a familiar shrug; hopes to give satisfaction in the town; hints at the liberal encouragement they received at W——ch, the last place they stopped at; had every possible facility afforded by the Magistrates; supped one evening with the Rev. Mr. J——s, a dissenting clergyman, and really a very well-informed, agreeable, sensible man, full of anecdote—no illiberal prejudices against the profession:—then talks of the strength of his company, with a careless mention of his own favourite line—his benefit fixed for an early day, but would do himself the honour to leave farther particulars at a future opportunity—speaks of the stage as an elegant amusement, that most agreeably enlivened a spare evening or two in the week, and, under proper management (to which he himself paid the most assiduous attention) might be made of the greatest assistance to the cause of virtue and humanity—had seen Mr. Garrick act the last night but one before his retiring from the stage—had himself had offers from the London boards, and indeed could not say he had given up all thoughts of one day surprising them—as it was, had no reason to repine—Mrs. F—— tolerably advanced in life—his eldest son a prodigious turn for the higher walks of tragedy—had said perhaps too much of himself—had given universal satisfaction—hoped that the young gentleman and lady, at least, would attend on the following evening, when the West-Indian would be performed at the market-hall, with the farce of No Song No Supper—and so having played his part, withdraws in the full persuasion of having made a favourable impression, and of meeting with every encouragement the place affords! Thus he passes from house to house, and goes through the routine of topic after topic, with that sort of modest assurance, which is indispensable in the manager of a country theatre. This fellow, who floats over the troubles of life as the froth above the idle wave, with all his little expedients and disappointments, with pawned paste-buckles, mortgaged scenery, empty exchequer, and rebellious orchestra, is not of all men the most miserable:—he is little less happy than a king, though not much better off than a beggar. He has little to think of, much to do, more to say; and is accompanied, in his incessant daily round of trifling occupations, with a never-failing sense of authority and self-importance, the one thing needful (above all others) to the heart of man. This however is their man of business in the company; he is a sort of fixture in their little state; like Nebuchadnezzar’s image, but half of earth and half of finer metal: he is not ‘of imagination all compact:’ he is not, like the rest of his aspiring crew, a feeder upon air, a drinker of applause, tricked out in vanity and in nothing else; he is not quite mad, nor quite happy. The whining Romeo, who goes supperless to bed, and on his pallet of straw dreams of a crown of laurel, of waving handkerchiefs, of bright eyes, and billet-doux breathing boundless love: the ranting Richard, whose infuriate execrations are drowned in the shouts of the all-ruling pit; he who, without a coat to his back, or a groat in his purse, snatches at Cato’s robe, and binds the diadem of Cæsar on his brow;—these are the men that Fancy has chosen for herself, and placed above the reach of fortune, and almost of fate. They take no thought for the morrow. What is it to them what they shall eat, or what they shall drink, or how they shall be clothed? ‘Their mind to them a kingdom is.’—It is not a poor ten shillings a week, their share in the profits of the theatre, with which they have to pay for bed, board, and lodging, that bounds their wealth. They share (and not unequally) in all the wealth, the pomp, and pleasures of the world. They wield sceptres, conquer kingdoms, court princesses, are clothed in purple, and fare sumptuously every night. They taste, in imagination, ‘of all earth’s bliss, both living and loving:’ whatever has been most the admiration or most the envy of mankind, they, for a moment, in their own eyes, and in the eyes of others, become. The poet fancies others to be this or that; the player fancies himself to be all that the poet but describes. A little rouge makes him a lover, a plume of feathers a hero, a brazen crown an emperor. Where will you buy rank, office, supreme delights, so cheap as at his shop of fancy? Is it nothing to dream whenever we please, and seem whatever we desire? Is real greatness, is real prosperity, more than what it seems? Where shall we find, or where shall the votary of the stage find, Fortunatus’s Wishing Cap, but in the wardrobe which we laugh at: or borrow the philosopher’s stone but from the property-man of the theatre? He has discovered the true Elixir of Life, which is freedom from care: he quaffs the pure aurum potabile, which is popular applause. He who is smit with the love of this ideal existence, cannot be weaned from it. Hoot him from the stage, and he will stay to sweep the lobbies or shift the scenes. Offer him twice the salary to go into a counting-house, or stand behind a counter, and he will return to poverty, steeped in contempt, but eked out with fancy, at the end of a week. Make a laughing-stock of an actress, lower her salary, tell her she is too tall, awkward, stupid, and ugly; try to get rid of her all you can—she will remain, only to hear herself courted, to listen to the echo of her borrowed name, to live but one short minute in the lap of vanity and tinsel shew. Will you give a man an additional ten shillings a week, and ask him to resign the fancied wealth of the world, which he ‘by his so potent art’ can conjure up, and glad his eyes, and fill his heart with it? When a little change of dress, and the muttering a few talismanic words, make all the difference between the vagabond and the hero, what signifies the interval so easily passed? Would you not yourself consent to be alternately a beggar and a king, but that you have not the secret skill to be so? The player has that ‘happy alchemy of mind:’—why then would you reduce him to an equality with yourself?—The moral of this reasoning is known and felt, though it may be gainsayed. Wherever the players come, they send a welcome before them, and leave an air in the place behind them.[41] They shed a light upon the day, that does not very soon pass off. See how they glitter along the street, wandering, not where business but the bent of pleasure takes them, like mealy-coated butterflies, or insects flitting in the sun. They seem another, happier, idler race of mortals, prolonging the carelessness of childhood to old age, floating down the stream of life, or wafted by the wanton breeze to their final place of rest. We remember one (we must make the reader acquainted with him) who once overtook us loitering by ‘Severn’s sedgy side,’ on a fine May morning, with a score of play-bills streaming from his pockets, for the use of the neighbouring villages, and a music-score in his hand, which he sung blithe and clear, advancing with light step and a loud voice! With a sprightly bon jour, he passed on, carolling to the echo of the babbling stream, brisk as a bird, gay as a mote, swift as an arrow from a twanging bow, heart-whole, and with shining face that shot back the sun’s broad rays!—What is become of this favourite of mirth and song? Has care touched him? Has death tripped up his heels? Has an indigestion imprisoned him, and all his gaiety, in a living dungeon? Or is he himself lost and buried amidst the rubbish of one of our larger, or else of one of our Minor Theatres?

——‘Alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!’

But as this was no doubt the height of his ambition, why should we wish to debar him of it?

This brings us back, after our intended digression, to the subject from whence we set out,—the smaller theatres of the metropolis; which we visited lately, in hopes to find in them a romantic contrast to the presumptuous and exclusive pretensions of the legitimate drama, and to revive some of the associations of our youth above described.—The first attempt we made was at the Cobourg, and we were completely baulked. Judge of our disappointment. This was not owing, we protest, to any fault or perversity of our own; to the crust and scales of formality which had grown over us; to the panoply of criticism in which we go armed, and which made us inaccessible to ‘pleasure’s finest point;’ or to the cheveux-de-fris of objections, which cut us off from all cordial participation in what was going forward on the stage. No such thing. We went not only willing, but determined to be pleased. We had laid aside the pedantry of rules, the petulance of sarcasm, and had hoped to open once more, by stealth, the source of sacred tears, of bubbling laughter, and concealed sighs. We were not formidable. On the contrary, we were ‘made of penetrable stuff.’ Stooping from our pride of place, we were ready to be equally delighted with a clown in a pantomime, or a lord-mayor in a tragedy. We were all attention, simplicity, and enthusiasm. But we saw neither attention, simplicity, nor enthusiasm in any body else; and our whole scheme of voluntary delusion and social enjoyment was cut up by the roots. The play was indifferent, but that was nothing. The acting was bad, but that was nothing. The audience were low, but that was nothing. It was the heartless indifference and hearty contempt shown by the performers for their parts, and by the audience for the players and the play, that disgusted us with all of them. Instead of the rude, naked, undisguised expression of curiosity and wonder, of overflowing vanity and unbridled egotism, there was nothing but an exhibition of the most petulant cockneyism and vulgar slang. All our former notions and theories were turned topsy-turvy. The genius of St. George’s Fields prevailed, and you felt yourself in a bridewell, or a brothel, amidst Jew-boys, pickpockets, prostitutes, and mountebanks, instead of being in the precincts of Mount Parnassus, or in the company of the Muses. The object was not to admire or to excel, but to vilify and degrade every thing. The audience did not hiss the actors (that would have implied a serious feeling of disapprobation, and something like a disappointed wish to be pleased) but they laughed, hooted at, nick-named, pelted them with oranges and witticisms, to show their unruly contempt for them and their art; while the performers, to be even with the audience, evidently slurred their parts, as if ashamed to be thought to take any interest in them, laughed in one another’s faces, and in that of their friends in the pit, and most effectually marred the process of theatrical illusion, by turning the whole into a most unprincipled burlesque. We cannot help thinking that some part of this indecency and licentiousness is to be traced to the diminutive size of these theatres, and to the close contact into which these unmannerly censors come with the objects of their ignorant and unfeeling scorn. Familiarity breeds contempt. By too narrow an inspection, you take away that fine, hazy medium of abstraction, by which (in moderation) a play is best set off: you are, as it were, admitted behind the scenes; ‘see the puppets dallying;’ shake hands, across the orchestra, with an actor whom you know, or take one you do not like by the beard, with equal impropriety:—you distinguish the paint, the individual features, the texture of the dresses, the patch-work and machinery by which the whole is made up; and this in some measure destroys the effect, distracts attention, suspends the interest, and makes you disposed to quarrel with the actors as impostors, and ‘not the men you took them for.’ You here see Mr. Booth, in Brutus, with every motion of his face articulated, with his under-jaws grinding out sentences, and his upper-lip twitching at words and syllables, as if a needle and thread had been passed through each corner of it, and the gude wife still continued sewing at her work:—you perceive the contortion and barrenness of his expression (in which there is only one form of bent brows, and close pent-up mouth for all occasions) the parsimony of his figure is exposed, and the refuse tones of his voice fall with undiminished vulgarity on the pained ear:—you have Mr. Higman as Prior Aymer in Ivanhoe, who used to play the Gipsey so well at Covent-garden in Guy Mannering, and who certainly is an admirable bass singer: you have Mr. Stanley, from the Theatre-Royal, Bath, and whom we thought an interesting actor there (such as poor Wilson might have been who trod the same boards, and with whom our readers will remember that Miss Lydia Melford, in Humphrey Clinker, fell in love):—you have Mr. Barrymore, that old and deserving favourite with the public in the best days of Mrs. Siddons and of John Kemble, superintending, we believe, the whole, from a little oval window in a stage-box, like Mr. Bentham eying the hopeful circle of delinquents in his Panopticon:—and, to sum up all in one word, you have here Mr. H. Kemble, whose hereditary gravity is put to the last test, by the yells and grins of the remorseless rabble.

‘My soul turn from them!’—‘Turn we to survey’ where the Miss Dennetts, at the Adelphi Theatre, (which should once more from them be called the Sans Pareil) weave the airy, the harmonious, liquid dance. Of each of them it might be said, and we believe has been said—

‘Her, lovely Venus at a birth With two Sister Graces more To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore.’

Such figures, no doubt, gave rise to the fables of ancient mythology, and might be worshipped. They revive the ideas of classic grace, life, and joy. They do not seem like taught dancers, Columbines, and figurantes on an artificial stage; but come bounding forward like nymphs in vales of Arcady, or, like Italian shepherdesses, join in a lovely group of easy gracefulness, while ‘vernal airs attune the trembling leaves’ to their soft motions. If they were nothing in themselves, they would be complete in one another. Each owes a double grace, youth, and beauty, to her reflection in the other two. It is the principle of proportion or harmony personified. To deny their merit or criticise their style, is to be blind and dead to the felicities of art and nature. Not to feel the force of their united charms (united, yet divided, different, and yet the same), is not to see the beauty of ‘three red roses on a stalk,’—or of the mingled hues of the rainbow, or of the halcyon’s breast, reflected in the stream,—or ‘the witchery of the soft blue sky,’ or grace in the waving of the branch of a tree, or tenderness in the bending of a flower, or liveliness in the motion of a wave of the sea. We shall not try to defend them against the dancing-school critics; there is another school, different from that of the pied a plomb and pirouette cant, the school of taste and nature. In this school, the Miss Dennetts are (to say the least) delicious novices. Theirs is the only performance on the stage (we include the Opera) that gives the uninitiated spectator an idea that dancing can be an emanation of instinctive gaiety, or express the language of sentiment. We might shew them to the Count Stendhal, who speaks so feelingly of the beauties of a dance by Italian peasant girls, as our three English Graces; and we might add, as a farther proof of national liberality and public taste, that they had been discarded from one of our larger, to take refuge in one of our petty theatres, on a disagreement about a pound a week in their joint salaries. Yet we suppose if these young ladies were to marry, and not volunteer to put ten thousand pounds in the pockets of some liberally disposed manager, we should hear a very pitiful story of their ingratitude to their patrons and the public. It is the way of the world. There is a Mr. Reeve at this theatre (the Adelphi in the Strand) of whom report had spoken highly in his particular department as a mimic, and in whom we were considerably disappointed. He is not so good as Matthews, who, after all, is by no means a fac-simile of those he pretends to represent. We knew most of Mr. Reeve’s likenesses, and that is the utmost we can say in their praise; for we thought them very bad ones. They were very slight, and yet contrived to be very disagreeable. Farren was the most amusing, from a certain oddity of voice and manner in the ingenious and eccentric original. Harley, again, was not at all the thing. There was something of the external dress and deportment, but none of the spirit, the frothy essence. He made him out a great burly swaggering ruffian, instead of being what he is—a pleasant, fidgetty person, pert as a jack-daw, light as a grasshopper. In short, from having seen Mr. Reeve, no one would wish to see Mr. Harley, though there is no one who has seen him but wishes to see him again; and, though mimicry has the privilege of turning into ridicule the loftier pretensions of tragic heroes, we believe it always endeavours to set off the livelier peculiarities of comic ones in the most agreeable light. Mr. Kean was bad enough. It might have been coarse and repulsive enough, and yet like; but it wanted point and energy, and this was inexcusable. We have heard much of ludicrous and admirable imitations of Mr. Kean’s acting. But the only person who ever caricatures Mr. Kean well, or from whose exaggerations he has any thing to fear, is himself. There are several other actors at the Adelphi who are, and must continue to be, nameless. There are also some better known to the town, as Mr. Wilkinson, Mrs. Alsop, etc. This lady has lost none of her exuberant and piquant vivacity by her change of situation. She also looks much the same: and as you see her near, this circumstance is by no means to her advantage. The truth is, that there are not good actors or agreeable actresses enough in town to make one really good company (by which we mean a company able to get up any one really good play throughout) and of course there are not a sufficient number (unless by a miracle) to divide into eight or ten different establishments.

Of the Haymarket and Lyceum, which come more properly under the head of Summer Theatres, it is not at present ‘our hint to speak’; but we may shortly take a peep into the Surrey and East London Theatres,[42] and enlarge upon them as we see cause. Of the latter it is sufficient to observe, that Mr. Rae is the principal tragic actor there, and Mr. Peter Moore the chief manager. After this, is it to be wondered at that Covent-garden is almost deserted, and that Mr. Elliston cannot yet afford to give up the practice of puffing at the bottom of his play-bills!

The larger, as well as the smaller, theatres have been closed during the greater part of the last month. There has been one new piece, the Antiquary, brought out at Covent-garden, since our last report. It is founded, as our readers will suppose, on the admirable novel of that name by the author of Waverley, but it is only a slight sketch of the story and characters, and not, we think, equal to the former popular melo-drames taken from the same prolific source. The characters in general were not very intelligibly brought out, nor very strikingly cast. Liston made but an indifferent Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck. He was dressed in a snuff-coloured coat and plain bob-wig, and that was all. It was quaint and dry, and accordingly inefficient, and quite unlike his admirable portrait of Dominie Sampson, which is one of the finest pieces of acting on the stage, both for humour and feeling, invention and expression. The little odd ways and antiquarian whims and crochets of Mr. Oldbuck, even were they as well managed in the drama as they are exquisitely hit off in the novel, would hardly tell in Liston’s hands. Emery made an impressive Edie Ochiltree; but he was somewhat too powerful a preacher, and too sturdy a beggar. Mr. Abbott personated the haughty, petulant Captain MacIntire to a great nicety of resemblance. Mr. Duruset as young Lovell ‘warbled’ in a manner that Jacques would not have found fault with. Miss Stephens sang one or two airs very sweetly, and was complimented at the end very rapturously and unexpectedly by the ungallant Mr. Oldbuck. The scene on the sea-shore, where she is in danger of being overtaken by the tide, with her father and old Edie, had an admirable effect, as far as the imitation of the rolling of the waves of the sea on a London stage could produce admiration. The part of old Elspith of Craigie Burn Wood was strikingly performed by Mrs. Fawcett, who, indeed, acts whatever she undertakes well; and the scene with Lord Glenallan, in which she unfolds to him the dreadful story of his life, was given at much length and with considerable effect. But what can come up to the sublime, heartbreaking pathos, the terrific painting of the original work? The story of this unhappy feudal lord is the most harrowing in all these novels (rich as they are in the materials of nature and passion): and the description of the old woman, who had been a principal subordinate instrument in the tragedy, is done with a more masterly and withering hand than any other. Her death-like appearance, her strange existence, like one hovering between this world and the next, or like a speaking corpse; her fixed attitude, her complete forgetfulness of every thing but the one subject that loads her thoughts, her preternatural self-possession on that, her prophetic and awful denunciations, her clay-cold and shrivelled body, consumed and kept alive by a wasting fire within, are all given with a subtlety, a truth, a boldness and originality of conception, that were never, perhaps, surpassed. But the author does not want our praise; nor can we withhold from him our admiration.

Mr. Kean, the week before we saw him in Coriolanus, played Othello; and as we would always prefer bearing testimony to his genius, to recording his comparative failures, we will here express our opinion of his performance of this character in the words of a contemporary journal, a short time back:—

Mr. Kean’s Othello is, we suppose, the finest piece of acting in the world. It is impossible either to describe or praise it adequately. We have never seen any actor so wrought upon, so ‘perplexed in the extreme.’ The energy of passion, as it expresses itself in action, is not the most terrific part: it is the agony of his soul, showing itself in looks and tones of voice. In one part, where he listens in dumb despair to the fiend-like insinuations of Iago, he presented the very face, the marble aspect of Dante’s Count Ugolino. On his fixed eye-lids, ‘horror sat plumed.’ In another part, where a gleam of hope or of tenderness returns to subdue the tumult of his passions, his voice broke in faltering accents from his over-charged breast. His lips might be said less to utter words, than to distil drops of blood, gushing from his heart. An instance of this was in his pronunciation of the line, ‘of one that loved not wisely but too well.’ The whole of this last speech was indeed given with exquisite force and beauty. We only object to the virulence with which he delivers the last line, and with which he stabs himself—a virulence which Othello would neither feel against himself at the moment, nor against the ‘turbaned Turk’ (whom he had slain) at such a distance at time. His exclamation on seeing his wife, ‘I cannot think but Desdemona’s honest,’ was, ‘the glorious triumph of exceeding love’; a thought flashing conviction on his mind, and irradiating his countenance with joy, like sudden sunshine. In fact, almost every scene or sentence in this extraordinary exhibition is a master-piece of natural passion. The convulsed motion of the hands, and the involuntary swelling of the veins in the forehead in some of the most painful situations, should not only suggest topics of critical panegyric, but might furnish studies to the painter or anatomist.

No. IV

[April, 1820.

The age we live in is critical, didactic, paradoxical, romantic, but it is not dramatic. This, if any, is its weak side: it is there that modern literature does not run on all fours, nor triumph over the periods that are past; it halts on one leg; and is fairly distanced by long-acknowledged excellence, as well as by long-forgotten efforts of the same kind. Our ancestors could write a tragedy two hundred years ago; they could write a comedy one hundred years ago; why cannot we do the same now? It is hard to say; but so it is. When we give it as our opinion, that this is not ‘the high and palmy state’ of the productions of the stage, we would be understood to signify, that there has hardly been a good tragedy or a good comedy written within the last fifty years, that is, since the time of Home’s Douglas, and Sheridan’s School for Scandal; and when we speak of a good tragedy or comedy, we mean one that will be thought so fifty years hence. Not that we would have it supposed, that a work, to be worth any thing, must last always: what we have said above of works that have fallen into unmerited decay, through the lapse of time, and mutation of circumstances, would show the contrary: but we think that a play that only runs its one-and-twenty nights, that does not reach beyond the life of an actor, or the fashion of a single generation, may be fairly set down as good for nothing, to any purposes of criticism, or serious admiration. Time seems to have its circle as well as the globe we inhabit; the loftiest eminences, by degrees, sink beneath the horizon; the greatest works are lost sight of in the end, and cannot be restored; but those that disappear at the first step we take, or are hidden by the first object that intervenes, can, in either case, be of no real magnitude or importance. We have never seen the highest range of mountains in the world; nor are the longest-lived works intelligible to us (from the difference both of language and manners) at this day: but the name of the Andes, like that of old, blind Homer, serves us on this side of the globe, and at the lag-end of time, to repeat and wonder at; and that we have ever heard of either is alone sufficient proof of the vastness of the one, and of the sublimity of the other! Without waiting for the final award, or gradual oblivion of slow-revolving ages, we may be bold to say of our writers for the stage, during the last twenty or thirty years, as Pope is reported to have said of Ben Jonson’s, somewhat unadvisedly, ‘What trash are their works, taken altogether!’ We would not deny or depreciate merit, wherever we find it, in individuals, or in classes: for instance, we grant that all the pantomimes are good in which Mr. Grimaldi plays the clown; and that the melodrames have been excellent, when Mr. Farley had a hand in them; and that the farces could not be damned if Munden showed his face in them; and that O’Keeffe’s could not fail with an audience that had a mind to laugh: but having mentioned these, and added a few more to our private list (for it might be invidious to specify particularly No Song no Supper, the Prize, Goldfinch, Robert Tyke, or Lubin Log, &c. &c.), we really are at a loss to proceed with the more legitimate and higher productions of the modern drama. Are there not then Mr. Coleridge’s Remorse, Mr. Maturin’s Bertram, Mr. Milman’s Fazio, and many others? There are; but we do not know that they make any difference in the question. The poverty indeed of our present dramatic genius cannot be made appear more fully than by this, that whatever it has to show of profound, is of German taste and origin; and that what little it can boast of elegant, though light and vain, is taken from petite pieces of Parisian mould.

We have been long trying to find out the meaning of all this, and at last we think we have succeeded. The cause of the evil complained of, like the root of so many other grievances and complaints, lies in the French revolution. That event has rivetted all eyes, and distracted all hearts; and, like people staring at a comet, in the panic and confusion in which we have been huddled together, we have not had time to laugh at one another’s defects, or to condole over one another’s misfortunes. We have become a nation of politicians and newsmongers; our inquiries in the streets are no less than after the health of Europe; and in men’s faces, we may see strange matters written,—the rise of stocks, the loss of battles, the fall of kingdoms, and the death of kings. The Muse, meanwhile, droops in bye-corners of the mind, and is forced to take up with the refuse of our thoughts. Our attention has been turned, by the current of events, to the general nature of men and things; and we cannot call it heartily back to individual caprices, or head-strong passions, which are the nerves and sinews of Comedy and Tragedy. What is an individual man to a nation? Or what is a nation to an abstract principle? The affairs of the world are spread out before us, as in a map; we sit with the newspaper, and a pair of compasses in our hand, to measure out provinces, and to dispose of thrones; we ‘look abroad into universality,’ feel in circles of latitude and longitude, and cannot contract the grasp of our minds to scan with nice scrutiny particular foibles, or to be engrossed by any single suffering. What we gain in extent, we lose in force and depth. A general and speculative interest absorbs the corroding poison, and takes out the sting of our more circumscribed and fiercer passions. We are become public creatures; ‘are embowelled of our natural entrails, and stuffed,’ as Mr. Burke has it in his high-flown phrase, ‘with paltry blurred sheets of paper about the rights of man,’ or the rights of legitimacy. We break our sleep to argue a question; a piece of news spoils our appetite for dinner. We are not so solicitous after our own success as the success of a cause. Our thoughts, feelings, distresses, are about what no way concerns us, more than it concerns any body else, like those of the Upholsterer, ridiculed as a new species of character in the Tatler: but we are become a nation of upholsterers. We participate in the general progress of intellect, and the large vicissitudes of human affairs; but the hugest private sorrow looks dwarfish and puerile. In the sovereignty of our minds, we make mankind our quarry; and, in the scope of our ambitious thoughts, hunt for prey through the four quarters of the world. In a word, literature and civilization have abstracted man from himself so far, that his existence is no longer dramatic; and the press has been the ruin of the stage, unless we are greatly deceived.

If a bias to abstraction is evidently, then, the reigning spirit of the age, dramatic poetry must be allowed to be most irreconcileable with this spirit; it is essentially individual and concrete, both in form and in power. It is the closest imitation of nature; it has a body of truth; it is ‘a counterfeit presentment’ of reality; for it brings forward certain characters to act and speak for themselves, in the most trying and singular circumstances. It is not enough for them to declaim on certain general topics, however forcibly or learnedly—this is merely oratory, and this any other characters might do as well, in any other circumstances: nor is it sufficient for the poet to furnish the colours and forms of style and fancy out of his own store, however inexhaustible; for if he merely makes them express his own feelings, and the idle effusions of his own breast, he had better speak in his own person, without any of those troublesome ‘interlocutions between Lucius and Caius.’ The tragic poet (to be truly such) can only deliver the sentiments of given persons, placed in given circumstances; and in order to make what so proceeds from their mouths, at once proper to them and interesting to the audience, their characters must be powerfully marked: their passions, which are the subject-matter of which they treat, must be worked up to the highest pitch of intensity; and the circumstances which give force and direction to them must be stamped with the utmost distinctness and vividness in every line. Within the circle of dramatic character and natural passion, each individual is to feel as keenly, as profoundly, as rapidly as possible, but he is not to feel beyond it, for others or for the whole. Each character, on the contrary, must be a kind of centre of repulsion to the rest; and it is their hostile interests, brought into collision, that must tug at their heart-strings, and call forth every faculty of thought, of speech, and action. They must not be represented like a set of profiles, looking all the same way, nor with their faces turned round to the audience; but in dire contention with each other: their words, like their swords, must strike fire from one another,—must inflict the wound, and pour in the poison. The poet, to do justice to his undertaking, must not only identify himself with each, but must take part with all by turns, ‘to relish all as sharply, passioned as they;’—must feel scorn, pity, love, hate, anger, remorse, revenge, ambition, in their most sudden and fierce extremes,—must not only have these passions rooted in his mind, but must be alive to every circumstance affecting them, to every accident of which advantage can be taken to gratify or exasperate them; a word must kindle the dormant spark into a flame; an unforeseen event must overturn his whole being in conceipt; it is from the excess of passion that he must borrow the activity of his imagination; he must mould the sound of his verse to its fluctuations and caprices, and build up the whole superstructure of his fable on the deep and strict foundations of nature. But surely it is hardly to be thought that the poet should feel for others in this way, when they have ceased almost to feel for themselves; when the mind is turned habitually out of itself to general, speculative truth, and possibilities of good, and when, in fact, the processes of the understanding, analytical distinctions, and verbal disputes, have superseded all personal and local attachments and antipathies, and have, in a manner, put a stop to the pulsation of the heart—quenched the fever in the blood—the madness in the brain;—when we are more in love with a theory than a mistress, and would only crush to atoms those who are of an opposite party to ourselves in taste, philosophy, or politics. The folds of self-love, arising out of natural instincts, connections, and circumstances, have not wound themselves exclusively and unconsciously enough round the human mind to furnish the matter of impassioned poetry in real life: much less are we to expect the poet, without observation of its effects on others, or experience of them in himself, to supply the imaginary form out of vague topics, general reflections, far-fetched tropes, affected sentiments, and fine writing. To move the world, he must have a place to fix the levers of invention upon. The poet (let his genius be what it will) can only act by sympathy with the public mind and manners of his age; but these are, at present, not in sympathy, but in opposition to dramatic poetry. Therefore, we have no dramatic poets. It would be strange indeed (under favour be it spoken) if in the same period of time that produced the Political Justice or the Edinburgh Review, there should be found such an ‘unfeathered, two-legged thing’ as a real tragedy poet.

But it may be answered, that the author of the Enquiry concerning Political Justice, is himself a writer of romances, and the author of Caleb Williams. We hearken to the suggestion, and will take this and one or two other eminent examples, to show how far we fall short of the goal we aim at. ‘You may wear your bays with a difference.’ Mr. Godwin has written an admirable and almost unrivalled novel (nay, more than one)—he has also written two tragedies, and failed. We can hardly think it would have been possible for him to have failed, but on the principle here stated; viz. that it was impossible for him to succeed. His genius is wholly adverse to the stage. As an author, as a novel writer, he may be considered as a philosophical recluse, a closet-hero. He cannot be denied to possess the constructive organ, to have originality and invention in an extraordinary degree: but he does not construct according to nature; his invention is not dramatic. He takes a character or a passion, and works it out to the utmost possible extravagance, and palliates or urges it on by every resource of the understanding, or by every species of plausible sophistry; but in doing this, he may be said to be only spinning a subtle theory, to be maintaining a wild paradox, as much as when he extends a philosophical and abstract principle into all its ramifications, and builds an entire and exclusive system of feeling and action on a single daring view of human nature. ‘He sits in the centre’ of his web, and ‘enjoys’ not ‘bright day,’ but a kind of gloomy grandeur. His characters stand alone, self-created, and self-supported, without communication with, or reaction upon, any other (except in the single instance of Caleb Williams himself):—the passions are not excited, qualified, or irritated by circumstances, but moulded by the will of the writer, like clay in the hands of the potter. Mr. Godwin’s imagination works like the power of steam, with inconceivable and incessant expansive force; but it is all in one direction, mechanical and uniform. By its help, he weaves gigantic figures, and unfolds terrific situations; but they are like the cloudy pageantry that hangs over the edge of day, and the prodigious offspring of his brain have neither fellow nor competitor in the scene of his imagination. They require a clear stage to themselves. They do not enter the lists with other men: nor are actuated by the ordinary wheels, pulleys, and machinery of society: they are at issue with themselves, and at war with the nature of things. Falkland, St. Leon, Mandeville, are studies for us to contemplate, not men that we can sympathise with. They move in an orbit of their own, urged on by restless thought and morbid sentiment, on which the antagonist powers of sense, habit, circumstances, and opinion have no influence whatever. The arguments addressed to them are idle and ineffectual. You might as well argue with a madman, or talk to the winds. But this is not the nature of dramatic writing. Mr. Godwin, to succeed in tragedy, should compose it almost entirely of long and repeated soliloquies, like the Prometheus of Æschylus; and his dialogues, properly translated, would turn out to be monologues, as we see in the Iron Chest.[43]

The same, or similar, remarks would apply to Mr. Wordsworth’s hankering after the drama. We understand, that, like Mr. Godwin, the author of the Lyric Ballads formerly made the attempt, and did not receive encouragement to proceed. We cannot say positively: but we much suspect that the writer would be for having all the talk to himself. His moody sensibility would eat into the plot like a cancer, and bespeak both sides of the dialogue for its own share. Mr. Wordsworth (we are satisfied with him, be it remembered, as he is), is not a man to go out of himself into the feelings of any one else; much less, to act the part of a variety of characters. He is not, like Bottom, ready to play the lady, the lover, and the lion. His poetry is a virtual proscription passed upon the promiscuous nature of the drama. He sees nothing but himself in the universe: or if he leans with a kindly feeling to any thing else, he would impart to the most uninteresting things the fulness of his own sentiments, and elevate the most insignificant characters into the foremost rank,—before kings, or heroes, or lords, or wits,—because they do not interfere with his own sense of self-importance. He has none of the bye-play, the varying points of view, the venturous magnanimity of dramatic fiction. He thinks the opening of the leaves of a daisy, or the perfume of a hedge (not of a garden) rose, matters of consequence enough for him to notice them; but he thinks the ‘daily intercourse of all this unintelligible world,’ its cares, its crimes, its noise, love, war, ambition, (what else?) mere vanity and vexation of spirit, with which a great poet cannot condescend to disturb the bright, serene, and solemn current of his thoughts. This lofty indifference and contempt for his dramatis personæ would not be the most likely means to make them interesting to the audience. We fear Mr. Wordsworth’s poetical egotism would prevent his writing a tragedy. Yet we have above made the dissipation and rarefaction of this spirit in society, the bar to dramatic excellence. Egotism is of different sorts; and he would not compliment the literary and artificial state of manners so much, as to suppose it quite free from this principle. But it is not allied at present to imagination or passion. It is sordid, servile, inert, a compound of dulness, vanity, and interest. That which is the source of dramatic excellence, is like a mountain spring, full of life and impetuosity, sparkling with light, thundering down precipices, winding along narrow defiles; or

‘Like a wild overflow, that sweeps before him A golden stack, and with it shakes down bridges, Cracks the strong hearts of pines, whose cable roots Held out a thousand storms, a thousand thunders, And so, made mightier, takes whole villages Upon his back, and, in that heat of pride, Charges strong towns, towers, castles, palaces, And lays them desolate.’

The other sort is a stagnant, gilded puddle. Mr. Wordsworth has measured it from side to side. ‘’Tis three feet long and two feet wide.’—Lord Byron’s patrician haughtiness and monastic seclusion are, we think, no less hostile than the levelling spirit of Mr. Wordsworth’s Muse, to the endless gradations, variety, and complicated ideas or mixed modes of this sort of composition. Yet we have read Manfred.

But what shall we say of Mr. Coleridge, who is the author not only of a successful but a meritorious tragedy? We may say of him what he has said of Mr. Maturin, that he is of the transcendental German school. He is a florid poet, and an ingenious metaphysician, who mistakes scholastic speculations for the intricate windings of the passions, and assigns possible reasons instead of actual motives for the excesses of his characters. He gives us studied special-pleadings for involuntary bursts of feeling, and the needless strain of tinkling sentiments for the point-blank language of nature. His Remorse is a spurious tragedy. Take the following passage, and then ask, whether the charge of sophistry and paradox, and dangerous morality, to startle the audience, in lieu of more legitimate methods of exciting their sympathy, which he brings against the author of Bertram, may not be retorted on his own head. Ordonio is made to defend the project of murdering his brother by such arguments as the following:—

‘What? if one reptile sting another reptile, Where is the crime? The goodly face of nature Hath one disfeaturing stain the less upon it. Are we not all predestined Transiency, And cold Dishonour? Grant it, that this hand Had given a morsel to the hungry worms Somewhat too early—where’s the crime of this? That this must needs bring on the idiotcy Of moist-eyed Penitence—’tis like a dream! Say, I had lay’d a body in the sun! Well! in a month there swarm forth from the corse A thousand, nay, ten thousand sentient beings In place of that one man. Say, I had killed him! Yet who shall tell me that each one and all Of these ten thousand lives is not as happy, As that one life, which, being push’d aside, Made room for these unnumber’d!’

This is a way in which no one ever justified a murder to his own mind. No one will suspect Mr. Southey of writing a tragedy, nor Mr. Moore either. His Muse is light. Walter Scott excels in the grotesque and the romantic. He gives us that which has been preserved of ancient manners and customs, and barbarous times and characters, and which strikes and staggers the mind the more, by the contrast it affords to the present artificial and effeminate state of society. But we do not know that he could write a tragedy: what he has engrafted of his own in this way upon the actual stock and floating materials of history is, we think, inferior to the general texture of his work. See, for instance, the conclusion of the Black Dwarf, where the situation of the parties is as dramatic as possible, and the effect is none at all. It is not a sound inference, that, because parts of a novel are dramatic, the author could write a play. The novelist is dramatic only where he can, and where he pleases; the other must be so. The first is a ride and tye business, like a gentleman leading his horse, or walking by the side of a gig down a hill. We shall not, however, insist farther on this topic, because we are not convinced that the author of Waverley could not write a first-rate tragedy, as well as so many first-rate novels. If he can, we wish that he would; and not leave it to others to mar what he has sketched so admirably as a ground-work for that purpose.

THE HEBREW, IVANHOE, ETC.—We have been led to make these general remarks, partly in consequence of the two new dramas, taken from the romance of Ivanhoe, the one called Ivanhoe at Coventgarden, and the other under the title of the Hebrew at Drury-lane. It argues little for the force or redundance of our original talents for tragic composition, when our authors of that description are periodical pensioners on the bounty of the Scottish press; and when with all the craving which the public and the Managers feel for novelty in this respect, they can only procure it at second-hand by vamping up with new scenery, decorations, and dresses, what has been already rendered at once sacred and familiar to us in the closet. Mr. Walter Scott no sooner conjures up the Muse of old romance, and brings us acquainted with her in ancient hall, cavern, or mossy dell, than Messrs. Harris and Elliston, with all their tribe, instantly set their tailors to work to take the pattern of the dresses, their artists to paint the wild-wood scenery or some proud dungeon-keep, their musicians to compose the fragments of bewildered ditties, and their penmen to connect the author’s scattered narrative and broken dialogue into a sort of theatrical join-hand. The thing is not ill got up in general; it fills the coffers of the theatre for a time; gratifies public curiosity till another new novel appears; and probably flatters the illustrious prose-writer, who must be fastidious indeed, if, at the end of each representation, he exclaims with Hamlet, ‘I had as lief the town-crier had spoken my lines!’—It has been observed by an excellent judge, that it was next to impossible to spoil a picture of Titian’s by copying it. Even the most indifferent wood-cut, a few scratches in an etching, gave something of a superior look of refinement, an air of grace and grandeur; the outline was so true, the disposition of light and shade so masterly in the original, that it could not be quite done away. So it is with these theatrical adaptations: the spirit of the real author shines through them in spite of many obstacles; and about a twentieth part of his genius appears in them, which is enough. His canvas is cut down, to be sure; his characters thinned out, the limbs and extremities of his plot are lopped away (cruel necessity!), and it is like showing a brick for a house. But then what is left is so fine! The author’s Muse is ‘instinct with fire,’ in every part, and the disjecta membra poetæ, like the polypus when hacked and hewed asunder, piece together again, or sprout out into new life. The other plays that we have seen taken from this stock are merely selections and transpositions of the borrowed materials: the Hebrew (we mean the principal character itself) is the only excrescence from it; and though fantastic and somewhat feeble, compared with the solid trunk from which it grew, it is still no unworthy ornament to it, like the withered and variegated moss upon the knotted oak.—Of Ivanhoe itself, we wish to say a single word, before we proceed to either drama. It is the first attempt of Mr. Scott (we wish the writer would either declare himself, or give himself a nom de guerre, that we might speak of him without either a periphrasis or impertinence) it is, we say, Mr. Scott’s first attempt on English ground, and it is, we think, only a comparative, but comparatively with himself, a decided failure. There are some few scenes in it, and one or two extraneous characters, equal to what he has before written; but we think they are, in comparison, few; and by being so distinctly detached as they are, from the general groundwork (so that no two persons taking the work to dramatise would not pitch upon the same incidents and individuals to bring forward on the stage) show that the other parts of the story are without proportionable prominence and interest. In the other novels it was not so. The variety, the continued interest, the crowded groups, the ever-changing features distracted attention, and perplexed the choice: the difficulty was not what to select, but what to reject. All was new, and all was equally, or nearly equally, good—teeming with life and throbbing with interest. But here, no one, if called upon for a preference, can miss pointing out Friar Tuck in his cell, and the Jew and his daughter Rebecca. These remain, and stand out after the perusal, as above water mark; when the rest are washed away and forgotten. For want of the same pulse, the same veins of nature circling throughout, the body of the work is cold and colourless. The author does not feel himself at home; and tries to make up for cordial sympathy and bold action, by the minute details of his subject—by finishing his Saxon draperies, or furbishing up the armour of his Normans, with equal care and indifference—so that we seem turning over a book of antiquarian prints, instead of the pages of an admired novel-writer. In fact, we conceive, as a point of speculative criticism, that the genius of the author of Waverley, however lofty, and however extensive, still has certain discernible limits; that it is strictly national; that it is traditional; that it relies on actual manners and external badges of character; that it insists on costume and dialect; and is one of individual character and situation, rather than of general nature. This was some time doubtful: but the present work ‘gives evidence of it.’ Compare his Rob Roy with Robin Hood. What rich Highland blood flows through the veins of the one; colours his hair, freckles his skin, bounds in his step, swells in his heart, kindles in his eye: what poor waterish puddle creeps through the soul of Locksley; and what a lazy, listless figure he makes in his coat of Lincoln-green, like a figure to let, in the novel of Ivanhoe! Mr. T. Cooke, of the Theatre Royal, Drury-lane, does not make him much more insipid. Mr. Scott slights and slurs our archer good. His imagination mounts with Rob Roy, among his native wilds and cliffs, like an eagle to its lordly nest: but it cannot take shelter with Robin Hood and his crew of outlaws in the Forest of Merry Sherwood: ‘his affections do not that way tend.’ Like a good patriot and an honest man, he feels not the same interest in old English history, as in Scottish tradition; the one is not bound up with his early impressions, with his local knowledge, with his personal attachments, like the other; and we may be allowed to say, that our author’s genius soars to its enviable and exclusive height from the depth of his prejudices. He has described Scottish manners, scenery, and history so well, and made them so interesting to others, from his complete knowledge and intense love of his country. Why should we expect him to describe English manners and events as well? On his native soil, within that hallowed circle of his warm affections and his keen observation, no one will pretend to cope with him. He has there a wide and noble range, over which his pen ‘holds sovereign sway and masterdom;’ to wit, over the Highlands and the Lowlands, and the Tolbooth and the good town of Edinburgh, with ‘a far cry to Lochiel,’ over gleaming lake and valley, and the bare mountain-path, over all ranks and classes of his countrymen, high and low, and over all that has happened to them for the last five hundred years, recorded in history, tradition, or old song. These he may challenge for himself; and if he throws down his gauntlet, no one but a madman will dare to take it up. But on this side the Tweed we have others as good as he. The genius of that magic stream may say to him, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.’ We have novels and romances of our own as good as Ivanhoe; and we will venture to predict, that the more this admirable and all but universal genius extends his rapid and unresisted career on this side the border, the more he will lose in reputation, and in real strength—

‘Like kings who lose the conquests gain’d before, By vain ambition still to make them more.’

How feeble, how slight, how unsatisfactory and disjointed, did the adaptations from Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, and the Antiquary appear, contrasted with the story we had read! The play of Ivanhoe at Covent Garden, on the contrary, seems to give all (or nearly so), that we remember distinctly in the novel; and the Hebrew, which constantly wanders from it, without any apparent object or meaning, yet does so without exciting much indignation or regret. We have in both the scene, the indispensable scene, at the hermitage of Copmanhurst, between the Black Knight, and Robin Hood’s jolly Friar (which, however, has not half the effect on the stage that it has in reading, though Mr. Emery plays the Friar, and sings a jolly stave for him admirably well at Covent Garden)—we have the trial of Rebecca, and the threat to put her father to the torture, almost carried into execution at the castle of Torquilstone; we have the siege and demolition of the castle itself; we have the fair Rowena at one house, in her own proper shape; and at the other, metamorphosed into the fairer and more lovely Israelite; and at both we have Cedric the Saxon, Gurth the swineherd, and Wamba the jester, and Brian de Bois-Guilbert; and what more would any one require in reason? The details, however, of all these personages and transactions are much more accurately given, and more skilfully connected in Ivanhoe than in the Hebrew, and the former play is better got up than the latter, in all the characters, with the exception of one, which it is needless to mention. Yet, why should we not, envy apart? Mr. Farren played Isaac of York, well; Mr. Kean played the Hebrew still better. As for the rest, Charles Kemble played the same character at one house that Mr. Penley, Jun. did at the other: Mr. Emery was Friar Tuck at Covent Garden, Mr. Oxberry at Drury Lane: Mr. Macready was Sir Reginald Front de Bœuf, a character exactly fitted for his impetuous action, and his smothered tremulous tones, which we cannot say of his other representative, Mr. Hamblin, though we have nothing to say against him: Miss Foote looked the beautiful Rebecca (all but the raven locks and dark eye-lashes) which Mrs. West played but insipidly, with Miss Carew to help her: and Mrs. Fawcett was the wretched, but terrific daughter of the race of Torquilstone, a character omitted at the other house. As a literary composition, we have nothing to offer on Ivanhoe; but the Hebrew (which is published, and which is from the pen of Mr. Soane, the author of some former pieces which have been well received), requires a word or two of remark. As a play, it is ill-constructed, without proportion or connection. As a poem, it has its beauties, and those we think neither mean nor few. It is disjointed, without dramatic decorum, and sometimes even to a ludicrous degree: as where a principal hero, on hearing the sound of a horn or trumpet, jumps on a table to look out of a window, and receives an arrow in his breast from one of the besiegers, on which he is carried out apparently lifeless; and yet he is presently after introduced again, as well as if no such accident had happened. But notwithstanding this, and many other errors of the same kind, and a weakness and languor in the general progress of the story, there are individual touches of nature and passion, which we can account for in no other way so satisfactorily as by imagining the author to be a man of genius. The flowers of poetry interspersed were often sad, but beautiful—

‘Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe’—

the turns and starts of passion in feeble and wronged old age, were often delicate and striking. Among these we might mention the Jew’s comparison of his own feelings on receiving an unexpected kindness, to the cold and icy current of the river frozen by the winter, but melting in the genial warmth of the sun: his refusal, in the wanderings of his intellect, to go to witness his daughter’s death in company with any one else; ‘No: thou art not my child, I’ll go alone:’ and the fine conception of his hearing, in the deep and silent abstraction of his despair (before any one else), the sound of the trampling of the champion’s steed, who comes to rescue her from destruction, which is, however, nearly ruined and rendered ridiculous by Mr. Penley’s running in with armour on from the farthest end of the stage, as fast as his legs can carry him. Upon the whole, this character, compared to the rough draught in the novel, is like a curiously finished miniature, done after a bold and noble design. For the dark, massy beard, and coarse weather-beaten figure, which we attribute to Isaac of York, we have a few sprinkled grey hairs, and the shrivelled, tottering frame of the Hebrew; and Mr. Kean’s acting in it, in several places, was such as to terrify us when we find from the play-bills that he is soon to act Lear. Of the two plays, we would then recommend it to our readers to go to see Ivanhoe at Covent Garden: but for ourselves, we would rather see the Hebrew a second time at Drury Lane, though every time we go there it costs us three and sixpence more than at the other house—a serious sum! Notwithstanding this repeated and heavy defalcation from our revenue, which really hurts our vanity not less than our interest, we must do the Manager the justice to say, that we never laughed more heartily than we did at his Sir Charles and Lady Racket the other night. ‘Unkindness may do much,’ but it is not a little matter that will hinder us from laughing as long and as loud as any body, ‘to the very top of our lungs,’ at so rich a treat as Three Weeks after Marriage. Mr. Elliston never shines to more advantage than in light, genteel farce, after Mr. Kean’s tragedy. ‘Do you think I’ll sleep with a woman that doesn’t know what’s trumps?’ It was irresistible. It might have been encored with few dissentient voices, and with no greater violation of established custom than the distributing three different performers, Mr. Connor, Mr. Yates, and Mrs. Davenport, in the pit and boxes, to hold a dialogue with a person on the stage, in the introductory interlude of The Manager in Distress at Covent Garden. We, however, do not object to this novelty, if nobody else does, and if it is not repeated; and it certainly did not put us in an ill humour for seeing Mr. Jones’s ‘Too Late for Dinner.’ Mr. Jones is much such an author as he is an actor—wild, but agreeable, going all lengths without making much progress, determined to please, and succeeding by dint of noise, bustle, whim, and nonsense. There is neither much plot, nor much point in the new farce; but it tells, and keeps the house laughing by a sort of absurd extravagance and good humour. Besides, Mr. Jones plays in it himself, and exerts himself with his wonted alacrity; so do Mr. Liston, Mr. Emery, Mrs. Davenport, and Miss Foote. The author has, indeed, cut out a cockney character for Liston (who is the Magnus Apollo of farce writers), as good as our old friend Lubin Log; and the scene in which he comes in stuffing buns, and talking at the same time, till he nearly chokes himself in the double operation, is one that would do for Hogarth to paint, if he were alive; or, as he is not, for Mr. Wilkie. Emery is a country bumpkin, who is learning French, to fit himself for travel into foreign parts; and his Yorkshire dialect and foreign jargon, jumbled together, have a very odd effect. But Mr. Emery’s acting, we are sorry to say, is not a subject for criticism: it is always just what it ought to be; and it is impossible to praise it sufficiently, because there is never any opportunity for finding fault with it. To criticise him, would be like criticising the countryman, who carried the pig under his cloak. He is always the very character he undertakes to represent; we mean, in his favourite and general cast of acting.

No. V

[May, 1820.

We don’t know where to begin this article—whether with Mr. Matthews and his Country Cousins; or with Harlequin versus Shakespear; or Cinderella and the Little Glass Slipper; or the story of Goody Two-Shoes and the Fate of Calas, at the Summer Theatre of Sadler’s Wells; or with Mr. Booth’s Lear, which we have seen with great pleasure; or with Mr. Kean’s, which is a greater pleasure to come, (so we anticipate) and which we see is put off to the last moment, lest, we suppose, as the play-bills announce, ‘the immortal Shakespear should meet with opponents.’ And why should the immortal Shakespear meet with opponents in this case? Nobody can tell. But to prevent so terrible and unlooked-for a catastrophe, and to protect the property of the theatre at so alarming a crisis from cries of ‘fire’ the Manager has thought it his duty ‘to suspend the Free List during the representation, the public press excepted.’ As we have not the mortification of the exclusion, nor the benefit of the exception, we care little about the matter, but as a curiosity in theatrical diplomacy. The anxiety of the Manager about the double trust committed to him, the property of a great theatre, and the fame of a great poet, is exemplary; and the precautions he uses for their preservation, no less admirable and efficacious:—so that, if the tragedy of King Lear should pass muster for a night or two, without suffering the greatest indignities, it will be owing to the suspension of the Free List: if Mr. Kean should ride triumphant in a sea of passion, the king of sorrows, and drown his audience in a flood of tears, it will be owing to the suspension of the Free List: if the heart-rending tragedy of the immortal bard, as it was originally written, does not meet with the same untoward fate as the speaking pantomime of the late Mr. Garrick deceased, ‘altered by a professional gentleman of great abilities,’ it will be owing to the suspension of the Free List. In a word, if the glory of the ‘great heir of fame’ does not totter to its base at the representation of his noblest work, nor the property of the theatre tumble about our ears the very first night, we shall have to thank Mr. Elliston’s timely care in the suspension of the Free List! ‘Strange that an old poet’s memory should be as mortal as a new manager’s wits!’ This bold anticipation and defiance of opposition, where none can be expected, is not very politic, though it may be very valiant. It is bringing into litigation an unencumbered estate (we mean that part of it relating to the character of Shakspear) of which we are in full and quiet possession. It is not only waking the sleeping lion, but kicking him. Mr. Elliston’s shutting his doors in the face of the Free List is like Don Quixote’s throwing open the cages of the wild beasts in the caravan, and insisting that they should come out and fight him. If the Free List were that formidable and ill-disposed body of sworn foes to Shakspear, that ‘tasteless monster that the world ne’er saw,’ and into which the manager’s officious zeal for the interests of the theatre would convert them, it were best to let them alone, and not court their hostility by invidious and impracticable disqualifications. If they are determined to damn Shakspear, there is no help for it: if they hold no such antipathy to him, ‘if that they love the gentle bard,’ why should their ‘unhoused, free condition, be put in circumscription and confine,’ during the Manager’s pleasure? We are in no great pain for the deathless renown of Shakspear: but we really entertain apprehensions that these Berlin and Milan decrees (in imitation of a great man) which our arbitrary theatrical dictator is in the habit of issuing at the bottom of his play-bills, may be of no service to the life-renters of Drury-lane. We hear a report (which we do not believe, and shall be happy to contradict) that the Drury-Lane Management have put in a claim to the exclusive representation of Lear, and have proposed to suspend the performance at the other house. This we think too much, even for the gratuitous and imposing pretensions of Mr. Elliston. We shall, at this rate, soon see stuck up about the town,—‘Shakspear performed at this theatre, for a few nights only, by permission of the Manager of Drury-Lane!’ Why, this would be a sweeping clause indeed, a master-stroke at the liberty of the stage. It cannot be. It is ‘as if he would confine the interminable.’ He may seat himself in the manager’s chair, like the lady in the lobster, but the tide of Shakspear’s genius must be allowed to take its full scope, and overflow, like the Nile, the banks on either side of Russell Street. Our poet is national, not private property. The quondam proprietor of the Circus cannot catch this mighty Proteus to make a Harlequin of him: it is not in the bond, that he should not now let any one else but Mr. Kean play Shakspear, as he once objected to let it play at all! We suspect this idle report must have arisen, not from any hint of an injunction, on the part of Mr. Elliston, against ‘a beard so old and white’ as Mr. Booth’s; but as a critical reproof to the Covent-Garden Managers, for reviving Nahum Tate’s Lear, instead of the original text; and as a friendly suggestion to them instantly to deprive Cordelia of her lover—and to exclude the Free List ‘lest the immortal Shakspear should meet with opponents!’ But we have said enough on this ridiculous subject.

We proceed to another; Mr. Matthews’s Country Cousins. This is the third season that this gentleman has entertained the town successfully, and we trust profitably to himself, by a melange of imitations, songs, narrative, and ventriloquism, entirely of his own getting up. For one man to be able to amuse the public, or, as the phrase is, to draw houses, night after night, by a display of his own resources and feats of comic dexterity alone, shews great variety and piquancy of talent. The Country Cousins is popular, like the rest: the audiences are, at this present speaking, somewhat thinner, but they do not laugh the less. We do not regret that Mr. Matthews has been transferred from the common stage to a stage of his own. He himself complained, at first, (as the cause of this removal) that he had not regular opportunities afforded him at Covent Garden for appearing in legitimate comedy, which was the chief object of his study and his ambition. If it were not the most ridiculous of all things to expect self-knowledge from any man, this ground of complaint would be sufficiently curious. Mr. Matthews was seldom or never put into any characters but those of mimicry and burlesque by the managers of Covent Garden: into what characters has he put himself since he has been upon his own hands? why, seldom or never into any but those of mimicry and burlesque. We remember on some former occasion throwing out a friendly discouragement of Mr. Matthews’s undertaking the part of Rover in Wild Oats, (as not exactly fitted to his peculiar cast of acting) which we had reason to think was not received in good part: yet how did he himself propose to make it palatable, and how did he really contrive to make it tolerable, to the audience?—By the introduction of Imitations of all the actors on the London boards. It is not easy to give a character of a man (without making a fool of him) with which he shall be satisfied: but actors are in general so infatuated with applause, or sore from disappointment, that they are, of all men, the least accessible to reason. We critics are a sort of people whom they very strangely look upon as in a state of natural hostility with them. A person who undertakes to give an account of the acted drama in London, may be supposed to be led to this by some fondness for, and some knowledge of, the stage: here then ‘there’s sympathy’ between the actor and the critic. He praises the good, he holds out a warning to the bad. The last may have cause to complain, but the first do not thank you a bit the more. You cheer them in the path of glory, shew them where to pluck fresh laurels, or teach them to shun the precipice, on which their hopes may be dashed to pieces: you devote your time and attention to them; are romantic, gay, witty, profound in adorning their art with every embellishment you have in store to make it interesting to others; you occupy the eyes and ears of the town with their names and affairs; weigh their merits and defects in daily, weekly, monthly scales, with as much preparation and formality as if the fate of the world depended on their failure or success; and yet they seem to suppose that your whole business and only object are to degrade and vilify them in public estimation. What you say in praise of any individual, is set down to the score of his merit: what you say of others, in common justice to yourself, is considered as a mere effusion of spleen, stupidity, and spite—as if you took a particular pleasure in torturing their feelings. Yet, upon second thoughts, there may be some ground for all this. We do not like to have a physician feel our pulse, shake his head, and prescribe a regimen: many persons have objection to sit for their pictures, and there is, perhaps, something in the very fact of being criticised, to which human nature is not easily reconciled. To have every word you speak scanned, every look scrutinised,—never to be sure whether you are right or wrong; to have it said that this was too high, that too low; to be abused by one person for the very same thing that another ‘applauds you to the very echo, that does applaud again;’ to have it hinted that one’s very best effort only just wanted something to make it perfect; and that certain other parts which we thought tolerable, were not to be endured; to be taken in pieces in this manner, turned inside out, to be had up at a self-elected tribunal of impertinence,—tried, condemned, and acquitted every night,—to hear the solemn defence, the ridiculous accusation,—to be subjected to a living anatomy,—to be made the text of a perpetual running commentary,—to be set up in an antithesis, to be played upon in an alliteration,—to have one’s faults separated from one’s virtues, like the sheep from the goats by the good shepherd,—to be shorn bare and have a mark set upon one,—to be bewitched and bedevilled by the critics,—to lie at the mercy of every puny whipster, and not be suffered to know whether one stands on one’s head or one’s heels till he tells one how—has, to be sure, something very perplexing and very provoking in it; and it is not so much to be wondered at that the subjects of this kind of critical handling undergo the operation with so little patience as they do. They particularly hate those writers who pretend to patronize them, for this takes away even the privilege of resentment.

An actor, again, is seldom satisfied with being extolled for what he is, unless you admire him for being what he is not. A great tragic actress thinks herself particularly happy in comedy, and it is a sort of misprision of treason not to say so. Your pen may grow wanton in praise of the broad farcical humour of a low comedian; but if you do not cry him up for the fine gentleman, he threatens to leave the stage. Most of our best comic performers came out in tragedy as their favourite line; and Mr. Matthews does not think it enough to enliven a whole theatre with his powers of drollery, and whim, and personal transformation, unless by way of preface and apology he first delivers an epitaph on those talents for the legitimate drama which were so prematurely buried at Covent Garden Theatre!—If we were to speak our minds, we should say, that Mr. Matthews shines particularly, neither as an actor, nor a mimic of actors, but that his forte is a certain general tact, and versatility of comic power. You would say, he is a clever performer: you would guess he is a cleverer man. His talents are not pure, but mixed. He is best when he is his own prompter, manager, and performer, orchestra, and scene-shifter; and, perhaps, to make the thing complete, the audience should be of his own providing too.—If we had never known any thing more of Mr. Matthews than the account we have heard of his imitating the interior of a German family, the wife lying a-bed grumbling at her husband’s staying out, the husband’s return home drunk, and the little child’s padding across the room to get to its own bed as soon as it hears him, we should set him down for a man of genius. These felicitous strokes are, however, casual and intermittent in him:—they proceed from him rather by chance than design, and are followed up by others equally gross and superficial. Mr. Matthews wants taste, or has been spoiled by the taste of the town, whom ‘he must live to please, and please to live.’ His talent, though limited, is of a lively and vigorous fibre; capable of a succession of shifts and disguises; he is up to a number of good things—single hits here and there; but by the suddenness and abruptness of his turns, he surprises and shocks oftener than he satisfies. His wit does not move the muscles of the mind, but, like some practical joker, gives one a good rap on the knuckles, or a lively box on the ear. He serves up a pic-nic entertainment of scraps and odd ends (some of them, we must say, old ones). He is like a host, who will not let us swallow a mouthful, but offers us something else, and directly after brings us the same dish again. He is in a continual hurry and disquietude to please, and destroys half the effect by trying to increase it. He is afraid to trust for a moment to the language of nature and character, and wants to translate it into pantomime and grimace, like a writing-master, who for the letter I has the hieroglyphic of an eye staring you in the face. Mr. Matthews may be said to have taken tythe of half the talents of the stage and of the town; yet his variety is not always charming. There is something dry and meagre in his jokes: they do not lard the lean earth as he walks; but seem as if they might be written upon parchment. His humour, in short, is not like digging into a fine Stilton cheese, but is more like the scrapings of Shapsugar.—As an actor, we think he cannot rise higher than a waiter, (certainly not a dumb one,) or than Mr. Wiggins. In this last character, in particular, by a certain panic-struck expression of countenance at the persecution of which the hen-pecked husband is the victim, and by the huge unwieldy helplessness of his person, unable to escape from it and from the rabble of boys at his heels, he excites shouts of laughter, and hits off the humour of the thing to an exact perfection. In general, his performance is of that kind which implies manual dexterity, or an assumption of bodily defect, rather than mental capacity: take from Mr. Matthews’s drollest parts an odd shuffle in the gait, a restless volubility of speech and motion, a sudden suppression of features, or the continual repetition of some cant phrase with unabated vigour, and you reduce him to almost total insignificance, and a state of still life. He is not therefore like—

‘A clock that wants both hands, As useless when it goes as when it stands:’

for only keep him going, and he bustles about the stage to some purpose. As a mimic of other actors, Mr. Matthews fails as often as he succeeds (we call it a failure, when it is with difficulty we can distinguish the person intended,) and when he succeeds, it is more by seizing upon some peculiarity, or exaggerating some defect, than by hitting upon the true character or prominent features. He gabbles like Incledon, or croaks like Suett, or lisps like Young; but when he attempts the expressive silver-tongued cadences of John Kemble, it is the shadow of a shade. If we did not know the contrary, we should suppose he had never heard the original, but was imitating some one who had. His best imitations are taken from something characteristic or absurd that has struck his fancy, or occurred to his observation in real life—such as a chattering footman, a drunken coachman, a surly traveller, or a garrulous old Scotchwoman. This last we would fix upon as Mr. Matthews’s chef-d’œuvre. It was a portrait of common nature, equal to Wilkie or Teniers—as faithful, as simple, as delicately humorous, and with a slight dash of pathos; but without one particle of caricature, of vulgarity, or ill-nature. We see no reason why the ingenious artist should not show his Country Cousins a gallery of such portraits, and of no others, once a year. ‘He might exhibit it every night for a month, and we should go to see it every night!’[44] What has impressed itself on our memory as the next best thing to this exquisite piece of genuine painting, was the broad joke of the abrupt proposal of a mutton-chop to the man who is sea-sick, and the convulsive marks of abhorrence with which it is received. The representation also of the tavern-beau in the Country Cousins, who is about to swallow a lighted-candle for a glass of brandy and water, as he is going drunk to bed, is well feigned and admirably humoured; with many more, too long to mention. It is more to our performer’s credit to suppose that the songs which he sings with such rapidity and vivacity of effect are not of his own composing; and, as to his ventriloquism, it is yet in its infancy. The fault of these exhibitions—that which appears ‘first, midst, and last’ in them, is that they turn too much upon caricaturing the most common-place and worn-out topics of ridicule—the blunders of Frenchmen in speaking English,—the mispronunciations of the cockney dialect, the ignorance of Country Cousins, and the impertinence and foppery of relations in town. It would seem too likely from the uniform texture of these pieces, that Mr. Matthews had passed his whole time in climbing to the top of the Monument, or had never been out of a tavern, or a stage-coach, a Margate-hoy or a Dover packet-boat. We do not deny the merit of some of the cross-readings out of the two languages; but certainly we think the quantity of French and English jargon put into the mouths of French and English travellers all through these imitations, must lessen their popularity instead of increasing it, as two-thirds of Mr. Matthews’s auditors, we should imagine, cannot know the point on which the jest turns. We grant that John Bull is always very willing to laugh at Mounseer, if he knew why or how—perhaps, even without knowing how or why! But we thought many of the jokes of this kind, however well contrived or intended, miscarried in their passage through the pit, and long before they reached the two shilling gallery.

A new pantomime, called Shakspear versus Harlequin, has been produced at Drury-lane Theatre. It is called ‘a speaking pantomime:’ we had rather it had said nothing. It is better to act folly than to talk it. The heels and wand and motley coat of Harlequin are sacred to nonsense; but the words, the cap and wings of Mercury (who was here also made the representative of Shakspear) are worthy of a better use. The essence of pantomime is practical absurdity, keeping the wits in constant chase, coming upon one by surprise, and starting off again before you can arrest the fleeting phantom: the essence of this piece was prosing stupidity remaining like a mawkish fixture on the stage, and overcoming your impatience by the force of ennui. A speaking pantomime (such as this one) is not unlike a flying waggon: but we do not want a pantomime to move in minuet-time, nor to have Harlequin’s light wand changed into a leaden mace. If we must have a series of shocks and surprises, of violations of probability, common sense, and nature, to keep the brain and senses in a whirl, let us, at least, have them hot and hot, let them ‘charge on heaps, that we may lose distinction in absurdity,’ and not have time to doze and yawn over them, in the intervals of the battle. The bringing Harlequin to the test of reason resembles the old story of hedging in the cuckoo, and surpasses the united genius of the late Mr. Garrick (to whom this dull farce is ascribed) and of the professional gentleman who has fitted the above productions of ‘the olden times’ (viz. those of the late Mr. Garrick) to modern taste! After all, though Harlequin is tried by three grave judges, who are very unnecessarily metamorphosed into three old women, no competition, no collision takes place between him and the genius of Shakspear, unless Mr. T. Cooke’s playing very cleverly on a variety of musical instruments, so as to ravish the heart of Miss Dolly Snip (Madam Vestris) can be construed into so many proofs of the superiority of Shakspear’s Muse! Again, Mr. Harley, as Harlequin, and Mr. Oxberry (as a country clown) get up into a tree to see the sport, from which it was as difficult to dislodge them as owls from an ivy-bush; and the sport is to see Joey Snip, the tailor, have his head cut off, and walk with it about the stage, and, unlike the sign of the good woman, talk without his tongue. The slicing off a blackamoor’s head or two with the stroke of a scymitar, provided the thing is done quickly, and instantly got out of sight, we do not much object to; but we do not like to have a ghastly spectre of this sort placed before us for a whole evening, as the heads of the rebel Scotch lords were stuck on Temple-bar for half a century. It may be well said indeed, Quod sic mihi ostendis incredulus odi. Perhaps this exhibition of posthumous horror and impertinence might be meant as a sly hit at the ghost of Hamlet.

‘See o’er the stage the ghost of Munden stalks.’

If so, we cry the Manager mercy. We must add, that the strength of the theatre was put in requisition for this piece, and if it could have been saved, it would. Miss Tree, to enliven so many dreary objects, danced a pas seul. We would rather see this young lady dance round a may-pole at a country wake or fair.

‘But thou, oh Hope, with eyes so fair, What was thy enchanting measure? Still it whisper’d promised pleasure, And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail:’—

We could not help repeating these lines as we saw the youngest of the Miss Dennetts, the tallest of the three, resume the part of Cinderella at Covent Garden,—restored, like Psyche, to her late-lost home, and transformed by the little hump-backed fairy, from a poor house-maid to a bright princess, drinking pleasure and treading air. This is a consummation more devoutly to be wished than the changing of a pipkin into a sign-post, or a wheel-barrow into a china-shop. A Fairy Tale is the true history of the human heart—it is a dream of youth realized! How many country-girls have fancied themselves princesses, nay, what country-girl ever was there that, some time or other, did not? A Fairy Tale is what the world would be, if every one had their wishes or their desserts, if our power and our passions were equal. We cannot be at a loss for a thousand bad translations of the story of Cinderella, if we look around us in the boxes. But the real imitation is on the stage. If we could always see the flowers open in the spring, or hear soft music, or see Cinderella dance, or dream we did, life itself would be a Fairy Tale. If the three Miss Dennetts are a little less like one another than they were, on the other hand, we must say that Miss Eliza Dennett (what a pretty name) is much improved, combines a little cluster of graces in her own person, and ‘in herself sums all delight.’ She has learned to add precision to ease, and firmness of movement to the utmost harmony of form. In the scene where Cinderella is introduced at court and is led out to dance by the enamoured prince, she bows as if she had a diadem on her head, moves as if she had just burst from fetters of roses, folds her arms as the vine curls its tendrils, and hurries from the scene, after the loss of her faithless slipper, as if she had to run a race with the winds. We had only one thing to desire, that she and her lover, instead of the new ballet, had danced the Minuet de la Cour with the Gavot, as they do in the Dansomanie; that we might have called the Minuet de la Cour divine, and the Gavot heavenly, and exclaimed once more, with more than artificial rapture—‘Such were the joys of our dancing days!’ We do not despair of seeing this alteration adopted, as our recommendations are sometimes attended to: and in that case we shall feel.—But the mechanical anticipation of an involuntary burst of sentiment in supposed circumstances is in vile taste, and we leave it to lords and pettifoggers. We hate to copy them: but we like to steal from Spenser. Here is a passage descriptive of dancing, and of the delights of love, of youth, and beauty which sometimes surround it, and of the eternal echo which they leave in the ear of fancy. The Managers of Covent-Garden may perhaps apply it to their own enchanted palace: we have nothing to do with the passage but to quote it.

‘They say that Venus, when she did dispose Herself to pleasure, used to resort Unto this place, and therein to repose And rest herself as in a gladsome port, Or with the Graces there to play and sport: That even her own Cytheron, though in it She used most to keep her royal court, And in her sovereign majesty to sit, She in regard hereof refus’d and thought unfit.

Unto this place, when as the Elfin knight Approach’d, him seemed that the merry sound Of a shrill pipe he playing heard on hight, And many feet fast thumping th’ hollow ground, That through the woods their echo did rebound. He nigher drew to weet what it mote be: There he a troop of ladies dancing found Full merrily, and making gladful glee, And in the midst a shepherd piping he did see.

All they without were ranged in a ring, And danced round; but in the midst of them Three other ladies did both dance and sing, The whilst the rest them round about did hem, And like a girlond did encompass them, And in the midst of those same three was placed Another damsel, as a precious gem, Amidst a ring most richly well enchaced, That with her goodly presence all the rest much graced.

Look how the crown which Ariadne wore Upon her ivory forehead, that same day That Theseus her unto her bridal bore (When the bold Centaurs made that bloody fray With the fierce Lapiths that did him dismay) Being now placed in the firmament, Through the bright heaven doth her beams display, And is unto the stars an ornament; Which round her move in order excellent.

Such was the beauty of this goodly band, Whose sundry shape were here too long to tell: But she that in the midst of them did stand, Seem’d all the rest in beauty to excel, Crown’d with a rosy girlond, that right well Did her beseem. And ever as the crew About her danc’d, sweet flow’rs that far did smell, And fragrant odours, they upon her threw, But most of all, those three did her with gifts endue.

Those were the Graces, daughters of delight, Handmaids of Venus, which are wont to haunt Upon this hill, and dance there day and night: Those three to men all gifts of grace do grant; And all that Venus in herself doth vaunt, Is borrowed of them. But that fair one, That in the midst was placed paravant, Was she to whom that shepherd piped alone, That made him pipe so merrily, as never none.’

Faery Queen, Book VI. Canto 10.

On the subject of the pantomime and the miscellaneous Drama, we have two words to add, viz. that we have been to see the Heart of Midlothian at the Surrey Theatre, of which we spoke by hearsay in our last but one, and which answered our warmest expectations; and that we took a pleasant stroll up to the Aquatic Theatre of Sadler’s Wells, and after dining at the Sir Hugh Middleton’s Head, saw a very pretty play-house, Goody Two Shoes, the Monastery, and the Fate of Calas. Goody Two Shoes was played first, on the evening we were there, because Mr. Grimaldi and Mr. Barnes were in it, and they were obliged afterwards to perform in the pantomime at Covent Garden. Did Miss Vallancy go with them? Otherwise, we should like to have seen her again in the course of the evening. All that we could see to praise in the Monastery was its faithfulness to the original, and the acting of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. We hope that under the management of a gentleman (Mr. Howard Paine,) so well acquainted with both departments of his undertaking, the literary and dramatic, this theatre will soon flourish in all the pride of summer. We had nearly omitted to notice a new Hamlet, that came out at Drury-lane a few weeks ago, who, it appeared to us, would have made the prettiest Hamlet we have seen, if he had been only equal to the part. Indeed he looked it to perfection; he had an elegant figure with a thoughtful face; and on the ordinary conduct and conception of the character, was at once the gentleman and scholar. In the more declamatory and impassioned scenes, however, his voice totally broke down under him, and he did not repeat the part as was given out; for he was the next morning pierced through with the feathered arrows of criticism, as if his breast had been a target. The gentlemen-critics of the daily press have not, in general, their cue on the first night of a performer’s appearance. If he fails, they fall upon him without mercy; if he succeeds, they are almost afraid to say so, lest others should say that they were wrong. They pretend (some of them) to lead public opinion and yet have no opinion of their own. They dare not boldly and distinctly declare their opinion of a new dramatic experiment, and the reason is, their convictions are not clear enough to warrant their placing any confidence in them, till they are confirmed by being put to the vote. The first quality of a good critic is courage; but mental courage, like bodily, is the result of conscious strength. Some of the Vampyre crew, indeed, retreat from the dimness and inanity of their perceptions, into the solid darkness of their prejudices, and the crude consistence of their everrankling spite; and, in that strong-hold of dirt and cob-webs, are impervious to every ray of sense or reason. We might leave them, if they had themselves been contented to remain, in their narrow, gloomy cells, the proper hiding-place of ignorance and bigotry; but when they come out into the blaze of noon,

‘Shut their blue-fringed lids, and hold them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in heaven, Cry out, where is it?’—

it is time to stop their ominous flight, and send them back to that life of sloth and pride, where the poison of dull-eyed envy preys only upon itself.

There was a want of proper spirit and gallantry shown the other day in the critical reception of Mr. Booth’s Lear. It was not thought that he would make any thing of it, and therefore it was not said that he did. Because he was on his trial, he was not to have a hearing. Because he was not ‘the most favoured actor of the day,’ he was to have no favour at all shown him. Fiat justitia, ruat cælum. When Mr. Booth does nothing but make wry faces and odd harsh noises in a character, in imitation of Mr. Kean, we will say, that he does it ill: but when he plays it as he did Lear, we will say that he does it not ill, but well, and that in prejudging him, we have been mistaken. It does not lessen Mr. Macready in our opinion, that (as we understand) he refused this character in obstinate despair of doing it justice: but if this was a proof of modesty and judgment in him, it certainly ought to raise our idea of Mr. Booth’s talents, that he was able to get through it in the way he did. Where failure would have been so fatal and so marked, it was a sufficient triumph even to a proud ambition not to fail. If the part in our adventurous actor’s hands wanted something of the breadth and majesty of Lear, it did not want for life or spirit, or a human interest. If he did not give the torrent and whirlwind of the passion, he had plenty of its gusts and flaws. Without his crown, or even the faded image of one, circling his brow, he bustled about the stage with a restlessness and impetuosity of feeling that kept expectation continually awake and gratified the attention which had been so excited. There was no feebleness, and no vulgarity in any part of Mr. Booth’s acting, but it was animated, vigorous, and pathetic throughout. The audience, we are sure, the first night, thought and felt as we did. In the exclamation, ‘I am every inch a king,’ his energy rose to dignity: again, in his reiteration of Gloucester’s epithet of ‘the fiery Duke,’ applied to his son-in-law, his manifest impatience, and increasing irritability, showed that Mr. Booth had felt the full force of that beautiful passage in which his own half-conscious infirmity is played off so finely on the ill-fated old king; and in the scenes with Edgar as mad Tom, where his wits begin to unsettle, the distraction and alienation of his mind, wandering from its own thoughts to catch hold of a clue less painful, and yet broken and entangled like them, were pourtrayed with equal skill and delicacy. In the more set speeches, as in the curse on his daughters, Mr. Booth, we thought, comparatively failed; but where action was to come in aid of the sentiment and point the meaning, he was almost uniformly correct and impressive. In fact, it is only when the poet’s language is explained by the comment of gesture or some sudden change of look, or situation—that is, when tragedy is enlivened by pantomime, that it becomes intelligible to the greater part of the audience; and we do not see how an actor can be supposed to do those things well which are almost abstractions in his art, and in which he is not encouraged by the sympathy or corrected by the judgment of his hearers. We observed, that the finest touches of thought, of poetry and nature in this play, which were not set off by the accompaniment of show and bustle, passed in profound silence, and without the smallest notice. The sublimity of repose is one in which our play-house frequenters do not seem to be proficients, and the players may be excused, if they do not always cultivate (as we might wish) this occult and mysterious branch of their profession. Of Mr. C. Kemble’s Edgar we cannot speak in terms of too high praise. In the supposed mad-scenes, his conception and delivery of the part excited the warmest approbation; his fine face and figure admirably relieved the horror of the situations; and, whenever we see Mad Tom played (which is not often), we should wish to see it played by him. The rest of the play was very respectably got up, and all we could object to was the interspersion of the love-scenes by Tate. The happy ending, and the triumph and dotage of the poor old king in repeating again and again, ‘Cordelia’s Queen, Cordelia’s Queen,’ were perhaps allowable concessions to the feelings of the audience.

HENRI QUATRE.—There are two lines in a modern poem which we often repeat to ourselves—

’Twas Lancelot of the Lake, a bright romance, That like a trumpet made young spirits dance:’

and we were much disposed to apply them to this romantic, light and elegant drama. We prophesy that the Managers and the public have a splendid career before them for the season. This will do. We saw it in the first opening scene, a view near Paris, the clearest, the most sparkling, the most vivid we ever saw. ‘Ah! brilliant land! ah! sunny, cloudless skies! Not all the ink, that has been shed to blacken thee, can blot thy shining face! Not all the blood that has been spilt to enslave thee can choke up thy living breath!’ If we can thus be transported to another and a gayer region, and made to drink the warmth and lustre of another climate by the painter’s magic art, what can we desire more?—What the pencil had in this case done, the poet’s pen did not undo: what the author had written, the actors did not spoil. They do order these things well at Covent Garden. We never saw a piece better got up in all its parts, nor one more adapted to the taste of the town in scenery, in dresses, in songs, in passing allusions, in popular sentiments; nor one that went off with less ennui, or with more continual bursts of flattering applause. The writing (as far as it was French) was, as might be expected, lively and sentimental: as far as we could perceive Mr. Morton to have had a hand in it, it consisted of strong touches of obvious nature, and showed a perfect understanding with the actors and the audience. The characters were strikingly conceived, and admirably sustained. Mr. Macready’s Henri Quatre was (we think) his very happiest effort. There was an originality, a raciness in it that hit our palates. With something, nay, with much of the stiffness and abruptness of one of ‘the invincible knights of old,’ used to march in rusty armour, there was at the same time the ease, the grace and gallantry of an accomplished courtier. ‘He is ten times handsomer,’ says the fair Jocrisse, ‘than Uncle Jervais,’ and according to her husband’s comment, ‘Handsome is that handsome does.’ There was a spirit of kindness blended with authority in his tones and in his actions; he was humane, and yet a king and a soldier. Some of the sentiments put into his mouth were worthy of the attention of princes, if they had time for serious reflection, and called forth loud and repeated plaudits. Henry professed his desire to reign by love not fear in the hearts of his subjects; and quoted a saying of his mother’s on the mode of effecting this purpose, that ‘a pound of honey would draw more flies than a ton of vinegar.’ We seemed suddenly and unaccountably carried back to the heroic times of camps and courts, in the company of this good-natured, high spirited, old fashioned monarch, and his favourite counsellor, Sully, a pattern of sound thinking and plain-speaking, who was characteristically represented by Mr. Egerton. It is his business to prevent the king from doing anything wrong,—‘no sinecure,’ as he honestly declares. We like these bitter jests; and we found that others were of our thinking, though they flew about as thick as hail. We should have thought this piece more likely to have been imported from Spain than France, at the present crisis of affairs. At any rate, Mr. Morton has given a truly English version of it. Mr. Emery played a blunt, rough old soldier (Moustache,) well, who is afterwards appointed keeper of a prison—‘Because,’ he says to his sovereign, ‘you think me a savage.’ ‘No!’ (is the answer,) ‘but because with the courage and rough outside of a lion you have the heart of a man.’ The scenes in which Charles Kemble, as Eugene de Biron, is committed to his charge under sentence of death—is liberated by him to perform a last act of friendship and of affection, and returns on his parole of honour to meet his fate (from which however he is delivered by having, in his night’s adventure, saved the lives of Henri and Sully, who had been attacked by assassins in a forest hard by) are among the most interesting of the story. We do not enter into the details of the plot, because we hope all our readers will go to see this piece, and it is anticipating a pleasure to come. Besides, we are bad hands at getting up a plot, and should on that account make but indifferent ministers of state. But the whole was delightful. Miss M. Tree was delightful as the village representative of the fair Gabrielle; Mr. Liston was happy as the husband of Jocrisse, ‘whom the king had deigned to salute,’ and to put a diamond ring on her finger, which was to introduce them to the Louvre in their wooden shoes on his coronation day.—Miss Stephens sung sweetly; Mr. Fawcett was at home in the old general; Irish Johnstone blundered in his own beautiful brogue, and every thing was as it should be. We like things to succeed in this manner: that they do not always do so, is assuredly no fault of ours.

L.

No. VI

[June, 1820.

MR. KEAN’S LEAR.—We need not say how much our expectations had been previously excited to see Mr. Kean in this character, and we are sorry to be obliged to add, that they were very considerably disappointed. We had hoped to witness something of the same effect produced upon an audience that Garrick is reported to have done in the part, which made Dr. Johnson resolve never to see him repeat it—the impression was so terrific and overwhelming. If we should make the same rash vow never to see Mr. Kean’s Lear again, it would not be from the intensity and excess, but from the deficiency and desultoriness of the interest excited. To give some idea of the manner in which this character might, and ought to be, made to seize upon the feelings of an audience, we have heard it mentioned, that once, when Garrick was in the middle of the mad-scene, his crown of straw came off, which circumstance, though it would have been fatal to a common actor, did not produce the smallest interruption, or even notice in the house. On another occasion, while he was kneeling to repeat the curse, the first row in the pit stood up in order to see him better; the second row, not willing to lose the precious moments by remonstrating, stood up too; and so, by a tacit movement, the entire pit rose to hear the withering imprecation, while the whole passed in such cautious silence, that you might have heard a pin drop. John Kemble (that old campaigner) was also very great in the curse: so we have heard, from very good authorities; and we put implicit faith in them.—What led us to look for the greatest things from Mr. Kean in the present instance, was his own opinion, on which we have a strong reliance. It was always his favourite part. We have understood he has been heard to say, that ‘he was very much obliged to the London audiences for the good opinion they had hitherto expressed of him, but that when they came to see him over the dead body of Cordelia, they would have quite a different notion of the matter.’ As it happens, they have not yet had an opportunity of seeing him over the dead body of Cordelia: for, after all, our versatile Manager has acted Tate’s Lear instead of Shakspear’s: and it was suggested, that perhaps Mr. Kean played the whole ill out of spite, as he could not have it his own way—a hint to which we lent a willing ear, for we would rather think Mr. Kean the most spiteful man, than not the best actor, in the world! The impression, however, made on our minds was, that, instead of its being his master-piece, he was to seek in many parts of the character;—that the general conception was often perverse, or feeble; and that there were only two or three places where he could be said to electrify the house. It is altogether inferior to his Othello. Yet, if he had even played it equal to that, all we could have said of Mr. Kean would have been that he was a very wonderful man;—and such we certainly think him as it is. Into the bursts, and starts, and torrent of the passion in Othello, this excellent actor appeared to have flung himself completely: there was all the fitful fever of the blood, the jealous madness of the brain: his heart seemed to bleed with anguish, while his tongue dropped broken, imperfect accents of woe; but there is something (we don’t know how) in the gigantic, outspread sorrows of Lear, that seems to elude his grasp, and baffle his attempts at comprehension. The passion in Othello pours along, so to speak, like a river, torments itself in restless eddies, or is hurled from its dizzy height, like a sounding cataract. That in Lear is more like a sea, swelling, chafing, raging, without bound, without hope, without beacon, or anchor. Torn from the hold of his affections and fixed purposes, he floats a mighty wreck in the wide world of sorrows. Othello’s causes of complaint are more distinct and pointed, and he has a desperate, a maddening remedy for them in his revenge. But Lear’s injuries are without provocation, and admit of no alleviation or atonement. They are strange, bewildering, overwhelming: they wrench asunder, and stun the whole frame: they ‘accumulate horrors on horror’s head,’ and yet leave the mind impotent of resources, cut off, proscribed, anathematised from the common hope of good to itself, or ill to others—amazed at its own situation, but unable to avert it, scarce daring to look at, or to weep over it. The action of the mind, however, under this load of disabling circumstances, is brought out in the play in the most masterly and triumphant manner: it staggers under them, but it does not yield. The character is cemented of human strength and human weaknesses (the firmer for the mixture):—abandoned of fortune, of nature, of reason, and without any energy of purpose, or power of action left,—with the grounds of all hope and comfort failing under it,—but sustained, reared to a majestic height out of the yawning abyss, by the force of the affections, the imagination, and the cords of the human heart—it stands a proud monument, in the gap of nature, over barbarous cruelty and filial ingratitude. We had thought that Mr. Kean would take possession of this time-worn, venerable figure, ‘that has outlasted a thousand storms, a thousand winters,’ and, like the gods of old, when their oracles were about to speak, shake it with present inspiration:—that he would set up a living copy of it on the stage: but he failed, either from insurmountable difficulties, or from his own sense of the magnitude of the undertaking. There are pieces of ancient granite that turn the edge of any modern chisel: so perhaps the genius of no living actor can be expected to cope with Lear. Mr. Kean chipped off a bit of the character here and there: but he did not pierce the solid substance, nor move the entire mass.—Indeed, he did not go the right way about it. He was too violent at first, and too tame afterwards. He sunk from unmixed rage to mere dotage. Thus (to leave this general description, and come to particulars) he made the well-known curse a piece of downright rant. He ‘tore it to tatters, to very rags,’ and made it, from beginning to end, an explosion of ungovernable physical rage, without solemnity, or elevation. Here it is; and let the reader judge for himself whether it should be so served.

‘Hear, Nature, hear; dear goddess, hear a father! Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful: Into her womb convey sterility, Dry up in her the organs of increase, And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honour her! If she must teem, Create her child of spleen, that it may live, And be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her: Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth, With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel, How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child.’

Now this should not certainly be spoken in a fit of drunken choler, without any ‘compunctious visitings of nature,’ without any relentings of tenderness, as if it was a mere speech of hate, directed against a person to whom he had the most rooted and unalterable aversion. The very bitterness of the imprecations is prompted by, and turns upon, an allusion to the fondest recollections: it is an excess of indignation, but that indignation, from the depth of its source, conjures up the dearest images of love: it is from these that the brimming cup of anguish overflows; and the voice, in going over them, should falter, and be choked with other feelings besides anger. The curse in Lear should not be scolded, but recited as a Hymn to the Penates! Lear is not a Timon. From the action and attitude into which Mr. Kean put himself to repeat this passage, we had augured a different result. He threw himself on his knees; lifted up his arms like withered stumps; threw his head quite back, and in that position, as if severed from all that held him to society, breathed a heart-struck prayer, like the figure of a man obtruncated!—It was the only moment worthy of himself, and of the character.

In the former part of the scene, where Lear, in answer to the cool didactic reasoning of Gonerill, asks, ‘Are you our daughter?’ &c., Mr. Kean, we thought, failed from a contrary defect. The suppression of passion should not amount to immobility: that intensity of feeling of which the slightest intimation is supposed to convey everything, should not seem to convey nothing. There is a difference between ordinary familiarity and the sublime of familiarity. The mind may be staggered by a blow too great for it to bear, and may not recover itself for a moment or two; but this state of suspense of its faculties, ‘like a phantasma, or a hideous dream,’ should not assume the appearance of indifference, or still-life. We do not think Mr. Kean kept this distinction (though it is one in which he is often very happy) sufficiently marked in the foregoing question to his daughter, nor in the speech which follows immediately after, as a confirmation of the same sentiment of incredulity and surprise.

‘Does any here know me? This is not Lear: Does Lear walk thus? speak thus? where are his eyes? Either his notion weakens, his discernings Are lethargied—Ha! waking—’tis not so; Who is it that can tell me who I am? Lear’s shadow? I would learn; for by the marks Of sovereignty, of knowledge, and of reason, I should be false persuaded I had daughters. Your name, fair gentlewoman?’—

These fearful interrogatories, which stand ready to start away on the brink of madness, should not certainly be asked like a common question, nor a dry sarcasm. If Mr. Kean did not speak them so, we beg his pardon.—In what comes after this, in the apostrophe to Ingratitude, in the sudden call for his horses, in the defence of the character of his train as ‘men of choice and rarest parts,’ and in the recurrence to Cordelia’s ‘most small fault,’ there are plenty of stops to play upon, all the varieties of agony, of anger and impatience, of asserted dignity and tender regret—Mr. Kean struck but two notes all through, the highest and the lowest.

This scene of Lear with Gonerill, in the first act, is only to be paralleled by the doubly terrific one between him and Regan and Gonerill in the second act. To call it a decided failure would be saying what we do not think: to call it a splendid success would be saying so no less. Mr. Kean did not appear to us to set his back fairly to his task, or to trust implicitly to his author, but to be trying experiments upon the audience, and waiting to see the result. We never saw this daring actor want confidence before, but he seemed to cower and hesitate before the public eye in the present instance, and to be looking out for the effect of what he did, while he was doing it. In the ironical remonstrance to Regan, for example:

‘Dear daughter, I confess that I am old— Age is unnecessary, &c.’

he might be said to be waiting for the report of the House to know how low he should bend his knee in mimic reverence, how far he should sink his voice into the tones of feebleness, despondency, and mendicancy. But, if ever, it was upon this occasion that he ought to have raised himself above criticism, and sat enthroned (in the towering contemplations of his own mind) with Genius and Nature. They alone (and not the critic’s eye, nor the tumultuous voices of the pit) are the true judges of Lear! If he had trusted only to these, his own counsellors and bosom friends, we see no limit to the effect he might have produced. But he did not give any particular effect to the exclamation—

——‘Beloved Regan, Thy sister’s naught: oh, Regan, she hath tied Sharp-tooth’d unkindness, like a vulture here:’

nor to the assurance that he will not return to her again—

‘Never, Regan: She hath abated me of half my train, Look’d black upon me; struck me with her tongue, Most serpent-like, upon the very heart. All the stored vengeances of heaven fall On her ingrateful top!’

nor to the description of his two daughters’ looks—

——‘Her eyes are fierce; but thine Do comfort, and not burn:’

nor to that last sublime appeal to the heavens on seeing Gonerill approach—

‘Oh, heav’ns! If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Hallow obedience, if yourselves are old, Make it your cause, send down, and take my part. Art not asham’d to look upon this beard? Oh, Regan, will you take her by the hand?’

One would think there are tones, and looks, and gestures, answerable to these words, to thrill and harrow up the thoughts, to ‘appal the guilty, and make mad the free,’ or that might ‘create a soul under the ribs of death!’ But we did not see, or hear them. It was Mr. Kean’s business to furnish them: it would have been ours to feel them, if he had! It is not enough that Lear’s crosses and perplexities are expressed by single strokes. There should be an agglomeration of horrors, closing him in like a phalanx. His speech should be thick with the fulness of his agony. His face should, as it were, encrust and stiffen into amazement at his multiplied afflictions. A single image of ruin is nothing—there should be a growing desolation all around him. His wrongs should seem enlarged tenfold through the solid atmosphere of his despair—his thoughts should be vast and lucid, like the sun when he declines—He should be ‘a huge dumb heap’ of woe! The most that Mr. Kean did was to make some single hits here and there; but these did not tell, because they were separated from the main body and movement of the passion. They might be compared to interlineations of the character, rather than parts of the text. In the sudden reiteration of the epithet—‘fiery quality of the Duke,’ applied to Cornwall by Gloucester, at which his jealousy blazes out to extravagance, we thought Mr. Kean feeble and indecisive: but in breaking away at the conclusion of the scene, ‘I will do such things: what they are, yet I know not; but they shall be the terrors of the earth,’—he made one of those tremendous bursts of energy and grandeur, which shed a redeeming glory round every character he plays.

Mr. Kean’s performance of the remainder of the character, when the king’s intellects begin to fail him, and are, at last, quite disordered, was curious and quaint, rather than impressive or natural. There appeared a degree of perversity in all this—a determination to give the passages in a way in which nobody else would give them, and in which nobody else would expect them to be given. But singularity is not always excellence. Why, for instance, should our actor lower his voice in the soliloquy in the third act, ‘Blow winds, and crack your cheeks,’ &c. in which the tumult of Lear’s thoughts, and the extravagance of his expressions, seem almost contending with the violence of the storm? We can conceive no reason but that it was contrary to the practice of most actors hitherto. Mr. Rae’s manner of mouthing the passage would have been ‘more germane to the matter.’ In asking his companion—

‘How dost, my boy? Art cold? I’m cold myself’——

there was a shrinking of the frame, and a chill glance of the eye, like the shivering of an ague-fit: but no other feeling surmounted the physical expression. On meeting with Edgar, as Mad Tom, Lear wildly exclaims, with infinite beauty and pathos, ‘Didst thou give all to thy daughters, and art thou come to this?’ And again, presently after, he repeats, ‘What, have his daughters brought him to this pass? Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give ’em all?’—questions which imply a strong possession, the eager indulgence of a favourite idea which has just struck his heated fancy; but which Mr. Kean pronounced in a feeble, sceptical, querulous under-tone, as if wanting information as to some ordinary occasion of insignificant distress. We do not admire these cross-readings of a work like Lear. They may be very well when the actor’s ingenuity, however paradoxical, is more amusing than the author’s sense: but it is not so in this case. From some such miscalculation, or desire of finding out a clue to the character, other than ‘was set down’ for him, Mr. Kean did not display his usual resources and felicitous spirit in these terrific scenes:—he drivelled, and looked vacant, and moved his lips, so as not to be heard, and did nothing, and appeared, at times, as if he would quite forget himself. The pauses were too long; the indications of remote meaning were too significant to be well understood. The spectator was big with expectation of seeing some extraordinary means employed: but the general result did not correspond to the waste of preparation. In a subsequent part, Mr. Kean did not give to the reply of Lear, ‘Aye, every inch a king!’—the same vehemence and emphasis that Mr. Booth did; and in this he was justified: for, in the text, it is an exclamation of indignant irony, not of conscious superiority; and he immediately adds with deep disdain, to prove the nothingness of his pretensions—

‘When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.’

Almost the only passage in which Mr. Kean obtained his usual heartfelt tribute, was in his interview with Cordelia, after he awakes from sleep, and has been restored to his senses.

‘Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward; and to deal plainly, I fear, I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks, I should know you, and know this man; Yet I am doubtful; for I’m mainly ignorant What place this is; and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments; nay, I know not Where I did lodge last night. _Do not laugh at me, For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia._

Cordelia. And so I am; I am.’

In uttering the last words, Mr. Kean staggered faintly into Cordelia’s arms, and his sobs of tenderness, and his ecstasy of joy commingled, drew streaming tears from the brightest eyes,

‘Which sacred pity had engender’d there.’

Mr. Rae was very effective in the part of Edgar, and was received with very great applause. If this gentleman could rein in a certain ‘false gallop’ in his voice and gait, he would be a most respectable addition, from the spirit and impressiveness of his declamation, to the general strength of any theatre, and we heartily congratulate him on his return to Drury-lane.—Mrs. West made an interesting representative of Cordelia. In all parts of plaintive tenderness, she is an excellent actress. We could have spared the love-scenes—and one of her lovers, Mr. Hamblin. Mr. Holland was great in Gloster. In short, what is he not great in, that requires a great deal of sturdy prosing, an ‘honest, sonsy, bawzont face,’ and a lamentably broken-down, hale, wholesome, hearty voice, that seems ‘incapable of its own distress?’ We like his jovial, well-meaning way of going about his parts. We can afford, out of his good cheer, and lively aspect, and his manner of bestriding the stage, to be made melancholy by him at any time, without being a bit the worse for it. Mr. Dowton’s Kent was not at all good: it was a downright discarded serving-man. Mr. Russel, in the absence of the Fool, played the zany in the Steward. The tragedy was, in general, got up better than we expected.

Artaxerxes.—We believe that this is the most beautiful opera in the world, though we have great authorities against us: but we do not believe, that it is better acted now than it ever was, though we have no less an authority for us, were we disposed to be of that opinion, than the Manager himself. The Cognoscenti, he tells us, hold that this Musical Drama was never so got up before as it is at present; viz., by Mr. Braham, Mr. Incledon, Miss Carew, and the pretty little Madame Vestris. There is no degree of excellence, however high, with which this Opera could be played, that we should not hail with delight; and we would at any time go ten miles on foot, only to see it played as we formerly did. The time we allude to, was when Miss Stephens first came out in Mandane, when Miss Rennell (who is since dead) played Artaxerxes, when Mr. Incledon played the same part he does still, better than he does at present, when Miss Carew was the fair Semira, who listens no less delightfully than she sings, and some one (we forget who) played Arbaces, not very well. As to Mr. Braham, he was not there, nor was he wanted;—for we prefer the music of Arne, to Mr. Braham’s, and Mr. Braham willingly gives us none but his own. He has omitted some of the most exquisite airs in Artaxerxes to introduce others of his own composing;—and where he has not done this, he might as well, for he so overloads, embellishes, accompanies, and flourishes over the original songs that one would hardly know them again. Can anything be more tantalising than to hear him sing ‘Water parted from the sea?’ Instead of one continued stream of plaintive sound, labouring from the heart with fond emotion, and still murmuring as it flows, it was one incessant exhibition of frothy affectation and sparkling pretence; as if the only ambition of the singer, and the only advantage he could derive from the power and flexibility of his voice, was to run away at every opportunity from the music and the sentiment. Does Mr. Braham suppose that the finest pieces of composition were only invented, and modulated into their faultless perfection, for him to play tricks with, to make ad libitum experiments of his powers of execution upon them, and to use the score of the musician only as the rope-dancer does his rope, to vault up and down on,—to shew off his pirouettes and his summersaults, and to perform feats of impossibility? This celebrated person’s favourite style of singing is like bad Opera-dancing, of which not grace, but trick is the constant character. So Mr. Braham’s object is not to please but astonish his hearers—to do what is difficult and absurd, not what is worth doing—to unfold the richness, depth, sweetness, and variety of his tones, not to touch the chords of sentiment. In fact, it is the essence of all perverted art, to display art, and carry itself to the opposite extreme from nature, lest it should be mistaken for her, instead of returning back to and identifying itself as much as possible with nature (both as means and end) that they may seem inseparable, and no one discern the difference. The accomplished singer, whom we are criticising, too often puts himself in the place of his subject. He mistakes the object of the public. We do not go to the theatre to admire him, to hear him tune his voice like an instrument for sale. We go to be delighted with certain ‘concords of sweet sounds,’ which strike certain springs in unison in the human breast. These things are found united in nature, and in the works of the greatest masters, such as Arne and Mozart. What they have joined together, why will Mr. Braham put asunder? Why will he pour forth, for instance, as in this very song which he murdered, a volume of sound in one note, like the deep thunder, or the loud water-fall, and in the next, without any change of circumstance, try to thrill the ear by an excess of the softest and most voluptuous effeminacy? There is no reason why he should—but that he can, and is allowed to do so. Mr. Braham, we know, complains that the fault is not in his own taste, but in the vitiated ear of the town which he is obliged (much against his will) to pamper with trills, quavers, crotchets, falsettos, bravuras, and all the idle brood of affectation and sickly sensibility. He might have been taught a lesson to the contrary, a year or two ago, when he sung with Miss Stephens at Covent-Garden; and never surely was the difference of two styles more marked, or the triumph of good taste over bad more complete. Mr. Braham could not plead want of skill, of power, of practice: it was the difference of style only; and Miss Stephens’s simple, artless manner, gave nothing but pure pleasure, while Mr. Braham’s ornamental, laboured, complicated, or tortured execution, excited feelings of mingled astonishment, regret, and disappointment. There is Miss Tree again, who is another instance. What is it that gives such a superiority to her singing? Nothing but its truth, its seriousness, its sincerity. She has no capricios, plays no fantastic tricks; but seems as much in the power, at the mercy of the composer, as a musical instrument: her lips transmit the notes she has by heart, as the Æolian harp is stirred by the murmuring wind; and her voice seems to brood over, and become enamoured of the sentiment. But simplicity, we believe, will not do alone without sentiment, and we suspect Mr. Braham of a want of sentiment. He apparently sings, as far as the passion is concerned, from the marginal directions, con furio, con strepito, adagio, etc., which are but indifferent helps to expression; and where a performer cannot fasten instinctively on the sympathy of his hearers, he has no better resource than to make an appeal to their wonder. To confess the extent of our insensibility, or our prejudice, we do not admire Mr. Braham’s ‘Mild as the moonbeams,’ which is in his most lisping and languishing, nor his ‘Wallace,’ which is in his most heroic manner. What we like best, is his Oratorio style of singing, and that is the most manly, the most direct, and the least an abuse of the great powers which both Nature and Art have given to him. Having said so much of Mr. Braham, we will say nothing of Mr. Incledon. Miss Carew, as Mandane, warbled like a nightingale, and held her head on one side like a peacock; of Madame Vestris, we repeat that she is pretty. Indeed, we liked her the best of the four.

T.

No. VII

[July, 1820.

The Drama is a subject of which we could give a very entertaining account once a month, if there were no plays acted all the year. But, as some artists have said of Nature, ‘the Theatres put us out.’ The only article we have written on this matter that has given us entire satisfaction—(we answer, be it observed, for nobody but ourselves)—is the one we wrote in the winter, when, in consequence of two great public calamities, the theatres were closed for some weeks together. We seized that lucky opportunity, to take a peep into the raree-show of our own fancies,—the moods of our own minds,—and a very pretty little kaleidoscope it made. Our readers, we are sure, remember the description. Our head is stuffed full of recollections on the subject of the Drama, some of older, some of later date, but all treasured up with more or less fondness; we, in short, love it, and what we love, we can talk of for ever. We love it as well as Mr. Weathercock loves maccaroni; as Mr. Croker loves the Quarterly Review, and the Quarterly Review the Edinburgh; as Kings love Queens; and Scotchmen love their country. But, as happens in some of these instances, we love it best at a distance. We like to be a hundred miles off from the Acted Drama in London, and to get a friend (who may be depended on) to give an account of it for us; which we read, at our leisure, under the shade of a clump of lime-trees. What is the use indeed of coming to town, merely to discover that Mr. Elliston is ‘fat, fair, and forty,’ and becomes silk hose worse than fleecy hosiery?

‘Odious, in satin! ’Twould a saint provoke!’

We had rather stay where we are, and think how young, how genteel, how sprightly Lewis was at seventy! Garrick too was fat and pursy; but who ever perceived it through that airy soul of his, that life of mind, that bore him up ‘like little wanton boys that swim on bladders?’ Or why should we take coach to prevent our friend and coadjutor, of the whimsical name,—that Bucolical Juvenile, the Sir Piercie Shafton of the London Magazine,—from carrying off his Mysie Happer, the bewitching Miss Brunton, from our critical advances, and forestalling our praises of the grey twinkling eyes, the large white teeth, and querulous catechising voice of this accomplished little rustic? We shall leave him in full possession of his prize;—she shall be his Protection, and he shall be her Audacity: but we cannot consent to give up to his agreeable importunity our right and interest in the Miss Dennetts—the fair, the ‘inexpressive three.’ We will not erase their names from our pages, but twine them in cypher, as they are ‘written in our heart’s tables,’—though they do not dance at the Opera! We have not this gentleman’s exquisitely happy knack in the geography of criticism: nor do we carry a map of London in our pockets to make out an exact scale of merit and virtu; nor judge of black eyes, a white cheek, and so forth, by the bills of mortality. We do not hate pathos because it is found in the Borough; our taste (such as it is) can cross the water, by any of the four bridges, in search of spirit and nature; we can make up our minds to beauty even at Whitechapel! Our friend and correspondent, Janus, grieves and wonders at this. He asks us why we do not express his sentiments instead of our own? and we answer, ‘It is because we are not you.’ He runs away from vulgar places and people, as from the plague; swoons at the mention of the Royal Cobourg; mimics his barber’s pronunciation of Ashley’s; and is afraid to trust himself at Sadler’s Wells, lest his clothes should be covered with gingerbread, and spoiled with the smell of gin and tobacco. Now we, in our turn, laugh at all this. We are never afraid of being confounded with the vulgar; nor is our time taken up in thinking of what is ungenteel, and persuading ourselves that we are mightily superior to it. The gentlemen in the gallery, in Fielding’s time, thought every thing low; and our friend, Mr. Weathercock, presents his compliments to us, and tells us we are wrong in condescending to any thing beneath ‘Milanie’s foot of fire.’ We have no notion of condescending in any thing we write about: we seek for truth and beauty wherever we can find them, and think that with these we are safe from contamination. ‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.’ Our comparative negligence, in this respect, probably arises from the difference that exists between our dress and that of our correspondent. A good judge has said, ‘a man’s mind is parcel of his fortunes,’—and a man’s taste is part of his dress. If we wore ‘diamond rings on our fingers, antique cameos in our breast-pins, cambric pocket-handkerchiefs breathing forth Attargul, and pale lemon-coloured kid gloves,’ our perceptions might be strangely altered. We might then think Mr. Young ‘the perfect gentleman both on and off the stage,’ and consider Mr. Jones’s ‘cut-steel watch chain quite refreshing.’ As it is, we differ from him on most of the above points. Yet, for any thing we see to the contrary, we might safely have staid in the country another month, and deputed the modern Euphuist, as our tire-man of the theatre, to adjust Mr. Kemble’s boots, to tie on Mr. Abbott’s sash to his liking, to dry Miss Stephens’s bonnet, and dye Miss Tree’s stockings any colour but blue:—but we heard from good authority that there was a new tragedy worth seeing, and also that it was written by an old friend of ours. That there was no resisting. So ‘we came, saw, and were satisfied.’—Virginius is a good play:—we repeat it. It is a real tragedy; a sound historical painting. Mr. Knowles has taken the facts as he found them, and expressed the feelings that would naturally arise out of the occasion. Strange to say, in this age of poetical egotism, the author, in writing his play, has been thinking of Virginius and his daughter, more than of himself! This is the true imagination, to put yourself in the place of others, and to feel and speak for them. Our unpretending poet travels along the high road of nature and the human heart; and does not turn aside to pluck pastoral flowers in primrose lanes, or hunt gilded butterflies over enamelled meads, breathless and exhausted;—nor does he, with vain ambition, ‘strike his lofty head against the stars.’ So far indeed, he may thank the Gods for not having made him poetical. Some cold, formal, affected, and interested critics have not known what to make of this. It was not what they would have done. One finds fault with the style as poor, because it is not inflated. Another can see nothing in it, because it is not interlarded with modern metaphysical theories, unknown to the ancients. A third declares that it is all borrowed from Shakspear, because it is true to nature. A fourth pronounces it a superior kind of melodrame, because it pleases the public. The two last things to which the dull and envious ever think of attributing the success of any work (and yet the only ones to which genuine success is attributable), are Genius and Nature. The one they hate, and of the other they are ignorant. The same critics who despise and slur the Virginius of Covent Garden, praise the Virginius and the David Rizzio of Drury Lane, because (as it should appear) there is nothing in them to rouse their dormant spleen, stung equally by merit or success, and to mortify their own ridiculous, inordinate, and hopeless vanity. Their praise is of a piece with their censure; and equally from what they applaud and what they condemn, you perceive the principle of their perverse judgments. They are soothed with flatness and failure, and doat over them with parental fondness; but what is above their strength, and demands their admiration, they shrink from with loathing, and an oppressive sense of their own imbecility: and what they dare not openly condemn, they would willingly secrete from the public ear! We have described this class of critics more than once, but they breed still: all that we can do is to sweep them from our path as often as we meet with them, and to remove their dirt and cobwebs as fast as they proceed from the same noisome source. Besides the merits of Virginius as a literary composition, it is admirably adapted to the stage. It presents a succession of pictures. We might suppose each scene almost to be copied from a beautiful bas-relief, or to have formed a group on some antique vase. ‘’Tis the taste of the ancients, ’tis classical lore.’ But it is a speaking and a living picture we are called upon to witness. These figures so strikingly, so simply, so harmoniously combined, start into life and action, and breathe forth words, the soul of passion—inflamed with anger, or melting with tenderness. Several passages of great beauty were cited in a former article on this subject; but we might mention in addition, the fine imaginative apostrophe of Virginius to his daughter, when the story of her birth is questioned:

‘I never saw you look so like your mother In all my life’—

the exquisite lines ending,

... ‘The lie Is most unfruitful then, that makes the flower— The very flow’r our bed connubial grew To prove its barrenness’——

or the sudden and impatient answer of Virginius to Numitorius, who asks if the slave will swear Virginia is her child—

‘To be sure she will! Is she not his slave?’

or again, the dignified reply to his brother, who reminds him it is time to hasten to the Forum,

‘Let the Forum wait for us!’

This is the true language of nature and passion; and all that we can wish for, or require, in dramatic writing. If such language is not poetical, it is the fault of poets, who do not write as the heart dictates! We have seen plays that produced much more tumultuous applause; none scarcely that excited more sincere sympathy. There were no clap-traps, no sentiments that were the understood signals for making a violent uproar; but we heard every one near us express heartfelt and unqualified approbation; and tears more precious supplied the place of loud huzzas. Each spectator appeared to appeal to, and to judge from the feelings of his own breast, not from vulgar clamour; and we trust the success will be more lasting and secure, as its foundations are laid in the deep and proud humility of nature. Mr. Knowles owes every thing, that an author can owe, to the actors; and they owed every thing to their attention to truth and to real feeling. Mr. Macready’s Virginius is his best and most faultless performance,—at once the least laboured and the most effectual. His fine, manly voice sends forth soothing, impassioned tones, that seem to linger round, or burst with terrific grandeur from the home of his heart. Mr. Kemble’s Icilius was heroic, spirited, fervid, the Roman warrior and lover; and Miss Foote was ‘the freeborn Roman maid,’ with a little bit, a delightful little bit, of the English schoolgirl in her acting. We incline to the ideal of our own country-women after all, when they are so young, so innocent, so handsome. We are both pleased and sorry to hear a report which threatens us with the loss of so great a favourite; and one chief source of our regret will be, that she will no longer play Virginia. The scenery allotted to this tragedy encumbered the stage, and the simplicity of the play. Temples and pictured monuments adorned the scene, which were not in existence till five hundred years after the date of the story; and the ruins of the Capitol, of Constantine’s arch, and the temple of Jupiter Stator, frowned at once on the death of Virginia, and the decline and fall of the Roman empire. As to the dresses, we leave them to our deputy of the wardrobe; but, we believe, they were got right at last, with some trouble. In the printed play, we observe a number of passages marked with inverted commas, which are omitted in the representation. This is the case almost uniformly wherever the words ‘Tyranny,’ or ‘Liberty,’ occur. Is this done by authority, or is it prudence in the author, ‘lest the courtiers offended should be?’ Is the name of Liberty to be struck out of the English language, and are we not to hate tyrants even in an old Roman play? ‘Let the galled jade wince: our withers are unwrung.’ We turn to a pleasanter topic, and are glad to find an old and early friend unaltered in sentiment as he is unspoiled by success:—the same boy-poet, after a lapse of years, as when we first knew him; unconscious of the wreath he has woven round his brow, laughing and talking of his play just as if it had been written by any body else, and as simple-hearted, downright, and honest as the unblemished work he has produced![45]

We saw Mr. Kean at his benefit at the risk of our limbs, and are sorry for the accident that happened to himself in the course of the evening. We have longed ever since we saw Mr. Kean—that is, any time these six years—to see him jump through a trap-door—hearing he could do it. ‘Why are those things hid? Is this a time to conceal virtues?’ said we to ourselves. What was our disappointment, then, when on the point of this consummation of our wishes—just in the moment of the projection of our hopes—when dancing with Miss Valancy too, he broke the tendon Achilles, and down fell all our promised pleasure, our castles in the air! Good-reader, it was not the jump through the trap-door that we wished literally to see; but the leap from Othello to Harlequin. What a jump! What an interval, what a gulph to pass! What an elasticity of soul and body too—what a diversity of capacity in the same diminutive person! To be Othello, a man should be all passion, abstraction, imagination: to be Harlequin, he should have his wits in his heels, and in his fingers’ ends! To be both, is impossible, or miraculous. Each doubles the wonder of the other; and in judging of the aggregate amount of merit, we must proceed, not by the rules of addition, but multiply Harlequin’s lightness into Othello’s gravity, and the result will give us the sum total of Mr. Kean’s abilities. What a spring, what an expansive force of mind, what an untamed vigour, to rise to such a height from such a lowness; to tower like a Phoenix from its ashes; to ascend like a pyramid of fire! Why, what a complex piece of machinery is here; what an involution of faculties, circle within circle, that enables the same individual to make a summersault, and that swells the veins of his forehead with true artificial passion, and that turns him to a marble statue with thought! It is not being educated in the fourth form of St. Paul’s school, or cast in the antique mould of the high Roman fashion, that can do this; but it is genius alone that can raise a man thus above his first origin, and make him thus various from himself! It is bestriding the microcosm of man like a Colossus, and, by uniting the extremes of the chain of being, seemingly implies all the intermediate links. We do not think much of Mr. Kean’s singing: we could, with a little practice and tuition, sing nearly as well ourselves: as for his dancing, it is but so so, and anybody can dance: his fencing is good, nervous, firm, fibrous, like that of a new pocket Hercules:—but for his jumping through a hole in the wall,—clean through, head over heels, like a shot out of culverin—‘by Heavens, it would have been great!’ This we fully expected at his hands, and ‘in this expectation we were baulked.’ Just as our critical expectations were on tip-toe, Mr. Kean suddenly strained his ancle:—as it were to spite us;—we went out in dudgeon, and were near missing his Imitations, which would not have signified much if we had. They were tolerable, indifferent, pretty good, but not the thing. Mr. Matthews’s or Mr. Yates’s are better. They were softened down, and fastidious. Kemble was not very like. Incledon and Braham were the best, and Munden was very middling. The after-piece of the Admirable Crichton, in which he was to do all this, was neither historical nor dramatic. The character, which might have given excellent opportunities for the display of a variety of extraordinary accomplishments in the real progress of the story, was ill-conceived and ill-managed. He was made either a pedagogue or an antic. In himself, he was dull and grave, instead of being high-spirited, volatile, and self-sufficient; and to show off his abilities, he was put into masquerade. We did not like it at all; though, from the prologue, we had expected more point and daring. Mr. Kean’s Jaffier was fine, and in some parts admirable. This indeed, is only to say that he played it. But it was not one of his finest parts, nor indeed one in which we expected him to shine pre-eminently: but on that we had not depended, for we never know beforehand what he will do best or worst. He is one of those wandering fires, whose orbit is not calculable by any known rules of criticism. Mr. Elliston’s Pierre, was, we are happy to say, a spirited and effectual performance. We must not forget to add that Mrs. M’Gibbon’s Belvidera was excellent, declaimed with impassioned propriety, and acted with dignity and grace.

‘And what of this new opera of David Rizzio, that the New Times makes such a rout about?’—Nothing. ‘Nothing can come of nothing.’ We truly and strictly could not make a word of sense of it. We wonder whose it can be. It is praised too in the Chronicle; but that is no matter. The story promised much; the music, the old Scotch tunes, more. They were both completely transmogrified,—they melted into thin air. The author set aside the one, and the composers (of whom there are no less than five) the other. This required some ingenuity. The plot turns altogether upon this, that Rizzio (Braham) is supposed and made to be in love with Lady Mary Livingstone (Miss Carew), and by warbling out her Christian name in ballads in the open air, is imagined, by Darnley and the rest, to be in love with Mary, Queen of Scots (Mrs. West), from which strange misinterpretation all the mischief and confusion ensue. We fancy there is no foundation for this in tradition or old records. The author has indeed reversed the method of the writer of the Scotch Novels, for, instead of building as much as possible on facts and history, he has built as little as possible on them—and has produced just the contrary effect of the Great Unknown, that is, has spun a tissue of incidents and sentiments out of his own head, worth nothing, unmeaning, feeble, languid, disjointed, and for the most part, incomprehensible. Most of the scenes in the two first acts, consisted of the Exits and Entrances of single persons, who only appeared to deliver an introductory speech, and sing a song, and then vanished before any one else could come on to entrap them into a dialogue—a delicate evasion of the wily dramatist! Mr. Barnard repeated these Operatic soliloquies so often, as to be almost hissed off the stage, and Miss Povey (his sweetheart) by coming to his relief half a minute after he was gone, did not much mend the matter, either by the charms of her voice or person. This young lady is pretty, and sings agreeably enough, but we do not see what she can have to do with romantic sentiments or situations. Some of those in which she was placed, would require the utmost delicacy of the most accomplished heroine to carry them off without an obtrusive sense of impropriety. For instance, after warbling a ditty to the desert air of Holyrood House, she retires into a summer-house hard by, to keep an assignation with the persuasive Mr. Barnard, and is presently surprised and carried off, instead of the silver-voiced Carew, by a band of ruffians, who—on her making many exclamations, and repeating ‘Oh! dear me!’ and saying she only came to meet a young man—reply very laconically, ‘Aye, you came to meet one young man, and now you have met with four—that’s better!’ In the last scene, the catastrophe is brought about by Rizzio’s being discovered by the conspirators at a magnificent entertainment in the apartment of the Queen, which confirms their former suspicions and infuriates their revenge; and he is hurried from her frantic embraces, which display all the tenderness of a mistress, rather than the attachment of a sovereign, to be despatched in the adjoining chamber. His assassins find their error too late, when, from the passionate declaration of Lady Mary Livingstone that she is his wife, they are convinced of his and the Queen’s innocence. The lesson to be drawn from this fiction, seems to be, that ladies (whether Princesses or not) who defy opinion, must take the consequences of their infatuated self-indulgence, or involve others in ruin: for the presumption is, that no woman in her senses will risk her character, unless she has a further object in view, namely, to gratify her passions. This was not, however, the inference drawn by the generality of the audience; for several passages, construed in allusion to passing events, were loudly and triumphantly cheered. They, indeed, saved the piece from final and absolute damnation, for it drooped from the beginning, and to the end, and had no other interest than what arose from the occasional parallelism of political situations. Mr. Braham (as David Rizzio) disappointed us much. He sung the airs he had probably himself selected, without any affectation indeed—‘softly sweet in Lydian measures’—but without any effect whatever upon our ears; he fell into simplicity and insipidity, plump together, ten thousand fathoms down. The other singers acquitted themselves very well, but there was nothing to excite an interest in itself, or to answer the previous expectations arising from the title of the piece. We had hoped to have been treated to some old Scotch airs, at least: but the joint-composers seemed to have a strong aversion to any thing connected with the sound of a bagpipe. This we suppose is a symptom of the progress of a more refined taste among us. The causes of our want of sympathy with it have been explained above. The piece has been repeated once or twice since.

Giovanni in London has been transferred to this theatre (Drury Lane) from the Olympic. It was a favourite with the town there; it has become a favourite with the town here. There is something in burlesque that pleases. We like to see the great degraded to a level with the little. The humour is extravagant and coarse, but it is certainly droll; and we never check our inclinations to laugh, when we have an opportunity given us. We have not laughed so heartily a long time, as at seeing the meddlesome lawyer tossed in a blanket in the King’s Bench; and we should imagine there is a natural and inevitable connection between the performance of that gentle salutary mode of discipline, and the titillation of the lungs of the spectators. Madame Vestris played, sung, and looked the incorrigible Don John very prettily and spiritedly; but, we confess, we had rather see her petticoated than in a Spanish doublet and hose, hat and feather. Yet she gave a life to the scene, and Pluto relented as she sung. There is a pulpy softness and ripeness in her lips, a roseate hue, like the leaves of the damask rose, a luscious honeyed sound in her voice, a depth and fulness too, as if it were clogged with its own sweets, a languid archness, an Italian lustre in her eye, an enchanting smile, a mouth—shall we go on? No. But she is more bewitching even than Miss Brunton. Yet we like to see her best in petticoats. It cannot be denied that Mrs. Gould (late Miss Burrell) of the Olympic, who played it first, was the girl to play Giovanni in London. She had a hooked nose, large staring eyes, a manlike voice, a tall person, a strut that became a rake.

‘She forgot to be a woman: changed fear, and niceness, (The hand maids of all women, or more truly Woman its pretty-self) into a waggish courage; Ready in gibes, quick answered, saucy, and As quarrellous as the weasel.’

All this Madame Vestris attempts; but in spite of her efforts to the contrary, she shrinks back into feminine softness and delicacy, and her heart evidently fails her, and flutters, ‘like a new ta’en sparrow,’ in the midst of all her pretended swaggering and determination to brazen the matter out. On the night we saw this afterpiece, Mr. Knight played Leporello, instead of Mr. Harley: so that we can praise neither.

L.

No. VIII

August, 1820.

It is now the middle of July, when we are by turns drenched with showers and scorched with sun-beams: the winter theatres are closed, and the summer ones have just opened, soon to close again—

‘Like marigolds with the sun’s eye.’

We are not, however, in the number of those who deprecate the shortness of the summer season, as one of the miseries of human life, or who think little theatres better than big. We like a play-house in proportion to the number of happy human faces it contains (and a play-house seldom contains many wretched ones)—and again we like a play best when we do not see the faces of the actors too near. We do not want to be informed, as at the little theatre in the Haymarket, that part of the rich humour of Mr. Liston’s face arises from his having lost a tooth in front, nor to see Mr. Jones’s eyes roll more meteorous than ever. At the larger theatres we only discover that the ladies paint red: at the smaller ones we can distinguish when they paint white. We see defects enough at a distance, and we can always get near enough (in the pit) to see the beauties. Those who go to the boxes do not go to see the play, but to make a figure, and be thought something of themselves (so far they probably succeed, at least in their own opinion): and if the Gods cannot hear, they make themselves heard. We do not like private theatricals. We like every thing to be what it is. We have no fancy for seeing the actors look like part of the audience, nor for seeing the pit invade the boxes, nor the boxes shake hands with the galleries. We are for a proper distinction of ranks—at the theatre. While we are laughing at the broad farcical humour of the Agreeable Surprise, or critically examining Mrs. Mardyn’s dress in the Will, we do not care to be disturbed by some idle whisper, or mumbling disapprobation of an old beau, or antiquated dowager in a high head-dress, close at our ear, but in a different part of the house.—Mr. Arnold has taken care of this at the New English Opera-house in the Strand, of which he is proprietor and patentee. The ‘Great Vulgar and the Small’ (as Cowley has it) are there kept at a respectful distance. The boxes are perched up so high above the pit, that it gives you a head-ache to look up at the beauty and fashion that nightly adorn them with their thin and scattered constellations; and then the gallery is ‘raised so high above all height,’ it is nearly impossible for the eye to scale it, while a little miserable shabby upper-gallery is partitioned off with an iron railing, through which the poor one-shilling devils look like half-starved prisoners in the Fleet, and are a constant butt of ridicule to the genteeler rabble beneath them. Then again (so vast is Mr. Arnold’s genius for separating and combining), you have a Saloon, a sweet pastoral retreat, where any love-sick melancholy swain, or romantic nymph, may take a rural walk to Primrose-hill, or Chalk-farm, by the side of painted purling streams, and sickly flowering shrubs, without once going out of the walls of the theatre:—

‘Such tricks hath strong Imagination!’

If the Haymarket has been praised by a contemporary critic (of whom we might say, that he is alter et idem) for being as hot as an oven in the midst of the dog-days; the Lyceum, on the other hand, is as cool as a well; and much might, we think, be said on both sides. As a matter of taste, or fancy, or prejudice, (we shall not pretend to say which) we do not greatly like the new English Opera-house. The house is new, the pieces are new, the company are new, and we do not know what to make of any of them. As to the things that are acted there, they are a sort of pert, patched-up, insipid, flippant attempt at mediocrity. They are like the odd-ends and scraps of all the rejected pieces, which have come into the manager’s possession in virtue of his office for a length of time; and which he has stitched and tacked together in such a way that neither the authors nor the public can know any thing of the matter. They are a condensed essence of all the vapid stuff that has been suppressed at home or acted abroad for a number of years last past. Visions of farces, operas, and interludes, thin, blue, fluttering, gawzy appearances, mock the empty sight, elude the public comprehension, and the critic’s grasp. The worst of these slender, wire-drawn productions is, that there is nothing to praise in them, nor any thing to condemn. They ‘present no mark’ to friend or foe. ‘You may as well take aim at the edge of a pen-knife,’ as try to pick any thing out of them. They are trifling, tedious, frivolous, and vexatious. The best is, they do not last long, and ‘one bubble’ (to borrow an illusion from an eloquent divine, in treating on a graver subject) ‘knocks another on the head, and both rush together into oblivion!’—Miss Kelly is here; she might as well be a hundred miles off. She is not good at child’s play, at the make-believe fine-lady, or the make-believe waiting-maid. Hers is bonâ fide downright acting, and she must have something to do, in order to do it properly. She is too clever and too knowing to act a part totally without meaning, such as that lately given her in the Promissory Note. Such was not her Yarico. Ah! there were tones, and looks, and piercing sighs in her representation of the fond, injured, sun-burnt Indian maid, that make it difficult to think of her in any inferior part, or to speak slightingly of any theatre in which she is concerned: but critics, as it has been said of judges, must not give way to their feelings. There is Wrench here too, as easy as an old glove, the same careless, hair-brained, idle, impudent, good humoured, lackadaisical sort of a gentleman as ever; there is Harley too, who has not been spoiled by the town, since we first saw him here:—then there is Mr. Rowbotham, a grave young man, a new hand, very like the real, the prudent Mr. Thomas Inkle: encore un coup, we have Mr. Bartley, who, if not a new hand, is fresh returned from America, and as much at home on these boards as before he went abroad: in the Governor of Barbadoes, he had quite a Transatlantic look with him: there is also Mr. Westbourn (we think he is at this house) and a Mr. Wilkinson, and a Mr. Richardson (whose names and persons we are apt to confound together), and Mr. Pearman (whom it is not possible to mistake for any one else) and Miss Stevenson (a very provoking young thing), and Miss Love, and Mrs. Grove, and a whole Sylva Critica of actors and actresses, of whom the very nomenclature terrifies us. We give it up in despair: and so humbly take our leave of the New English Opera house for the season!—‘We had rather be taxed for silence, than checked for speech.’

At the other house, to which we ‘do more favourably incline,’ both from old associations and immediate liking, though there are some raw recruits (picked up we don’t know where), there is a large and powerful detachment from the veteran corps of Covent Garden; Terry, Jones, Mrs. Gibbs, Liston, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kemble, J. Russel, Farley, and Mrs. Mardyn and Madame Vestris from Drury-Lane, and last, Miss R. Corri, from the Opera House.—In fact, it is our opinion that there is theatrical strength enough in this town only to set up one good summer or one good winter theatre. Competition may be necessary to prevent negligence and abuse, but the result of this distribution of the corps dramatique into different companies, is, that we never, or very rarely indeed, see a play well acted in all its parts. At Drury-Lane there is only one tragic actor, Mr. Kean: all the rest are supernumeraries. No one, we apprehend, would ever cross the threshold to see Mr. Pope’s Iago, or Mr. Elliston’s Richmond, or Mr. Rae’s Bassanio, or Mr. Hamblin, or Mr. Penley, or Mr. Fisher, or Mr. Philips, who plays the King in Hamlet: though, ‘in the catalogue they go for actors.’ In comedy, Drury-Lane is better off: yet, they cannot get up a real sterling comedy, for want of actors and actresses to fill the parts of gentlemen and ladies. Miss Kelly is the best comic actress on either stage, but she is only an appendage to the real fine lady, Millamant’s Mrs. Mincing, ‘to curl her hair so crisp and pure’: in cases of necessity, they have no one but Mr. Penley, jun. to top the part of Lord Foppington: Mr. Munden is their Sir Peter Teazle, and Mr. Elliston is his own Lord Townley. But they really hit off a modern comedy, such as Wild Oats, which is a mixture of farce and romantic sentiment, to an exact perfection. At Covent-Garden they lately had one great tragic actress, Miss O’Neill; and two or three actors who were highly respectable, at least in second-rate tragic characters. At present, the female throne in tragedy is vacant; and of the men ‘who rant and fret their hour upon the stage,’ Mr. Macready is the only one who draws houses, or who finds admirers. He shines most, however, in the pathos of domestic life; and we still want to see tragedy, ‘turretted, crowned, and crested, with its front gilt, and blood-stained,’ stooping from the skies (not raised from the earth) as it did in the person of John Kemble. He is now quaffing health and burgundy in the south of France. He perhaps finds the air that blows from the ‘vine-covered hills’ wholesomer than that of a crowded house; and the lengthened murmurs of the Mediterranean shores more soothing to the soul, than the deep thunders of the pit. Or does he sometimes recline his lofty, laurelled head upon the sea-beat beach, and unlocking the cells of memory, listen to the rolling Pæans, the loud never-to-be-forgotten plaudits of enraptured multitudes, that mingle with the music of the waves,

‘And murmur as the Ocean murmurs near?’

Or does he still ‘sigh his soul towards England’ and the busy hum of Covent-Garden? If we thought so, (but that we dread all returns from Elba) we would say to him, ‘Come back, and once more bid Britannia rival old Greece and Rome!’—Or where is Mr. Young now? There is an opening for his pretensions too.—If the Drury-Lane company are deficient in genteel comedy, we fear that Covent-Garden cannot help them out in this respect. Mr. W. Farren is the only exception to the sweeping clause we were going to insert against them. He plays the old gentleman, the antiquated beau of the last age, very much after the fashion that we remember to have seen in our younger days, and that is quite a singular excellence in this. Is it that Mr. Farren has caught glimpses of this character in real life, hovering in the horizon of the sister kingdom, which has been long banished from this? They have their Castle Rack-rents, their moats and ditches, still extant in remote parts of the interior: and perhaps in famed Dublin city, the cheveux-de-fris of dress, the trellis-work of lace and ruffles, the masked battery of compliment, the port-cullises of formal speech, the whole artillery of sighs and ogling, with all the appendages and proper costume of the ancient regime, and paraphernalia of the preux chevalier, may have been kept up in a state of lively decrepitude and smiling dilapidation, in a few straggling instances from the last century, which Mr. Farren had seen. The present age produces nothing of the sort; and so, according to our theory, Mr. Farren does not play the young gentleman or modern man of fashion, though he is himself a young man. For the rest, comedy is in a rich, thriving state at Covent-Garden, as far as the lower kind of comic humour is concerned; but it is like an ill-baked pudding, where all the plums sink to the bottom. Emery and Liston, the two best, are of this description: Jones is a caricaturist; and Terry, in his graver parts, is not a comedian, but a moralist.—Even a junction of the two companies into one would hardly furnish out one set of players competent to do justice to any of the standard productions of the English stage in tragedy or comedy: what a hopeful project it must be then to start a few more play-houses in the heart of the metropolis as nurseries of histrionic talent, still more to divide and dissipate what little concentration of genius we have, and still more to weaken and distract public patronage? As to the argument in favour of two or more theatres from the necessity of competition, we shall not dispute it; but the actual benefits are not so visible to our dim eyes as to some others. There is a competition in what is bad as well as in what is good: the race of popularity is as often gained by tripping up the heels of your antagonist, as by pressing forward yourself: there is a competition in running an indifferent piece, or a piece indifferently acted, to prevent the success of the same piece at the other house; and there is a competition in puffing, as Mr. Elliston can witness.—No, there we confess, he leaves all competition behind!

The two pleasantest pieces we have seen this season at the Haymarket are the Green Man, and Pigeons and Crows. They were both to us an Agreeable Surprise; for we had not seen them when they were brought out last year, or the year before. The first is moral and pointed; the latter more lively and quaint. The Green Man abounds in laconic good sense: in Pigeons and Crows there is as edifying a vein of nonsense. We do not know the author of this last piece (to whom we confess ourselves obliged for two mirthful, thoughtless evenings), but we understand that the Green Man is adapted by Mr. Jones from a French petite pièce, which was itself taken from a German novel, we believe one of Kotzebue’s. The sentiments indeed are evidently of that romantic, levelling cast, which formerly abounded in the writings of the ci-devant philanthropic enthusiast. The principal character in it is that of the Green Man himself, who is a benevolent, blunt-spoken, friendly cynic. The only joke of the character consists in his being dressed all in green—he has a green coat, a green waistcoat and breeches, green stockings, a green hat, a green pocket handkerchief, and a green watch. This gives rise to many pleasant allusions; and indeed, from the manner in which the peculiarity of his personal appearance affects our notion of his personal identity, he looks like a talking suit of clothes, a sermonizing and sententious vegetable. Mr. Terry performs the part admirably, and seems himself transformed into ‘a brother of the groves.’ He does not aggravate the author’s meaning too much, but gives just as much point as was intended, and passes on to what comes next, as naturally, and with that sort of manner and unconscious interest which a man really takes in his own, or other people’s affairs. Mr. Terry’s acting always shows vigour and good sense. His only fault is, that he is too jealous of himself, and strives to do better than well. In the Green Man he was quite at home, and quite at his ease; and made every one else feel equally so. Mr. Jones is an overstarched French fop in this play, full of foreign grimace and affectation, of which, however, he is cured by his passion for the fair ward of the Green Man (Miss Leigh, a very pleasing new actress), who does not at all tolerate such impertinence, and he afterwards turns out (dandyism apart) a very good sort of a humane character. Perhaps, enough has never been made on the stage of the frequent contradiction in this respect between outside appearances and sterling qualities within. We carry our prejudices both for and against dress too far. It is no rule either way. A fop is not necessarily a fool, nor without feeling. A man may even wear stays, and not be effeminate; or a pink coat, without making his friends blush for him. The celebrated beau, Hervey, threw the scavenger that ridiculed him into his own mud-cart; and a person in our own time, who has carried extravagance of dress and appearance to a very great pitch indeed, is, in reality, a very good-natured, sensible, modest man. The fault, in such cases, is neither in the head nor heart, but in the cut of a coat-collar, or the size of a pair of whiskers.—Farley and J. Russell were Major Dumpling and Captain Bibber in the same piece: and a scene of high farce they made of it. The one is an officer in the army, the local militia; the other is an officer in the navy. The one excels in eating, the other in drinking. The one is most at home in the kitchen, the other in the cellar. The one is fat, huge, and unwieldy; the other, dapper, tight, and bustling. Farley is an actor with whose merit, in such parts, the public are well acquainted: Russel is one who will be liked more, the more he is known. Both in Captain Bibber, Blondeau, the French showman in Pigeons and Crows, and in Silvester Daggerwood, he has acquitted himself with great applause, and entered into the humour, eccentricity, and peculiar distinctions of his characters, with spirit and fidelity. His mimicry is also good, and he sings a French rondeau, or a sailor’s ditty, con amore. The part of Major Dumpling was originally played by Mr. Tokely. It was one of three parts (Crockery and Peter Pastoral were the other two) for which he seemed born, and having rolled himself up in them, like the silk-worm, he died. Poor Tokely! He relished his parts; with Crockery doated over an old sign-post, or wept with honest Peter over a green leaf.

‘His tears were tears of oil and gladness.’

But he also relished his morning’s draught, and sipped the sweets till he was drowned in a butt of whiskey. The said fair-looking, round-faced, pot-bellied, uncouth, awkward, out-of-the-way, unmeaning, inimitable Crockery, or Peter Pastoral, or Major Dumpling, was the very little child that, in the year 1796, Kemble used to carry off triumphantly on his arm in the original performance of Pizarro! Thinking of these things, may we not say, sic transit gloria mundi? So flies the stage away, and life flies after it as fast!—Mrs. Gibbs, ‘that horse-whipping woman,’ in Teazing made Easy, does not, however, wear the willow on his account, but looks as smiling, as good-humoured, as buxom, as in the natural and professional life-time of Mr. Tokely, and drinks her bowl of cream as Cowslip, and expresses her liking of a roast-duck with the same resignation of flesh and spirit as ever.

Mr. Liston in Pigeons and Crows plays the part of Sir Peter Pigwiggin, knight, alderman, and pin-maker. What a name, what a person, and what a representative! We never saw Mr. Liston’s countenance in better preservation; that is, it seems tumbling all in pieces with indescribable emotions, and a thousand odd twitches, and unaccountable absurdities, oozing out at every pore. His jaws seem to ache with laughter: his eyes look out of his head with wonder: his face is unctuous all over and bathed with jests; the tip of his nose is tickled with conceit of himself, and his teeth chatter in his head in the eager insinuation of a plot: his forehead speaks, and his wig (not every particular hair, but the whole bewildered bushy mass) ‘stands on end as life were in it.’ In the scene with his dulcinea (Miss Leigh) his approaches are the height of self-complacent, cockney courtship; his rhymes on his own projected marriage,

‘What a thing! Bless the King!’

would make any man (who is not so already) loyal, and his laughing in the glass when he is told by mistake that Miss’s mamma is eighteen, and his convulsive distortions as he recovers from his first surprise, and the choking effects of it, out-Hogarth Hogarth!

‘Let those laugh now who never laugh’d before, And those who still have laugh’d, now laugh the more.’

The scene where he is told he is poisoned, and his interview with the drunken apothecary (Mr. Williams), though excellent in themselves, were not so good: for Liston does not play so well to any one else, as he does to himself. The rest of the characters were well supported. Jones, as the younger Pigwiggin, alias Captain Neville, the lover of Liston’s fair inamorata, ‘does a little bit of fidgets’ very well. He is sprightly, voluble, knowing, and pleasant; and is the life of a small theatre, only that he is now and then a little too obstreperous; but he keeps up the interest of his part, and that is every thing. The audience delight to hear his ‘View Halloa’ before he comes on the stage (which is a sure sign of their opinion), and expect to be amused for the next ten minutes. If an actor can excite hope, and not disappoint it, what can he do more? Mr. Russell, as the little French showman, Mr. Farley as Mr. Wadd, and Mr. Connor as a blundering Irish servant, all sustained their parts with great eclat: and so did the ladies. The scene where Jones deceives two of his creditors, Russell and Farley, by appointing each to pay the other, had a very laughable effect; but the stratagem is borrowed from Congreve, who indeed was not the very worst source to borrow from.

The house was crowded to excess to see the new appearances in the Beggar’s Opera; Madame Vestris’s Captain Macheath, Miss R. Corri’s Polly, and Mrs. Charles Kemble’s Lucy, which last, indeed, is an old friend with a new face. Mrs. Kemble was the best Lucy we ever saw (not excepting Miss Kelly, who is also much at home in this part), and she retains all the spirit of her original performances. Miss Kelly plays Lucy as naturally, perhaps more so; but Mrs. Kemble does it more characteristically. She has no ‘compunctious visitings’ of delicacy, but her mind seems hardened against the walls that enclose it. She is Lockitt’s daughter, the child of a prison; the true virago, that is to be the foil to the gentle spirit of Polly. The air with which she throws the rat to the cat in the song has a gusto worthy of one of Michael Angelo’s Sybils; a box on the ear from her right hand is no jesting matter. Her rage and sullenness are of the true unmitigated stamp, and her affected civilities to her fair rival are a parody (as the author intended) on the friendships of courts.—Madame Vestris, as the Captain, almost shrunk before her, like Viola before her enraged enemies. Indeed, she played the part very prettily, with great vivacity and an agreeable swagger, cocking her hat, throwing back her shoulders, and making a free use of a rattan-cane, like Little Pickle, but she did not look like the hero, or the highwayman, if this was desirable in her case. If, however, she turned Macheath into a petit-maitre, she did not play it like Mr. Incledon or Mr. Cooke, or Mr. Braham, or Mr. Young, or any one else we have seen in it, which is no small commendation. Miss Corri sang Cease your funning, and one or two other songs, with sweetness and effect; but, in general, she was more like a modern made-up boarding-school girl, than the artless and elegant Polly. She lisps and looks pretty. The other parts were very respectably filled, but some of the best scenes (we are sorry to say it) were left out.

T.

No. IX

[September, 1820.

DRURY LANE.—The following is a play-bill of this theatre, for which we paid two-pence on the spot, to verify the fact—as some well-disposed persons, to prevent mistakes, purchase libellous or blasphemous publications from their necessitous or desperate vendors.

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.—Agreeably to the former advertisement, this theatre is now open for the last performances of Mr. Kean, before his positive departure for America. This evening, Saturday, August 19, 1820, his Majesty’s servants will perform Shakespear’s tragedy of Othello. Duke of Venice, Mr. Thompson; Brabantio, Mr. Powell; Gratiano, Mr. Carr; Lodovico, Mr. Vining; Montano, Mr. Jeffries; Othello, Mr. Kean—(his last appearance in that character); Cassio, Mr. Bromley—(his first appearance in that character); Roderigo, Mr. Russell; Iago, Junius Brutus Booth; Leonardo, Mr. Hudson; Julio, Mr. Raymond; Manco, Mr. Moreton; Paulo, Mr. Read; Giovanni, Mr. Starmer; Luca, Mr. Randall; Desdemona, Mrs. W. West; Emilia, Mrs. Egerton—This theatre overflows every night. The patentees cannot condescend to enter into a competition of scurrility which is only fitted for minor theatres—what their powers really are, will be, without any public appeal, legally decided in November next, and any gasconade can only be supposed to be caused by cunning or poverty.—After which, the farce of Modern Antiques, &c.

A more impudent puff, and heartless piece of bravado than this, we do not remember to have witnessed. This theatre does not overflow every night. As to the competition of scurrility, which the manager declines, it is he who has commenced it. The minor theatres—that is, one of them—to wit, the Lyceum—put forth a very proper and well-grounded remonstrance against this portentous opening of the winter theatre in the middle of the dog-days, to scorch up the dry, meagre, hasty harvest of the summer ones:—at which our mighty manager sets up his back, like the great cat, Rodilardus; scornfully rejects their appeal to the public; says he will pounce upon them in November with the law in his hands; and that, in the mean time, all they can do to interest the public in their favour by a plain statement of facts, ‘can only be supposed to be caused by cunning or poverty.’ This is pretty well for a manager who has been so thanked as Mr. Elliston! His own committee may laud him for bullying other theatres, but the public will have a feeling for his weaker rivals, though the angry comedian ‘should threaten to swallow them up quick,’ and vaunt of his action of battery against them, without any public appeal, ‘when wind and rain beat dark November down.’ This sorry manager, ‘dressed’ (to use the words of the immortal bard, whom he so modestly and liberally patronises) ‘dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,’—not ‘as make the angels weep,’—but his own candle-snuffers laugh, and his own scene-shifters blush. He ought to be ashamed of himself. Why, what a beggarly account of wretched actors, what an exposure of the nakedness of the land, have we in this very play-bill, which is issued forth with such a mixture of pomp and imbecility! Mr. Kean’s name, indeed, stands pre-eminent in lordly capitals, in defiance of Mr. Dowton’s resentment,—and Junius Brutus Booth, in his way, scorns to be Mistered! But all the rest are, we suppose—Mr. Elliston’s friends. They are happy in the favour of the manager, and in the total ignorance of the town! Mr. Kean, we grant, is in himself a host; a sturdy column, supporting the tottering, tragic dome of Drury-Lane! What will it be when this main, this sole striking pillar is taken away—‘You take my house, when you do take the prop that holds my house’—when the patentees shall have nothing to look to for salvation but the puffing of the Great Lessee, and his genius for law, which we grant may rival the Widow Black-acre’s—and when the cries of Othello, of Macbeth, of Richard, and Sir Giles, in the last agonies of their despair, shall be lost, through all the long winter months, ‘over a vast and unhearing ocean?’ Mr. Elliston, instead of taking so much pains to announce his own approaching dissolution, had better let Mr. Kean pass in silence, and take his positive departure for America without the pasting of placards, and the dust and clatter of a law-suit in Westminster Hall. It is not becoming in him, W. R. Elliston, Esq., comedian, formerly proprietor of the Surrey and the Olympic, and author of a pamphlet on the unwarrantable encroachments of the Theatres-royal, now to insult over the plea of self-defence and self-preservation, set up by his brethren of the minor play-houses, as the resource of ‘poverty and cunning!’—‘It is not friendly, it is not gentlemanly. The profession, as well as Mr. Arnold, may blame him for it:’ but the patentees will no doubt thank him at their next quarterly meeting.

Mr. Kean’s Othello the other night did not quite answer our over-wrought expectations. He played it with variations; and therefore, necessarily worse. There is but one perfect way of playing Othello, and that was the way in which he used to play it. To see him in this character at his best, may be reckoned among the consolations of the human mind. It is to feel our hearts bleed by sympathy with another; it is to vent a world of sighs for another’s sorrows; to have the loaded bosom ‘cleansed of that perilous stuff that weighs upon the soul,’ by witnessing the struggles and the mortal strokes that ‘flesh is heir to.’ We often seek this deliverance from private woes through the actor’s obstetric art; and it is hard when he disappoints us, either from indifference or wilfulness. Mr. Kean did not repeat his admired farewell apostrophe to Content, with that fine ‘organ-stop’ that he used,—as if his inmost vows and wishes were ascending to the canopy of Heaven, and their sounding echo were heard upon the earth like distant thunder,—but in a querulous, whining, sobbing tone, which we do not think right. Othello’s spirit does not sink under, but supports itself on the retrospect of the past; and we should hear the lofty murmurs of his departing hopes, his ambition and his glory, borne onward majestically ‘to the passing wind.’ He pronounced the ‘not a jot, not a jot,’ as an hysteric exclamation, not with the sudden stillness of fixed despair. As we have seen him do this part before, his lips uttered the words, but they produced and were caused by no corresponding emotion in his breast. They were breath just playing on the surface of his mind, but that did not penetrate to the soul. His manner of saying to Cassio, ‘But never more be officer of mine,’ was in a tone truly terrific, magnificent, prophetic; and the only alteration we remarked as an improvement. We have adverted to this subject here, because we think Mr. Kean cannot wisely outdo himself. He is always sufficiently original, sufficiently in extremes, and when he attempts to vary from himself, and go still farther, we think he has no alternative but to run into extravagance. It is true it may be said of him that he is—

‘Never so sure our passion to create, As when he treads the brink of all we hate—’

but still one step over the precipice is destruction. We also fear that the critical soil of America is slippery ground. Jonathan is inclined to the safe side of things, even in matters of taste and fancy. They are a little formal and common-place in those parts. They do not like liberties in morals, nor excuse poetical licenses. They do not tolerate the privileges of birth, or readily sanction those of genius. A very little excess above the water-mark of mediocrity is with them quite enough. Mr. Kean will do well not to offend by extraordinary efforts, or dazzling eccentricities. He should be the Washington of actors, the modern Fabius. If he had been educated in the fourth form of St. Paul’s school, like some other top-tragedians that we know, we should say to him, in classic terms, in medio tutissimus ibis. ‘Remember that they hiss the Beggar’s Opera in America. If they do not spare Captain Macheath, do you think they will spare you? Play off no pranks in the United States. Do not think to redeem great vices by great virtues. They are inexorable to the one, and insensible to the other. Reserve all works of supererogation till you come back, and have safely run the gauntlet of New York, of Philadelphia, of Baltimore, and Boston. Think how Mr. Young would act,—and act with a little more meaning, and a little less pomp than he would—who, we are assured on credible authority, is that model of indifference that the New World would worship and bow down before.’—We have made bold to offer this advice, because we wish well to Mr. Kean; and because we wish to think as well as possible of a republican public. We watch both him and them ‘with the rooted malice of a friend.’ We have thus paid our respects to Old Drury in holiday-time; and thought we had already taken leave of the New English Opera-House for the season. But there were TWO WORDS to that bargain. The farce with this title is a very lively little thing, worth going to see; and the new Dramatic Romance (or whatever it is called) of the VAMPYRE is, upon the whole, the most splendid spectacle we have ever seen. It is taken from a French piece, founded on the celebrated story so long bandied about between Lord Byron, Mr. Shelley, and Dr. Polidori, which last turned out to be the true author. As a mere fiction, and as a fiction attributed to Lord Byron, whose genius is chartered for the land of horrors, the original story passed well enough: but on the stage it is a little shocking to the feelings, and incongruous to the sense, to see a spirit in human shape,—in the shape of a real Earl, and, what is more, of a Scotch Earl—going about seeking whom it may marry and then devour, to lengthen out its own abhorred and anomalous being. Allowing for the preternatural atrocity of the fable, the situations were well imagined and supported: the acting of Mr. T. P. Cooke (from the Surry Theatre) was spirited and imposing, and certainly Mrs. W. H. Chatterley, as the daughter of his friend the Baron, (Mr. Bartley), and his destined bride, bid fair to be a very delectable victim. She is however saved in a surprizing manner, after a rapid succession of interesting events, to the great joy of the spectator. The scenery of this piece is its greatest charm, and it is inimitable. We have seen sparkling and overpowering effects of this kind before; but to the splendour of a transparency were here added all the harmony and mellowness of the finest painting. We do not speak of the vision at the beginning, or of that at the end of the piece,—though these were admirably managed,—so much as of the representation of the effects of moonlight on the water and on the person of the dying knight. The hue of the sea-green waves, floating in the pale beam under an arch-way of grey weather-beaten rocks, and with the light of a torch glaring over the milder radiance, was in as fine keeping and strict truth as Claude or Rembrandt, and would satisfy, we think, the most fastidious artist’s eye. It lulled the sense of sight as the fancied sound of the dashing waters soothed the imagination. In the scene where the moonlight fell on the dying form of Ruthven (the Vampire) it was like a fairy glory, forming a palace of emerald light: the body seemed to drink its balmy essence, and to revive in it without a miracle. The line,

‘See how the moon sleeps with Endymion,’

came into the mind from the beauty and gorgeousness of the picture, notwithstanding the repugnance of every circumstance and feeling. This melodrame succeeds very well; and it succeeds in spite of Mr. Kean’s last nights, and without Miss Kelly!

At the Hay-market there has been a new comedy, called ‘the Diamond Ring, or Exchange no Robbery.’ It is said to be by Mr. Theodore Hook. We should not wonder. The morality, and the sentiment are very flat, and very offensive; we mean, all the half platonic, half serious love scenes between Sir Lennox Leinster, (Mr. Conner), and Lady Cranberry (Mrs. Mardyn). This actress,—young, handsome, and full of spirit as she is, and as the character she represents is supposed to be,—and married to an old husband, who is always grumbling, and complaining,—does not appear fitted to be engaged in half an amour; nor as if she would excuse Sir Lennox for being ‘figurative,’ in that way. Her conduct is at least equivocal, and without any ostensible motive but a gross one, which yet she does not acknowledge to herself. A Milan commission would inevitably have ruined her, even though Sir Lennox had been a less likely man than a well-looking, impudent, Irish Baronet. His personal pretensions are certainly formidable to her jealous spouse (Mr. Terry, an Adonis of sixty)—though it is hard to find out the charms in his conversation that recommend him so powerfully to the friendship of the lady. He has one joke, one flower of rhetoric, interspersed through all his discourse, witty or amorous—the cant phrase, ‘You’ll excuse my being figurative.’ His metaphorical turn would not however have been excused, but for the matter-of-fact notions and accomplishments of Mr. Liston—who plays a bona fide pot boy in the comic group, the supposed son of old Cranberry, but the real and proper off-spring of old Swipes, the landlord of The Pig and Gridiron. This hopeful young gentleman has been palmed upon his pretended father, (to the no small mortification and dismay of both parties) instead of the intrepid Lieutenant Littleworth (Mr. Barnard) the true heir to the Cranberry estate and honours. Liston, as young Swipes, has nothing genteel about him; not even the wish to be so. His inclinations are low. Thus he likes to drink with the butler; makes a young blackamore, whom he calls ‘snowdrop,’ drunk with claret, and is in love with Miss Polly Watts, who has red hair, a red face, and red elbows. He has vowed to elope with her before that day week, and make her Mrs. C., and would no doubt have been as good as his word if the secret of his birth had not been discovered by his mother-in-law, in revenge for a matrimonial squabble; and the whole ends, as a three-act piece should do—abruptly but agreeably. Mr. Liston’s acting in such a character as we have described, it is needless to add, was infinitely droll, and Terry was a father worthy (pro tempore) of such a son.

The Manager of the English Opera House on Monday, 21st ult. brought out an occasional farce against the Manager of Drury-Lane, called Patent Seasons; deprecating the encroachments of the winter theatres, and predicting that, in consequence, ‘the English Opera would soon be a Beggar’s Opera.’ His hits at his overbearing rival were good, and told; but the confession of the weakness and ‘poverty,’ which Mr. Elliston had thrown in his teeth, rather served to damp than excite the enthusiasm of the audience. Every one is inclined to run away from a falling house; and of all appeals, that to humanity should be the last. The town may be bullied, ridiculed, wheedled, puffed out of their time and money, but to ask them to sink their patronage in a bankrupt concern, is to betray an ignorance of the world, who sympathise with the prosperous, and laugh at injustice. Generosity is the last infirmity of the public mind. Pity is a frail ground of popularity: and ‘misery doth part the flux of company.’ If you want the assistance of others, put a good face upon the matter, and conceal it from them that you want it. Do not whine and look piteous in their faces, or they will treat you like a dog. The 170 families that Mr. Arnold tells us depend upon his minor theatre for support are not ‘Russian sufferers,’ nor sufferers in a triumphant cause. Talk of 170 distressed families dependent on a distressed manager (not an autocrat of one vast theatre) and the sound hangs like a mill-stone on the imagination, ‘or load to sink a navy.’ The audience slink away, one by one, willing to slip their necks out of it. Charity is cold.

The Manager of the English Opera House, however, does not stand alone in his difficulties. The theatres in general seem to totter, and feel the hand of decay. Even the King’s Theatre, we understand, has manifested signs of decrepitude, and ‘palsied eld,’ and stopped,—we do not say its payments, but its performances. Of all the theatres, we should feel the least compassion for the deserted saloons and tattered hangings of the Italian Opera. We should rather indeed see it flourish, as it has long flourished, in splendour and in honour: we do not like ‘to see a void made in the Drama: any ruin on the face of the land.’ But this would touch us the least. We might be disposed to write its epitaph, not its elegy.

L.

No. XI

[December, 1820.

‘At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue: To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new.’

Why was not this No. XII. instead of No. XI. of the Acted Drama in London? Had we but seen No. XII. at the head of our article for December, we had been happy, ‘as broad and casing as the general air, whole as the marble, founded as the rock,’ but now we are ‘cooped and cabined in by saucy doubts and fears.’ Had No. XI. been ready in time, we should have been irreproachable ‘in act and complement extern,’ which is with us every thing. Punctuality is ‘the immediate jewel of our souls.’ We leave it to others to be shrewd, ingenious, witty and wise; to think deeply, and write finely; it is enough for us to be exactly dull. The categories of number and quantity are what we chiefly delight in; for on these depend (by arithmetical computation) the pounds, shillings, and pence. We suspect that those writers only trouble their heads about fame, who cannot get any thing more substantial for what they write; and are in fact equally at a loss for ‘solid pudding or for empty praise.’ That is not the case with us. We have money in our purse, and reputation—to spare. Nothing troubles us but that our article on the drama was wanting for November—on this point we are inconsolable. No more delight in regularity—no more undisturbed complacency in the sense of arduous duty conscientiously discharged—no more confidence in meeting our Editors—no more implicit expectation of our monthly decisions on the part of the public! As the Italian poet for one error of the press, in a poem presented to the Pope, died of chagrin, so we for one deficiency in this series of Dramatic Criticisms (complete but for that) must resign! We have no other way left to appease our scrupulous sense of critical punctilio. That there was but one link wanting, is no matter—

‘Tenth or ten thousandth break the chain alike.’

There was one Number (the eleventh) of the LONDON MAGAZINE, of which the curious reader turned over the pages with eager haste, and found no Drama—a thing never to be remedied! It was no fault of ours that it was so. A friend hath done this. The author of the Calendar of Nature (a pleasing and punctual performance) has spoiled our Calendar of Art, and robbed us of that golden rigol of periodical praise, that we had in fancy ‘bound our brows withal.’ With the month our contribution to the stock of literary amusement and scientific intelligence returned without fail. In January, we gave an account of all the actors we had ever seen or heard of. In February, we confined ourselves to Miss O’Neill. In March, we expatiated at large on the Minor Theatres, and took great delight in the three Miss Dennetts. In April (being at Ilminster, a pretty town in the Vale of Taunton, and thence passing on to the Lamb at Hindon, a dreary spot), we proved at these two places, sitting in an arm-chair by a sea-coal fire, very satisfactorily, and without fear of contradiction,—neither Mr. Maturin, Mr. Shiel, nor Mr. Milman being present,—that no modern author could write a tragedy. In May, we wrote an article which filled the proper number of columns, though we forget what it was about. In June, we had to show that a modern author had written a tragedy (Virginius)—an opinion, which, though it overset our theory, we are by no means desirous to retract. We still say, that that play is better than Bertram, though Mr. Maturin, in the Preface to Melmoth, says it is not. As in June we were not dry, neither in July were we droughty. We found something to say in this and the following month without being much indebted to the actors or actresses, though, if Miss Tree came out in either of those months, we ought to recollect it, and mark the event with a white stone. We had rather hear her sing in ordinary cases than Miss Stephens, though not in extraordinary ones. By the bye, when will that little pouting[46] slut, with crystalline eyes and voice, return to us from the sister island? The Dublin critics hardly pretend to keep her to themselves, on the ground that they (like the Edinburgh wags) are better judges and patrons of merit, than we of famous London town.—The Irish are impudent: but they are not so impudent as the Scotch. This is a digression. To proceed.—In August, we had a skirmish with the facetious and biting Janus, of versatile memory, on his assumed superiority in dramatic taste and skill, when we corrected him for his contempt of court—and the Miss Dennetts, our wards in criticism. In September, we got an able article written for us; for we flatter ourselves, that we not only say good things ourselves, but are the cause of them in others. In October, we called Mr. Elliston to task for taking, in his vocation of manager, improper liberties with the public. But in November, (may that dark month stand aye accursed in the Calendar!) we failed, and failed, as how? Our friend, the ingenious writer aforesaid (one of the most ingenious and sharp-witted men of his age, but not so remarkable for the virtue of reliability as Mr. Coleridge’s friend, the poet-laureate), was to take a mutton-chop with us, and afterwards we were to go to the play, and club our forces in a criticism—but he never came, we never went to the play (The Stranger with Charles Kemble as the hero, and a new Mrs. Haller), and the criticism was never written. The Drama of the LONDON MAGAZINE for that month is left a blank!—We were in hopes that our other contributors might have been proportionably on the alert; but, on the contrary, we were sorry to hear it remarked by more than one person, that the Magazine for November was, on the whole, dull. There was no TABLE-TALK, for instance, an article which we take up immediately after we have perused our own, and seldom lay it down till we get to the end of it, though we think the papers too long. We are glad to see the notice from the redoubtable LION’S HEAD of No. V. for the present Number, for we understand that a Cockney, in clandestine correspondence with Blackwood, on looking for it in the last, and finding it missing, had sent off instant word, that the writer ‘was expelled’ from the LONDON MAGAZINE. We are sure we should be sorry for that.

If theatrical criticisms were only written when there is something worth writing about, it would be hard upon us who live by them. Are we not to receive our quarter’s salary (like Mr. Croker in the piping time of peace) because Mrs. Siddons has left the stage, and ‘has not left her peer;’ or because John Kemble will not return to it with renewed health and vigour, to prop a falling house, and falling art; or because Mr. Kean has gone to America; or because Mr. Wallack has arrived from that country? No; the duller the stage grows, the gayer and more edifying must we become in ourselves: the less we have to say about that, the more room we have to talk about other things. Now would be the time for Mr. Coleridge to turn his talents to account, and write for the stage, when there is no topic to confine his pen, or, ‘constrain his genius by mastery.’ ‘With mighty wings outspread, his imagination might brood over the void and make it pregnant.’ Under the assumed head of the Drama, he might unfold the whole mysteries of Swedenborg, or ascend the third heaven of invention with Jacob Behmen: he might write a treatise on all the unknown sciences, and finish the Encyclopedia Metropolitana in a pocket form:—nay, he might bring to a satisfactory close his own dissertation on the difference between the Imagination and the Fancy,[47] before, in all probability, another great actor appears, or another tragedy or comedy is written. He is the man of all others to swim on empty bladders in a sea, without shore or soundings: to drive an empty stage-coach without passengers or lading, and arrive behind his time; to write marginal notes without a text; to look into a millstone to foster the rising genius of the age; to ‘see merit in the chaos of its elements, and discern perfection in the great obscurity of nothing,’ as his most favourite author, Sir Thomas Brown, has it on another occasion. Alas! we have no such creative talents: we cannot amplify, expand, raise our flimsy discourse, as the gaseous matter fills and lifts the round, glittering, slow-sailing balloon, to ‘the up-turned eyes of wondering mortals.’ Here is our bill of fare for the month, our list of memoranda—The French dancers—Farren’s Deaf Lover—Macready’s Zanga—Mr. Cooper’s Romeo. _A new farce, not acted a second time—Wallace, a tragedy,—and Mr. Wallack’s Hamlet._ Who can make any thing of such a beggarly account as this? Not we. Yet as poets at a pinch invoke the Muse, so we, for once, will invoke Mr. Coleridge’s better genius, and thus we hear him talk, diverting our attention from the players and the play.

‘The French, my dear H——,’ would he begin, ‘are not a people of imagination. They have so little, that you cannot persuade them to conceive it possible that they have none. They have no poetry, no such thing as genius, from the age of Louis XIV. It was that, their boasted Augustan age, which stamped them French, which put the seal upon their character, and from that time nothing has grown up original or luxuriant, or spontaneous among them; the whole has been cast in a mould, and that a bad one. Montaigne and Rabelais (their two greatest men, the one for thought, and the other for imaginative humour,—for the distinction between imagination and fancy holds in ludicrous as well as serious composition) I consider as Franks rather than Frenchmen, for in their time the national literature was not set, was neither mounted on stilts, nor buckramed in stays. Wit they had too, if I could persuade myself that Moliere was a genuine Frenchman, but I cannot help suspecting that his mother played his reputed father false, and that an Englishman begot him. I am sure his genius is English; and his wit not of the Parisian cut. As a proof of this, see how his most extravagant farces, the Mock-doctor, Barnaby Brittle, &c. take with us. What can be more to the taste of our bourgeoisie, more adapted to our native tooth, than his Country Wife, which Wycherly did little else than translate into English? What success a translator of Racine into our vernacular tongue would meet with, I leave you to guess. His tragedies are not poetry, are not passion, are not imagination: they are a parcel of set speeches, of epigrammatic conceits, of declamatory phrases, without any of the glow, and glancing rapidity, and principle of fusion in the mind of the poet, to agglomerate them into grandeur, or blend them into harmony. The principle of the imagination resembles the emblem of the serpent, by which the ancients typified wisdom and the universe, with undulating folds, for ever varying and for ever flowing into itself,—circular, and without beginning or end. The definite, the fixed, is death: the principle of life is the indefinite, the growing, the moving, the continuous. But every thing in French poetry is cut up into shreds and patches, little flowers of poetry, with tickets and labels to them, as when the daughters of Jason minced and hacked their old father into collops—we have the disjecta membra poetæ—not the entire and living man. The spirit of genuine poetry should inform the whole work, should breathe through, and move, and agitate the complete mass, as the soul informs and moves the limbs of a man, or as the vital principle (whatever it be) permeates the veins of the loftiest trees, building up the trunk, and extending the branches to the sun and winds of heaven, and shooting out into fruit and flowers. This is the progress of nature and of genius. This is the true poetic faculty; or that which the Greeks literally called ποιησις. But a French play (I think it is Schlegel, who somewhere makes the comparison, though I had myself, before I ever read Schlegel, made the same remark) is like a child’s garden set with slips of branches and flowers, stuck in the ground, not growing in it. We may weave a gaudy garland in this manner, but it withers in an hour: while the products of genius and nature give out their odours to the gale, and spread their tints in the sun’s eye, age after age—

“Outlast a thousand storms, a thousand winters, Free from the Sirian star, free from the thunder stroke,”

and flourish in immortal youth and beauty. Every thing French is, in the way of it, frittered into parts: every thing is therefore dead and ineffective. French poetry is just like chopped logic: nothing comes of it. There is no life of mind: neither the birth nor generation of knowledge. It is all patch-work, all sharp points and angles, all superficial. They receive, and give out sensation, too readily for it ever to amount to a sentiment. They cannot even dance, as you may see. There is, I am sure you will agree, no expression, no grace in their dancing. Littleness, point, is what damns them in all they do. With all their vivacity, and animal spirits, they dance not like men and women under the impression of certain emotions, but like puppets; they twirl round like tourniquets. Not to feel, and not to think, is all they know of this art or any other. You might swear that a nation that danced in that manner would never produce a true poet or philosopher. They have it not in them. There is not the principle of cause and effect. They make a sudden turn because there is no reason for it: they stop short, or move fast, only because you expect something else. Their style of dancing is difficult: would it were impossible.’[48] (By this time several persons in the pit had turned round to listen to this uninterrupted discourse, and our eloquent friend went on, rather raising his voice with a Paulo majora canamus.) ‘Look at that Mademoiselle Milanie with “the foot of fire,” as she is called. You might contrive a paste-board figure, with the help of strings or wires, to do all, and more, than she does—to point the toe, to raise the leg, to jerk the body, to run like wild-fire. Antics are not grace: to dance is not to move against time. My dear H——, if you could see a dance by some Italian peasant-girls in the Campagna of Rome, as I have, I am sure your good taste and good sense would approve it. They came forward slow and smiling, but as if their limbs were steeped in luxury, and every motion seemed an echo of the music, and the heavens looked on serener as they trod. You are right about the Miss Dennetts, though you have all the cant-phrases against you. It is true, they break down in some of their steps, but it is like “the lily drooping on its stalk green,” or like “the flowers Proserpina let fall from Dis’s waggon.” Those who cannot see grace in the youth and inexperience of these charming girls, would see no beauty in a cluster of hyacinths, bent with the morning dew. To shew at once what is, and is not French, there is Mademoiselle Hullin, she is Dutch. Nay, she is just like a Dutch doll, as round-faced, as rosy, and looks for all the world as if her limbs were made of wax-work, and would take in pieces, but not as if she could move them of her own accord. Alas, poor tender thing! As to the men, I confess’ (this was said to me in an audible whisper, lest it might be construed into a breach of confidence) ‘I should like, as Southey says, to have them hamstrung!’—(At this moment Monsieur Hullin Pere looked as if this charitable operation was about to be performed on him by an extra-official warrant from the poet-laureate.)

‘Pray, H——, have you seen Macready’s Zanga?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what do you think of it?’

‘I did not like it much.’

‘Nor I.—Macready has talents and a magnificent voice, but he is, I fear, too improving an actor to be a man of genius. That little ill-looking vagabond Kean never improved in any thing. In some things he could not, and in others he would not. The only parts of M.’s Zanga that I liked (which of course I only half-liked) were some things in imitation of the extremely natural manner of Kean, and his address to Alonzo, urging him, as the greatest triumph of his self-denial, to sacrifice

“A wife, a bride, a mistress unenjoyed—”

where his voice rose exulting on the sentiment, like the thunder that clothes the neck of the war-horse. The person that pleased me most in this play was Mrs. Sterling: she did justice to her part—a thing not easy to do. I like Macready’s Wallace better than his Zanga, though the play is not a good one, and it is difficult for the actor to find out the author’s meaning. I would not judge harshly of a first attempt, but the faults of youthful genius are exuberance, and a continual desire of novelty: now the faults of this play are tameness, common-place, and clap-traps. It is said to be written by young Walker, the son of the Westminster orator. If so, his friend, Mr. Cobbett, will probably write a Theatrical Examiner of it in his next week’s Political Register. What, I would ask, can be worse, more out of character and costume, than to make Wallace drop his sword to have his throat cut by Menteith, merely because the latter has proved himself (what he suspected) a traitor and a villain, and then console himself for this voluntary martyrdom by a sentimental farewell to the rocks and mountains of his native country! This effeminate softness and wretched cant did not belong to the age, the country, or the hero. In this scene, however, Mr. Macready shone much; and in the attitude in which he stood after letting his sword fall, he displayed extreme grace and feeling. It was as if he had let his best friend, his trusty sword, drop like a serpent from his hand. Macready’s figure is awkward, but his attitudes are graceful and well composed.—Don’t you think so?’—

I answered, yes; and he then ran on in his usual manner, by inquiring into the metaphysical distinction between the grace of form, and the grace that arises from motion (as for instance, you may move a square form in a circular or waving line), and illustrated this subtle observation at great length and with much happiness. He asked me how it was, that Mr. Farren in the farce of the Deaf Lover, played the old gentleman so well, and failed so entirely in the young gallant. I said I could not tell. He then tried at a solution himself, in which I could not follow him so as to give the precise point of his argument. He afterwards defined to me, and those about us, the merits of Mr. Cooper and Mr. Wallack, classing the first as a respectable, and the last as a second-rate actor; with large grounds and learned definitions of his meaning on both points; and, as the lights were by this time nearly out, and the audience (except his immediate auditors) going away, he reluctantly ‘ended,’

‘But in Adam’s ear so pleasing left his voice,’

that I quite forgot I had to write my article on the Drama the next day; nor without his imaginary aid should I have been able to wind up my accounts for the year, as Mr. Matthews gets through his AT HOME by the help of a little awkward ventriloquism.

W. H.

November 21, 1820.

NOTES

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH COMIC WRITERS

These Lectures were delivered at the Surrey Institution, in Blackfriars Road, in 1818, after the completion of the course on the English Poets (see vol. V.). Some particulars as to their delivery will be found in Talfourd’s edition of Lamb’s Letters (see Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s reprint, Bohn, i. 38 et seq.), and in Patmore’s My Friends and Acquaintance. See also Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s Four Generations of a Literary Family (vol. I. pp. 121-2), where the opinions of Beckford and Thackeray are referred to. In the third edition of the Lectures (see Bibliographical Note) several passages ‘collected by the author, apparently with a view to a reprint of the volume,’ were interpolated. Two of these passages are taken from a long letter (published in full in the Appendix to these notes) which Hazlitt contributed to The Morning Chronicle, Oct. 15, 1813. The rest are taken from prefatory notices which he contributed to William Oxberry’s The New English Drama (20 vols. 1818-1825), and are printed in the following notes.

LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY

PAGE

8. The Tale of Slaukenbergius. Tristram Shandy, vol. IV.

9. ‘There is something in the misfortunes,’ etc. Rochefoucault, Maximes et Réflexions Morales, CCXLI.

‘They were talking,’ etc. Farquhar’s Beaux’ Stratagem, Act III. Sc. 1.

Lord Foppington. In The Relapse of Vanbrugh. See post, p. 82.

10. Aretine laughed himself to death, etc. The story is that while laughing at the jest Aretine fell from a stool and was killed.

Sir Thomas More jested, etc. More bade the executioner stay till he had put aside his beard, ‘for that,’ he said, ‘had never committed treason.’

Rabelais and Wycherley. ‘When Rabelais,’ says Bacon (Apophthegms), ‘the great jester of France, lay on his death-bed, and they gave him the extreme unction, a familiar friend came to him afterwards, and asked him how he did? Rabelais answered, “Even going my journey, they have greased my boots already.”’ But his last words, uttered ‘avec un éclat de rire,’ were: ‘Tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée.’ It is said that Wycherley, on the night before he died, made his young wife promise that she would never marry an old man again. See a letter from Pope to Blount, Jan. 21, 1715-6 (Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, VI. 366). Pope, after telling the story, adds: ‘I cannot help remarking that sickness, which often destroys both wit and wisdom, yet seldom has power to remove that talent which we call humour.’

The dialogue between Aimwell and Gibbet. The Beaux’ Stratagem, Act III. Sc. 2.

Mr. Emery’s Robert Tyke. In Thomas Morton’s _School of Reform_ (1805). Cf. post, p. 391.

11. The Liar. By Samuel Foote (1762).

The Busy Body. By Susannah Centlivre (1709).

The history of hobby-horses. See Tristram Shandy, vol. I. especially chaps. XXIV. and XXV.

‘Ever lifted leg.’ Cf. ‘A better never lifted leg.’ Tam o’ Shanter, 80.

12. Malvolio’s punishment, etc. Twelfth Night, Act IV. Sc. 2.

Christopher’s Sly’s drunken transformation. _The Taming of the Shrew_, Induction, Sc. 2.

Parson Adams’s fall, etc. See Joseph Andrews, Book III. Chap. 7, Book IV. Chap. 14, and Book II. Chap. 12.

Baltimore House. In what is now Russell Square.

14. The author of the Ancient Mariner. Cf. a passage in the essay ‘On Dreams’ (Plain Speaker, vol. VII. pp. 23-24).

Bishop Atterbury. See Pope’s Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), IX. 21-4. As Mr. Austin Dobson, however, points out, it is not clear that the Arabian Nights are referred to. Atterbury speaks of ‘Petit de la Croix’ as ‘the pretended author’ of the tales, from which it would appear that the tales he found so hard to read were not the Arabian Nights, but the Contes Persans of Petit de la Croix, a translation of which Ambrose Philips had published in 1709.

‘Favours secret,’ etc. Burns, Tam o’ Shanter, 48.

‘The soldiers,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

Horner, etc. Horner, in Wycherley’s The Country Wife; Millamant, in Congreve’s The Way of the World; Tattle and Miss Prue, in Congreve’s Love for Love; Archer and Cherry, in Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem; Mrs. Amlet, in Vanbrugh’s The Confederacy (see Act III. Sc. 1); Valentine and Angelica, in Love for Love; Miss Peggy, in Garrick’s The Country Girl, adapted from The Country Wife; Anne Page, in The Merry Wives of Windsor (See Act III. Sc. 1).

15. ‘The age of comedy,’ etc. An adaptation of Burke’s famous ‘But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.’ (Reflections on the Revolution in France, Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89.)

‘Accept a miracle,’ etc. By the poet Young. See Spence’s Anecdotes, p. 378.

16. ‘The sun had long since,’ etc. Hudibras, Part II., Canto II. 29-38.

‘By this the northern waggoner,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I., Canto II. St. 1.

‘At last,’ etc. Ibid. Book I., Canto V. St. 2.

17. ‘But now a sport,’ etc. Hudibras, Part I., Canto I. 675-688.

Mr. Sheridan’s description, etc. In his speech on the Definitive Treaty of Peace, May 14, 1802.

‘The sarcastic reply of Porson.’ According to Rogers (Dyce, Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers, p. 330), the ‘not till then’ was the comment of Byron on a remark of Porson’s (Porsoniana) that ‘Madoc will be read, when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.’

18. ‘Compound for sins,’ etc. Hudibras, Part I., Canto I., 215-216.

‘There’s but the twinkling,’ etc. Ibid. Part II., Canto III., 957-964.

‘Now night descending,’ etc. The Dunciad, I. 89-90.

19. Harris. James Harris (1709-1780), author of Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar (1751).

20. ‘A foregone conclusion.’ Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Comes in such,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

‘Soul-killing lies,’ etc. Lamb, John Woodvil, Act II.

21. ‘The instance might be painful,’ etc. Letters of Junius, Letter XLIX.

‘And ever,’ etc. L’Allegro, 135-6.

The reply of the author, etc. This was Richard Owen Cambridge (1717-1802), contributor to Edward Moore’s _The World_ (1753-1756).

‘Full of sound and fury,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

‘For thin partitions,’ etc. Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part I. 164.

Mr. Curran. Curran had died on October 14, 1817.

22. Hæret lateri, etc. Æneid, IV. 73.

The Duke of Buckingham’s saying. ‘And give me leave to tell your lordships, by the way, that statutes are not like women, for they are not one jot the worse for being old.’ Speech on the Dissolution of Parliament, 1676. The speech was included by Hazlitt in his Eloquence of the British Senate. See vol. III. p. 399.

Mr. Addison, indeed, etc. The Spectator, No. 61.

Mandrake. In Farquhar’s The Twin Rivals, Act II. Sc. 2.

Sir Hugh Evans. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Sc. 1.

23. ‘From the sublime,’ etc. ‘Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.’ Attributed to Napoleon. Thomas Paine had, however, said the same thing in his Age of Reason, Part II.

24. Mr. Canning’s Court Parodies, etc. In the Anti-Jacobin (1797-1798). Southey was the victim of two of the best known of these parodies, the Inscription for the door of the Cell in Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg, the Prentice-cide, was confined previous to her execution, and The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.

The Rejected Addresses. By James and Horace Smith, published in 1812. The parody of Crabbe was by James Smith.

Lear and the Fool. The references in this paragraph are to King Lear, Act I. Sc. 4.

‘’Tis with our judgments,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Criticism, 9-10.

25. ‘He is the cause,’ etc. Cf. ‘I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.’ Henry IV., Part II., Act I. Sc. 2.

‘That perilous stuff,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Imitate humanity,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

26. Barrow’s celebrated description. See Isaac Barrow’s (1630-77) sermon ‘Against Foolish Talking and Jesting.’

27. ‘Who did essay,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II., Canto VI., St. 7.

28. Barnaby Brittle. See post, note to p. 481.

29. The strictures of Rousseau. Lettre à M. D’Alembert. Petits Chefs-d’œuvre (ed. Firmin-Didot), pp. 405 et seq.

An exquisite ... defence. See La Critique de l’École des Femmes, Sc. 6.

‘An equal want,’ etc. ‘But equally a want of books and men.’ Wordsworth, _Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty_, XV., Sonnet beginning ‘Great men have been among us; hands that penned,’ etc.

LECTURE II. ON SHAKSPEARE AND BEN JONSON

30. Dr. Johnson thought, etc. See his Preface to Shakespeare (Works, Oxford, 1825, vol. V. p. 113).

‘Smit with the love of sacred song.’ Paradise Lost, III. 29.

31. There is but one, etc. Hazlitt is recalling Dryden’s line, ‘within that circle none must walk but he.’ (Prologue to The Tempest.)

‘Not to speak it profanely.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Like an unsubstantial pageant faded.’ The Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1.

32. ‘He is the leviathan,’ etc. Hazlitt adapts a passage of Burke’s: ‘The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the Crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty.’ A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 129).

‘A consummation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

The description of Queen Mab. In Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Sc. 4.

‘The shade of melancholy boughs.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

‘Give a very echo,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘Oh! it came,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 1.

33. ‘Covers a multitude of sins.’ I. Peter, iv. 8.

The ligament, etc. Cf. ‘And that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken.’ Tristram Shandy, VI. 10.

The Society for the Suppression of Vice. Cf. _The Round Table_, vol. I. p, 60 and note.

‘He has been merry,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II., Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Heard the chimes at midnight.’ Ibid., Act III. Sc. 2.

34. ‘Come on, come on, etc. Ibid.

35. ‘One touch of nature,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘It is apprehensive, etc. Henry IV., Part II., Act IV. Sc. 3.

36. ‘Go to church,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 3.

Tattle and Sparkish. In Congreve’s Love for Love and Wycherley’s The Country Wife respectively.

‘All beyond Hyde Park,’ etc. Sir George Etherege’s The Man of Mode, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Lay waste a country gentleman.’ Hazlitt uses this expression elsewhere. See his character of Cobbett in The Spirit of the Age (vol. IV. p. 334), where he says that Cobbett ‘lays waste a city orator or Member of Parliament.’

Lord Foppington. In Vanbrugh’s The Relapse.

‘The Prince of coxcombs,’ etc.

‘Fashion. Now, by all that’s great and powerful, thou art the prince of coxcombs.

Lord Foppington. Sir—I am proud of being at the head of so prevailing a party.’

The Relapse, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘Manners damnable,’ etc. See the dialogue between Touchstone and Corin in As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 2.

37. ‘Airy nothing.’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘Love’s golden shaft,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘There the mind,’ etc. ‘Therein the patient must minister to himself.’ Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Of solitude,’ etc. Cf. ‘Of solitude and melancholy born.’ Beattie, The Minstrel, Canto I. St. 56.

38. ‘In the crust of formality.’ Hazlitt elsewhere attributes this phrase to Milton.

To wanton in the idle summer air. Cf. ‘That idles in the wanton summer air.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 6.

39. ‘Does mad and fantastic execution,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act V. Sc. 5.

Schlegel observes, etc. In his Lectures on Dramatic Literature (No. XXVII.) the English version of which was reviewed by Hazlitt in The Edinburgh Review for Feb. 1816.

‘Lively, audible,’ etc. ‘Waking, audible, and full of vent.’ Coriolanus, Act IV. Sc. 5.

40. Captain Otter. In The Silent Woman (1609).

‘Bless’d conditions.’ Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘If to be wise,’ etc. Cf. ‘Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.’ Coriolanus, Act V. Sc. 3.

41. ‘The gayest,’ etc. Akenside, _Pleasures of the Imagination_, I. 30.

Aliquando sufflaminandus erat. See Ben Jonson’s _Timber: or, Discoveries_, LXIV., and note to The Spirit of the Age, vol. IV. p. 336.

Howel’s Letters. See the Familiar Letters of James Howell, 10th ed., 1737, pp. 323-4.

42. Jamque opus, etc. Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV. 871.

Exegi monumentum, etc. Horace, Odes, III. 30, 1.

O fortunatam, etc. Cicero, De Suis Temporibus, quoted by Juvenal, Satire X. 122.

A detailed account. In Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (1817).

l. 23. In the third edition the following sentence is interpolated: ‘It has been observed of this author, that he painted not so much human nature as temporary manners; not the characters of men, but their humours; that is to say, peculiarities of phrase, modes of dress, gesture, etc., which becoming obsolete, and being in themselves altogether arbitrary and fantastical, have become unintelligible and uninteresting.’ Hazlitt probably refers to Schlegel. See Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (trans. John Black, ed. 1900, p. 464).

The meeting between Morose and Epicene. Act II. Sc. 3.

43. O’er step, etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

The scene between Sir Amorous La Foole and Sir John Daw, etc. See The Silent Woman, Act IV. Sc. 2, and _Twelfth Night_, Act III. Sc. 4.

Decorum ... which Milton says, etc. On Education (Works, 1738, 1. p. 140).

Truewit. In The Silent Woman.

Thus Peregrine, in Volpone, etc. Act II. Sc. 1. Volpone was first acted in 1605.

This play was Dryden’s favourite. Hazlitt refers to _The Silent Woman_, of which Dryden gives an ‘Examen’ in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (Select Essays, ed. Ker, I. 83 et seq.).

Truewit says. The Silent Woman, Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘Even though we should hold,’ etc. Cf. ‘All which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

The directions for making love. The Silent Woman, Act IV. Sc. 1.

44. ‘Hood an ass,’ etc. Volpone, Act I. Sc. 1.

Every Man in his Humour. First acted in 1598, this play held the stage until Hazlitt’s time. Cf. his notice of Kean’s Kitely in A View of the English Stage, post, p. 310. Dickens played the part of Bobadil in 1845.

‘As dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.’ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 7.

His well-known proposal, etc. Every Man in his Humour, Act IV. Sc. 5.

45. The scene in which Brainworm, etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 2.

Bartholomew Fair. Produced in 1614.

The Alchymist. Produced in 1610.

One glorious scene. Act II. Sc. 1.

48. Beaumont and Fletcher. Cf. vol. V., p. 261 and note.

The Inconstant. Farquhar’s comedy (1703).

49. Mrs. Jordan. Mrs. Jordan had died on May 24, 1817.

LECTURE III. ON COWLEY, BUTLER, SUCKLING, ETHEREGE, ETC.

PAGE

‘The metaphysical poets,’ etc. Johnson, Life of Cowley in The Lives of the Poets.

The father of criticism. Aristotle. See the Poetics.

50. ‘Hitch into a rhyme.’ Pope, Imitations of Horace, Satires, Book II., Satire i. 78.

51. ‘And though reclaim’d,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, IV. 723-5.

Donne. John Donne (1573-1631).

‘Heaved pantingly forth.’ King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘Buried quick again.’ Hamlet’s words ‘Be buried quick with her, and so will I’ (Act V. Sc. 1), were perhaps in Hazlitt’s mind.

‘Little think’st thou,’ etc. Poems (‘Muses’ Library,’ I. 63).

52. A lame and impotent conclusion. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘Whoever comes,’ etc. Poems, i. 61.

‘I long to talk,’ etc. Ibid. I. 56.

53. ‘Here lies,’ etc. Ibid. I. 86.

To the pure, etc. Titus I. 15.

Bishop Hall’s Satires. The Satires of Joseph Hall (1574-1656), Bishop of Exeter (1627) and of Norwich (1641), were published in 1597 and 1598 under the title of Virgidemiarum, Sixe Bookes. For Pope’s admiration of him see Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, III. 423.

Sir John Davies (1569-1626). His _Orchestra, or a Poeme of Dancing_, appeared in 1596, his Nosce Teipsum, a poem on the immortality of the soul, in 1599.

Crashaw. Richard Crashaw (1612?-1649). The ‘celebrated Latin Epigram’ appeared in a volume of Latin poems and epigrams published in 1634. The line referred to by Hazlitt, ‘Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit,’ is the last of a four-line epigram. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. Croker, 1847, p. 598).

‘Seething brains.’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

The contest between the Musician and the Nightingale. Musick’s Duel, a version from the Latin of the Roman Jesuit Strada, paraphrased also by Ford in The Lover’s Melancholy, Act. I. Sc. 1.

Davenant’s Gondibert. The Gondibert of Sir William D’Avenant (1606-1668), published in 1651.

54. ‘Yet on that wall,’ etc. Gondibert, Book II. Canto V. St. 33.

Marvel. Cf. Lectures on the English Poets, vol. V. p. 83.

‘And sat not as a meat,’ etc. The Character of Holland, 1. 30.

One whose praise, etc. Probably Lamb.

Shadwell. Thomas Shadwell (1642?-1692). The Libertine appeared in 1676.

Carew. Thomas Carew (1598?-1639?). The reference to him in Sir John Suckling’s Session of the Poets (1637) is as follows:—

‘Tom Carew was next, but he had a fault That would not stand well with a laureat; His Muse was hard bound, and th’ issue of’s brain Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain.’

His masque. Performed in Feb. 1633-4.

55. Milton’s name, etc. Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, says: ‘Milton tried the metaphysick style only in his lines upon Hobson, the carrier.’

‘Aggregation of ideas.’ ‘Sublimity,’ says Johnson (Life of Cowley), ‘is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion.’

‘Inimitable on earth,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 508-9.

Suckling. Sir John Suckling (1609-1642). Johnson refers to him in his Life of Cowley as one of the ‘immediate successors’ of the metaphysical poets, but adds: ‘Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling could not reach it, and Milton disdained it.’

57. Cowley. Cf. vol. V. p. 372.

‘The Phœnix Pindar,’ etc. The Praise of Pindar, l. 2.

‘Sailing with supreme dominion,’ etc. Gray, _The Progress of Poesy_, III. 3.

58. He compares Bacon to Moses. ‘Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last.’ To the Royal Society.

60. Cowley’s Essays. Published in 1668.

61. Cutter of Coleman Street. The Guardian acted at Cambridge in 1641 and printed in 1650, afterwards re-written and produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields as ‘Cutter of Coleman Street’ in 1661.

62. ‘Call you this backing your friends?’ Henry IV., Part I., Act II. Sc. 4.

Butler’s Hudibras. The three Parts of Hudibras appeared in 1662, 1663, and 1678 respectively.

Dr. Campbell. Dr. George Campbell (1719-1796) published his Philosophy of Rhetoric in 1776.

‘Narrow his mind,’ etc. Goldsmith’s Retaliation, 31-2.

Dr. Zachary Grey. Zachary Grey’s (1688-1766) edition of Hudibras appeared in 1744.

63. Note. (1) Part II., Canto II. 297-8; and II., I. 617-20; (2) II., I. 273-4; (3) I., II. 255-6; (4) I., II. 109-10; (5) I., II. 225-6; I., I. 241-252; and I., I. 375-8.

64. Note. (1) Part II. Canto II. 831-2, and II. III. 107-8; (2) II. II. 421-2; (3) I. I. 59-60; (4) II. III. 809-10; (5) I. II. 1099-1102.

65. ‘Pilloried,’ etc. Cowper, Hope, 556.

‘As one grain of wheat,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act I. Sc. 1.

The account of Sidrophel and Whackum. Hudibras, Part II. Canto III.

Note. ‘Thus stopp’d,’ etc. Hudibras, Part I. Canto III. 951-2. ‘And setting his right foot,’ etc. I. III. 82-4. ‘At this the knight,’ etc. II. II. 541-4. ‘The knight himself,’ etc. I. II. 1123-6. ‘And raised,’ etc. I. II. 95-6. ‘And Hudibras,’ etc. II. II. 661-2. ‘Both thought,’ etc. II. II. 577-90.

67. The burlesque description, etc. Hudibras, Part I. Canto II. 1129, et seq.

‘As when an owl,’ etc. Ibid. I. III. 403-6.

‘The queen of night, etc. Ibid. III. I. 1321-6.

_Butler’s Remains. The Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr. Samuel Butler_, not published till 1759.

‘Reduce all tragedy,’ etc. Butler, Upon Critics, 17-42.

68. Etherege. Sir George Etherege (1635?-1691) wrote three comedies, The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub (1664), She Would if she Could (1667), and The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter (1676). The last was a great favourite of Hazlitt’s, and is constantly referred to by him.

‘Tames his wild heart,’ etc. Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘Like the morn,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 310-11.

The Wild Gallant. First performed February 1662-3. See Act II. Sc. 1.

69. Sir Martin Mar-all. Produced in 1667, and founded on a translation by the Duke of Newcastle of Molière’s L’Étourdi. The Busy Body, by Mrs. Centlivre, appeared in 1709.

Otway’s comedies. The Cheats of Scapin (adapted from Molière) (1677), Friendship in Fashion (1678), _The Soldier’s Fortune_ (1681), and The Atheist (1684).

Rehearsal. The Duke of Buckingham’s (1628-1687) The Rehearsal, first published in 1672.

Knight of the Burning Pestle. Written about 1611 and published in 1613.

Sir Robert Howard. The Committee, by Sir Robert Howard (1626-1698), was produced in 1662. Thomas Knight’s The Honest Thieves, an adaptation, was acted at Covent Garden in 1797.

‘Mitigated into courtiers [companions],’ etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 90).

The great bed of Ware. Referred to by Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, Act III. Sc. 2), and now at Rye House.

LECTURE IV. ON WYCHERLEY, CONGREVE, VANBRUGH, AND FARQUHAR

70. ‘Graceful ornament,’ etc. ‘Nobility is a graceful ornament,’ etc. Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 164).

Waller’s Sacharissa. Lady Dorothy Sidney, eldest daughter of the second Earl of Leicester.

Wycherley, etc. William Wycherley (1640?-1715), William Congreve (1670-1730), Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), and George Farquhar (1678-1707). Leigh Hunt in 1840 published an edition of the dramatic works of all these writers, with biographical and critical notices. With this lecture compare Lamb’s famous essay ‘On the Artificial Comedy of the last Century,’ contributed to The London Magazine, April 1822.

71. ‘Whose jewels,’ etc. Collins’s Ode, The Manners, 55-6.

In the dedication of one of his plays. Probably _The Way of the World_, though the dedication hardly bears out Hazlitt’s account of it.

Love for Love. 1695.

The Way of the World. 1700.

Munden’s Foresight. See A View of the English Stage, ante, p. 278.

72. ‘I never valued,’ etc. Love for Love, Act V. Sc. 12.

‘To divest him,’ etc. Ibid. Act II. Sc. 7.

The short scene with Trapland. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 5.

‘More misfortunes,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 9.

‘Sisters every way.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 9.

‘Nay, if you come to that,’ etc. Ibid.

The Old Bachelor, brought out in January, 1692-3; The Double Dealer, in November 1693.

‘Dying Ned Careless.’ The Double Dealer, Act IV. Sc. 9.

‘Love’s thrice reputed [repured] nectar.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 2.

73. ‘Ah! idle creature.’ The Way of the World, Act IV. Sc. 5.

‘Like Phœbus,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 4.

‘Come then,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle II., 17-20.

‘If there’s delight,’ etc. The Way of the World, Act III. Sc. 12.

‘Beauty the lover’s gift,’ etc. Ibid. Act II. Sc. 5.

74. ‘Nature’s own sweet,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘Wild wit,’ etc. Gray, Ode On a distant Prospect of Eton College, 46.

‘Blazons herself.’

‘Thou divine nature, how thyself thou blazon’st In these two princely boys!’

Cymbeline, Act IV. Sc. 2.

Mrs. Abington’s Millamant. Frances Abington (1737-1815) practically retired from the stage in 1790, though she re-appeared for a season as late as 1799.

Declaim. Disclaim.

‘He’s but his half-brother.’ The Way of the World, Act I. Sc. 6.

75. The description of the ruins, etc. The Mourning Bride, Act II. Sc. 3. For Johnson’s praise of this passage see Boswell’s Life (ed. G. B. Hill, II. 85).

‘Be every day,’ etc. The Mourning Bride, Act I. Sc. 3.

76. Bolingbroke’s entry into London. Richard II., Act V. Sc. 2.

Country Wife. Produced in 1672 or 1673, published in 1675, this play was partly founded on Molière’s _L’École des Femmes_ and L’École des Maris.

Agnes. In Molière’s L’École des Femmes.

77. Moody. In Garrick’s adaptation The Country Girl (1766).

‘With him a wit,’ etc. ‘A wit to me is the greatest title in the world.’ The Country Wife, Act I. Sc. 1.

The Plain Dealer. Produced in 1674, published in 1677. The passage in which Wycherley refers to The Country Wife is in Act II. Sc. 1.

78. ‘A discipline of humanity.’ Bacon’s Essays, ‘Of Marriage and Single Life.’

‘Go! You’re a censorious ill woman.’ ‘Let us begone from this censorious ill woman.’ The Plain Dealer, Act V. Sc. 1.

The Gentleman Dancing Master. Produced about 1671, published in 1673.

Love in a Wood. Produced in 1671. It was Wycherley’s first play.

79. ‘Had I the tediousness,’ etc. Much Ado about Nothing, Act III. Sc. 5.

The treatment he received from Pope. See Elwin and Courthope’s edition of Pope’s Works, vol. V. 73-5. Wycherley’s letters to Pope are printed in Appendix I. to that volume.

The Provoked Wife. Produced by Betterton and published in 1697.

The Relapse. Produced and published in 1697.

80. The Confederacy. Produced and published in 1705.

This last scene. The Confederacy, Act III. Sc. 2.

81. ‘It does somewhat smack.’ Cf. ‘My father did something smack.’ The Merchant of Venice, Act II. Sc. 2.

Old Palmer. See ante, p. 388.

82. ‘The best company in the world.’ The Man of Mode, Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘Now, for my part,’ etc. The Relapse, Act V. Sc. 5.

‘Let loose the greyhound,’ etc. See Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

83. ‘It’s well they’ve got me a husband,’ etc. Ibid.

‘A devilish girl at the bottom.’ The Confederacy, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘Proud to be at the head,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 36.

Garrick’s favourite part. A portrait of Garrick as Sir John Brute, by Zoffany, is in the Garrick Club.

The drunken scene. See Act IV. Scenes 1 and 3 of _The Provoked Wife_. When the play was revived in 1725 Vanbrugh himself changed Sir John Brute’s disguise, and made him appear before the justice in his wife’s ‘short cloak and sack.’

84. ‘Hair-breadth ‘scapes.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘Any relish of salvation.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 3.

85. ‘O’erstep the modesty of nature.’ Ibid. Act III. Sc. 2.

‘God Almighty’s gentlemen.’ Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. 645.

He somewhere prides himself, etc. In the dedication of The Inconstant.

The Trip to the Jubilee. The Constant Couple; or, a Trip to the Jubilee, produced in 1700.

85. Mr. Burke’s courtly and chivalrous observation. ‘That chastity of honour ... under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.’ Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

86. ‘Now, dear madam,’ etc. Sir Harry Wildair, Act IV. Sc. 2.

88. The dialogue between Cherry and Archer. See The Beaux’ Stratagem (produced 1707), Act II. Sc. 3.

89. The Recruiting Officer. 1706.

Catastrophe of this play. See Farquhar’s Dedication.

Love and a Bottle, 1699; The Twin Rivals, 1702.

Farquhar’s Letters. Originally published in 1702 under the title of ‘Love and Business.’

Dennis’s Remarks, etc. Dennis’s Remarks upon Cato appeared in 1713.

His View of the English Stage. Jeremy Collier’s _Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage_ (1697-8).

90. ‘Shews vice,’ etc. Cf. ‘To show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Denote a foregone conclusion.’ Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

Colley Cibber’s Life, etc. Cf. the second essay ‘On Actors and Acting’ in The Round Table, vol. I. p. 156.

91. ‘Let no rude hand,’ etc. Wordsworth, Ellen Irwin, St. 7.

‘Die and leave the world no copy.’ Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 5.

LECTURE V. ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS

‘The proper study,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, II. 2.

‘Comes home to the business,’ etc. Bacon, dedication of the Essays.

‘Quicquid agunt homines,’ etc. These words of Juvenal (Sat. I. 85-6) formed the motto of the first 40 numbers of The Tatler.

‘Holds the mirror,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘The act [art] and practic part,’ etc. Henry V., Act I. Sc. 1.

92. ‘‘The web of our life,’ etc. All’s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘Quid sit pulchrum,’ etc. Horace, Epistles, I. 2, ll. 3-4.

Montaigne. The Essais of Michael de Montaigne (1533-1592), were published, Books I. and II. in 1580, Book III. in 1588.

93. ‘Pour out all as plain,’ etc. Pope, Imitations of Horace, Sat. I. 51-2.

Note.

‘What made (say Montaigne, or more sage Charron!) Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon.’

Pope, Moral Essays, I. 87-8.

De la Sagesse, the chief work of Montaigne’s friend Pierre Charron (1541-1603), appeared in 1601.

94. ‘Pereant isti,’ etc. Ælius Donatus, St. Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Cap. I.

Charles Cotton. Cotton’s translation of Montaigne was published in three volumes in 1685, and has frequently been reprinted, the latest edition being that of Mr. W. C. Hazlitt (republished 1902). The earlier version by John Florio (1603) has been included in the Tudor Translations (1893) and in the Temple Classics (1897).

‘The book in the world,’ etc. Cotton’s translation was dedicated to George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, who, in his reply, addressed to Cotton, spoke of the Essays as ‘the book in the world I am best entertained with.’

Cowley, etc. Abraham Cowley’s Several Discourses by way of Essays in Prose and Verse were appended to the collected edition of his works in 1668; Sir

William Temple’s (1628-1699) essays entitled Miscellanea were published in 1680 and 1692; Lord Shaftesbury’s (1671-1713) Moralists in 1709, and Characteristics in 1711.

94. Note. Nam quodcumque, etc. Lucretius, III. 752-3.

95. ‘The perfect spy o’ th’ time.’ Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 1.

The Tatler. The first number of the Tatler appeared on April 12, 1709, the last on January 2, 1711. The papers were re-issued in two forms, one in 8vo., one in 12mo., in 1710-11. Nearly the whole of this paragraph and the next is taken from an essay in The Examiner (March 5, 1815), reprinted in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 7-10, and the notes thereon.

96. Note. No. 86, not No. 125, of The Tatler.

Mr. Lilly’s shop-windows. Charles Lillie, the perfumer’s at the corner of Beaufort Buildings in the Strand.

Will Estcourt or Tom D’urfey. Richard Estcourt (1668-1712), actor and dramatist, and Tom D’Urfey (1653-1723), the dramatist and song-writer, are constantly referred to in The Tatler.

97. The Spectator. The Spectator ran from March I, 1711, to December 6, 1712, and from June 18, 1714, to December 20, 1714. The collected edition appeared in 8 vols., 1712-15.

‘The whiteness of her hand.’ ‘She has certainly the finest hand of any woman in the world.’ The Spectator, No. 113.

98. ‘He has a widow in his line of life.’ The Spectator, No. 130.

His falling asleep in church, etc. The Spectator, No. 112. John Williams should be ‘one John Matthews.’

99. The Guardian. March 12, 1713, to October 1713. Of the 176 numbers Steele contributed 82, and Addison 53, papers.

100. The Rambler. March 20, 1749-50, to March 14, 1752.

‘Give us pause.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

101. ‘The elephant,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 345-7.

102. ‘If he were to write,’ etc. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II. 231. Abused Milton and patronised Lauder. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), I 228-31.

103. ‘The king of good fellows,’ etc. Burns, Auld Rob Morris, l. 2.

‘Inventory of all he said.’ Cf. ‘And ta’en an inventory of what they are.’ Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Does he wind, etc. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II. 260.

‘If that fellow Burke,’ etc. Ibid. II. 450.

‘What, is it you,’ etc. Ibid. I. 250.

‘Now I think I am,’ etc. Ibid. II. 362.

His quitting the society, etc. Ibid. I. 201.

His dining with Wilkes. Ibid. III. 64 et seq.

His sitting with the young ladies. Ibid. II. 120.

His carrying the unfortunate victim, etc. Ibid. IV. 321.

104. An act which realises the parable of the good Samaritan. Sergeant Talfourd, in his account of these Lectures, speaks of the insensibility of the bulk of the audience, and adds: ‘He [Hazlitt] once had a more edifying advantage over them. He was enumerating the humanities which endeared Dr. Johnson to his mind, and at the close of an agreeable catalogue mentioned as last and noblest “his carrying the poor victim of disease and dissipation on his back through Fleet Street,” at which a titter arose from some who were struck by the picture as ludicrous, and a murmur from others who deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite: he paused for an instant, and then added, in his sturdiest and most impressive manner—“an act which realizes the parable of the Good Samaritan”—at which his moral, and his delicate hearers shrank, rebuked, into deep silence.’ Lamb’s Letters (ed. W. C. Hazlitt), I. 39-40.

104. ‘Where they,’ etc. Gray’s Elegy, The Epitaph.

The Adventurer. Nov. 7, 1752, to March 9, 1754. John Hawkesworth (1715-1773) was the chief contributor.

The World. Jan. 4, 1753, to Dec. 30, 1756.

The Connoisseur. Jan. 31, 1754, to Sept. 30, 1756.

One good idea, etc. Hazlitt refers to a paper by Edward Moore which appeared in The World (No. 176), not, as he says, in The Connoisseur.

Citizen of the World. Republished (from the Public Ledger and elsewhere) in 2 vols., 1762.

‘Go about to cozen,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act II. Sc. 9.

The Persian Letters. Lord Lyttelton’s Letters from a Persian in England to his friend at Ispahan, 1735.

‘The bonzes,’ etc. The Citizen of the World, Letter X.

105. ‘Edinburgh. We are positive,’ etc. Ibid. Letter V.

Beau Tibbs. Ibid. Letters XXIX., LIV., LV., and LXXI.

The Lounger and The Mirror. The Mirror appeared in Edinburgh from Jan. 23, 1779, to May 27, 1780; The Lounger from Feb. 5, 1785, to Jan. 6, 1786. Henry Mackenzie was the chief contributor to both.

La Roche. The Mirror, Nos. 42, 43, and 44.

Le Fevre. Tristram Shandy, VI. chaps. 6 et seq.

The Man of the World. By Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), published in 1773.

Julia de Roubigné. Published in 1777.

Rosamund Gray. See Lamb’s Poems, Plays, and Essays, ed. Ainger, Notes to Rosamund Gray, p. 391.

The Man of Feeling. Published in 1771.

LECTURE VI. ON THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS

The whole of this Lecture down to the end of the paragraph on p. 125 is taken with but few variations from an article in The Edinburgh Review for Feb. 1815, on ‘Standard Novels and Romances,’ ostensibly a review of Madame D’Arblay’s The Wanderer.

PAGE

106. ‘Be mine to read,’ etc. Gray, in a letter to Richard West, April 1742 (Letters, ed. Tovey, I. 97).

‘Something more divine in it.’ Hazlitt is perhaps recalling a passage in Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (II. iv. 2): ‘So as poesy serveth and conferreth to delectation, magnanimity, and morality, ... it may seem deservedly to have some participation of divineness,’ etc.

107. Fielding in speaking, etc. Joseph Andrews, Book III. chap. 1.

The description ... given by Mr. Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 92-3).

Echard ‘On the Contempt of the Clergy.’ John Eachard’s (1636?-1697) The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion enquired into, published in 1670 and frequently reprinted.

‘Worthy of all acceptation.’ 1 Timothy, 1. 15.

The Lecture which Lady Booby reads, etc. Joseph Andrews, Book IV. chap. 3.

Blackstone or De Lolme. Sir William Blackstone’s (1723-1780) Commentaries on the Laws of England appeared in 1765-9, John Louis De Lolme’s (1740?-1807) The Constitution of England, in French 1771, in English 1775.

108. What I have said upon it, etc. In The Edinburgh Review. See ante, note to p. 106.

Don Quixote. Part I., 1605; Part II., 1615.

‘The long-forgotten order of chivalry.’ ‘The long-neglected and almost extinguished order of knight-errantry,’ _Don Quixote_ (trans. Jarvis), Part I., Book IV. chap. 28.

‘Witch the world,’ etc. Henry IV., Part I., Act IV. Sc. 1.

109. ‘Oh, what delicate wooden spoons,’ etc. Don Quixote, Part II., Book IV. chap. 67.

The curate confidentially informing Don Quixote, etc. Ibid.

Our adventurer afterwards, etc. Ibid.

110. ‘Still prompts,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, IV. 3-4.

‘Singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles.’ Don Quixote, Part II., Book I. chap. 9.

Marcella. Ibid. Part I., Book I. chaps. 12 and 13.

His Galatea, etc. Galatea, 1585; _Persiles and Sigismunda_, 1616.

111. Gusman D’Alfarache. By Mateo Aleman, published in 1599.

Lazarillo de Tormes. Attributed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503-1575), published in 1553.

Gil Blas. The Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane of Alain-René le Sage (1668-1747) appeared in 4 vols., 1715-1735.

112. Smollett is more like Gil Blas. In the Preface to Roderick Random he admitted his obligation to Le Sage.

113. Tom Jones. Published in 1749.

114. ‘I was never so handsome,’ etc. Tom Jones, Book XVII. chap. 4.

The story of Tom Jones, etc. Cf. the well-known dictum of Coleridge (Table Talk, July 5, 1834), ‘Upon my word, I think the Œdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones, the three most perfect plots ever planned.’

Amelia and Joseph Andrews. Published in 1751 and 1742 respectively.

Amelia, and the hashed mutton. Cf. Hazlitt’s essay ‘A Farewell to Essay-writing,’ from which it appears that the article in the Edinburgh Review from which this lecture is taken was the result of a ‘sharply-seasoned and well-sustained’ discussion with Lamb, kept up till midnight.

115. Roderick Random. Published in 1748, when Smollett was 27; Tom Jones was published in 1749, when Fielding was 42.

116. Intus et in cute. Persius, Satires, III. 30.

117. Peregrine Pickle ... and Launcelot Graves. 1751 and 1762 respectively.

Humphrey Clinker and Count Fathom. 1771 and 1753 respectively.

Richardson. The three novels of Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) appeared as follows: Pamela in 1740; Clarissa Harlowe in 1747-8; Sir Charles Grandison in 1753.

119. Dr. Johnson ... when he said, etc. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II. 174.

120. ‘Books are a real world,’ etc. Wordsworth, Personal Talk, St. 3.

Sterne. Laurence Sterne’s (1713-1768) Tristram Shandy appeared in 9 vols. 1759-1767, and A Sentimental Journey (2 vols.) in 1768.

121. Goldsmith ... should call him, etc. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II. 222.

123. ‘Have kept the even tenor of their way.’ Gray’s Elegy, 76.

Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla. By Frances Burney, Madame D’Arblay (1752-1840), published respectively in 1778, 1782, and 1796.

Mrs. Radcliffe. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1822), author of The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), etc.

‘Enchantments drear.’ Il Penseroso, 119.

Mrs. Inchbald. Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821), novelist, dramatist, and actress. Her Nature and Art appeared in 1796, A Simple Story in 1791.

Miss Edgeworth. Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849). _Castle Rackrent_ appeared in 1800.

Meadows. In The Wanderer.

Note. The Fool of Quality, by Henry Brooke (1766); David Simple, by Sarah Fielding (1744); and Sidney Biddulph, by Mrs. Sheridan (1761).

124. It has been said of Shakspeare, etc. By Pope. See Hazlitt’s Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, vol. I. p. 171 and note.

‘There is nothing so true as habit.’ Windham, Speech on the Conduct of the Duke of York, Speeches, III. 205, March 14, 1809.

125. ‘Stand so [not] upon the order,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.

The green silken threads, etc. Don Quixote, Part II. IV. Chap. 58.

The Wanderer. 1814.

‘The gossamer,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 6.

127. The Castle of Otranto. By Horace Walpole (1764).

Quod sic mihi, etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 188.

The Recess, by Sophia Lee (1785); The Old English Baron, by Clara Reeve, originally published in 1777 under the title of ‘The Champion of Virtue, a Gothic Story.’

‘Dismal treatises.’ Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

The Monk, by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1795 as ‘Ambrosio, or the Monk.’

‘All the luxury of woe.’ Moore, Juvenile Poems, stanzas headed ‘Anacreontic,’ beginning ‘Press the grape, and let it pour,’ etc.

128. ‘His chamber,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto ix. St. 50.

129. ‘Familiar in our mouths,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 3.

130. The author of Caleb Williams. William Godwin (1756-1836). Caleb Williams appeared in 1794, St. Leon in 1799, Mandeville in 1817.

‘Action is momentary,’ etc. These lines are slightly misquoted from Wordsworth’s tragedy, The Borderer. See note to vol. IV., p. 276.

132. Political Justice. _An Inquiry concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness_, 1793.

‘Where his treasure,’ etc. St. Matthew, vi. 21.

LECTURE VII. ON THE WORKS OF HOGARTH—ON THE GRAND AND FAMILIAR STYLE OF PAINTING

A great part of this lecture is taken from two papers in The Examiner, republished in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 25-31, and notes thereon.

133. Hogarth. William Hogarth (1697-1764).

‘Instinct in every part.’ Cf. ‘Instinct through all proportions low and high.’ Paradise Lost, XI. 562.

‘Other pictures we see, Hogarth’s we read.’ ‘Other pictures we look at,—his prints we read.’ Lamb’s _Essay on the Genius and Character of Hogarth_, referred to below, p. 138.

Not long ago. In 1814.

134. ‘Of amber-lidded snuff-box,’ etc. Pope’s _Rape of the Lock_, IV. 123.

134. ‘A person, and a smooth dispose,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘Vice loses half,’ etc. Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

137. ‘All the mutually reflected charities.’ Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 40).

‘Frequent and full,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 795-7.

138. Mr. Lamb’s Essay. Published in The Reflector (1811) and reprinted in Poems, Plays and Essays (ed. Ainger).

What distinguishes, etc. The remainder of the lecture from this point had not appeared in The Examiner or The Round Table.

139. Mr. Wilkie. David Wilkie (1785-1841), Royal Academician 1811, knighted 1836.

Teniers. David Teniers, the younger (1610-1690).

‘To shew vice,’ etc. Adapted from Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

140. ‘The very error of the time.’ Cf. ‘The very error of the moon,’ Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Your lungs,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

Bagnigge Wells. Sadler’s Wells. Hazlitt refers to Hogarth’s ‘Evening,’ one of the four ‘Times of Day.’

142. Parson Ford. Johnson’s cousin, Cornelius Ford. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), i. 49. The figure in Hogarth’s picture has also been identified with ‘Orator’ Henley.

143. ‘Die of a rose,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, 1, 200.

In the manner of Ackerman’s dresses for May. Moore, Horace, Ode XI., Lib. 2. Freely translated by the Pr—ce R—g—t.

144. ‘The Charming Betsy Careless.’ See the last of the series of ‘The Rake’s Progress,’ the scene in Bedlam. One of the lunatics has scratched the name on the bannisters.

‘Stray-gifts of love and beauty.’ Wordsworth, Stray Pleasures.

145. Sir Joshua Reynolds. See Table-Talk, vol. VI. p. 131 et seq.

146. ‘Conformed to this world,’ etc. Romans, xii. 2.

‘Give to airy nothing,’ etc. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘Ignorant present.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

Note. ‘Nay, nay,’ etc. ‘Na, na! not that way, not that way, the head to the east.’ Guy Mannering, chap. 55.

148. It is many years since, etc. About 1798, at St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire. Cf. the essay ‘On Going a Journey’ in Table-Talk, vol. VI. p. 185.

‘How was I then uplifted.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Temples not made with hands,’ etc. 2 Corinthians, V. 1.

In the Louvre. In 1802, when the Louvre still contained the spoils of Buonaparte’s conquests. Cf. Table-Talk, vol. VI. pp. 15 et seq. and notes thereon.

‘All eyes shall see me,’ etc. Cf. Romans, xiv. 11.

149. There ‘stood the statue,’ etc. ‘So stands the statue that enchants the world.’ Thomson, The Seasons, Summer, 1347. The statue is the Venus of Medici.

‘There was old Proteus,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us,’ adapted.

The stay, the guide, etc. An unacknowledged quotation from Wordsworth’s _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_, 109-110.

‘Smoothed the raven down,’ etc. Comus, 251.

LECTURE VIII. ON THE COMIC WRITERS OF THE LAST CENTURY

Much of the early part of this Lecture is taken from a paper in The Examiner (Aug. 20, 1815), republished in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 10-14, and notes.

PAGE

150. ‘Where it must live,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘To see ourselves,’ etc. Burns, To a Louse.

151. ‘Present no mark to the foeman.’ Henry IV., Part II., Act III. Sc. 2. Wars should be Shadow.

152. The authority of Sterne, etc. See Tristram Shandy, I. 21.

l. 22. In the third edition a passage is interpolated from Hazlitt’s letter to The Morning Chronicle, Oct. 15, 1813.

‘The ring,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, III. 309-10.

Angelica, etc. All these characters are in Congreve’s Love for Love.

The compliments which Pope paid to his friends. Cf. the essay ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen,’ where some of these compliments are quoted.

153. The loves of the plants and the triangles. Erasmus Darwin’s poem ‘The Loves of the Plants’(1789) was the subject of Canning’s famous parody ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ in The Anti-Jacobin.

Berinthias and Alitheas. Berinthia in Vanbrugh’s _The Relapse_; Alithea in Wycherley’s The Country Wife.

Beppo, etc. Lord Byron’s Beppo (1818), Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming (1809), Scott’s Lady of the Lake (1810). Madame De Staël’s Corinne appeared in 1807.

l. 17. In the third edition a long passage from Hazlitt’s letter to The Morning Chronicle is here inserted.

‘That sevenfold fence.’ See note to vol. I. p. 13, and cf. A Reply to Malthus, vol. IV. p. 101.

154. ‘Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man.’ Foote’s The Minor, Act II.

‘Almost afraid to know itself.’ Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 3.

Mr. Farren. William Farren (1786-1861). Lord Ogleby in Colman and Garrick’s The Clandestine Marriage was one of his best parts.

Note. See vol. I. p. 313.

155. Jeremy Collier. Jeremy Collier’s (1650-1726) _Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage_ appeared in March 1697-8.

Mrs. Centlivre. Susannah Centlivre (1667?-1723). The Busy Body appeared in 1709, The Wonder in 1714.

156. The scene near the end. The Wonder, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Roast me these Violantes.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 1.

156. In the third edition the following account of The Busy Body, taken from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. VI.) is inserted:

‘“The Busy Body” is a comedy that has now held possession of the stage above a hundred years (the best test of excellence); and the merit that has enabled it to do so, consists in the ingenuity of the contrivance, the liveliness of the plot, and the striking effect of the situations. Mrs. Centlivre, in this and her other plays, could do nothing without a stratagem; but she could do everything with one. She delights in putting her dramatis personæ continually at their wit’s end, and in helping them off with a new evasion; and the subtlety of her resources is in proportion to the criticalness of the situation and the shortness of the notice for resorting to an expedient. Twenty times, in seeing or reading one of her plays, your pulse beats quick, and you become restless and apprehensive for the event; but with a fine theatrical sleight of hand, she lets you off, undoes the knot of the difficulty, and you breathe freely again, and have a hearty laugh into the bargain. In short, with her knowledge of chambermaids’ tricks, and insight into the intricate foldings of lovers’ hearts, she plays with the events of comedy, as a juggler shuffles about a pack of cards, to serve his own purposes, and to the surprise of the spectator. This is one of the most delightful employments of the dramatic art. It costs nothing—but a voluntary tax on the inventive powers of the author; and it produces, when successfully done, profit and praise to one party, and pleasure to all. To show the extent and importance of theatrical amusements (which some grave persons would decry altogether, and which no one can extol too highly), a friend of ours,[49] whose name will be as well known to posterity as it is to his contemporaries, was not long ago mentioning, that one of the earliest and most memorable impressions ever made on his mind, was the seeing “Venice Preserved” acted in a country town when he was only nine years old. But he added, that an elderly lady who took him to see it, lamented, notwithstanding the wonder and delight he had experienced, that instead of “Venice Preserved,” they had not gone to see “The Busy Body,” which had been acted the night before. This was fifty years ago, since which, and for fifty years before that, it has been acted a thousand times in town and country, giving delight to the old, the young, and middle-aged, passing the time carelessly, and affording matter for agreeable reflection afterwards, making us think ourselves, and wish to be thought, the men equal to Sir George Airy in grace and spirit, the women to Miranda and Isabinda in love and beauty, and all of us superior to Marplot in wit. Among the scenes that might be mentioned in this comedy, as striking instances of happy stage effect, are Miranda’s contrivance to escape from Sir George, by making him turn his back upon her to hear her confession of love, and the ludicrous attitude in which he is left waiting for the rest of her speech after the lady has vanished; his offer of the hundred pounds to her guardian to make love to her in his presence, and when she receives him in dumb show, his answering for both; his situation concealed behind the chimney-screen; his supposed metamorphosis into a monkey, and his deliverance from thence in that character by the interference of Marplot; Mrs. Patch’s sudden conversion of the mysterious love letter into a charm for the toothache, and the whole of Marplot’s meddling and blunders. The last character is taken from Dryden and the Duchess of Newcastle; and is, indeed, the only attempt at character in the play. It is amusing and superficial. We see little of the puzzled perplexity of his brain, but his actions are absurd enough. He whiffles about the stage with considerable volubility, and makes a very lively automaton. Sir George Airy sets out for a scene or two in a spirited manner, but afterwards the character evaporates in the name; and he becomes as commonplace as his friend Charles, who merely laments over his misfortunes, or gets out of them by following the suggestions of his valet or his valet’s mistress. Miranda is the heroine of the piece, and has a right to be so; for she is a beauty and an heiress. Her friend has less to recommend her; but who can refuse to fall in love with her name? What volumes of sighs, what a world of love, is breathed in the very sound alone—the letters that form the charming name of Isabinda.’

157. ‘The one cries Mum,’ etc. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5. Sc. 2.

Note. See first edition (1714), pp. 35-6.

158. ‘‘Some soul of goodness,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 1.

His Funeral. Produced in 1701.

‘All the milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

The Conscious Lovers. 1722. Hazlitt refers to Act III. Sc. 1.

Parson Adams against me. See Joseph Andrews, Book III. chap. II.

Addison’s Drummer. 1715.

‘An Hour after Marriage.’ Three Hours after Marriage (1717), the joint production of Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot.

‘An alligator stuff’d.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act V. Sc. 1.

Gay’s What-d’ye-call-it. 1715.

‘Polly.’ Published in 1728. The representation was forbidden by the Court.

Last line but one. In the third edition Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the Beggar’s Opera’ (see vol. I. pp. 65-6) is here introduced.

159. The Mock Doctor. 1732.

Tom Thumb. Afterwards called _The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great_ (1730; additional Act, 1731).

Lord Grizzle. In Tom Thumb.

‘‘Like those hanging locks,’ etc. Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘Fell of hair,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

‘Hey for Doctor’s Commons.’ Tragedy of Tragedies, etc., Act II. Sc. 5.

‘From the sublime,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 23.

Lubin Log. In James Kenney’s farce, Love, Law, and Physic, produced 1812. See ante, p. 192.

The Widow’s Choice. Allingham’s Who Wins, or The Widow’s Choice, 1808.

‘Is high fantastical.’ Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 1.

160. The hero of the Dunciad. Cibber was substituted for Theobald as the King of Dulness in consequence of his famous letter to Pope, published in 1742.

‘By merit raised,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 5-6.

His Apology for his own Life. Published in 1740. Cf. _The Round Table_, vol. I. pp. 156-7.

His account of his waiting, etc. An Apology, etc., 2nd ed. 1740, chap. III. pp. 59-60.

Mr. Burke’s celebrated apostrophe. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

Kynaston, etc. See vol. I. notes to pp. 156-7.

161. His Careless Husband. 1704.

His Double Gallant. 1707. The play was revived in 1817 and noticed by Hazlitt. See ante, pp. 359-362.

‘In hidden mazes,’ etc. Misquoted from L’Allegro, 141-2.

162. His Nonjuror. 1717. Isaac Bickerstaff’s The Hypocrite was produced in 1768.

Love’s Last Shift. Colley Cibber’s first play, produced in 1694. For Southerne’s remark to Cibber, see _An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber_, p. 173.

l. 34. In the third edition a great part of Hazlitt’s article on The Hypocrite (see A View of the English Stage, ante, p. 245) is inserted here. The passage is also in Oxberry’s New English Drama, vol. I.

Love in a Riddle. 1729.

163. The Suspicious Husband, 1747, The Jealous Wife, 1761, The Clandestine Marriage, 1766.

l. 15. In the third edition the following passage on _The Jealous Wife_, taken from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. I.) is here inserted:—

‘Colman, the elder, was the translator of Terence: and the “Jealous Wife” is a classical play. The plot is regular, the characters well supported, and the moral the best in the world. The dialogue has more sense than wit. The ludicrous arises from the skilful development of the characters, and the absurdities they commit in their own persons, rather than from the smart reflections which are made upon them by others. Thus nothing can be more ridiculous or more instructive than the scenes of which Mrs. Oakly is the heroine, yet they are all serious and unconscious: she exposes herself to our contempt and ridicule by the part she acts, by the airs she gives herself, and the fantastic behaviour in the situations in which she is placed. In other words, the character is pure comedy, not satire. Congreve’s comedies for the most part are satires, in which, from an exuberance of wit, the different speakers play off the sharp-pointed raillery on one another’s foibles, real or supposed. The best and most genuine kind of comedy, because the most dramatic, is that of character or humour, in which the persons introduced upon the stage are left to betray their own folly by their words and actions. The progressive winding up of the story of the present comedy is excellently managed. The jealousy and hysteric violence of Mrs. Oakly increase every moment, as the pretext for them becomes more and more frivolous. The attention is kept alive by our doubts about Oakly’s wavering (but in the end triumphant) firmness; and the arch insinuations and well-concerted home-thrusts of the Major heighten the comic interest of the scene. There is only one circumstance on which this veteran bachelor’s freedom of speech might have thrown a little more light, namely, that the married lady’s jealousy is in truth only a pretence for the exercise of her domineering spirit in general; so that we are left at last in some uncertainty as to the turn which this humour may take, and as to the future repose of her husband, though the affair of Miss Russet is satisfactorily cleared up. The under-plot of the two lovers is very ingeniously fitted into the principal one, and is not without interest in itself. Charles Oakly is a spirited, well-meaning, thoughtless young fellow, and Harriet Russet is an amiable romantic girl, in that very common, but always romantic situation—in love. Her persecution from the addresses of Lord Trinket and Sir Harry Beagle fans the gentle flame which had been kindled just a year before in her breast, produces the adventures and cross-purposes of the plot, and at last reconciles her to, and throws her into the arms of her lover, in spite of her resentment for his misconduct and apparent want of delicacy. The figure which Lord Trinket and Lady Freelove make in the piece is as odious and contemptible as it is possible for people in that class of life (and for no others) to make. The insolence, the meanness, the affectation, the hollowness, the want of humanity, sincerity, principle, and delicacy, are such as can only be found where artificial rank and station in society supersede not merely a regard to propriety of conduct, but the necessity even of an attention to appearances. The morality of the stage has (we are ready to hope) told in that direction as well as others, has, in some measure suppressed the suffocating pretensions and flaunting affectation of vice and folly in “persons of honour,” and, as it were, humanised rank and file. The pictures drawn of the finished depravity of such characters in high life, in the old comedies and novels, can hardly have been thrown away upon the persons themselves, any more than upon the world at large. Little Terence O’Cutler, the delicious protégé of Lord Trinket and Lady Freelove, is a fit instrument for them to use, and follows in the train of such principals as naturally and assuredly as their shadow. Sir Harry Beagle is a coarse, but striking character of a thorough-bred fox-hunting country squire. He has but one idea in his head, but one sentiment in his heart—and that is his stud. This idea haunts his imagination, tinges or imbues every other object, and accounts for his whole phraseology, appearance, costume, and conduct. Sir Harry’s ruling passion is varied very ingeniously, and often turned to a very ludicrous account. There is a necessary monotony in the humour, which arises from a want of more than one idea, but the obviousness of the jest almost makes up for the recurrence of it; if the means of exciting mirth are mechanical, the effect is sure; and to say that a hearty laugh is cheaply purchased, is not a serious objection against it. When an author is terribly conscious of plagiarism, he seldom confesses it; when the obligation does not press his conscience, he sometimes does. Colman, in the advertisement to the first edition of the “Jealous Wife,” apologises for the freedom which he has used in borrowing from “Tom Jones.” In reading this modest excuse, though we have seen the play several times, we could not imagine what part of the plot was taken from Fielding. We did not suspect that Miss Russet was Sophia Western, and that old Russet and Sir Harry Beagle between them somehow represented Squire Western and young Blifil. But so it is! The outline of the plot and some of the characters are certainly the same, but the filling up destroys the likeness. There is all in the novel that there is in the play, but there is so much in the novel that is not in the play, that the total impression is quite different, and loses even an appearance of resemblance. In the same manner, though a profile or a shade of a face is exactly the same as the original, we with difficulty recognise it from the absence of so many other particulars. Colman might have kept his own secret, and no one would have been the wiser for it.’

163. The elder Colman’s translation of Terence. Published in 1765.

Bickerstaff’s plays. Love in a Village, 1763, The Maid of the Mill, 1765, and The Hypocrite are the best known.

Mrs. Cowley’s comedy, etc. Hannah Cowley’s (1743?-1809) The Belle’s Stratagem appeared in 1780, Who’s the Dupe? in 1779.

164. Goldsmith’s Good-natured Man, 1768; She Stoops to Conquer, 1773.

In the third edition the following account of She Stoops to Conquer from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. IV.) is here inserted:—

‘It, however, bears the stamp of the author’s genius, which was an indefinable mixture of the original and imitative. His plot, characters, and incidents are all apparently new; and yet, when you come to look into them, they are all old, with little variation or disguise: that is, the author sedulously avoided the beaten, vulgar path, and sought for singularity, but found it rather in the unhackneyed and eccentric inventions of those who had gone before him, than in his own stores. The “Vicar of Wakefield,” which abounds more than any of his works in delightful and original traits, is still very much borrowed, in its general tone and outline, from Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews.” Again, the characters and adventures of Tony Lumpkin, and the ridiculous conduct of his mother, in the present comedy, are a counterpart (even to the incident of the theft of the jewels) of those of the Widow Blackacre and her booby son in Wycherley’s “Plain Dealer.”

‘This sort of plagiarism, which gives us a repetition of new and striking pictures of human life, is much to be preferred to the dull routine of trite, vapid, every-day common-places; but it is more dangerous, as the stealing of pictures or family plate, where the property can be immediately identified, is more liable to detection than the stealing of bank-notes, or the current coin of the realm. Dr. Johnson’s sarcasm against some writer, that his “singularity was not his excellence,” cannot be applied to Goldsmith’s writings in general; but we are not sure whether it might not in severity be applied to “She Stoops to Conquer.” The incidents and characters are many of them exceedingly amusing; but they are so, a little at the expense of probability and bienseance. Tony Lumpkin is a very essential and unquestionably comic personage; but certainly his absurdities or his humours fail of none of their effect for want of being carried far enough. He is in his own sex what a hoyden is in the other. He is that vulgar nickname, a hobbety-hoy, dramatised; forward and sheepish, mischievous and idle, cunning and stupid, with the vices of the man and the follies of the boy; fond of low company, and giving himself all the airs of consequence of the young squire. His vacant delight in playing at cup and ball, and his impenetrable confusion and obstinate gravity in spelling the letter, drew fresh beauties from Mr. Liston’s face. Young Marlow’s bashfulness in the scenes with his mistress is, when well acted, irresistibly ludicrous; but still nothing can quite overcome our incredulity as to the existence of such a character in the present day, and in the rank of life, and with the education which Marlow is supposed to have had. It is a highly amusing caricature, a ridiculous fancy, but no more. One of the finest and most delicate touches of character is in the transition from the modest gentleman’s manner with his mistress, to the easy and agreeable tone of familiarity with the supposed chambermaid, which was not total and abrupt, but exactly such in kind and degree as such a character of natural reserve and constitutional timidity would undergo from the change of circumstances. Of the other characters in the piece, the most amusing are Tony Lumpkin’s associates at the Three Pigeons; and of these we profess the greatest partiality for the important showman who declares that “his bear dances to none but the genteelest of tunes, ‘Water parted from the Sea,’ or the minuet in ‘Ariadne’!”[50] This is certainly the “high-fantastical”[51] of low comedy.’

164. Murphy’s plays, etc. Arthur Murphy’s (1730-1805) _All in the Wrong_, 1761, and Know Your Own Mind, 1778.

Both his principal pieces, etc. There seems to be some inaccuracy here. Colman’s Jealous Wife was produced in February 1761, Murphy’s All in the Wrong in June of the same year. The School for Scandal, however, appeared a month later than Murphy’s Know Your Own Mind, viz., in May 1777.

The School for Scandal, 1777, The Rivals, 1775, _The Duenna_, 1775, and The Critic, 1779.

Cumberland. Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), the dramatist, whose West Indian (1771) and The Wheel of Fortune (1795) are referred to below, p. 166.

‘Dragged the struggling,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Traveller, l. 190.

165. Miss Farren. Elizabeth Farren (1759?-1829), Countess of Derby. She played Lady Teazle on the occasion of her last appearance, April 8, 1797.

Matthew Bramble and his sister. In Humphry Clinker.

‘He had damnable iteration in him.’ Henry IV., Part I., Act I. Sc. 2.

165, l. 36. In the third edition Hazlitt’s description of The Rivals, from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. I.) is inserted here:—

‘The “Rivals” is one of the most agreeable comedies we have. In the elegance and brilliancy of the dialogue, in a certain animation of moral sentiment, and in the masterly dénouement of the fable, the “School for Scandal” is superior; but the “Rivals” has more life and action in it, and abounds in a greater number of whimsical characters, unexpected incidents, and absurd contrasts of situation. The effect of the “School for Scandal” is something like reading a collection of epigrams, that of the “Rivals” is more like reading a novel. In the first you are always at the toilette or in the drawing-room; in the last you pass into the open air, and take a turn in King’s Mead. The interest is kept alive in the one play by smart repartees, in the other by startling rencontres: in the one we laugh at the satirical descriptions of the speakers, in the other the situation of their persons on the stage is irresistibly ludicrous. Thus the interviews between Lucy and Sir Lucius O’Trigger, between Acres and his friend Jack, who is at once his confidant and his rival; between Mrs. Malaprop and the lover of her niece as Captain Absolute, and between the young lady and the same person as the pretended Ensign Beverley, tell from the mere double entendre of the scene, and from the ignorance of the parties of one another’s persons and designs. There is no source of dramatic effect more complete than this species of practical satire (in which our author seems to have been an adept), where one character in the piece is made a fool of and turned into ridicule to his face, by the very person whom he is trying to over-reach.

‘There is scarcely a more delightful play than the “Rivals” when it is well acted, or one that goes off more indifferently when it is not. The humour is of so broad and farcical a kind, that if not thoroughly entered into and carried off by the tone and manner of the performers, it fails of effect from its obtrusiveness, and becomes flat from eccentricity. The absurdities brought forward are of that artificial, affected, and preposterous description, that we in some measure require to have the evidence of our senses to see the persons themselves “jetting under the advance plumes of their folly,”[52] before we can entirely believe in their existence, or derive pleasure from their exposure. If the extravagance of the poet’s conception is not supported by the downright reality of the representation, our credulity is staggered and falls to the ground.

‘For instance, Acres should be as odd a compound in external appearance as he is of the author’s brain. He must look like a very notable mixture of the lively coxcomb and the blundering blockhead, to reconcile us to his continued impertinence and senseless flippancy. Acres is a mere conventional character, a gay, fluttering automaton, constructed upon mechanical principles, and pushed, as it were, by the logic of wit and a strict keeping in the pursuit of the ridiculous, into follies and fopperies which his natural thoughtlessness would never have dreamt of. Acres does not say or do what such a half-witted young gentleman would say or do of his own head, but what he might be led to do or say with such a prompter as Sheridan at his elbow to tutor him in absurdity—to make a butt of him first, and laugh at him afterwards. Thus his presence of mind in persisting in his allegorical swearing, “Odds triggers and flints,”[53] in the duel scene, when he is trembling all over with cowardice, is quite out of character, but it keeps up the preconcerted jest. In proportion, therefore, as the author has overdone the part, it calls for a greater effort of animal spirits, and a peculiar aptitude of genius in the actor to go through with it, to humour the extravagance, and to seem to take a real and cordial delight in caricaturing himself. Dodd[54] was the only actor we remember who realised this ideal combination of volatility and phlegm, of slowness of understanding with levity of purpose, of vacancy of thought and vivacity of gesture. Acres’ affected phrases and apish manners used to sit upon this inimitable actor with the same sort of bumpkin grace and conscious self-complacency as the new cut of his clothes. In general, this character is made little of on the stage; and when left to shift for itself, seems as vapid as it is forced.

‘Mrs. Malaprop is another portrait of the same overcharged description. The chief drollery of this extraordinary personage consists of her unaccountable and systematic misapplication of hard words. How she should know the words, and not their meaning, is a little odd. In reading the play we are amused with such a series of ridiculous blunders, just as we are with a series of puns or cross-readings. But to keep up the farce upon the stage, besides “a nice derangement of epitaphs,”[55] the imagination must have the assistance of a stately array of grave pretensions, and a most formidable establishment of countenance, with all the vulgar self-sufficiency of pride and ignorance, before it can give full credit to this learned tissue of technical absurdity.

‘As to Miss Lydia Languish, she is not easily done to the life. She is a delightful compound of extravagance and naïveté. She is fond and froward, practical and chimerical, hot and cold in a breath. She is that kind of fruit which drops into the mouth before it is ripe. She must have a husband, but she will not have one without an elopement. This young lady is at an age and of a disposition to throw herself into the arms of the first handsome young fellow she meets; but she repents and grows sullen, like a spoiled child, when she finds that nobody hinders her. She should have all the physiognomical marks of a true boarding-school, novel-reading Miss about her, and some others into the bargain. Sir Anthony’s description hardly comes up to the truth. She should have large, rolling eyes; pouting, disdainful lips; a pale, clear complexion; an oval chin, an arching neck, and a profusion of dark ringlets falling down upon it, or she will never answer to our ideas of the charming sentimental hoyden, who is the heroine of the play.

‘Faulkland is a refined study of a very common disagreeable character, actuated by an unceasing spirit of contradiction, who perversely seizes every idle pretext for making himself and others miserable; or querulous enthusiast, determined on disappointment, and enamoured with suspicion. He is without excuse; nor is it without some difficulty that we endure his self-tormenting follies, through our partiality for Julia, the amiable, unresisting victim of his gloomy caprice.

‘Sir Anthony Absolute and his son are the most sterling characters of the play. The tetchy, positive, impatient, overbearing, but warm and generous character of the one, and the gallant, determined spirit, adroit address, and dry humour of the other, are admirably set off against each other. The two scenes in which they contend about the proposed match, in the first of which the indignant lover is as choleric and rash as the old gentleman is furious and obstinate, and in the latter of which the son affects such a cool indifference and dutiful submission to his father, from having found out that it is the mistress of his choice whom he is to be compelled to marry, are masterpieces both of wit, humour, and character. Sir Anthony Absolute is an evident copy after Smollett’s kind-hearted, high-spirited Matthew Bramble, as Mrs. Malaprop is after the redoubted linguist, Mrs. Tabitha Bramble; and, indeed the whole tone, as well as the local scenery of the “Rivals,” reminds the reader of “Humphry Clinker.” Sheridan had a right to borrow; and he made use of this privilege, not sparingly, both in this and in his other plays. His Acres, as well in the general character as in particular scenes, is a mannered imitation of Sir Andrew Ague-cheek.

‘Fag, Lucy, and Sir Lucius O’Trigger, though subordinate agents in the plot of the “Rivals,” are not the less amusing on that account. Fag wears his master’s wit, as he does his lace, at second-hand; Lucy is an edifying specimen of simplicity in a chambermaid, and Sir Lucius is an honest fortune-hunting Hibernian, who means well to himself, and no harm to anybody else. They are also traditional characters, common to the stage; but they are drawn with all the life and spirit of originals.

‘This appears, indeed, to have been the peculiar forte and the great praise of our author’s genius, that he could imitate with the spirit of an inventor. There is hardly a character, we believe, or a marked situation in any of his works, of which there are not distinct traces to be found in his predecessors. But though the groundwork and texture of his materials was little more than what he found already existing in the models of acknowledged excellence, yet he constantly varied or improved upon their suggestions with masterly skill and ingenuity. He applied what he thus borrowed, with a sparkling effect and rare felicity, to different circumstances, and adapted it with peculiar elegance to the prevailing taste of the age. He was the farthest possible from a servile plagiarist. He wrote in imitation of Congreve, Vanbrugh, or Wycherley, as those persons would have written in continuation of themselves, had they lived at the same time with him. There is no excellence of former writers of which he has not availed himself, and which he has not converted to his own purposes, with equal spirit and success. He had great acuteness and knowledge of the world; and if he did not create his own characters, he compared them with their prototypes in nature, and understood their bearings and qualities, before he undertook to make a different use of them. He had wit, fancy, sentiment at command, enabling him to place the thoughts of others in new lights of his own, which reflected back an added lustre on the originals: whatever he touched, he adorned with all the ease, grace, and brilliancy of his style. If he ranks only as a man of second-rate genius, he was assuredly a man of first-rate talents. He was the most classical and the most popular dramatic writer of his age. The works he has left behind him will remain as monuments of his fame, for the delight and instruction of posterity.

‘Mr. Sheridan not only excelled as a comic writer, but was also an eminent orator, and a disinterested patriot. As a public speaker, he was distinguished by acuteness of observation and pointed wit, more than by impassioned eloquence, or powerful and comprehensive reasoning. Considering him with reference to his conversational talents, his merits as a comic writer, and as a political character, he was perhaps the most accomplished person of his time.

“Take him for all in all, We shall not look upon his like again.”[56]

165. ‘Had I a heart,’ etc. The Duenna, Act I. Sc. 5.

166. ‘Half thy malice,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 1.

That on the Begum’s affairs. June 3, 6, 10, 13, 1788.

One who has all the ability, etc. Hazlitt refers to Thomas Moore, whose Life of Sheridan, however, did not appear till 1825.

Macklin’s Man of the World. Charles Macklin’s (1697?-1797) The Man of the World, first produced in London in 1781. For George Frederick Cooke’s (1756-1811) acting in the part of Sir Pertinax Macsycophant see Leigh Hunt’s _Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres_ (1807), pp. 220-1.

Mr. Holcroft. See Hazlitt’s Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Holcroft, vol. II. pp. 121-4 of the present edition.

l. 38. In the third edition the following account of The West Indian from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. I.) is interpolated:—

‘As to the “West Indian,” it is a play that from the time of its first appearing has continued to hold possession of the stage, with just enough merit to keep it there, and no striking faults to drive it thence. It is above mediocrity. There is an agreeable vein of good humour and animal spirits running through it that does not suffer it to sink into downright insipidity, nor ever excites any very high degree of interest or delight. Wit there is none, and hardly an attempt at humour, except in the character of Major O’ Flaherty, who would not be recognised as a genuine Irishman but by virtue of his representative on the stage. His blunders and conduct are not such as would proceed from the good-natured unthinking impetuosity of such a person as O’ Flaherty is intended to be: but they are such as the author might sit down and try to invent for him. It is not an Irish character, but a character playing the Irishman; not a hasty, warm-hearted, hair-brained fellow, stumbling on mistakes by accident either in his words and actions, but a very complaisant gentleman, looking out for them by design, to humour the opinion which you entertain of him, and who is to make himself a national butt for the audience to laugh at. The “West Indian” himself (Belcour) is certainly the support of the piece. There is something interesting in the idea of seeing a young fellow of high animal spirits, a handsome fortune, and considerable generosity of feeling, launched from the other side of the world (with the additional impetus that the distance would give him) to run the gauntlet of the follies and vices of the town, to fall into scrapes only to get out of them, and who is full of professions of attachment to virtues which he does not practise, and of repentance for offences which he has not committed. It is the same character as Charles Surface in the “School for Scandal,” with an infusion of the romantic from his transatlantic origin, and an additional excuse for his extravagances in the tropical temperature of his blood.

‘The language of this play is elegant but common-place: the speakers seem in general more intent on adjusting their periods than on settling their affairs. The sentiments aspire to liberality. They are amiably mawkish, and as often as they incline to paradox, have a rapid sort of petulance about them, which excites neither our sympathy nor our esteem. The plot is a good plot. It is well laid, decently distributed through the course of five acts, and wound up at last to its final catastrophe in a single sentence.’

The Mayor of Garratt. Samuel Foote’s (1720-1777), produced in 1764. John O’Keeffe’s (1747-1833) The Agreeable Surprise, 1781.

167. Mother Cole, etc. Mrs. Cole and Smirk are both in _The Minor_ (1760). Hazlitt may have been thinking of Puff in Taste (1752).

The acting of Dowton, etc. See _A View of the English Stage_, ante, p. 317, from which this passage is taken.

‘‘Pigeon-livered,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

168. Peter Pindar. John Wolcot (1738-1819). _Sir Joseph Banks and the Emperor of Morocco_ was published in 1788. The first of his Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians appeared in 1782, and his _Ode upon Ode, or a Peep at St. James’s and Instructions to a celebrated Laureat, being a Comic Account of the Visit of the Sovereign to Whitbread’s Brewery_, in 1787.

‘Faint picture,’ etc. Adapted from Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.

Like his own expiring taper. Hazlitt seems to refer to some verses of Wolcot’s, entitled ‘To My Candle.’ See Pindar’s Works (1816), vol. II. p. 399.

A VIEW OF THE ENGLISH STAGE

In this work, published in 1818, Hazlitt collected the greater part of the theatrical criticisms which he had contributed successively to The Morning Chronicle, The Champion, The Examiner, and The Times. His first article in The Morning Chronicle appeared on October 18, 1813 (see ante, p. 192), and the last on May 27, 1814 (see ante, p. 195). In his essay, ‘On Patronage and Puffing’ (Table Talk, vol. V. pp. 292, et seq.), Hazlitt gives an account of his theatrical criticisms in the Chronicle. He thought himself that they were the best articles in the series (see ante, p. 174), and they are at any rate of exceptional interest inasmuch as they deal for the most part with the first appearances of Edmund Kean in London. His first article in The Champion, then edited by John Scott, appeared on August 14, 1814 (see p. 196), and the last on January 8, 1815 (see p. 208). Early in 1815 he became the regular dramatic critic of The Examiner. Leigh Hunt, the editor, had intended to resume theatrical criticism after his release from prison in February, but his attention was diverted to politics by the return of Buonaparte from Elba. Hazlitt’s first article (except for two notices of Kean’s Iago, July 24 and August 7, 1814) appeared on March 19, 1815 (see p. 221), the last on June 8, 1817 (see p. 373). By far the greater part of Hazlitt’s articles in The Morning Chronicle, The Champion, and The Examiner were included by him in A View of the English Stage. Some passages, however, and, we think, some articles, he did omit (especially from The Examiner of 1817). In the following notes passages omitted from articles included in A View are printed in full; articles omitted from A View are shortly summarised, if it is pretty clear from internal evidence that they were written by Hazlitt. Owing to want of space these articles cannot be printed in the present volume, but those which are clearly Hazlitt’s will be found among fugitive writings in a later volume, together with some notices (deemed certainly his) from The Times. Hazlitt seems to have been the dramatic critic, or one of the dramatic critics, of The Times from the summer of 1817 till the spring of 1818, but only two of his articles (pp. 374, et seq.) were included in A View of the English Stage. These appeared in September 1817, near the beginning of his term of office. Hazlitt’s reason for including so few of his Times articles is not known. An examination of the dramatic notices in The Times during the period in question suggests (1) that there were at least two regular dramatic critics on the staff, (2) that Hazlitt chiefly confined himself to Shakespearian and other plays of established reputation, and (3) that he practically ceased to write at the end of 1817. The following may be mentioned among the more important articles, which may, with varying degrees of probability, be ascribed to Hazlitt:— School for Scandal (Munden as Sir Peter Teazle), September 8, 1817; Young’s Hamlet, September 9; As You Like It (Miss Brunton as Rosalind), September 20; Maywood’s Zanga, October 3; Cibber’s The Refusal, or The Ladies’ Philosophy, October 6; Kean’s Richard III., October 7; The Wonder, or A Woman Keeps a Secret, October 9; Venice Preserved, October 10; Kean’s Macbeth, October 21; Othello (Kean as Othello, Maywood as Iago), October 27; Venice Preserved (Miss O’Neill as Belvidera), December 2; The Honey Moon, December 3; Fisher’s Hamlet, December 11; Kean’s Macbeth, December 16; King John (Miss O’Neill as Constance), December 18.

Reference should be made (1) to Mr. William Archer’s Introduction to a Selection of Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays (ed. Archer and Lowe, 1895), and (2) to the companion-volume of Leigh Hunt’s Dramatic Essays (ed. Archer and Lowe, 1894).

PAGE

173. Rochefoucault, etc. Maximes et Réflexions Morales, cccxii.

‘The brief chronicles of the time.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘Hold the mirror,’ etc. Ibid. Act. III. Sc. 2.

‘Imitate humanity,’ etc. Ibid.

Zoffany’s pictures. John Zoffany (1733-1810), a native of Ratisbon, came to England in 1758, and soon became noted for his pictures of Garrick and other actors in character. Several of these are preserved at the Garrick Club.

Colley Cibber’s Life. Cf. ante, pp. 160-1.

174. A perverse caricature. Hazlitt refers to the character of Marmozet in Peregrine Pickle (1751). The quarrel between Garrick and Smollett was afterwards made up.

In different newspapers. See ante, introductory note to p. 169.

‘The secrets of the prison-house.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5.

The editor of which, etc. Thomas Barnes was editor of _The Times_ when Hazlitt was theatrical critic, but the reference is probably to the proprietor, John Walter the Second.

Too prolix on the subject of the Bourbons. Hazlitt probably refers to his brother-in-law, Dr., afterwards Sir John Stoddart, who was dismissed from the editorship of The Times early in 1817, in consequence of the violence of his writings on French affairs. Stoddart immediately started The Day and New Times, the title of which was altered in 1818 to The New Times.

‘One who loved, etc. Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

175. ‘‘Some quantity,’ etc. A composite quotation from Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2, and Romeo and Juliet, Act V. Sc. 1.

Mr. Perry. James Perry (1756-1821), proprietor and editor of The Morning Chronicle.

‘Screw the courage,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.

176. ‘Pritchard’s genteel,’ etc. Churchill, The Rosciad, 852, the reference being to Hannah Pritchard (1711-1768), the actress who played Johnson’s Irene.

Swiss bodyguards. The famous corps, constituted in 1616, who had shown such fidelity to Louis XVI. during the attack on the Tuileries on August 10, 1792.

‘Pigmy body,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, I. 157-8.

The Fudge family in Paris (1818), Letter II. 116-123.

177. ‘A master of scholars.’ Cf. ante, p. 167.

178. The Characters of Shakespear’s Plays. A second edition had just been published. Hazlitt certainly availed himself to the full of the license which he frankly claims in this paragraph. An attempt has been made in the present edition to indicate the source of his essays and criticisms, and also the various publications into which they were afterwards transferred.

179. Mr. Kean’s Shylock. Edmund Kean (1787-1833) had already acted many important parts in the provinces. At Dorchester one of his performances had been witnessed by Arnold, the stage manager of Drury Lane, through whom an engagement was made with the management of that theatre. Kean insisted on playing Shylock, and though the management and his fellow-actors were incredulous as to his powers, his success was undisputed. Henceforward his many triumphs in London were associated with the Drury Lane Theatre, except for a short period from 1827 to 1829, when his services were transferred to Covent Garden. For a later account of his Shylock, see ante, pp. 294-6.

180. l. 8. In The Morning Chronicle Hazlitt adds: ‘After the play we were rejoiced to see the sterling farce of The Apprentice[57] revived, in which Mr. Bannister was eminently successful.’

Miss Smith. The assumed maiden name of the actress who married George Bartley, the actor, on August 24, 1814. She made her first appearance in London in 1805. She suffered by comparison with Mrs. Siddons, and later with Miss O’Neill.

Rae. Alexander Rae (1782-1820), after acting for a season at the Haymarket in 1806, made his first appearance at Drury Lane on November 12, 1812. Kean quickly eclipsed him in tragedy, though he maintained the reputation of being a good Hamlet.

‘Far-darting’ eye.

‘And covetous of Shakspeare’s beauty seen In every flash of his far-beaming eye.’

COWPER, The Task, III. 601-2.

181. ‘But I was born so high,’ etc. Richard III., Act I. Sc. 3.

The miserable medley acted for Richard III. The work chiefly of Colley Cibber, published in 1700.

Cooke. George Frederick Cooke (1756-1811). His first appearance in London (Covent Garden, October 31, 1801) was in this part, which remained one of his best impersonations.

‘Stand all apart,’ etc. Richard III. (Cibber’s version).

182. ‘The golden rigol,’ etc. Ibid. Interpolated from Henry IV., Part II. Act IV. Sc. 5:

‘—— ——This is a sleep That from this golden rigol hath divorced So many English kings.’

‘Chop off his head.’ See post, note to p. 201.

last line. In The Morning Chronicle Hazlitt proceeds: ‘His fall, however, was too rapid. Nothing but a sword passed through the heart could occasion such a fall. With his innate spirit of Richard he would struggle with his fate to the last moment of ebbing life. But on the whole the performance was the most perfect of any thing that has been witnessed since the days of Garrick. The play was got up with great skill. The scenes were all painted with strict regard to historic truth. There had evidently been research as to identity of place, for the views of the Tower, of Crosby House, etc. were, in the eye of the best judges, considered as faithful representations according to the descriptions handed down to us. The cast of the play was also good. Green-room report says that Miss Smith refused the part of the Queen, as not great enough forsooth for her superior talents, although Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Pope,[58] Mrs. Crauford[59] and others felt it to their honour to display their powers in the character. In the present case the absence of Miss Smith was not a misfortune, for Mrs. Glover[60] gave to the fine scene with her children, a force and feeling that drew from the audience the most sympathetic testimonies of applause. Miss Boyce made a very interesting and elegant representative of Lady Anne. We sincerely congratulate the public on the great accession to the theatrical art which they have obtained in the talents of Mr. Kean. The experience of Saturday night convinces us that he acts from his own mental resources, and that he has organs to give effect to his comprehension of character. We never saw such admirable use made of the eye, of the lip, and generally of the muscles. We could judge of what he would have been if his voice had been clear from hoarseness; and we trust he will not repeat the difficult part till he has overcome his cold. We understand, he is shortly to appear in Don John, in The Chances. We know no character so exactly suited to his powers.’

183. ‘I am myself alone.’ Richard III. (Cibber’s version).

‘I am not i’ the vein.’ Richard III. Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘His grace looks cheerfully,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 4.

184. ‘Take him for all in all,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.

Mr. Wroughton. Richard Wroughton (1748-1822), the main part of whose career closed in 1798. He returned to the stage two years later, and continued to act till 1815.

Mrs. Glover. Julia Glover (1779-1850), the daughter of an actor named Betterton, a favourite actress who had made her first appearance in London in 1797.

‘For in the very torrent,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

Shakespeare Gallery. Hazlitt refers to the well known Shakespeare Gallery projected and carried out by Alderman Boydell between 1786 and 1802.

185. Mr. Kean’s Hamlet. Drury Lane, March 12, 1814.

‘A young and princely novice.’ Richard III., Act I. Sc. 4.

186. ‘That has no relish,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘That noble and liberal casuist.’ Charles Lamb refers to the old English Dramatists as ‘those noble and liberal casuists.’ Poems, Plays and Essays (ed. Ainger), p. 248.

‘Out of joint.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘Come then,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, II. 17-20.

187. ‘A wave of the sea.’ A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.

‘That within,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘Weakness and melancholy.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 2.

‘’Tis I, Hamlet the Dane.’ Ibid. Act V. Sc. 1.

188. ‘I’ll call thee,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 4.

‘The rugged Pyrrhus.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 2.

‘Bordered on the verge,’ etc. Cf. Pope, Moral Essays, II. 51-2.

189. Mr. Raymond’s Representation, etc. For Raymond, at this time acting manager at Drury Lane, see Leigh Hunt’s _Critical Essays_ (1807), pp. 29-32.

Mr. Dowton. William Dowton (1764-1851), one of the chief comedians of the Drury Lane company, made his first appearance in London in 1796 and retired in 1840.

‘Flows on to the Propontic,’ etc. This and the other quotations in this notice are from Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

The rest of the play, etc. Pope played Iago, Miss Smith Desdemona and Mrs. Glover Emilia.

190. ‘A consummation,’ etc. Adapted from Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

Antony and Cleopatra. This version was attributed to Kemble.

191. ‘The barge,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. Sc. 2.

192. ‘He’s speaking now,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 5.

‘It is my birth-day,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 13.

Mrs. Faucit. Harriet Faucit, the mother of Helen Faucit, had made her first appearance, on October 7, as Desdemona.

Mr. Terry. Daniel Terry (1780?-1829), who appeared in Edinburgh in 1809 and in London in 1813. He is chiefly remembered as an intimate friend and correspondent of Sir Walter Scott, many of whose novels he adapted for the stage.

Artaxerxes. By Thomas Augustine Arne (1710-1778), originally produced in 1762. The words were translated from Metastasio’s ‘Artaserse.’

Miss Stephens. Catherine Stephens (1794-1882), a great favourite with Hazlitt who here notices her first important appearance on the stage. She was popular not only on the stage but in the concert-room. She retired in 1835 and in 1838 married the fifth earl of Essex.

193. Catalani. Angelica Catalani (1779-1849), the greatest prima donna of her time.

Mr. Liston’s acting, etc. See ante, pp. 159-60.

The Beggar’s Opera. See the essay ‘On Patronage and Puffing’ in Table-Talk (Vol. VI. pp. 292-3), where Hazlitt gives an interesting account of the writing of this article, ‘the last,’ he says, ‘I ever wrote with any pleasure to myself.’ Cf. also The Round Table, (Vol. I. pp. 65-6) for an account of The Beggar’s Opera, which Hazlitt was never tired of praising.

‘O’erstepping,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

194. ‘Woman is [Virgins are] like,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act I.

‘There is some soul,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘Hussey, hussey,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act I.

‘Cease your funning.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 2.

195. Described by Molière. In La Critique de l’École des Femmes, Sc. 6.

Mrs. Liston’s person. Miss Tyer (d. 1854), who married Liston in 1807, was of diminutive stature. She retired from the stage when her husband left Covent Garden in 1822.

Richard Cœur de Lion. The version (1786) by General Burgoyne of Sedaine’s Richard Cœur de Lion, produced in Paris in 1784.

Oh, Richard! etc. This song in the original opera ‘O Richard! O mon Roi!’ had enjoyed great popularity in France before the Revolution.

196. Miss Foote. Maria Foote (1797?-1867), ‘a very pretty woman and a very pleasing actress,’ according to Genest. Some circumstances of her private life, alluded to by Hazlitt elsewhere, increased her popularity with the public. She retired in 1831, and in the same year married the fourth Earl of Harrington.

Amanthus. In Mrs. Inchbald’s Child of Nature. ‘_Youthful poet’s fancy_,’ etc. Rowe, The Fair Penitent, Act III. Sc. 1.

197. Madame Grassini. Josephina Grassini (1773-1850), a contralto singer who first appeared in London in 1803. Cf. De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater (Works, ed. Masson, III. 389).

Signor Tramezzani. A favourite Italian tenor. ‘To a beautiful voice he joined delicate apprehension, intense feeling and rich expression.’ (Dictionary of Musicians, 1824.)

‘Might create,’ etc. Comus, 562.

198. The Genius of Scotland. Hazlitt is perhaps thinking of Sir Pertinax Macsycophant in Macklin’s The Man of the World, who ‘always booed, and booed, and booed, as it were by instinct.’ (Act III. Sc. 1.)

M. Vestris. The Champion reads: ‘M. Vestris, who made an able-bodied representative of Zephyr in the ballet, appears to us to be the Conway among dancers.’

Miss O’Neill’s Juliet. For Eliza O’Neill (1791-1872), afterwards Lady Becher, see The Round Table, vol. I., note to p. 156, and many references in the present volume.

The Gamester, etc. Edward Moore’s tragedy, first produced in 1753.

199. Palmer. John Palmer (1742?-1798), ‘Plausible Jack,’ the original Joseph Surface. See Lamb’s Essay ‘On Some of the Old Actors.’

Isabella. In Isabella; or the Fatal Marriage (1758), Garrick’s version of Thomas Southerne’s The Fatal Marriage (1694).

‘Sweet is the dew,’ etc. Cf. vol. I. p. 91 (The Round Table).

200. ‘And Romeo banished.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Festering in his shroud.’ Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘The last scene,’ etc. In Garrick’s version (1750) of Romeo and Juliet.

‘I have forgot,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2.

Mr. Jones’s Mercutio. Richard Jones (1779-1851), known as ‘Gentleman Jones,’ a good actor of farces.

Mr. Conway’s Romeo. William Augustus Conway (1789-1828) first appeared in London in 1813, when he captivated Mrs. Piozzi, who is said to have offered to marry him. He continued to act in London and at Bath (sometimes playing important parts) till 1821, when he was driven from the English stage by an anonymous attack. In 1823 he went to America where, after acting with success and delivering religious discourses, he drowned himself in 1828. Hazlitt has somewhat softened the asperities of this paragraph. See The Champion, October 16, 1814.

‘The very beadle,’ etc. ‘A very beadle to a humorous sigh.’ Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act III. Sc. 1.

Mr. Coates’s absurdities. Robert Coates (1772-1848), the wealthy ‘Amateur of Fashion,’ who was known as ‘Romeo Coates’ from his representations of Romeo, the first of which took place at Bath in 1810.

Mr. Kean’s Richard. Drury Lane, October 3, 1814.

201. ‘Chop off his head.’ ‘Off with his head! So much for Buckingham!’ Act IV. Sc. 3 of Cibber’s ‘miserable medley.’ See ante, p. 181.

‘I fear no uncles,’ etc. Richard III., Act III. Sc. 1.

203. ‘Inexplicable dumb show and noise.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

Captain Barclay. Robert Barclay Allardice (1779-1854), generally known as ‘Captain Barclay,’ famous for his feats of pedestrianism, the most remarkable of which was walking one mile in each of 1000 successive hours, which he accomplished in the summer of 1809 at Newmarket. Bets amounting in the aggregate to £100,000 are said to have been made in connection with this feat.

204. ‘With her best nurse,’ etc. Comus, 377-80.

Mr. Kean’s Macbeth. November 5, 1814.

205. ‘Real hearts,’ etc. Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 101).

‘Fate and metaphysical aid.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

206. ‘Direness is thus,’ etc. Ibid. Act V. Sc. 5.

‘Troubled with thick-coming fancies.’ Ibid. Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Subject [servile] to all the skyey influences.’ _Measure for Measure_, Act III. Sc. 1.

207. ‘Lost too poorly in himself.’ Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘My way of life,’ etc. Ibid. Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Then, oh farewell,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘To consider too curiously.’ Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.

208. Mr. Kean’s Romeo. January 2, 1815.

‘Added a cubit,’ etc. St. Matthew, VI. 27.

‘As musical,’ etc. Comus, 477.

Luke. In Sir James Bland Burgess’s _Riches; or, The Wife and Brother_, founded on Massinger’s The City Madam, and produced in 1810.

209. Garrick and Barry. Garrick and Spranger Barry (1719-1777) were rival Romeos. In 1750 the play was acted twelve consecutive nights both at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. See Dr. Doran’s Annals of the English Stage (ed. Lowe), II. 122-3, where the remark quoted by Hazlitt is attributed to ‘a lady who did not pretend to be a critic, and who was guided by her feelings.’

‘The silver sound,’ etc. ‘How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night,’ Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2.

210. ‘What said my man,’ etc. Ibid. Act V. Sc. 3.

211. Mrs. Beverley. In Edward Moore’s The Gamester.

‘As one,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

l. 36. In The Champion Hazlitt proceeded as follows: ‘To return to Mr. Kean. We would, if we had any influence with him, advise him to give one thorough reading to Shakspeare, without any regard to the promptbook, or to his own cue, or to the effect he is likely to produce on the pit or gallery. If he does this, not with a view to his profession, but as a study of human nature in general, he will, we trust, find his account in it, quite as much as in keeping company with “the great vulgar, or the small.”[61] He will find there all that he wants, as well as all that he has:—sunshine and gloom, repose as well as energy, pleasure mixed up with pain, love and hatred, thought, feeling, and action, lofty imagination, with point and accuracy, general character with particular traits, and all that distinguishes the infinite variety of nature. He will then find that the interest of Macbeth does not end with the dagger scene, and that Hamlet is a fine character in the closet, and might be made so on the stage, by being understood. He may then hope to do justice to Shakspeare, and when he does this, he need not fear but that his fame will last.’

Mr. Kean’s Iago. Cf. ante, p. 190.

212. ‘Hedged in,’ etc. Adapted from Hamlet, Act IV. Sc. 5.

In contempt of mankind. Hazlitt refers to a passage of Burke’s. See Political Essays, vol. III. p. 32 and note.

213. ‘Play the dog,’ etc. Henry VI., Part III., Act V. Sc. 6.

214. Plausibility of a confessor. The Examiner has the following note on this passage: ‘Iago is a Jesuit out of orders, and ought to wear black. Mr. Kean had on a red coat (certainly not “the costume of his crime,” which is hypocrisy), and conducted the whole affair with the easy intrepidity of a young volunteer officer, who undertakes to seduce a bar-maid at an inn.’

214. ‘His cue,’ etc. King Lear, Act I. Sc. 2.

215. ‘Who has that heart so pure,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

216. ‘What a full fortune,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘Here is her father’s house,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 1.

Ode to Indifference. By Mrs. Frances Greville, Fanny Burney’s godmother.

‘What is the reason,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

217. ‘I cannot believe,’ etc. Ibid. Act II. Sc. 1.

‘And yet how nature,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Nearly are allied,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, I. 163-4.

‘Who knows all quantities [qualities], etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3. In The Examiner the following note is appended to this passage:—

‘If Desdemona really “saw her husband’s visage in his mind,”[62] or fell in love with the abstract idea of “his virtues and his valiant parts,”[63] she was the only woman on record, either before or since, who ever did so. Shakespeare’s want of penetration in supposing that those are the sort of things that gain the affections, might perhaps have drawn a smile from the ladies, if honest Iago had not checked it by suggesting a different explanation. It should seem by this, as if the rankness and gross impropriety of the personal connection, the difference in age, features, colour, constitution, instead of being the obstacle, had been the motive of the refinement of her choice, and had, by beginning at the wrong end, subdued her to the amiable qualities of her lord. Iago is indeed a most learned and irrefragable doctor on the subject of love, which he defines to be “merely a lust of the blood, and a permission of the will.”[64] The idea that love has its source in moral or intellectual excellence, in good nature or good sense, or has any connection with sentiment or refinement of any kind, is one of those preposterous and wilful errors, which ought to be extirpated for the sake of those few persons who alone are likely to suffer by it, whose romantic generosity and delicacy ought not to be sacrificed to the baseness of their nature, but who treading securely the flowery path, marked out for them by poets and moralists, the licensed artificers of fraud and lies, are dashed to pieces down the precipice, and perish without help.’ In the following number of The Examiner (August 14, 1814) Leigh Hunt, then in Surrey Gaol, wrote a long reply to this characteristic passage. In the number for September 4, the dramatic critic of The Examiner replied to Hazlitt’s article on the character of Iago. A letter from Hazlitt by way of rejoinder appeared on September 11 (see Appendix to these notes). The critic replied (closing the controversy) on September 18.

218. ‘Oh gentle lady,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘The milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘Least relish of salvation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Oh, you are well tuned now,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘Though in the trade of war,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 2.

219. ‘My noble lord,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘It is not written in the bond.’ The Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Sc. 1.

220. ‘Though I perchance,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘O grace,’ etc. Ibid.

‘This may do something,’ etc. Ibid.

‘I did say so,’ etc. Ibid.

221. ‘Work on,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘How is it, General,’ etc. Ibid.

‘Look on the tragic loading,’ etc. Ibid. Act V. Sc. 2.

Mr. Kean’s Richard II. Shakespeare’s play with considerable alterations and additions (by Wroughton), produced March 9, 1815, and acted thirteen times. This is the first paper which Hazlitt wrote as regular dramatic critic of The Examiner. Leigh Hunt, the editor, who was released from prison in February 1815, had intended to take up this work, and had begun the year (while still in Surrey gaol) by contributing a series of articles on the principal actors and actresses of the day. He had also written one ‘Theatrical Examiner’ (February 26, on Kean’s Richard III.) before he was compelled by the stirring events of the ‘hundred days’ to devote all his attention to politics. Thus the work of dramatic critic, as well as the carrying out of the ‘Round Table’ scheme, fell to Hazlitt. Cf. the advertisement to The Round Table (Vol I. p. xxxi.).

We are in the number, etc. Cf. Lamb’s essay ‘On the tragedies of Shakspeare considered with reference to their fitness for stage representation,’ originally published in The Reflector (1811).

222. ‘Inexpressible [inexplicable] dumb-show and noise.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Segnius per aures,’ etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 180.

Mr. Kean ... in very many passages, etc. Cf. Coleridge’s well-known saying (Table Talk, April 27, 1823): ‘To see him [Kean] act, is like reading Shakspeare by flashes of lightning.’

223. ‘Overdone or come tardy of [off]’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

224. ‘Why on thy knee,’ etc. Richard II., Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Oh that I were a mockery king,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 1.

The Editor of this Paper. Leigh Hunt first saw Kean as Richard III., and wrote a criticism in The Examiner (February 26, 1815) to which Hazlitt refers.

Mr. Pope. Alexander Pope (1763-1835) from 1785 till 1827 acted an immense number of parts both at Drury Lane and Covent Garden.

Mr. Holland. Charles Holland (1768-1849?), nephew of the better known Charles Holland (1733-1769), Garrick’s friend, first appeared at Drury Lane in 1796.

Idly tacked on to the conclusion. ‘For Mrs. Bartley to rant and whine in,’ The Examiner adds.

The Unknown Guest. Produced on March 29, 1815, and attributed to Arnold, the manager.

Mr. Arnold. Samuel James Arnold (1774-1852) in 1809 opened the Lyceum Theatre as the English Opera House, of which he was manager for many years. He was manager at Drury Lane from 1812 to 1815.

225. ‘More honoured,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

Mr. Kelly. Michael Kelly (1764?-1826), after singing abroad chiefly in Italy and Vienna, first appeared in 1787 at Drury Lane of which he became musical director.

Mr. Braham. See vol. VII., note to p. 70.

226. Mr. Phillips. Thomas Phillipps (1774-1841), the composer, who first appeared in London in 1796.

Mrs. Dickons. Maria Dickons (1770?-1833) appeared at Covent Garden as Miss Poole (her maiden name) in 1793. She joined the Drury Lane company in 1811 and retired about 1820.

Miss Kelly. Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882), a niece of Michael Kelly, appeared at Drury Lane as early as 1798 and was chiefly associated with that theatre during her long career as an actress. She retired in 1835 and devoted herself to the training of young actresses. She was a great friend of the Lambs and the heroine of Elia’s Barbara S——. The present volume shows how greatly Hazlitt admired her acting.

Mr. Knight. Edward Knight (1774-1826), ‘Little Knight,’ a regular member of the Drury Lane company from 1812.

227. Love in Limbo. Attributed to Millingen.

Zembuca. Zembuca, or the Net-Maker and his Wife, by Pocock.

Mr. Kean’s Zanga. At Drury Lane, May 24, 1815.

The Revenge. By Edward Young, produced in 1721.

228. ‘I knew you could not bear it.’ Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘And so is my revenge.’ Act V. Sc. 2.

Oxberry. William Oxberry (1784-1824), one of the regular Drury Lane comedians. His Dramatic Biography (5 vols. 1820-1826) was edited after his death by his widow.

229. Mr. Bannister’s Farewell. June 1, 1815. Hazlitt had already published part of this article in The Round Table, (vol. I. p. 155).

The World. By James Kenney, produced in 1808.

The Children in the Wood. By Thomas Morton, music by Dr. Samuel Arnold, produced in 1793.

Mr. Gattie. Henry Gattie (1774-1844), a member of the Drury Lane company from 1813 till his retirement in 1833.

The Honey-Moon. By John Tobin (1770-1804), produced in 1805.

Mrs. Davison. Maria Rebecca Davison (1780?-1858) appeared at Drury Lane (as Miss Duncan) in 1804, and was chiefly associated with that theatre for a number of years.

Decamp. See post, note to p. 247.

We do not wonder, etc. This passage to the end is in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 155-6 and notes.

230. Comus. Produced April 28, 1815, and acted fourteen times.

231. ‘Of mask and antique pageantry.’ L’Allegro, 128.

‘A marvellous proper man.’ Richard III., Act I. Sc. 2.

Mr. Duruset. J. B. Durusett, ‘an agreeable tenor singer’ at Covent Garden. He was regarded as the principal male singer during the absence of John Sinclair from that theatre.

‘Magic circle.’

Cf. ‘But Shakespear’s magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.’

Dryden, Prologue to The Tempest, 19-20.

‘This evening late,’ etc. Comus, 540 et seq.

232. ‘Two such I saw,’ etc. Ibid. 291 et seq.

233. ‘Royal fortitude.’

‘—— ——whose mind ensued, Through perilous war, with regal fortitude.’

Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘November, 1813,’ published in 1815. In the note Hazlitt probably refers to the omission of _The Evening Walk_ (1793), which was not republished till 1837.

Mr. Kean’s Leon. June 20, 1815.

Leon. In Fletcher’s Rule a Wife and Have a Wife.

234. Mr. Bartley. George Bartley (1782?-1858) first appeared at Drury Lane in 1802, and became manager of Covent Garden in 1829.

‘Double deafness.’ Cf. ‘But yield to double darkness nigh at hand,’ Samson Agonistes, 593.

The Shakespeare Gallery. Cf. ante, note to p. 184.

235. ‘The gay creatures,’ etc. Comus, 299.

Messrs. Young, etc. Charles Mayne Young (1777-1856), who succeeded Kemble as the chief tragedian at Covent Garden, and retired in 1832; William Abbott (1789-1843), a member of the Covent Garden company for many years from 1812; John Emery (1777-1822), one of the best actors of his time, especially in rustic parts, associated almost entirely with Covent Garden from 1798 till his death; Sarah Booth (1793-1867), who first appeared at Covent Garden in 1810.

’Tis much.’ Cymbeline, Act I. Sc. 6.

236. Airy shapes, etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, I. 775 et seq.

Mr. Grimaldi’s Orson. In Valentine and Orson, the part in which Joseph Grimaldi (1779-1837) made his first appearance (1806) at Covent Garden.

‘Tricksy spirit.’ The Tempest, Act V. Sc. 1.

237. Mrs. Bland. Maria Theresa Bland (1769-1838), who made her first appearance at Drury Lane (as Miss Romanzini) in 1786. Hazlitt heard her in Liverpool in 1792. See vol. vii. p. 193.

‘After the songs of Apollo.’ Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Sc. 2.

My Wife! What Wife? By Barrett, produced July 25, 1815.

‘Keep such a dreadful pudder [pother].’ etc. King Lear, Act III. Sc. 2.

238. ‘Good Mr. Tokely [Master Brook],’ etc. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘In the likeness of a sigh.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 1.

239. Mr. Meggett. This actor from Edinburgh made his first appearance at the Haymarket on July 19, 1815. Genest (VIII. 486) says that he was ‘cruelly used by the bigotted admirers of Kean.’

The Mountaineers. By George Colman the younger, produced in 1795.

Mr. Harley’s Fidget. In The Boarding House, a musical farce by Samuel Beazley (1786-1851), first produced on August 26, 1811.

Mr. Harley. John Pritt Harley (1786-1858) made his first appearance in London at the English Opera House in July, 1815. Soon afterwards he joined the company at Drury Lane, where he remained till 1835, and made a great reputation as a comic actor and singer.

The Blue Stocking. Moore’s M.P., or the Blue-Stocking (1811).

240. Mr. Wallack. James William Wallack (1791?-1864), a versatile actor well known for many years both in London and America.

Mrs. Harlowe. Sarah Harlowe (1765-1852), a low comedy actress who first appeared at Covent Garden in 1790.

‘Warbled, etc. Cf. ‘In amorous ditties all a summer’s day.’ Paradise Lost, I. 449.

‘As one incapable,’ etc. Hamlet, Act IV. Sc. 7.

The Iron Chest. By George Colman the younger, produced by Kemble in 1796.

241. The Squire of Dames. The Faerie Queene, Book III. Canto VII. The giantess was Argante.

Mr. Capel Lofft. Capell Lofft (1751-1824), a well-known politician and miscellaneous writer, the patron of the poet Bloomfield and Napoleon. The letter referred to by Hazlitt appeared in The Morning Chronicle, August 3, 1815.

Mr. Foote. An actor from Edinburgh who had made his first appearance in London on July 18, 1815.

242. Mr. Gyngell. Gyngell’s ‘Exhibition of the original Fantoccini, the Microcosm, the Moving Panorama,’ etc. was on view at this time at the theatre in Catherine Street.

Living in London. Attributed to Jameson, produced August 5, 1815.

‘Want of decency,’ etc. The Earl of Roscommon’s Essay on Translated Verse,

114.

243. Quod sit, etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 188.

The King’s Proxy. By Samuel James Arnold.

Plato. The Republic, Book VII.

244. Mr. and Mrs. T. Cooke. Thomas Simpson Cooke (1782-1848), who composed the music for The King’s Proxy.

l. 23. The Examiner proceeds to quote from The Morning Chronicle a favourable notice of a new musical farce (by E. P. Knight) entitled A Chip of the Old Block, or, The Village Festival, and adds: ‘This account is from the Chronicle. It is much too favourable. The piece is one of the most wretched we have seen. A statute fair would be more entertaining. The political claptraps were so barefaced as to be hissed. Matthews sung a song with that kind of humour and effect of which our readers will easily form an idea.’

The Maid and the Magpie. Arnold’s version, produced August 21, 1815.

245. The Hypocrite. By Isaac Bickerstaffe, first produced in 1768.

246. ‘Sleek o’er his rugged looks.’ Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 2.

Major Sturgeon. In Foote’s The Mayor of Garratt.

Mrs. Sparks. See Leigh Hunt’s Dramatic Essays (ed. Archer and Lowe), p. 177.

Mrs. Orger. Mary Ann Orger (1788-1849) appeared at Drury Lane in 1808. She was the wife of Thomas Orger, a Quaker.

247. ‘Has honours,’ etc. Cf. ‘Some have greatness thrust upon ’em.’ Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 5.

Mr. Decamp. De Camp (Mrs. Charles Kemble’s brother) had played Isidore in Coleridge’s Remorse (January 23, 1813). For another failure of his see Lamb’s Letters (ed. W. C. Hazlitt), I. 377.

Mr. Edwards’s Richard III. September 25, 1815.

‘Sole sway and sovereignty.’ Cf. ‘Give solely sovereign sway.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

248. Mr. Incledon. Charles Incledon (1763-1826), the tenor, a good singer but a bad actor, appeared at Covent Garden from 1790 till 1815.

249. Lovers’ Vows. Mrs. Inchbald’s version of Kotzebue’s Natural Son, first produced at Covent Garden, 1798, revived at Drury Lane, September 26, 1815.

Mrs. Mardyn. Mrs. Mardyn had been very successful in Dublin. A false report was afterwards spread that she had eloped with Byron. See Byron’s Letters and Journals (ed. Prothero), III. 217, and Mrs. Baron Wilson’s Our Actresses, I. 198-207.

Mr. Dowton ... for the first time. October 5, 1815.

‘Merry jest.’ Titus Andronicus, Act V. Sc. 2.

250. Mr. Lovegrove. William Lovegrove (1778-1816), who made his reputation at Bath, and appeared in London in 1810.

Wewitzer. Ralph Wewitzer (1748-1825), who had had a long career, chiefly in secondary parts. This was one of his last appearances.

l. 18. The Examiner article continues: ‘The new farce [at Covent Garden, October 5, 1815], called The Farce-Writer, has been very successful; we wish we could add deservedly so. It is a happy instance of lively dulness. The wit consists entirely in the loco-motion of the actors. It is a very badly written pantomime.’

250. The School for Scandal. September 27, 1815.

Little Simmons. Samuel Simmons (1777?-1819), a regular member of the Covent Garden company from 1796, and very successful as a comedian. Moses in The School for Scandal was one of his parts.

‘Cast some longing,’ etc. Gray’s Elegy, St. 22.

251. Fawcett. John Fawcett (1768-1837), for many years manager of Covent Garden.

Mrs. Gibbs. For an account of this actress, said to have been the wife of George Colman the younger, see Mrs. Baron Wilson’s Our Actresses, I. 83-90.

Mr. Blanchard. William Blanchard (1769-1835), one of the Covent Garden comedians. See Leigh Hunt’s Critical Essays, p. 122.

Mr. Farley. Charles Farley (1771-1859), actor, dramatist, and stage-manager.

last line. The Examiner continues: ‘Miss O’Neill has resumed her engagement at this house, and plays her usual characters to crowded audiences with even increased effect. We should attempt to describe her excellency in some of them, but that we feel ourselves unable to do her even tolerable justice.’

252. Mrs. Alsop’s Rosalind. Covent Garden, October 18, 1815. Mrs. Alsop did not continue long on the stage. She was the daughter of Mrs. Jordan and Richard Daly, the Irish theatrical manager.

‘No more like,’ etc. Cf. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.

Her Nell. In The Devil to Pay.

The Will. By F. Reynolds, produced in 1797.

253. John Du Bart. October 25, 1815. The piece, attributed to Pocock, seems to have been founded on an exploit of the French naval hero, Jean Barth (1651-1702).

That which took place in Hyde Park. Hazlitt refers to the extraordinary thanksgiving jubilee, which took place in London on August 1, 1814, and following days. Part of the programme consisted of a sham fight on the Serpentine.

254. Mr. Bishop. Afterwards Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-1855), the composer.

‘Guns, drums,’ etc. Pope, Satires, I. 26.

The Beggar’s Opera. October 28, 1815. Cf. ante, pp. 193-5.

Miss Nash. Miss Nash had played Polly at Bath, November 4, 1813, a performance described by Genest as ‘very good.’

255. Mrs. Davenport. Mary Ann Davenport (1765?-1843) first appeared at Covent Garden in 1794.

256. l. 15. The Examiner adds: ‘A new farce has been brought out at Drury-Lane in the course of the week, called _Twenty per Cent_. It has succeeded very well. A voluble lying knave of a servant in it by Mr. Harley, who plays this class of characters well, is its chief attraction. It is deficient in plot, but not without pleasantry. It is improbable, lively, and short.’ The farce was by T. Dibdin.

Miss O’Neill’s Elwina. Covent Garden, November 11. Hannah More’s Percy was produced in 1778.

l. 15. The Theatrical Examiner for November 12, 1815, on Kean’s Bajazet, and Mrs. Mardyn and Mrs. Alsop in _The Country Girl_, is clearly Hazlitt’s.

257. There is one short word, etc. ‘Fudge.’ See The Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xi.

258. l. 24. The Examiner continues: ‘Miss Stephens has appeared twice in Polly, and once in Rosetta. She looks better than she did last year, and, if possible, sings better. Of the new Farce at Drury-Lane [Who’s Who? or The Double Imposture], we have only room to add, that there is one good scene in it, in which Munden and Harley made a very grotesque contrast, with some tolerable equivoques; all the rest is a tissue of the most tedious and gross improbabilities. The author’s wit appeared to have been elicited and expended in the same moment.’

Where to Find a Friend. By Leigh, produced at Drury Lane November 23, 1815.

260. Johnstone. John Henry Johnstone (1749-1828), a member of the Drury Lane company from 1803 to 1820. He began his career as a singer.

‘The milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. v.

261. Cymon. Garrick’s play was produced in 1767.

‘Sweet Passion of Love,’ Act III. Sc. 2.

‘It is silly sooth,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘Now I am seventy-two.’ Cymon, Act II. Sc. 3.

‘Split the ears,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

262. What’s a Man of Fashion? ‘An indifferent farce’ (according to Genest) by Reynolds.

263. ‘With pleased attention,’ etc. Collins, Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer, 59-63. Collins is referring to Fletcher.

‘Where did you rest last night?’ The Orphan, Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘A cubit from his stature.’ Cf. St. Matthew, vi. 27.

The Honey-Moon. By John Tobin (1805).

‘He still plays the dog.’ Cf. Henry VI., Part III. Act V. Sc. 6.

last line. The Examiner adds: ‘Mrs. Marden [Mardyn] played Miss Hoyden on Wednesday in the admirable comedy of the Trip to Scarborough. She seemed to consult her own genius in it less than the admonitions of some critics. There was accordingly less to find fault with, but we like her better when she takes her full swing.

‘If to her share some trifling errors fall, Look in her face, and you’ll forget them all.’[65]

Mr. Penley’s Lord Foppington had very considerable merit.

264. The Merchant of Bruges. A version by Douglas Kinnaird, Byron’s friend, of Fletcher’s comedy, The Beggar’s Bush.

‘That every petty lord,’ etc. For this and the other passages quoted see The Beggar’s Bush, Act II. Sc. 3.

266. l. 17. In The Examiner the article continued as follows: ‘The new musical farce, My Spouse and I, continues to be acted with deserved applause. It is by much the best thing brought out this season. It has a great deal of all that is necessary to a good farce, point, character, humour, and incident. It was admirably supported. Harley played a lively character of the bustling Fawcett-cast very happily. He may now stick very comfortably in the skirts of public favour, if he does not chuse to fling himself out of them. The only faults of this piece are, that it is too long in the second act, and that Miss Kelly continues somewhat too long in breeches, for the purposes of decorum. Mr. Barnard, as a country lad, played very well, and was deservedly encored in a song, “But not for me the merry bells.” This piece is described by Genest as “an indifferent musical farce by C. Dibdin, Jun.”’

Smiles and Tears. By Mrs. Charles Kemble (Maria Theresa De Camp, 1774-1838), produced December 12, 1815.

268. Lucy Lockitt. In The Beggar’s Opera.

Deaf and Dumb. A version (1801) of Bouilly’s _Abbé de l’Épée_.

Father and Daughter. Mrs. Opie’s (1769-1853) first publication (1801).

l. 29. In The Examiner Hazlitt adds: ‘Mr. Liston spoke an indifferent epilogue inimitably well.’

George Barnwell. Cf. The Round Table, vol. I. p. 154.

‘A custom more honoured,’ etc. Hamlet, Act. I. Sc. 4.

269. ‘These odds more even.’ Cf. Measure for Measure, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘A good hater.’ See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), I. 190, u. 1.

‘He is the fitter for heaven.’ George Barnwell, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Could he lay,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 1.

270. l. 10. The Examiner concludes: ‘Both Pantomimes are indifferent. That at Drury-Lane consists in endless flights of magpies up to the ceiling, and that at Covent-Garden stays too long in China. The latter part was better where Mr. Grimaldi comes in, and lets off a culverin at his enemies, and sings a serenade to his mistress in concert with Grimalkin. We were glad, right glad, to see Mr. Grimaldi again. There was (some weeks back) an ugly report that Mr. Grimaldi was dead. We would not believe it; we did not like to ask any one the question, but we watched the public countenance for the intimation of an event which “would have eclipsed the gaiety of nations.”[66] We looked at the faces we met in the street, but there were no signs of general sadness; no one stopped his acquaintance to say, that a man of genius was no more. Here indeed he is again, safe and sound, and as pleasant as ever. As without the gentleman at St. Helena, there is an end of politics in Europe; so without the clown at Sadler’s Wells, there must be an end of pantomimes in this country!’

The Busy Body. Mrs. Centlivre’s comedy (1709).

‘His voice,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

271. Barnes. ‘Mrs. Barnes from Exeter.’ December 29, 1815.

‘The divine Desdemona.’ Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘That flows on,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

Zanga or Bajazet. In Young’s The Revenge and Rowe’s Tamerlane respectively.

272. ‘Then, oh, farewell!’ For this and the other Othello quotations see ante, p. 189.

A New Way to Pay Old Debts. Sir Giles Overreach was one of Kean’s greatest parts. See Doran’s Annals of the English Stage (ed. Lowe), III. 390-1.

It has been considered, etc. Part of this passage was repeated in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 156-7, and notes.

273. ‘Two at a time,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act III. Sc. 4.

Edwin. John Edwin, the elder (1749-1790), one of the great comedians of his day.

274. ‘His fortune swells him,’ etc. _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘Come hither, Marall,’ etc. Ibid., Act II. Sc. 1.

‘I’m feeble,’ etc. Ibid.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As altered by Reynolds, and produced January 17, 1816.

We hope we have not been, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to the concluding paragraph of one of his Round Table essays. See vol. I. p. 64.

275. ‘Injurious Hermia,’ etc. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Sc. 2.

277. ‘Is he not moved,’ etc. A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘Lord,—Right Honourable Lord.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 1, and Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Do themselves homage.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘It came twanging off.’ A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Act III. Sc. 2.

278. Love for Love. January 23, 1816.

Munden’s Foresight. Cf. ante, p. 71.

Parsons. William Parsons (1736-1795), ‘the comic Roscius.’ Foresight was one of his best parts.

‘School’s up,’ etc. An interpolation apparently.

279. ‘A great sea-porpoise.’ ‘You great sea-calf,’ Miss Prue says to him (Act III. Sc. 7).

‘And pray sister,’ etc. Act II. Sc. 9.

The Anglade Family. Accusation, or The Family of D’Anglade, adapted from the French by J. H. Payne, and produced February 1, 1816.

The Maid and the Magpye. Cf. ante, p. 244.

280. note. Lavalette, after the second Bourbon restoration in 1815, was, along with Ney, condemned to death, but escaped by changing clothes with his wife. Cf. vol. III. p. 157 and note.

281. The same drama. The Covent Garden version (February 1) was by James Kenney.

Mathews. Charles Mathews (1776-1835), one of the best comedians, and the greatest mimic of his time. Hazlitt’s admiration of him was not enthusiastic.

Charles Kemble. Charles Kemble (1775-1854), the younger brother of Mrs. Siddons and John Philip Kemble, first appeared in London in 1794, and retired in 1840.

Measure for Measure. Covent Garden, February 8, 1816.

Lectures on Dramatic Literature, etc. Cf. vol. I. (Characters of Shakespear’s Plays), p. 346 and note.

282. ‘The cowl,’ etc. Cf. ‘All hoods make not monks.’ Henry VIII., Act III. Sc. 1.

‘If I do lose thee,’ etc. Measure for Measure, Act III. Sc. 1.

283. ‘To lie in cold obstruction,’ etc. Ibid.

‘Careless,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘He has been drinking hard,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘A dish of some three-pence.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 1.

‘There is some soul,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 1.

Society for the Suppression of Vice. See vol. I. p. 60, and note.

284. ‘The enemies of the human race.’ The phrase was applied to Buonaparte. Cf. vol. IX. p. 321.

‘Oh fie, fie.’ Measure for Measure, Act III. Sc. 1.

Vetus. See vol. III. pp. 57 et seq., and notes.

‘Marall, come hither, Marall.’ See ante, note to p. 274.

285. l. 35. In The Examiner the article concludes: ‘Rosina has been acted at this theatre to introduce the two Miss Halfords in the characters of Rosina and Phœbe. They have both of them succeeded, and equally well. If they are not a pair of Sirens, they are very pretty singers. Miss E. Halford is the tallest, and Miss S. Halford the fattest of the two.’

286. ‘The mob are so pleased,’ etc. The Recruiting Officer, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘Oh, the wonderful works of Nature.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 3.

‘Well, Tummy.’ Ibid.

287. l. 6. In The Examiner the article concludes as follows: ‘The new farce of What Next? is very broad, very improbable, but if better managed, might have been made very laughable. The plot turns entirely on the disguise assumed by a nephew to personate his uncle, which leads to several ridiculous surprises and blunders, and the carrying on and the disentangling of the plot is effected with much more violence than art. It was once or twice in danger, but it hurried on so rapidly from absurdity to absurdity, that it at last distanced the critics. Even as a farce, it is too crude and coarse ever to become a very great favourite.’ ‘A moderate Farce by T. Dibdin’ (Genest), produced at Drury Lane, Feb. 29.

287. The Fair Penitent. By Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718), produced in 1703. On the present occasion Charles Kemble played Lothario.

‘A Muse of fire,’ etc. Henry V., Prologue.

‘An awkward imitator of Shakespear.’ See Tom Jones, Book IX. chap. 1.

288. ‘Which to be hated,’ etc. Pope’s Essay on Man, II. 218.

‘It was the day,’ etc. The Fair Penitent, Act III. Sc. 1.

Last line. The article in The Examiner concludes with a brief reference to the re-appearance of Braham in _Israel in Egypt_, and gives the speech addressed by him to the audience, who had received him with some signs of disapprobation.

289. The Duke of Milan. Published in 1623.

‘Which felt a stain,’ etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

290. ‘Proud to die,’ etc. The Duke of Milan, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Some widow’s curse,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 274.

‘By orphans’ tears.’ See ante, note to p. 277.

291. l. 5. Add: ‘Mr. Bartley spoke a new prologue on the occasion, which was well received.’

Miss O’Neill’s Lady Teazle. In The Examiner this article begins as follows: ‘Miss O’Neill [we beg pardon of the Board of Green Cloth, and are almost afraid that this style of theatrical criticism may not be quite consistent with the principles of subordination and the scale of respectability about to be established in Europe; for we read in the Examiner of last week the following paragraph: “At Berlin, orders have been given by the police to leave out the titles of Mr., Mrs., and Miss, prefixed to the names of public actors. The females are to take the name of frou. Accordingly we see the part of Desdemona, in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Othello, is given out to be played by frou (woman) Schrok.” This is as it should be, and legitimate. But to proceed till further orders in the usual style].’

Miss Farren. Elizabeth Farren (1759-1829), who first played in London in 1777, retired in 1797, and in the same year married the 12th Earl of Derby. Cf. ante, p. 389. Her last appearance was in the character of Lady Teazle.

292. Mrs. Egerton. Sarah Egerton (1782-1847) first appeared in London in 1811, and retired in 1835. Mrs. Baron Wilson (Our Actresses, I. 79) relates that on the occasion here referred to by Hazlitt she played Meg Merrilies in place of Emery, who ‘refused to put on petticoats.’

The late Mr. Cooke. George Frederick Cooke (1756-1811) was frequently too intoxicated to appear on the stage. See ante, note to p. 207.

293. ‘The web of our life,’ etc. All’s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘Like the giddy sailor,’ etc. Misquoted from _Richard III._, Act III. Sc. 4.

294. ‘Deep than loud.’ Cf. ‘Curses, not loud, but deep.’ Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

295. The following account. See ante, pp. 179-80.

296. ‘I would not have parted with it,’ etc. The Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. 1.

297. ‘Exhaling to the sky.’ Cf. ‘No natural exhalation in the sky.’ King John, Act III. Sc. 4.

Madame Mainville Fodor. Josephine Fodor-Mainvielle (b. 1793). This was her first, or one of her first appearances in London. She retired from the stage in 1833.

‘Has her exits,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

298. ‘Till the moon,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 607 et seq.

‘Hope told a flattering tale.’ An anonymous song set to music by Paisiello.

Mons. Drouet. Louis François Philippe Drouet (1792-1873).

l. 29. The Examiner continues: ‘Drury-Lane.—A young lady has appeared at this theatre in the character of Cecilia in the Chapter of Accidents: but from the insipidity of the character in which she chose to appear, we know no more of her powers of acting than before we saw her. Both her face and voice are pleasing.’ The lady was Miss Murray. Sophia Lee’s comedy The Chapter of Accidents was produced in 1780.

Mr. Cobham. April 15, 1816. Thomas Cobham (1786-1842) failed on this occasion, but became ‘a hero to transpontine audiences.’

‘Made of penetrable stuff.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

299. ‘Unhousell’d,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 5.

Sir Pertinax MacSycophant. In Macklin’s _The Man of the World_ (1781). Bibby appeared on April 16, 1816.

Egerton. Daniel Egerton (1772-1835), ‘long the performer of “cruel uncles” and “flinty-hearted fathers”’ at Covent Garden. He married Sarah Fisher, for whom see ante, p. 292.

300. Miss Grimani. Miss Grimani from Bath played Juliet, April 23, 1816.

‘How silver sweet,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘The midnight bell,’ etc. King John, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Gentle tassel.’ ‘To lure this tassel-gentle back again.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2.

301. Garrick’s Ode on Shakespear. Written for the famous Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford in 1769.

‘Vesuvius in an eruption,’ etc. Gray, Letter to Warton, August 8, 1749. See Letters (ed. Tovey), I. 201.

‘I was ready to sink for him,’ etc. Ibid.

302. l. 20. In The Examiner Hazlitt continues as follows: ‘But any one who chuses may see the celebration of the centenary of Shakspeare’s death to-day, (which is Thursday) on Saturday or on Tuesday next, at Covent-Garden Theatre. They kill him there as often as the town pleases.——We cannot speak favourably of either of the new after-pieces, Who wants a Wife? and Pitcairn’s Island. The one is contrived for Mr. Liston to make foolish love in; and the other for Mr. Smith to play that land-monster, a singing, swaggering, good-natured, honest, blackguard English Jack Tar, a sort of animal that ought never to come ashore, or as soon as it does, ought to go to sea again.’

‘Doubtless the pleasure,’ etc. Hudibras, Part II., Canto III., 1-2.

‘Full volly home.’ Cf. ‘But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,’ Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 628. Cf. King Lear, Act V. Sc. 3, l. 174.

303. Madame Sacchi. Madame Sacchi’s ‘astonishing performances’ on the tight rope were introduced ‘for the accommodation of the crowds of applicants’ who desired to witness them.

‘So fails,’ etc. See The Excursion, Book VII., 975 et seq.

‘Affecting a virtue.’ ‘Assume a virtue, if you have it not.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘They two can be made one flesh.’ Cf. Genesis ii. 24.

Dame Hellenore. The Faerie Queene, Book III. Canto X.

‘Aggravated,’ etc. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I. Sc. 2.

304. ‘There is some fury,’ etc. A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘A word of naught.’ Cf. ‘You must say “paragon”; a paramour is, God bless us, a thing of naught.’ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘So stands the statue,’ etc. Thomson, The Seasons, Summer, 1347.

l. 24. Hazlitt concluded his article in The Examiner as follows: ‘He must be sent to Coventry or St. Helena!’

305. Bertram. By the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824), author of Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). Bertram had previously been recommended by Scott to Kemble who declined it. Coleridge attacked it in The Courier and in _Biographia Literaria_. See Dykes Campbell’s Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 223, note 1.

Aristotle, etc. Part of the famous definition of tragedy in the Poetics.

‘Yes, the limner’s art,’ etc. Bertram, Act I. Sc. 5.

306. ‘And yet some sorcery,’ etc. Ibid.

307. ‘Yea, thus they live,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 2.

‘By heaven,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 2.

The speech of Bertram. Ibid. Act V. Sc. 2.

‘The wretched have no country.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 3.

Miss Somerville. Margaret Agnes Somerville (1799-1883), whose first appearance Hazlitt notices here. In 1819 she married Alfred Bunn, the theatrical manager. Her subsequent appearances were fitful, and she retired at an early age.

308. ‘Decked in purple,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 5.

‘Beholds that lady,’ etc. Ibid.

l. 13. In The Examiner Hazlitt adds: ‘Covent-Garden. We have seen Miss O’Neill’s Mrs. Oakley. It is much better than her Lady Teazle, and yet it is not good. Her comedy is only tragedy diluted. It wants the true spirit.’

Adelaide, or the Emigrants. The first play of Richard Lalor Sheil (1791-1851). It had been brought out at Dublin in 1814.

309. ‘Throw it to the dogs,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

Mr. Murray. Charles Murray (1754-1821), after acquiring considerable reputation in the provinces, appeared at Covent Garden in 1796.

310. ‘Where did you rest last night.’ See ante, note to p. 263.

l. 22. In The Examiner the article concludes with a long account of the plot of Bertram.

It has been observed of Ben Jonson, etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 42.

311. ‘As dry,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

‘Like a man,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II., Act III. Sc. 2.

312. ‘The baby of a girl.’ Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘Rather than so,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 1.

313. The Princess Charlotte. The only daughter of the Prince Regent, and a great favourite of the nation’s. She married (May 2, 1816) Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, and died November 5, 1817.

‘Leave me to my repose.’ ‘Leave me, leave me to repose.’ Gray. The Vegtam’s Kivitha; or the Descent of Odin.

‘The line too labours,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 371.

‘I tell you,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 1.

314. ‘Go, go.’ In the banquet scene presumably, Act III. Sc. 4.

Mr. Horace Twiss. Horace Twiss (1787-1849), the biographer of Lord Eldon, was a nephew of Mrs. Siddons and wrote for her an address which she delivered on taking her farewell of the stage, June 29, 1812.

‘Himself again.’ Richard III. (Cibber’s version).

‘Tomorrow and tomorrow.’ Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

Printed by a steam-engine. See vol. III., p. 158 (Political Essays).

315. Up all Night, or the Smuggler’s Cave. By Matthew Peter King (1773-1823) first produced in 1809 (words by S. J. Arnold).

Mr. Russell from Edinburgh. Hazlitt distinguishes him from Samuel Thomas Russell (1769?-1845), great as Jerry Sneak.

The Beehive. A musical farce by John Gideon Millingen (1782-1862), produced in 1811.

Wrench. Benjamin Wrench (1778-1843), after playing at Bath and York, appeared in London in 1809 and became a well-known comedian at Drury Lane, The Lyceum and Covent Garden.

The School of Reform. By Thomas Morton, produced in 1805.

316. The Irish Widow. By Garrick, produced in 1772.

l. 10. Hazlitt, in concluding his article in The Examiner, declares his disbelief of the rumours relating to Mrs. Mardyn (see ante, note to p. 249), and publishes a long letter from her addressed to the editor of the Morning Chronicle, indignantly denying them.

The Jealous Wife. By George Colman the elder, produced in 1761.

Sylvester Daggerwood. By George Colman the younger, first acted in 1795 as ‘New Hay at the Old Market.’

‘Like angels’ visits,’ etc. See vol. IV., note to p. 346 (The Spirit of the Age).

Wild Oats. O’Keeffe’s comedy, produced in 1794.

317. The acting of Dowton and Russell. This paragraph is repeated in Lectures on the Comic Writers. See ante, pp. 167-8.

319. The Poor Gentleman. By George Colman the younger, produced in 1802.

The Agreeable Surprise. Cf. Hazlitt’s account of this farce, ante, pp. 166-7.

320. l. 4. Hazlitt continues in The Examiner: ‘We saw Miss Matthews’s name in the bills, but as it was her benefit night at Covent-Garden, her entrance in the afterpiece was an agreeable surprise to us.—English Opera. A gentleman of the name of Horn has re-appeared with much and deserved applause at this Theatre, in the part of the Seraskier. His voice and style of singing are good, and his action spirited and superior to that of singers in general. We hope soon to say more of him.’ Charles Edward Horn (1786-1849), the composer of ‘Cherry Ripe,’ ‘I know a bank,’ etc.

Artaxerxes. Cf. ante, pp. 192-3.

321. Exit by Mistake. ‘A pretty good comedy in 3 acts, by Jameson’ (Genest).

322. John Dennis. Hazlitt probably refers to John Dennis’s ‘Remarks upon Cato.’ 1713.

The editor of a modern journal. Probably Hazlitt’s brother-in-law, Dr., afterwards Sir John Stoddart.

323. The Beggar’s Opera. Cf. ante, pp. 193-5. Polly’s famous song, ‘Oh, ponder well! be not severe,’ etc. (Act I.), is said to have turned the tide in favour of the opera at its first representation, January 29, 1728.

324. Schlegel’s work on the Drama. See Lecture IV. _Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature_ (trans. John Black, ed. 1900), p. 64.

325. Selon la coutume de notre pays. See vol. I. note to p. 100.

Cosi fan Tutti. Mozart’s Opera, 1788.

Dansomanie. By Étienne Nicolas Méhul (1763-1817), produced in Paris, 1800.

326. ‘To draw three souls,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 3.

Mr. Naldi. Giuseppe Naldi (1770-1820), who first appeared in London in 1806.

Pandarus. In Troilus and Cressida.

Signor Begri. Presumably Pierre Ignace Begrey (1783-1863), who appeared in London, 1815-1822.

‘Floats upon the air,’ etc. Loosely quoted from Comus, 249-251.

‘And silence,’ etc. Ibid. 557-560.

327. Madame Vestris. Lucia Elizabeth Bartolozzi (1797-1856), granddaughter of the engraver, and the wife, first (1813) of Armand Vestris, a dancer at the King’s Theatre, and second (1838), of Charles James Mathews. She first appeared in London in 1815, and retired in 1854. Mrs. Baron Wilson (Our Actresses, II. 184) describes her as ‘the fair Syren, who, for nearly a quarter of a century, has fascinated the whole kingdom by her talent and beauty.’

Miss L. Kelly. The younger sister of Frances Maria Kelly, born 1795.

328. l. 13. In The Examiner the article concludes as follows: ‘Love in a Village is put off till Thursday next, and Mr. Incledon is to perform in Artaxerxes on Tuesday. Mr. Horn played the Seraskier in the Siege of Belgrade on Friday, and sung the songs, particularly ‘My heart with love is beating’ with great truth and effect. Mr. Russell’s Leopold was very lively. It is not necessary to say that Miss Kelly’s Lilla was good, for all that she does is so. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were present, and were very cordially greeted by the audience. After the play, God save the King was repeatedly called for, and at length sung, with an additional, occasional, and complimentary verse by Mr. Arnold:—

“Long may the Royal Line, Proud Star of Brunswick shine; While thus we sing, Joy may thy Daughter share, Blest by a Nation’s pray’r, Blest be the Royal Pair; God save the King.”

‘At the Haymarket, where the same Illustrious Personages appeared for the first time in public (since their marriage) the night before, the following stanza was introduced:—

‘“Great George! thy people’s voice Now hails thy daughter’s choice Till echoes ring: This shout still rends the air, May she prove blest as fair! Long live the noble pair! God save the King.”’

My Landlady’s Night-Gown. My Landlady’s Gown (August 10, 1816), by Walley Chamberlain Oulton (1770?-1820?).

‘Its own place.’ Paradise Lost, 1. 254.

329. l. 4. In The Examiner Hazlitt proceeds: ‘A Miss Ives played a little plump chambermaid prettily enough. The Jealous Wife was acted at this Theatre on Monday. Mr. Meggett played Mr. Oakley but indifferently. He seemed to be at hawk and buzzard between insipid comedy and pompous tragedy. It was not the thing. Mr. Terry’s Major Oakley we like very much. Mrs. Glover, who played Mrs. Oakley, is really too big for this little theatre. The stage cannot contain her, and her violent airs. Miss Taylor was Miss Russet, and looked like a very nice, runaway school-girl. Barnard played her lover, and got through the part very well.’

Rosetta. In Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village.

Mr. Chatterley. William Symonds Chatterley (1787-1822). Justice Woodcock was his best character.

Castle of Andalusia. A comic opera by O’Keeffe, produced in 1782.

330. l. 36. The article in The Examiner continues: ‘Haymarket-Theatre. The new farce in one act, called The Fair Deserter, succeeds very well here. It preserves the unities of time, place, and action, with the most perfect regularity. The merit of it is confined to the plot, and to the pretended changes of character by the changes of dress, which succeed one another with the rapidity and with something of the ingenuity of a pantomime. Mr. Duruset, a young officer of musical habits, wishes to release Miss MacAlpine from the power of her guardian, who is determined to marry her the next day. The young lady is kept under lock and key, and the difficulty is to get her out of the house. For this purpose Tokely, servant to Duruset, contrives to make the cook of the family drunk at an alehouse, where he leaves him, and carries off his official paraphernalia, his night-cap, apron, and long knife, in a bundle to his master. The old guardian (Watkinson) comes out with his lawyer from the house, and Tokely, presenting himself as the drunken cook, is let in. He, however, takes the key of the street door with him, which he shuts to, and as this intercepts the return of the old gentleman to his house, Tokely is forced to get out of the window by a ladder to fetch a blacksmith. He presently returns himself, in the character of the blacksmith, unlocks the door, but on the other’s refusing him a guinea for his trouble, locks it again, and walks off in spite of all remonstrances. The guardian is now compelled to ascend the ladder himself as well as he can: and while he is engaged in this ticklish adventure, the young Gallant and his mischievous Valet return with a couple of sentries whom Duruset orders to seize the poor old Guardian as a robber, and upon his declaring who and what he is, he is immediately charged by the lover with concealing a Deserter in his house, who is presently brought out, and is in fact his ward, disguised in a young officer’s uniform, which Tokely had given to her for that purpose. Tokely now returns dressed as an officer, and pretending to be the father of the young gentleman, with much blustering and little probability, persuades the guardian to consent to the match between his (adopted) son and the young lady, who has just been arrested as the Deserter, and who, upon this, throwing aside her disguise, the affair is concluded, to the satisfaction of every body but the old guardian, and the curtain drops. The bustle of this little piece keeps it alive: there is nothing good either in the writing or the acting of it.’

331. ‘Gone like a crab,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

Mr. Terry last week, etc. At the Haymarket, on August 27, 1816.

The Surrender of Calais. By George Colman the younger (1791).

‘The line too labours,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 313.

‘He resembles a person,’ etc. Schlegel on Dryden. See Lectures on Dramatic Literature (trans. John Black, ed. 1900), p. 479.

332. ‘Not to be hated.’ Cf. ante, note to p. 288.

The Wonder. Mrs. Centlivre’s (1714), Covent Garden, Sep. 13, 1816.

The Busy Body. 1709.

333. ‘Trippingly from [on] the tongue.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘A Scotsman is not ashamed,’ etc. The Wonder, Act V. Sc. 1.

334. The Distressed Mother. Originally produced in 1712. Hazlitt here notices the first appearance in London of William Charles Macready (1793-1873), Covent Garden, Sep. 16, 1816.

335. The epithet in Homer. Κάρη κομδωντες Ἀξαϡολ.

Lovers’ Vows. Sep. 14, 1816. Cf. ante, p. 249.

Writer in the Courier. Coleridge. See ante, note to p. 305.

336. ‘Pointing to [at] the skies.’ Pope, Moral Essays, III. 339.

‘A vaporous drop profound.’ Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 5.

Miss Boyle’s Rosalind. October 2, 1816.

‘How silver sweet,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2.

Lady Townley. In Vanbrugh and Cibber’s _The Provoked Husband_.

337. ‘Our poesy,’ etc. Timon of Athens, Act I. Sc. 1.

The Italian Lover. Robert Jephson’s (1736-1803) _Julia, or the Italian Lover_ (1787), revived at Covent Garden, Sep. 30, 1816.

338. l. 10. In The Examiner the article concludes as follows: ‘Drury Lane.—O’Keeffe’s farce of the Blacksmith of Antwerp was brought out here on Thursday [Oct. 3, 1816], Mr. Munden being sufficiently recovered from his indisposition. It is founded on the old story of Quintin Matsys and the Citizen of Antwerp, who would marry his daughter to no one but a painter. It is full of pleasant incidents and situations, which succeed one another with careless rapidity, without fatiguing the attention or exciting much interest. It is one of the least striking of O’Keeffe’s productions. It however went off very well, and we dare say will have a run. The music is pleasing enough.’

Mr. Macready’s Othello. October 10, 1816.

‘Let Afric,’ etc. Young, The Revenge, Act V. Sc. 2.

339. ‘I do agnise,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘No, not much moved.’ Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Othello’s occupation’s gone.’ Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Yet, oh the pity of it,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘Swell, bosom,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Like to the Pontic sea,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Horror on horror’s head,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Pride, pomp,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

340. Mr. Stephen Kemble. Stephen Kemble (1758-1822), brother of Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble.

Sir John Falstaff. The Merry Wives of Windsor was played at Drury Lane, October 10, 1816.

‘Had guts in his brains.’ Cf. ‘Who wears his wit in his belly and his guts in his head.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘How he cuts up,’ etc. Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 145).

‘The gods have not made,’ etc. Cf. As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 3.

The writer in the Courier. Hazlitt is plainly referring to Coleridge. The poet’s contributions to The Courier during 1816 have not been republished. Cf. ante, notes to pp. 305 and 335.

Sir Richard Steele tells us, etc. See a paper ‘On the Death of Peer, the Property Man,’ in The Guardian (No. 82), June 15, 1713.

342. Mr. Kemble’s Cato. October 25, 1816.

l. 5. In The Examiner Hazlitt continues: ‘Owing to the early filling of the house, we were prevented from seeing Othello on Tuesday; but we understand that Mr. Young played Othello like a great humming-top, “full of sound, but signifying nothing,”[67] and that Mr. Macready in Iago was like a mischievous boy whipping him; and that Miss Boyle did not play Desdemona as unaffectedly as she ought. But we hope we have been misinformed: and shall be glad to say so, if possible, in our next.’ The article concludes with an account of Kean quoted from The Edinburgh Courant.

342. ‘Being mortal.’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II. Sc. 1.

l. 27. In The Examiner the article continues as follows: ‘After the play, we saw the Broken Sword, which is a melodrame of some interest, for it has a dumb boy, a murderer, and an innocent person suspected of being the perpetrator of the crime, in it: but it is a very ill-digested and ill-conducted piece. The introduction to the principal events is very tedious and round about, and the incidents themselves, when they arrive, come in very great disorder, and shock from their improbability and want of necessary connection as much as from their own nature. Mr. Terry played the part of a murderer with considerable gravity. We do not know at all how he came to get into so awkward a situation. The piece is, we understand, from common report, by Mr. Dimond.[68] It is by no means one of his best. For he is a very impressive as well as a prolific writer in this way, and would do still better, if he would mind his fine writing less, and get on faster to the business of the story. Mr. Farley was highly interesting as Estevan, the servant who is unjustly accused of the murder of his master; in fact, he always plays this class of characters admirably, both as to feeling and effect; and Miss Lupino played the dumb Florio very prettily. In the first act, there was a dance by the Miss Dennetts.[69] If our readers have not seen this dance, we hope they will, and that they will encore it, which is the etiquette. Certainly, it is the prettiest thing in the world, except the performers in it. They are quite charming. They are three kindred Graces cast in the same mould: a little Trinity of innocent delights, dancing in their “trinal simplicities below.”[70] They are like “three red roses on a stalk;”[71] and in the pas de trois which they dance twice over, they are as it were twined and woven into garlands and festoons of blushing flowers, such as “Proserpine let fall from Dis’s waggon.”[72] You can hardly distinguish them from one another, they are at first so alike in shape, age, air, look: so that the pleasure you receive from one is blended with the delight you receive from the other two, in a sort of provoking, pleasing confusion. Milton was thinking of them when he wrote the lines:—

‘Whom lovely Venus at a birth, With two Sister Graces more, To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore.”[73]

Yet after all we have a preference, but we will not say which it is, whether the tallest or the shortest, the fairest or the darkest, of this lovely, laughing trio, more gay and joyous than Mozart’s.—“But pray, dear sir, could you not give us a little bit of a hint which of us it is you like the very, very best?”—Yes, yes, you rogue, you know very well it’s you, but don’t say a word of it to either of your sisters.’ The theatrical criticisms during November were written by Leigh Hunt.

The Iron Chest. By George Colman the younger (1796), revived at Drury Lane, November 23, 1816.

343. Adam Winterton. A character in The Iron Chest.

Mr. Colman was enraged, etc. He wrote an angry preface which was suppressed after the first edition.

344. ‘Wears his heart,’ etc. Adapted from Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘The fiery soul,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I., 156-8.

345. l. 5. In The Examiner the article concludes as follows: ‘The new farce, Laugh to Day and Cry Tomorrow [by E. P. Knight], met as it deserved a very indifferent reception. It was a series of awkward clap-traps about the glory of Old England, and the good-nature of English audiences. Munden was the only thing in it not damnable.’

Mr. Kemble’s King John. December 3, 1816.

‘When we waked,’ etc. The Tempest, Act III. Sc. 2.

346. According to the book of arithmetic. More commonly ‘according to Cocker.’

‘Man delight’ [delights], etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

347. ‘Bulk, the thews,’ etc. Misquoted from Henry IV., Part II., Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Could Sir Robert,’ etc. King John, Act I. Sc. 1.

Coriolanus. November 28 and 30, 1816. For the rest of this article, except the last paragraph, see vol. i. pp. 214-6 (Characters of Shakespear’s Plays) and notes thereon.

350. l. 21. In The Examiner the article concludes as follows: ‘There have been two new farces this week: one at each house. One was saved and one was damned. One was justly damned, and the other unjustly saved. Nota Bene, or _The Two Dr. Fungus’s_, shot up and disappeared in one night, notwithstanding the inimitable acting and well-oiled humour of Oxberry in one scene, where he makes bumpkin forward love to Mrs. Orger in a style equal to Liston. _Love and Toothache_, though there is neither Love nor Toothache in it, is as disagreeable as the one and as foolish as the other. One farce consists of a succession of low incidents without a plot, and the other is one tedious and improbable incident without a plot. The changing of the two signs, or Nota Benes of the two Fungus’s, barber and doctor, in the first, is better than anything in the last. The only difference is, that at the one house they contrive to have their pieces cast, and get them condemned at the other. Yet this is a saying without any meaning; for in the present case they were both got up as well as they could be.—We almost despair of ever seeing another good farce. Mr. H——, thou wert damned. Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. H——, and answering that they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert damned! Hadst thou been anonymous, thou mightst have been immortal! But thou didst come to an untimely end, for thy tricks and for want of a better name to pass them off (as the old joke of Divine Right passes current under the alias of Legitimacy)—and since that time nothing worth naming has been offered to the stage!’ Hazlitt refers again to Lamb’s farce ‘Mr. H——’ in his essay ‘On Great and Little Things.’ See vol. VI. p. 232 and notes. The passage above, beginning ‘Mr. H——, thou wert damned’ down to ‘for want of a better name to pass them off’ was prefixed to the farce by Lamb, when he published it in 1818.

The Man of the World. Revived December 27, 1816.

Mr. Henry Johnston. Henry Erskine Johnston, (1777-1830?), the ‘Scottish Roscius.’

Sir Archy Mac Sarcasm. In Macklin’s Love à-la-Mode (1793) revived at Covent Garden, with Johnston as Sir Archy, on December 10, 1816.

351. ‘Die and leave,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 5.

352. ‘Ever charming,’ etc. Dyer, Grongar Hill, l. 103.

Jane Shore. January 2, 1817. Rowe’s tragedy was first produced in 1713. In The Examiner Hazlitt concludes this article as follows:—‘We think the tragedy of Jane Shore, which is founded on the dreadful calamity of hunger, is hardly proper to be represented in these starving times; and it ought to be prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain, on a principle of decorum. Of Mrs. Alsop, who is said to have an engagement at this theatre, we have spoken at the time when she appeared at the other house. Those who have before not witnessed her performance, will now probably have an opportunity of seeing her in company with Mrs. Mardyn, and may judge whether the laborious comparison we attempted between her and that lady was well or ill-founded. We see little alteration or improvement in her. Her figure and face are against her; otherwise she is certainly a very spirited little actress, and her voice is excellent. Her singing, however, does not correspond with what you would expect from her speaking tones. It wants volume and clearness. Mrs. Alsop’s laugh sometimes puts us a little in mind of her mother: and those parts of the character of Violante in which she succeeded best were the most joyous and exulting ones: her expression of distress is truly distressing. Miss Kelly played Flora; and it was the only time we ever saw her fail. She seemed to be playing tricks with the chambermaid: now those kind of people are as much in earnest in their absurdities as any other class of people in the world, and the great beauty of Miss Kelly’s acting in all other instances is, that it is more in downright earnest than any other acting in the world. We hope she does not think of growing fantastical, and operatic. The new pantomime is very poor.’

The Theatrical Examiners of January 12 and January 19, 1817 are clearly Hazlitt’s. The first is a notice of Cherry’s The Soldier’s Daughter, revived at Covent Garden, January 8, and contains a severe criticism of Miss O’Neill as a comic actress. The second is a notice of Cimarosa’s Penelope and the comic Ballet Dansomanie at the King’s Theatre, and concludes with a long quotation from Colley Cibber’s Life on the introduction of opera into England.

353. The Humorous Lieutenant. In The Examiner the article from which this notice is taken begins with a long account (probably by Hazlitt) of Southerne’s Oroonoko revived at Drury Lane January 20, 1817 with Kean as Oroonoko and Miss Somerville as Imoinda. The Humorous Lieutenant (January 18) was ‘a bad alteration’ by Frederic Reynolds. Celia was played by ‘a Young Lady, 1st appearance on any stage.’

‘Whose utmost skirts,’ etc. Paradise Lost, XI. 332-3.

l. 20. The Theatrical Examiner of February 2, 1817 in which are noticed John Philip Kemble’s farce The Pannel, revived at Drury Lane January 29, 1816 and a melodrama (attributed to Pocock) The Ravens, or the Force of Conscience, acted at Covent Garden January 24, 1817, is clearly Hazlitt’s. The article contains a comparison between the Drury Lane and Covent Garden companies.

Two New Ballets. From a Theatrical Examiner which begins with an account of Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro not at all in Hazlitt’s manner.

Like Virgil’s wood. Æneid, III. 37-40.

‘Whom lovely Venus,’ etc. L’Allegro, 14 et seq.

354. ‘When you do dance,’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.

Booth. Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852), whose first important appearances in London are noticed in this and the two following articles. The last years of his life were spent in America.

‘What does he [do they] in the north.’ Richard III., Act IV. Sc. 4.

355. ‘A weak invention,’ etc. Cf. ‘A thing devised by the enemy.’ Richard III., Act V. Sc. 3.

Figaro. Holcroft’s The Follies of a Day; or, the Marriage of Figaro (1784).

356. ‘The fell opposite.’ Vaguely Shakesperian. Cf. _Twelfth Night_, Act III. Sc. 4, and Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘I know my price no less.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘Give the world,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘My wit comes,’ etc. Misquoted from Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

357. The O. P. rows. The old price riots at the new Covent Garden Theatre in 1809.

358. Frightened to Death. A musical farce by Oulton.

359. ‘From which,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

l. 19. The Theatrical Examiner for the following week (March 9, 1817) contains a notice (possibly by Hazlitt) of _The Heir of Vironi, or Honesty the Best Policy_ (Covent Garden, February 27), and of ‘Mr. Booth’s imitations of Mr. Kean.’ With this exception The Theatrical Examiners down to March 13 are by Leigh Hunt.

Cibber. Cf. ante, pp. 160-2.

360. ‘In hidden mazes,’ etc. Misquoted from L’Allegro, 141-2.

361. ‘Frontlet.’ King Lear, Act I. Sc. 4.

362. The Inn-Keeper’s Daughter. By George Soane (1790-1860).

363. ‘Airs from heaven,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

364. ‘And when she spake,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, II. iii. 24.

365. Signor Ambrogetti. Giuseppe Ambrogetti was in London 1817-1821.

‘Sense of amorous delight.’ ‘The spirit of love and amorous delight.’ Paradise Lost, VIII. 477.

Signor Crivelli, etc. Gaetano Crivelli (1774-1836), a tenor; Violante Camporese (b. 1785), a soprano; Carlo Angrisani (b. circa 1760), a bass.

366. l. 6. The Theatrical Examiner concludes with an ‘Anecdote relating to the Overture of Don Giovanni’ and a reference to Elphi Bey, ‘a tedious and insipid’ romantic drama (Drury Lane, April 17).

Ex uno omnes. ‘Ab uno disce omnes.’ Æneid, II. 65-6.

367. ‘With all appliances,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II. Act III. Sc. 1.

‘The golden cadences,’ etc. ‘Golden cadence of poesy.’ Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV. Sc. 2.

368. l. 29. The Theatrical Examiner of May 4, 1817, clearly by Hazlitt, contains a notice of Johnny Gilpin (Drury Lane, April 28), and a brief reference to Mrs. Hill’s Lady Macbeth (April 29). Johnny Gilpin is described as ‘very poorly got up.’

369. Holland. Charles Holland (1768-1849?) played at Drury Lane 1796-1820.

370. l. 14. The Theatrical Examiner concludes as follows: ‘We have not room to say much of the new tragedy of The Apostate,[74] for which we are not sorry, as we should have little good to say of it. The poetry does not rise to the merit of common-place, and the tragic situations are too violent, frequent, and improbable. It is full of a succession of self-inflicted horrors. Miss O’Neill played the heroine of the piece, whose affectation and meddling imbecility occasion all the mischief, and played it shockingly well. Mr. Young’s Malec was in his best and most imposing manner. The best things in The Apostate were the palpable hits at the Inquisition and Ferdinand the Beloved, which were taken loudly and tumultuously by the house, a circumstance which occasioned more horror in that wretched infatuated devoted tool of despotism, the Editor of The New Times,[75] than all the other horrors of the piece. The Dungeons of the Holy Inquisition, whips, racks, and slow fires, kindled by legitimate hands, excite no horror in his breast; but that a British public still revolt at these things, that that fine word Legitimacy has not polluted their souls and poisoned their very senses with the slime and filth of slavery and superstition, this writhes his brain and plants scorpions in his mind, and makes his flesh crawl and shrink in agony from the last expression of manhood and humanity in an English audience, as if a serpent had wound round his heart!’

The Theatrical Examiner of May 18, 1817, in which is described a second visit to Don Giovanni, and Kean’s Eustace de St. Pierre in The Surrender of Calais, is clearly Hazlitt’s.

370. ‘Something rotten,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

Mr. Sinclair. John Sinclair (1791-1857), tenor singer.

‘To split the ears,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

371. ‘And of his port,’ etc. The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 69.

372. ‘None but himself,’ etc. Lewis Theobald, The Double Falsehood.

l. 9. The article in The Examiner concludes: ‘Drury Lane. The farce of The Romp[76] was revived here, and we hope will be continued, for we like to laugh when we can. Mrs. Alsop does the part of Priscilla Tomboy, and is all but her mother in it. Knight is clever enough as Watty Cockney; and the piece, upon the whole, went off with great éclat, allowing for the badness of the times, for our want of genius for comedy, and of taste for farce.’

Barbarossa. By John Brown (1715-1766), author of _An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times_ (1757). Barbarossa was produced in 1754, Athelstane, the author’s other tragedy, in 1756.

Paul and Virginia. A musical drama by James Cobb (1756-1818), produced in 1800.

‘And when your song,’ etc. The Tatler, No. 163 (by Addison).

‘In our heart’s core,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

last line. The Theatrical Examiner concludes as follows:—‘Covent Garden. Mr. Kemble played Posthumus here on Friday. At present, to use a favourite pun, all his characters are posthumous; he plays them repeatedly after the last time. We hate all suspense: and we therefore wish Mr. Kemble would go, or let it alone. We had much rather, for ourselves, that he staid; for there is no one to fill his place on the stage. The mould is broken in which he was cast. His Posthumus is a very successful piece of acting. It alternately displays that repulsive stately dignity of manner, or that intense vehemence of action, in which the body and the mind strain with eager impotence after a certain object of disappointed passion, for which Mr. Kemble is peculiarly distinguished. In the scenes with Iachimo he was particularly happy, and threw from him the imputations and even the proofs of Imogen’s inconstancy with a fine manly graceful scorn. The burst of inconsolable passion when the conviction of his treacherous rival’s success is forced upon him, was nearly as fine as his smothered indignation and impatience of the least suggestion against his mistress’s purity of character, had before been. In the concluding scene he failed. When he comes forward to brave Iachimo, and as it were to sink him to the earth by his very presence—‘Behold him here’—his voice and manner wanted force and impetuosity. Mr. Kemble executes a surprise in the most premeditated and least unexpected manner possible. What was said the other day in praise of this accomplished actor, might be converted into an objection to him: he has been too much used to figure “on tesselated pavements, when a fall would be fatal” to himself as well as others. He therefore manages the movements of his person with as much care as if he were a marble statue, and as if the least trip in his gait, or discomposure of his balance, would be sure to fracture some of his limbs. Mr. Terry was Bellarius, and recited some of the most beautiful passages in the world like the bellman’s verses. His voice is not “musical as is Apollo’s lute,” but “harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose.”[77] Mr. Young made a very respectable Iachimo, and Miss Foote lisped through the part of Imogen very prettily. The rest of the characters were very poorly cast.—Oh! we had forgot Mr. Liston’s Cloten: a sign that it is not so good as his Lord Grizzle, or Lubin Log, or a dozen more exquisite characters that he plays. It would, however, have been very well, if he had not whisked off the stage at the end of each scene, “to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh.”[78] The serenade at Imogen’s window was very beautiful, and was encored,—we suspect, contrary to the etiquette of the regular drama. But we take a greater delight in fine music than in etiquette.’

373. Mrs. Siddons’s Lady Macbeth. The Theatrical Examiner, from which this notice is taken, opens with a notice (possibly by Hazlitt) of Paer’s opera Agnese, at the King’s Theatre. Mrs. Siddons played Lady Macbeth on June 5, 1817, with J. P. Kemble as Macbeth and Charles Kemble as Macduff. After this date the theatrical criticism of The Examiner was taken over by Leigh Hunt, and Hazlitt began to write for The Times.

374. ‘Thank God,’ etc. The Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. 1.

Mr. Kemble’s retirement. Covent Garden, June 23, 1817.

375. ‘Like an eagle,’ etc. Coriolanus, Act V. Sc. 6.

‘My mother bows,’ etc. Ibid. Act V. Sc. 3.

376. ‘Nothing extenuate,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

377. ‘Is whispering,’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘Every [each] corporal agent.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.

‘There was neither variableness,’ etc. St. James, i. 17.

‘The fire i’ th’ flint,’ etc. Timon of Athens, Act I. Sc. 1.

378. ‘My way of life,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

‘The fiery soul,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 1. 156-8.

‘You shall relish,’ etc. Cf. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

379. ‘The tug and war.’ Cf. ‘Then was the tug of war.’ Lee, Alexander the Great, Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘Fate and metaphysical aid.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

Invita Minerva. Horace, Ars Poetica, 385.

ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA FROM THE LONDON MAGAZINE, 1820.

PAGE

383. Semper varium et mutabile. Virgil, Æneid, IV. 569.

‘The stage, the inconstant stage.’ Cf. ‘The moon, the inconstant moon.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2.

384. ‘To dally with the wind,’ etc. Cf. Richard III., Act I. Sc. 3.

‘With coy [sweet] reluctant,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 311.

385. ‘Should God create,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IX. 911-13.

386. ‘Play the hostess.’ Cf. ‘Ourself will mingle with society, and play the humble host. Our hostess keeps her state,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.

387. Eclipsed the gaiety, etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 270.

Beau Mordecai. In Macklin’s Love à-la Mode, brought out in 1760.

Lord Sands. In King Henry VIII.

‘With nods and becks,’ etc. L’Allegro, 28.

388. ‘Secret Tattle.’ In Congreve’s Love for Love.

389. ‘Made a sunshine,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, 1. iii. 4.

‘Talked far above singing.’ Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, Act V. Sc. 5.

‘Her bounty,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2.

Her Nell. In Coffey’s The Devil to Pay (1731).

392. ‘Extenuate,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

393. ‘There were two,’ etc. Cf. St. Luke, xvii. 31 et seq.

‘A consummation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘To our moist vows denied.’ Lycidas, 159.

‘Slippery turns,’ etc. Coriolanus, Act IV. Sc. 4.

‘Mr. Limberham,’ etc. Dryden’s The Kind Keeper; or, Mr. Limberham (1680).

‘With its worldly goods,’ etc. The Book of Common Prayer, Marriage Service.

‘The list of weeds,’ etc. Jeremy Taylor, Holy Dying, Chap. 1. § 2.

‘In monumental mockery.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 3.

394. The Surrey, etc. The Surrey Theatre, in Blackfriars Road, opened in 1782; The Cobourg Theatre, Waterloo Bridge Road, opened in 1818; The Sans Pareil, better known as The Adelphi Theatre, in the Strand, opened in 1806.

395. ‘Gentle and low,’ etc. King Lear, Act V. Sc. 3.

397. ‘Like to another morn, etc.’ Paradise Lost, V. 310-11.

‘Moody madness,’ etc. Gray, Ode, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 79-80.

398. ‘Mar [scar] that whiter skin,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

399. Gallantry, or Adventures at Madrid. Jan. 15, 1820; acted only once.

‘Had its brother,’ etc. Cf. Pope, Moral Essays, IV. 117-8.

400. ‘As it was set down for him.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘The courtier’s or the lover’s melancholy.’ Cf. As You Like It, Act IV. Sc. 1.

Gilray. James Gillray (1757-1815), the caricaturist.

Mrs. Edwin. Elizabeth Rebecca Richards (1771?-1854) first appeared at Covent Garden 1789; married in 1791 John Edwin the younger.

401. Magis pares, etc. Cf. ‘Similia omnia magis visa hominibus, quam paria.’ Livy, XLV. 43.

Note 1. Pope’s Essay on Criticism, 1-2.

402. ‘All is grace above,’ etc. ‘Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.’

Dryden, Epistle to Congreve, 19.

‘To relish all,’ etc. The Tempest, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘I banish you.’ Coriolanus, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘The most sweet voices.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 3.

403. ‘Guns, drums,’ etc. Pope, Satires, I. 26.

‘Ample scope [room],’ etc. Gray, The Bard, 5.

404. ‘Constrained by mastery.’ Cf. post, note to p. 479.

‘Speculative,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘There he arriving,’ etc. Muiopotmos, St. XXII. and XXVII.

405. ‘Like greyhound on the slip.’ Henry V., Act III. Sc. 1.

‘The full eyes,’ etc. Jeremy Taylor, Holy Dying, Chap. 1. § 2.

‘Embalmed with odours.’ Paradise Lost, II. 843.

‘A wide O.’ Cf. ‘Why should you fall into so deep an O?’ Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Come, let me clutch thee.’ Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘Those gay creatures,’ etc. Comus, 299-301.

406. W—m. Wem.

The Rev. Mr. J——s. The author’s son fills this blank with the name of Jenkins.

407. ‘Of imagination all compact.’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘Their mind to them,’ etc. Sir Edward Dyer’s ‘My mynde to me a kyngdome is,’ set to music by Byrd in 1588.

‘Of all earth’s bliss,’ etc. From Lamb’s version of Thekla’s song in Wallenstein (Part I., The Piccolomini). See Coleridge’s Poetical Works (ed. J. D. Campbell), 648.

408. ‘By his so potent art.’ The Tempest, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘Happy alchemy of mind.’ See vol. V., note to p. 107.

‘Severn’s sedgy side.’ ‘Gentle Severn’s sedgy bank.’ Henry IV., Part I., Act I. Sc. 3.

‘Note. ‘The beggars are coming,’ etc. From the old song beginning, ‘Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,’ etc.

409. ‘Alas! how changed,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, III. 305-6.

‘Made of penetrable stuff.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

410. ‘See the puppets dallying.’ Ibid. Act III. Sc. 2.

Mr. Stanley. Stanley had been well known at Bath, and had appeared for a short time at Drury Lane. Genest (VIII. 693) describes him as ‘a very good actor for a provincial theatre, and a fair actor for London.’

411. Panopticon. Cf. vol. IV., note to p. 197.

‘My soul turn from them.’ Goldsmith, The Traveller, 165.

‘Her, lovely Venus,’ etc. L’Allegro, 14-16.

‘Vernal airs,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 264-6.

‘Three red roses,’ etc. Cf. Richard III., Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘The witchery,’ etc. Wordsworth, Peter Bell (Part I.), l. 265.

412. Mr. Reeve. John Reeve (1799-1838), a mimic and comedian, chiefly associated with the Adelphi.

‘Our hint to speak.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

413. Mr. Peter Moore. Peter Moore (1753-1828), member of parliament and company promoter. He was at one time one of the managers of Drury Lane Theatre.

The Antiquary. A musical play in three acts by Daniel Terry, Jan. 25, 1820.

‘Warbled.’ ‘Come, warble, come.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 5.

Note. The Surrey Theatre. The Surrey Theatre had been taken by Thomas John Dibdin (1771-1841) in 1816.

414. ‘Perplexed in the extreme.’ Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Horror sat plumed.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 989.

‘Of one that loved,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Turbaned Turk.’ Ibid. Act V. Sc. 2.

‘I cannot think,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘The glorious triumph [trial],’ etc. Paradise Lost, IX. 961.

415. ‘The high and palmy state.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 1.

416. Mr. Milman’s Fazio. Produced at Covent Garden, Feb. 5, 1818.

‘Look abroad,’ etc. Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, Book I., III. 6.

417. ‘Are embowelled,’ etc. Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 101).

The Upholsterer. Cf. ante, p. 96.

‘A counterfeit presentment.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

418. ‘To relish,’ etc. Cf. ante, p. 402.

419. ‘Unfeathered, two-legged thing.’ Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, I. 170.

‘You may wear,’ etc. Hamlet, Act IV. Sc. 5.

‘He sits in the centre,’ etc. Comus, 382-3.

420. Mr. Wordsworth’s hankering after the drama. Wordsworth’s tragedy, The Borderers, composed in 1795-6, and soon afterwards refused by the Covent Garden management, was not published till 1842.

‘The daily intercourse,’ etc. Quoted vaguely from Wordsworth’s _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_.

note. Joanna Baillie (1762-1851), whose Plays on the Passions had appeared in 3 vols. 1798-1812.

421. ‘Like a wild overflow,’ etc. Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, Act V. Sc. 3.

‘’Tis three feet long,’ etc. Wordsworth, The Thorn, (l. 33), as published in Lyrical Ballads (1798).

422. ‘What? if one reptile,’ etc. Remorse, Act III. Sc. 2.

423. The Hebrew. By George Soane (1790-1860).

‘I had as lief,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Instinct with fire.’ Paradise Lost, II. 937.

Disjecta [disjecti] membra poetae. Horace, Satires, I. 4, 62.

425. ‘His affections,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘Holds sovereign sway.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘A far cry to Lochiel.’ ‘It’s a far cry to Lochow.’ See Rob Roy, note to chap. 29.

‘Hitherto shalt thou come,’ etc. Job, xxxviii. 11.

‘Like kings,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 64-5.

427. ‘Like to that sanguine flower,’ etc. Lycidas, 106.

‘Unkindness,’ etc. Othello, Act IV. Sc. 2.

Three Weeks after Marriage. Arthur Murphy’s comedy, produced in 1776.

Mr. Connor. Charles Connor (d. 1826), Irish comedian.

428. The Manager in Distress. By George Colman the elder.

‘Too Late for Dinner.’ A farce by Richard Jones the actor.

429. ‘Great heir of fame.’ Milton, On Shakespeare. l. 5.

‘Strange that,’ etc. Cf. ‘Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

Don Quixote’s throwing open the cages, etc. Don Quixote, Part II., Book I. Chap. 17.

‘Tasteless monster,’ etc. ‘A faultless monster whom the world ne’er saw.’ John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, Essay on Poetry.

‘If that they love,’ etc. Cf. ‘But that I love the gentle Desdemona,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 2.

Berlin and Milan decrees. Of Napoleon, 1806 and 1807.

430. Like the lady in the lobster. Cf. Herrick’s Hesperides, No. 224 (The Faerie Temple).

‘As if he would confine,’ etc. Samson Agonistes, 307.

‘A beard so old and white.’ ‘’Gainst a head so old and white as this.’ King Lear, Act III. Sc. 2.

Nahum Tate’s Lear. Produced in 1681.

431. ‘There’s sympathy.’ The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Sc. 1.

432. ‘Applauds you,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

433. ‘He must live to please,’ etc. Johnson, Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, 1747, l. 54.

‘Lard the lean earth,’ etc. Henry IV. Part I., Act II. Sc. 2.

434. ‘First, midst, and last.’ Cf. Paradise Lost, V. 165.

435. Shakspear versus Harlequin. An alteration of Harlequin’s Invasion produced in 1759.

‘Charge on heaps,’ etc. Cf. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 2.

436. Quod sic mihi, etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 188.

‘See o’er the stage,’ etc. Cf. Thomson, The Seasons, winter, 646.

‘But thou, oh Hope,’ etc. Collins, Ode, The Passions, 29-32.

439. Sir Hugh Middleton’s Head. The sign of this inn, opposite Sadler’s Wells, figures in Hogarth’s Evening.

440. ‘Shut their blue-fringed lids,’ etc. Coleridge, Fears in Solitude, 84-6.

Mr. Booth’s Lear. Covent Garden, April 13, 1820.

‘I am every inch a King.’ King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.

‘The fiery Duke.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 4.

441. Henri Quatre. A musical romance in three acts by Thomas Morton.

‘’Twas Lancelot,’ etc. Leigh Hunt, The Story of Rimini.

‘Ah! brilliant land,’ etc. To this quotation the Editor of The London Magazine prints the following note: ‘Does our Correspondent here refer to the ink he has himself shed in severe criticism of the French National Character.’

442. ‘The invincible knights of old.’ Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘It is not to be thought of,’ etc.

Miss M. Tree. Ann Maria Tree (1801-1862), afterwards Mrs. Bradshaw, made her first appearance at Covent Garden in 1818.

The present crisis of affairs. Hazlitt alludes to the Revolution in Spain, in 1820.

445. ‘Accumulate horrors,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘That has outlasted,’ etc. Misquoted from Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Tore it to tatters,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Hear, Nature, hear,’ etc. The quotations from King Lear in this paragraph are from Act I. Sc. 4.

446. ‘Compunctious visitings of nature.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘Like a phantasma,’ etc. Julius Caesar, Act II. Sc. 1.

447. ‘Dear daughter,’ etc. King Lear, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘Beloved Regan,’ etc. Ibid. Act II. Sc. 4.

448. ‘Appal the guilty,’ etc. Misquoted from Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘Create a soul,’ etc. Comus, 562.

‘The fiery quality,’ etc. King Lear, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘I will do such things,’ etc. Ibid. Act II. Sc. 4.

449. ‘Blow winds,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 2.

‘More germane,’ etc. Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘How dost,’ etc. King Lear, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Didst thou give all,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘What, have his daughters,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Was set down.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

450. ‘Aye, every inch a king.’ King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.

‘When I do stare,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 6.

‘Pray do not mock me.’ Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 6.

‘Which sacred pity, etc.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

‘False gallop.’ Ibid. Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Honest sonsy,’ etc. Burns, Address to a Haggis, I.

451. Artaxerxes. Cf. ante, pp. 192-3.

452. ‘Concords of sweet sounds.’ The Merchant of Venice, Act V. Sc. 1.

453. l. 15. In The London Magazine the article concludes with a notice (signed ‘X.’) of a new after-piece at Drury Lane, entitled The Lady and the Devil, and a flattering notice of Virginius at Covent Garden. Neither of these notices is written in Hazlitt’s manner, and it is evident from his later account of Knowles’s tragedy (see pp. 455, et seq.) that the notice of Virginius at any rate is the work of another hand. It would seem that after seeing Kean in King Lear Hazlitt retired for a time to Winterslow.

The only article, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to his third article, published in the March number (ante, pp. 403, et seq.), which was probably written while the theatres were closed in consequence of the deaths of the Duke of Kent (d. January 23, 1820) and George III. (d. January 29, 1820).

Mr. Weathercock. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1852), afterwards well known as a forger and murderer, was at this time a regular contributor to The London Magazine, chiefly under the pseudonym of Janus Weathercock. His contributions were for the most part on the Fine Arts, but in the number for June 1820 (Janus’s Jumble, chap, III.) he wrote some remarks on the theatres, in the course of which he chaffed ‘Mr. Drama’ (i.e. Hazlitt) on some of his theatrical criticisms, and especially on his article on the minor theatres published in March. To these remarks Hazlitt replies in the present essay. For Wainewright himself see the biographical introduction to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition (1880) of his contributions to The London Magazine, and Mr. Bertram Dobell’s Sidelights on Charles Lamb (1903).

454. ‘Odious in satin,’ etc. ‘Odious! in woollen! ’twould a saint provoke.’ Pope, Moral Essays, I. 246.

‘Like little wanton boys,’ etc. Henry VIII. Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Inexpressive three.’ Cf. ‘Unexpressive she.’ _As You Like It_, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Written in our heart’s tables.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, Act I. Sc. 1.

455. ‘Entire affection scorneth [hateth],’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto VIII. St. 40.

‘A man’s mind,’ etc. ‘Men’s judgements are a parcel of their fortunes.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act III. Sc. 13.

‘Diamond rings,’ etc. etc. Hazlitt quotes from Wainewright’s article.

‘We came,’ etc. A hasty adaptation, presumably, of the famous ‘Veni, vidi, vici.’

Virginius. James Sheridan Knowles’s (1784-1862) Virginius was produced at Covent Garden on May 17, 1820.

‘Strike his lofty head,’ etc. ‘Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.’ Horace, Odes, I. I. 36.

456. The Virginius and the David Rizzio, etc. Another Virginius, with Kean in the title role, was produced at Drury Lane on May 29, 1820. David Rizzio, an opera by Colonel Hamilton, appeared at the same theatre on June 17.

A former article. See ante, note to p. 453.

‘I never saw you,’ etc. Virginius, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘The lie,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘To be sure she will,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘Let the forum wait for us!’ Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘The freeborn Roman maid.’ Varied slightly from phrases applied to Virginia in the play.

457. ‘Lest the courtiers,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘Let the galled jade,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

458. ‘Why are those things hid,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 3.

Mr. Kean at his benefit. June 12, 1820. The play was Venice Preserved, followed by The Admirable Crichton.

Educated in the fourth form, etc. A gibe at Elliston, who was educated at St. Paul’s School.

Cast in the antique mould, etc. The reference is to Kemble.

note. ‘An honest man,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, IV. 248.

459. ‘In this expectation,’ etc. Cf. ‘This was looked for at your hand, and this was balked.’ Twelfth Night, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Nothing can come of nothing.’ ‘De nihilo nihil.’ Persius, Satires, III. 84.

460. Miss Povey. Born in 1804, and appeared first at Drury Lane in 1817.

461. ‘Softly sweet in Lydian measures.’ Dryden, _Alexander’s Feast_, 97.

Giovanni in London. By William Thomas Moncrieff (1794-1857), originally produced at the Olympic on December 26, 1817.

462. ‘She forgot to be a woman,’ etc. Misquoted from Cymbeline, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘Like a new ta’en sparrow.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Like marigolds,’ etc. Cf. ‘The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun,’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.

463. The ‘Great Vulgar and the Small.’ Cowley, Horace, Odes, III. 1.

‘Raised so high,’ etc. Cf. ‘High throned above all highth.’ Paradise Lost, III. 58.

‘Such tricks,’ etc. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

464. ‘‘Present no mark.’ Henry IV., Part II. Act III. Sc. 2.

‘You may as well,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 2.

‘One bubble,’ etc. Jeremy Taylor, Holy Dying, Chap. 1. § 1.

Her Yarico. In Colman’s Inkle and Yarico (1787).

‘We had rather,’ etc. Adapted from All’s Well that Ends Well, Act I. Sc. 1.

465. ‘In the catalogue,’ etc. Cf. ‘Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men.’ Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘To curl her hair,’ etc. See Congreve’s The Way of the World, Act. II. Sc. 5.

465. ‘Who rant and fret,’ etc. Misquoted from Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

‘Vine-covered hills.’ ‘From the vine-cover’d hills and gay valleys of France.’ From lines ‘written in 1788’ by William Roscoe (1753-1831). The lines were partly parodied by Canning and Frere in The Anti-Jacobin (‘La Sainte Guillotine’): ‘From the blood-bedew’d valleys and mountains of France.’ Cf. vol. VI. p. 189 (Table Talk).

‘And murmur,’ etc. Landor, Gebir, Book I.

466. ‘Sigh his soul,’ etc. Cf. ‘And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tents.’ The Merchant of Venice, Act V. Sc. 1.

467. ‘A brother of the groves.’ Hazlitt perhaps recalls Wordsworth’s line, ‘A brother of the dancing leaves’ (_The Green Linnet_, 34). As originally published (Poems, 1807, II. 81), the line ran, ‘A Brother of the Leaves he seems,’ which is still nearer to Hazlitt’s phrase.

468. Crockery and Peter Pastoral. In Exit by Mistake and Teazing Made Easy respectively.

‘His tears,’ etc.

Cf. ‘The tears which came to Matthew’s eyes Were tears of light, the oil of gladness.’

Wordsworth, Matthew, as published in Lyrical Ballads, 1800, vol. II. p. 121.

‘Sic transit,’ etc. Thomas à Kempis, _De Imitatione Christi_, I. 3, 6.

469. ‘Stands on end,’ etc. Misquoted from Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

‘Let those laugh,’ etc.

Cf. ‘Let those love now, who never lov’d before; Let those who always lov’d, now love the more.’

Parnell, The Vigil of Venus.

470. ‘Compunctious visitings.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc, 5.

Little Pickle. In The Spoilt Child.

471. The great cat, Rodilardus. In Rabelais. See Pantagruel, IV. 67.

‘Dressed in a little brief authority,’ etc. Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 2.

472. ‘You take my house,’ etc. The Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘Cleansed,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Flesh is heir to.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

473. ‘Not a jot,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘But never more,’ etc. Ibid. Act II. Sc. 3.

‘Never so sure,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, II. 51-2.

‘In medio,’ etc. Ovid, Metamorphoses, II. 137.

They hiss the Beggar’s Opera in America. The Times of Dec. 10, 1817, quotes from New York papers dated Oct. 27 an account of the refusal of a New York audience to hear The Beggar’s Opera.

474. The Vampyre. By James Robinson Planché (1796-1880), adapted from ‘Le Vampire.’

The celebrated story. ‘The Vampyre,’ by John William Polidori (1795-1821), was published in 1819. Byron had intended to write a story on the same subject. See Letters and Journals, ed. Prothero, III. 446-453, and IV. 286 and 296.

‘See how the moon,’ etc. The Merchant of Venice, Act V. Sc. 1.

475. ‘The Diamond Ring.’ Adapted by Theodore Hook from _He would be a Soldier_ (1786), and produced Aug. 12, 1820.

476. ‘Misery,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘A load,’ etc. Henry VIII., Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Palsied eld.’ Measure for Measure, Act III. Sc. 1.

477. ‘At last he rose,’ etc. Lycidas, 192-3.

‘As broad,’ etc. Misquoted from Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘In act,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘The immediate jewel,’ etc. Ibid., Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Solid pudding,’ etc. Pope, The Dunciad, I. 54.

‘Tenth,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, I. 246.

The Calendar of Nature. Hazlitt seems to refer to Leigh Hunt’s The Months, originally published in the Literary Pocket Book, 1819-20, and there described as a ‘Calendar of the Seasons.’

‘Bound our brows withal.’ ‘To grace thy brows withal.’ Richard III., Act V. Sc. 5.

In January, etc. It will be noticed that Hazlitt does not give an accurate account of the dates and subjects of his articles.

478. ‘Being at Illminster,’ etc. Possibly on a visit to John Hunt, who had retired to the neighbourhood of Taunton. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt mentions (Memoirs, I. xviii.) a report that Hazlitt contributed for a short time to the _Taunton Courier_.

Note. ‘Or mouth,’ etc. Endymion, II. 405-6.

Note. ‘Beautified.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

Note. ‘Oh Scotland,’ etc. Cf. ‘O Jephthah, judge of Israel,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

479. An able article written for us. No. X., published in the October (not September) number.

No Table-Talk. The Table-Talks were of course the work of Hazlitt himself.

The Lion’s Head. The name given to two or three editorial paragraphs prefixed to The London Magazine. In the number for November, 1820, the editor announced for the next number ‘a chef d’œuvre of a Table Talk—the best yet, we think.’ This was No. V. ‘On the Pleasure of Painting.’

‘Has not left her peer.’ Lycidas, 9.

‘Constrain his genius,’ etc. Cf. ‘That Love will not submit to be controlled by mastery.’ Wordsworth, The Excursion, VI. 163-4.

‘With mighty wings,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 20-22.

480. Encyclopædia Metropolitana. The publication of this work began in 1817. Coleridge drew up the scheme, and contributed the ‘Preliminary Treatise on Method.’

Note. Hazlitt refers to The Fancy: a Selection from the Poetical Remains of the late Peter Corcoran, of Gray’s Inn, Student at Law, a ‘jeu d’esprit’ by John Hamilton Reynolds, reviewed in The London Magazine, July 1820.

‘The up-turned eyes,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2.

481. Barnaby Brittle. Founded on Moliere’s George Dandin, and produced at Covent Garden in 1791.

Disjecta membra poetæ. ‘Disjecti membra poëtæ.’ Horace, Satires, I. 4-62.

‘Outlasts a thousand storms,’ etc. Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, Act V. Sc. 3.

482. Paulo majora canamus. Virgil, Eclogues, IV. 1.

‘The lily drooping,’ etc. Cf. ‘Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene.’ The Canterbury Tales, The Knighte’s Tale, 1036.

‘The flowers,’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.

Note. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 409 n.

483. Macready’s Zanga. Macready first appeared as Zanga in Young’s Revenge on October 30, 1820.

‘A wife,’ etc. The Revenge, Act IV. Sc. 1.

Wallace. By C. E. Walker, November 14, 1820.

484. The Deaf Lover. By Frederick Pilon (1750-1788), originally produced in 1780 and revived at Covent Garden in 1819.

‘But in Adam’s ear,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VIII. 1-2.

APPENDIX I

(See introductory note on p. 487)

ON MODERN COMEDY

To the EDITOR of the MORNING CHRONICLE.

SIR,—I believe it seldom happens that we confess ourselves to be in the dark on any subject, till we are pretty well persuaded that no one else is able to dispel the gloom in which we are involved. Convinced, that where our own sagacity has failed, all further search must be vain, we resign ourselves implicitly to all the self-complacency of conscious ignorance, and are very little obliged to any one, who comes to disturb our intellectual repose. Something of this kind appears to have happened to your Correspondent on the subject of the Drama. Indeed, Sir, I should have been very cautious of attempting to remove the heap of doubts and difficulties which seemed to oppress him, but that I thought so obvious a truth as the connection between the manners of the age and comedy could not startle ‘the plainest understanding;’ but the moment this obvious truth is pointed out to him, he complains that he is ‘dazzled with excess of light,’[79] and puts a ready moveable screen of common places before him to keep it out. And then, Sir, I observe, that to fortify himself in his scruples, and lest he should be forced to give up his sceptical solution of sceptical doubts, he has confounded characters with you, Sir, by a dextrous ventriloquism puts his sentiments into your mouth, and has contrived to get the balance into his own hands, and ‘smiles delighted with the eternal poise.’[80]

After complimenting the writer of a former article, by saying that ‘his powers have not languished in the dense atmosphere of logic and criticism,’ (a compliment which I am ready to return with equal sincerity), your Correspondent proceeds—‘We confess it did not occur to us, that it is because so many excellent comedies have been written that so few are written at present. To our plain understanding, on the first statement of this circumstance, a conclusion directly the reverse would have presented itself. We should have been inclined to apply in this instance the analogy which we find to hold in almost every other, that relative perfection is only the result of repeated efforts, and that, as in the case of an individual artist, till his powers are impaired by age, every successive attempt is in general an improvement on the preceding, so in the art itself what has once been well done, usually leads to something better.’—On this passage I might observe, first, that I am always apt to distrust these modest pretensions to plain understanding. They signify nothing more than that an opinion is contrary to our own, and that we will not take the trouble to examine it. And besides, we all of us refine as much and as well as we are able; only we are not willing that others should refine more than we do. Secondly, Sir, the analogy to which your Correspondent appeals in support of his hypothesis, that the arts are uniformly progressive, totally fails; it applies to science, and not to art.

Farther, your Correspondent observes, ‘That the production of many good comedies should render us more severe towards bad ones, and bad poets more averse from exposing themselves, would appear much more likely than that exactly the reverse of all this should happen. We naturally expect from a landlord, who at the commencement of a repast regales us with elegant wines, that he will not place homely ale or insipid porter before us towards the end of it. It was D’Alembert, we believe, who suggested as a great improvement in modern literature, that all our books should be collected together every fifty years, for the purpose of making a bonfire of them,’ &c. All this may be very true, but I really do not see what it has to do with the question.

‘For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.’[81]

I am afraid he will think I am at cross-purposes with his theories, but it is really because they appear to me at cross-purposes with facts. For instance, the bad poets do not in the present case seem very backward to expose themselves; but what is it that hinders the good ones (rising like so many Phœnixes out of the ashes of their predecessors) from claiming the admiration that is due to them? Surely, if every succeeding writer improved upon the last, and ‘what was once well done always led to something better,’ the managers would not damp the rising flame. The progress of comedy among us appears to have been just the reverse of what your Correspondent would have anticipated; namely, from elegant wines to insipid porter, and our critic (if I mistake him not), would make the matter still worse by diluting this insipid stuff with water, in order that it may become still more tasteless, and according to him, more elegant and refined. Our elder comic writers provided choice wines, strong liquors and rich viands of all kinds for the entertainment of the public, while our author, seated at the full banquet, like Christopher Sly at the Duke’s table, calls out incessantly for ‘a pot of the smallest ale.’[82] As to the project of D’Alembert, I have no great objection to it. Only I would propose as a compromise that we should let our present stock remain on hand, and that nothing but reviews and newspaper criticisms should be written for the next fifty years, by which means I shall keep possession of Jonson, Farquhar, Wycherley, Congreve, and Smollett, and in the mean time your correspondent may take a surfeit of Mr. Tobin’s Honey Moon, The Duenna (for whom I have a great respect), and Madame de Stael. I cannot, however, agree with him in the building up of his chronological ladder of taste. Congreve did not improve upon Wycherley, because he was not indebted to him, and Sheridan was indebted to Congreve without improving upon him. Your Correspondent, Sir, writes very well about these authors, but as if he had not read them. As to the hardship of which he complains, that our fathers should have laughed for themselves and for us too, it is but the common course of nature. It is not a misfortune peculiar to ourselves. Even Madame de Stael is forced to go a hundred and fifty years back, for an author to insult the English with, on their want of comic genius, and of the knowledge of those traits peculiar to the refinements of French manners, but which yet paint human nature in every country. I agree with your Correspondent in his first letter, that though we cannot write good Comedies, we can assign good reasons why they are not written; and I think we have, between us, made out the reason of the present want of dramatic writers, though I doubt if we should, both of us together, make even half a Menander. But he will have all the advantages on his side, and be as merry as he is wise. Why, after he has laughed folly out of countenance, is he determined to laugh at her as much as ever, and to make good sense or absurdity equally subservient to his spleen? He is bent on laughing at all events—at every thing or nothing; and if he does not find things ridiculous, he will make them so. The fantastic resolution of Biron, ‘to laugh a twelvemonth in an hospital,’[83] does not exceed the preposterous ambition of your Correspondent, to extract the soul of mirth out of the schools of philosophy. We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things. If he or I were to put ourselves into the stage, to go from Salisbury to London, I dare say we should not meet with the same number of odd accidents or ludicrous distresses on the road, that befel Parson Adams; but why, if we get into a common vehicle, and submit to the conveniences of modern travelling, do we complain of the want of adventures? Modern manners may be compared to a modern stage-coach: our limbs may be a little cramped with the confinement, and we may grow drowsy; but we arrive safe, without any very amusing or any very sad accident, at out journey’s end. But your Correspondent sees nothing in the progress of modern manners and characters but a vague, abstract progression from grossness to refinement, marked on a graduated scale of human perfectibility. This sweeping distinction appears to him to explain satisfactorily the whole difference between all sorts of manners, and all kinds and degrees of dramatic excellence. These two words stand him instead of other ideas on the texture of society, or the nature of the dramatic art. He is not, however, quite consistent on this subject, for in one place he says, that ‘the stock of folly in the world is in no danger of being diminished,’ and in the next sentence, that there is a progression in society, an age of grossness and an age of refinement, and he only wonders that the progress of the stage does not keep pace with it. Now the reason why I do not share his wonder is, that though I think the quantity of dull, dry, serious, incorrigible folly in the world is in no danger of being diminished, yet I think the stock of lively, dramatic, entertaining, laughable folly is, and necessarily must be, diminished by the progress of that mechanical refinement which consists in throwing our follies, as it were, into a common stock, and moulding them in the same general form. Our peculiarities have become insipid sameness; our eccentricity servile imitation; our wit, wisdom at second-hand; our prejudices indifference; our feelings not our own; our distinguishing characteristic the want of all character. We are become a nation of authors and readers, and even this distinction is confounded by the mediation of the reviewers. We all follow the same profession, which is criticism, each individual is every thing but himself, not one but all mankind’s epitome, and the gradations of vice and virtue, of sense and folly, of refinement and grossness of character, seem lost in a kind of intellectual hermaphroditism. But on this tabula rasa, according to your Correspondent, the most lively and sparkling hues of comedy may be laid. His present reasoning gives a very different turn to the question he at first proposed. He appears to have set out with a theory of his own about the production of comic excellence, in which it was entirely regulated by the state of the market, and to have supposed that as long as authors continued to write plays, and managers to accept them, that is, so long as the thing answered in the way of trade, Comedy would go on pretty much as it had hitherto done, to the end of the world. But finding that this was not exactly the case, he takes his stand near the avenues leading to the manager’s door, and happening to see a young man of worth and talents, with great knowledge of the world, and of the refinements of polished society, come out with his piece in his hand, and a face of disappointment, he is no longer at a loss for the secret of the decline of Comedy among us, and proceeds cautiously to hint his discovery to the world. But it being suggested to him that the change of manners, produced partly by the stage itself, and the total disappearance of the characters which before formed the very life and soul of Comedy, might have something to do with the decline of the Stage, he will not hear a word of it, but says, that this circumstance, so far from shewing why our modern Comedies are not so good as the old ones, proves that they ought to be better; that the more we are become like one another, or like nothing, the less distinction of character we have, the greater discrimination must it require to bring it out; that the less ridiculous our manners become, the more scope do they afford for art and ingenuity in discovering our weak sides and shades of infirmity; and that the greatest sameness and monotony must in the end produce the most exquisite variety. For a plain man, this is very well. It is on the same principle, that some writers have contended that Scotland is more fertile than England, the excellence of the crop being in proportion to the barrenness of the soil. What a pity it is, that so ingenious a theory should not have the facts on its side; and that the perfection of satire should not be found to keep pace with the want of materials. It is rather too much to assume on a mere hypothesis, that the present manners are equally favourable to the production of the highest comic excellence, till they do produce it. Even in France, where encouragement is given to the noblest and most successful exertions of genius by the sure prospect of profit to yourself or your descendants, every time your piece is acted in any corner of the empire, to the latest posterity, we find the best critics going back to the grossness and illiberality of the age of Louis XIV. for the production of the best comedies; which is rather extraordinary, considering the infinitely refined state of manners in France, and the infinite encouragement given to dramatic talent. But has it never occurred to your Correspondent, as a solution of this difficulty, that there is a difference between refinement and imbecility, between general knowledge and personal elegance, between metaphysical subtlety and stage-effect? Does he think all manners, all kinds of folly, and all shades of character equally fit for dramatic representation? Does he not perceive that there is a point where minuteness of distinction becomes laborious foolery, and where the slenderness of the materials must baffle the skill and destroy the exertions of the artist? He insists, indeed, on pulling off the mask of folly, by some ingenious device, though she has been stripped of it long ago; and forced to compose her features into a decent appearance of gravity; and he next proceeds to apply a microscope of a new construction, to detect the freckles on her face and inequalities in her skin, in order to communicate his amusing discoveries to the audience, as some philosophical lecturer does the result of his chemical experiments on the decomposition of substances to the admiring circle. There is no end of this. Your Correspondent confesses that ‘we are drilled into a sort of stupid decorum and apparent uniformity,’ but this he converts into an advantage. His penetrating eye is infinitely delighted with the picturesque appearance of so many imperceptible deviations from a right line, and mathematical inclinations from the perpendicular. The picture of the Flamborough Family, painted with each an orange in his hand, must have been a masterpiece of nice discrimination and graceful inflection. Upon this principle of going to work the wrong way, and of making something out of nothing, we must reverse all our rules of taste and common sense. No Comedy can be perfect till the dramatis personæ might be reversed without creating much confusion: or the ingredients of character ought to be so blended and poured repeatedly from one vessel into another that the difference would be perceptible only to the finest palate. Thus, if Molière had lived in the present day, he would not have drawn his Avare, his Tartuffe and his Misanthrope with those strong touches and violent contrasts which he has done, but with those delicate traits which are common to human nature in general, that is, his Miser without avarice, his Hypocrite without design, and his Misanthrope without disgust at the vices of mankind. Or instead of the heroines of his School for Women (Alithea and Miss Peggy, which Wycherley has contrived to make the English understand) we should have had two sentimental young ladies brought up much in the same way, with nice shades of difference, which we should have been hardly able to distinguish, subscribing to the same circulating library, reading the same novels and poems, one preferring Gertrude of Wyoming to The Lady of the Lake, and the other The Lady of the Lake to Gertrude of Wyoming, differing in their opinions on points of taste or systems of mineralogy, and delivering dissertations on the arts with Corinna of Italy.

Considering the difficulty of the task which by our author’s own account is thus imposed upon modern writers, may we not suppose this very difficulty to have operated to deter them from the pursuit of dramatic excellence. But I suspect that your Correspondent has taken up his complaint of the deficiency of refined Comedy too hastily, and that he need not despair of finding some modelled upon his favourite principles. Guided by his theory he should have sought them out in their remote obscurity, and have obtruded them on the public eye. He might have formed a new era of criticism, and have claimed the same merit as Voltaire, when he discovered that the English had one good Tragedy, Cato. Your Correspondent, availing himself of the idea that frivolity, taste, and elegance are the same, might have shewn how much superior The Heiress of Burgoyne was to The Confederacy, or The Way of the World, and The Basil of Miss Bailey, to Romeo and Juliet. He would have found ample scope in the blooming desert for endless discoveries—of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of fancies ‘wan that hang the pensive head,’[84] of evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of all thought, and an artificial dearth of sense, spirit, wit and character! I can assure your Correspondent, there has been no want of Comedies to his taste; but the taste of the public was not so far advanced. It was found necessary to appeal to something more palpable: and so, in this interval of want of characters in real life, the actors amuse themselves with taking off one another.

But your Correspondent will have it that there are different degrees of refinement in wit and pleasantry, and he seems to suppose that the best of our old Comedies are no better than the coarse jests of a set of country clowns—a sort of comedies bourgeoises, compared with the admirable productions which might and ought to be written. Even our modern dramatists, he suspects, are not so familiar with high life as they ought to be. ‘They have not seen the Court, and if they have not seen the Court their manner must be damnable.’[85] Leaving him to settle this last point with the poetical Lords and Ladies of the present day, I am afraid he has himself fallen into the very error he complains of, and would degrade genteel Comedy from a high Court Lady into a literary prostitute. What does he mean by refinement? Does he find none in Millamant, and her morning dreams, in Sir Roger de Coverly and his widow? Did not Congreve, Wycherley, and Suckling approach tolerably near ‘the ring of mimic Statesmen, and their merry King?’[86] Does he suppose that their fine ladies were mere rustics, because they did not compose metaphysical treatises, or their fine gentlemen inexperienced tyros, because they had not been initiated into the infinitely refined society of Paris and of Baron Grimm? Is there no distinction between an Angelica, and a Miss Prue, a Valentine, a Tattle, and a Ben? Where in the annals of modern literature will he find anything more refined, more deliberate, more abstracted in vice than the Nobleman in Amelia? Are not the compliments which Pope paid to his friends,[87] to St. John, Murray, and Cornbury, equal in taste and elegance to those which passed between the French philosophers and their patrons?—Are there no traits in Sterne?—Is not Richardson minute enough?—Must we part with Sophia Western and Clarissa for the loves of the plants and the triangles?—The beauty of these writers in general was, that they gave every kind and gradation of character, and they did this, because their portraits were taken from life. They were true to nature, full of meaning, perfectly understood and executed in every part. Their coarseness was not mere vulgarity, their refinement was not a mere negation of precision. They refined upon characters, instead of refining them away. Their refinement consisted in working out the parts, not in leaving a vague outline. They painted human nature as it was, and as they saw it with individual character and circumstances, not human nature in general, abstracted from time, place and circumstance. Strength and refinement are so far from being incompatible, that they assist each other, as the hardest bodies admit of the finest touches and the brightest polish. But there are some minds that never understand any thing, but by a negation of its opposite. There is a strength without refinement, which is grossness, as there is a refinement without strength or effect, which is insipidity. Neither are grossness and refinement of manners inconsistent with each other in the same period. The grossness of one class adds to the refinement of another, by circumscribing it, by rendering the feeling more pointed and exquisite, by irritating our self-love, &c. There can be no great refinement of character where there is no distinction of persons. The character of a gentleman is a relative term. The diffusion of knowledge, of artificial and intellectual equality, tends to level this distinction, and to confound that nice perception and high sense of honour, which arises from conspicuousness of situation, and a perpetual attention to personal propriety and the claims of personal respect. Your Correspondent, I think, mistakes refinement of individual character for general knowledge and intellectual subtlety, with which it has little more to do than with the dexterity of a rope-dancer or juggler. The age of chivalry is gone with the improvements in the art of war, which superseded personal courage, and the character of a gentleman must disappear with those refinements in intellect which render the advantages of rank and situation common almost to any one. The bag-wig and sword followed the helmet and the spear, when these outward insignia no longer implied a real superiority, and were a distinction without a difference. Even the grossness of a state of mixed and various manners receives a degree of refinement from contrast and opposition, by being defined and implicated with circumstances. The Upholsterer in The Tatler is not a mere vulgar politician. His intense feeling of interest and curiosity about what does not at all concern him, displays itself in the smallest things, assumes the most eccentric forms, and the peculiarity of his absurdity masks itself under various shifts and evasions, which the same folly, when it becomes epidemic and universal as it has since done, would not have occasion to resort to. In general it is only in a state of mere barbarism or indiscriminate refinement that we are to look for extreme grossness or complete insipidity. Our modern dramatists indeed have happily contrived to unite both extremes. Omne tulit punctum.[88] On a soft ground of sentiment they have daubed in the gross absurdities of modern manners void of character, have blended metaphysical waiting maids with jockey noblemen, and the humours of the four in hand club, and fill up the piece by some vile and illiberal caricature of particular individuals known on the town.

To return once more to your Correspondent, who condemns all this as much as I do. He is for refining Comedy into a pure intellectual abstraction, the shadow of a shade. Will he forgive me if I suggest, as an addition to his theory, that the drama in general might be constructed on the same abstruse and philosophical principles. As he imagines that the finest Comedies may be formed without individual character, so the deepest Tragedies might be composed without real passion. The slightest and most ridiculous distresses might be improved by the help of art and metaphysical aid, into the most affecting scenes. A young man might naturally be introduced as the hero of a philosophic drama, who had lost the gold medal for a prize poem; or a young lady, whose verses had been severely criticized in the reviews. Nothing could come amiss to this rage for speculative refinement; or the actors might be supposed to come forward, not in any character, but as a sort of Chorus, reciting speeches on the general miseries of human life, or reading alternately a passage out of Seneca’s Morals or Voltaire’s Candide. This might by some be thought a great improvement on English Tragedy, or even on the French.

In fact, Sir, the whole of our author’s reasoning proceeds on a total misconception of the nature of the Drama itself. It confounds philosophy with poetry, laboured analysis with intuitive perception, general truth with individual observation. He makes the comic muse a dealer in riddles, and an expounder of hieroglyphics, and a taste for dramatic excellence, a species of the second sight. He would have the Drama to be the most remote, and it is the most substantial and real of all things. It represents not only looks, but motion and speech. The painter gives only the former, looks without action or speech, and the mere writer only the latter, words without looks or action. Its business and its use is to express the thoughts and character in the most striking and instantaneous manner, in the manner most like reality. It conveys them in all their truth and subtlety, but in all their force and with all possible effect. It brings them into action, obtrudes them on the sight, embodies them in habits, in gestures, in dress, in circumstances, and in speech. It renders every thing overt and ostensible, and presents human nature not in its elementary principles or by general reflections, but exhibits its essential quality in all their variety of combination, and furnishes subjects for perpetual reflection.

But the instant we begin to refine and generalise beyond a certain point, we are reduced to abstraction, and compelled to see things, not as individuals, or as connected with action and circumstances, but as universal truths, applicable in a degree to all things, and in their extent to none, which therefore it would be absurd to predicate of individuals, or to represent to the senses. The habit, too, of detaching these abstract species and fragments of nature, destroys the power of combining them in complex characters, in every degree of force and variety. The concrete and the abstract cannot co-exist in the same mind. We accordingly find, that to genuine comedy succeed satire and novels, the one dealing in general character and description, and the other making out particulars by the assistance of narrative and comment. Afterwards come traits, and collections of anecdotes, bon mots, topics, and quotations, &c. which are applicable to any one, and are just as good told of one person as another. Thus the trio in the Memoirs of M. Grimm, attributed to three celebrated characters, on the death of a fourth, might have the names reversed, and would lose nothing of its effect. In general these traits, which are so much admired, are a sort of systematic libels on human nature, which make up, by their malice and acuteness, for their want of wit and sense.

I have already taken notice of the quotation from Madame de Stael, with which your Correspondent concludes. I can only oppose to it the authority of Sterne and Sir Richard Steele, who thought that the excellence of the English in comedy was in a great measure owing to the originality and variety of character among them [See Sentimental Journey, and Tatler, No. .][89] With respect to that extreme refinement of taste which the fair Author arrogates to the French, they are neither entirely without it, nor have they so much as they think. The two most refined things in the world are the story of the Falcon in Boccacio, and the character of Griselda in Chaucer, of neither of which the French would have the smallest conception, because they do not depend on traits, or minute circumstances, or turns of expression, but in infinite simplicity and truth, and an everlasting sentiment. We might retort upon Mad. de Stael what she sometimes says in her own defence, That we understand all in other writers that is worth understanding. As to Moliere, he is quite out of the present question; he lived long before the era of French philosophy and refinement, and is besides almost an English author, quite a barbare, in all in which he excels. He was unquestionably one of the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived, a man of infinite wit, gaiety, and invention, full of life and laughter, the very soul of mirth and whim. But it cannot be denied, that his plays are in general mere farces, without real nature or refined character, totally void of probability. They could not be carried on a moment without a perfect collusion between the parties, to wink at impossibilities, by contradicting and acting in defiance of all common sense. For instance, take the Medecin malgre lui, in which a common wood-cutter voluntarily takes upon himself, and supports through a long play, the character of a learned physician, without exciting the least suspicion, but which is, notwithstanding the absurdity of the plot, one of the most laughable and truly comic things that can be imagined. The rest of his lighter pieces are of the same description—mere gratuitous fictions and exaggerations of nature. As to his serious Comedies, as the Tartuffe and Misanthrope, nothing can be more objectionable, and the chief objection to them is that nothing is more hard than to read them through. They have all the improbability and extravagance of the rest, united with all the tedious common-place prosing of French declamation. What can exceed the absurdity of the Misanthrope, who leaves his mistress after every proof of her attachment and constancy, merely because she will not submit to the technical formality of going to live with him in a desert? The characters which she gives of her friends in the beginning of the play are very admirable satires, but not Comedy. The same remarks apply in a greater degree to the Tartuffe. The long speeches and reasonings in this Play may be very good logic, or rhetoric, or philosophy, or any thing but Comedy. They are dull pompous casuistry. The improbability is monstrous. This play is indeed invaluable, as a lasting monument of the credulity of the French to all verbal professions of virtue or wisdom, and its existence can only be accounted for from that astonishing and tyrannical predominance which words exercise over things in the mind of every Frenchman.

In short, Sir, I conceive, that neither M. de Stael nor your Correspondent has hit upon the true theory of refinement. To suppose that we can go on refining for ever with vivacity and effect, embodying vague abstractions, and particularising flimsy generalities,—‘shewing the very body of the age, its form and pressure,’[90] though it has neither form nor pressure left,—seems to me the height of speculative absurdity. That undefined ‘frivolous space,’ beyond which Madame de Stael regards as ‘the region of taste and elegance,’ is, indeed, nothing but the very Limbo of Vanity, the land of chiromancy and occult conceit, and paradise of fools, where, according to your correspondent,

‘None yet, but store hereafter from the earth Shall, like aerial vapours, upward rise Of all things transitory and vain.’[91]

I am, Sir, your humble servant, H.

APPENDIX II

(See note to p. 217.)

ON MR KEAN’S IAGO

MR. EXAMINER,—I was not at all aware that in the remarks which I offered on Mr. Kean’s Iago my opinions would clash with those already expressed by the respectable writer of the Theatrical Examiner: for I did not mean to object to ‘the gay and careless air which Mr. Kean threw over his representation of that arch villain,’ but to its being nothing but carelessness and gaiety; and I thought it perfectly consistent with a high degree of admiration of this extraordinary actor, to suppose that he might have carried an ingenious and original idea of the character to a paradoxical extreme. In some respects, your Correspondent seems to have mistaken what I have said; for he observes that I have entered into an analysis to shew, ‘that Iago is a malignant being, who hates his fellow-creatures, and doats on mischief and crime as the best means of annoying the objects of his hate.’ Now this is the very reverse of what I intended to shew; for so far from thinking that Iago is ‘a ruffian or a savage, who pursues wickedness for its own sake,’ I am ready to allow that he is a pleasant amusing sort of gentleman, but with an over-activity of mind that is dangerous to himself and others; that so far from hating his fellow-creatures, he is perfectly regardless of them, except as they may afford him food for the exercise of his spleen, and that ‘he doats on mischief and crime,’ not ‘as the best means of annoying the objects of his hate,’ but as necessary to keep himself in that strong state of excitement which his natural constitution requires, or, to express it proverbially, in perpetual hot water. Iago is a man who will not suffer himself or any one else to be at rest; he has an insatiable craving after action, and action of the most violent kind. His conduct and motives require some explanation; but they cannot be accounted for from his interest or his passions,—his love of himself, or hatred of those who are the objects of his persecution: these are both of them only the occasional pretext for his cruelty, and are in fact both of them subservient to his love of power and mischievous irritability. I repeat, that I consider this sort of unprincipled self-will as a very different thing from common malignity; but I conceive it also just as remote from indifference or levity. In one word, the malice of Iago is not personal, but intellectual. Mr. Kean very properly got rid of the brutal ferocity which had been considered as the principle of the character, and then left it without any principle at all. He has mistaken the want of moral feeling, which is inseparable from the part, for constitutional ease and general indifference, which are just as incompatible with it. Mr. Kean’s idea seems to have been, that the most perfect callousness ought to accompany the utmost degree of inhumanity; and so far as relates to callousness to moral considerations, this is true; but that is not the question. If our Ancient had no other object, or principle of action but his indifference to the feelings of others, he gives himself a great deal of trouble to no purpose. If he has nothing else to set him in motion, he had much better remain quiet than be broken on the rack. Mere carelessness and gaiety, then, do not account for the character. But Mr. Kean acted it with nearly the same easy air with which Mr. Braham sings a song in an opera, or with which a comic actor delivers a side-speech in an after-piece.

But the character of Iago, says your Correspondent, has nothing to do with the manner of acting it. We are to look to the business of the play. Is this then so very pleasant, or is the part which Iago undertakes and executes the perfection of easy comedy? I should conceive quite the contrary. The rest of what your Correspondent says on this subject is ‘ingenious, but not convincing.’ It amounts to this, that Iago is a hypocrite, and that a hypocrite should always be gay. This must depend upon circumstances. Tartuffe was a hypocrite, yet he was not gay: Joseph Surface was a hypocrite, but grave and plausible: Blifil was a hypocrite, but cold, formal and reserved. The hypocrite is naturally grave, that is, thoughtful, and dissatisfied with things as they are, plotting doubtful schemes for his own advancement and the ruin of others, studying far-fetched evasions, double-minded and double-faced.—Now all this is an effort, and one that is often attended with disagreeable consequences; and it seems more in character that a man whose invention is thus kept on the rack, and his feelings under painful restraint, should rather strive to hide the wrinkle rising on his brow, and the malice at his heart, under an honest concern for his friend, or the serene and regulated smile of steady virtue, than that he should wear the light-hearted look and easy gaiety of thoughtless constitutional good humour. The presumption therefore is not in favour of the lively, laughing, comic mien of hypocrisy. Gravity is its most obvious resource, and, with submission, it is quite as effectual a one. But it seems, that if Iago had worn this tremendous mask, ‘the gay and idle world would have had nothing to do with him.’ Why, indeed, if he had only intended to figure at a carnival or a ridotto, to dance with the women or drink with the men, this objection might be very true. But Iago has a different scene to act in, and has other thoughts in his contemplation. One would suppose that Othello contained no other adventures than those which are to be met with in Anstey’s Bath Guide,[92] or in one of Miss Burney’s novels. The smooth smiling surface of the world of fashion is not the element he delights to move in: he is the busy meddling fiend ‘who rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm,’[93] triumphing over the scattered wrecks, and listening to the shrieks of death. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Kean’s Iago must be wrong, for it seems to have abstracted your Correspondent entirely from the subject of the play. Indeed it is one great proof of Mr. Kean’s powers, but which at the same time blinds the audience to his defects, that they think of little else in any play but of the part he acts. ‘What! a gallant Venetian turned into a musty philosopher! Go away, and beg the reversion of Diogenes’ tub! Go away, the coxcomb Roderigo will think you mighty dull, and will answer your requests for money with a yawn; the cheerful spirited Cassio will choose some pleasanter companion to sing with him over his cups; the fiery Othello will fear lest his philosophic Ancient will be less valorously incautious in the day of battle, and that he will not storm a fort with the usual uncalculating intrepidity.’ Now, the coxcomb Roderigo would probably have answered his demands for money with a yawn, though he had been ever so facetious a companion, if he had not thought him useful to his affairs. He employs him as a man of business, as a dextrous, cunning, plotting rogue, who is to betray his master and debauch his wife, an occupation for which his good humour or apparent want of thought would not particularly qualify him. An accomplice in knavery ought always to be a solemn rogue, and withal a casuist, for he thus becomes our better conscience, and gives a sanction to the roguery. Cassio does not invite Iago to drink with him, but is prevailed upon against his will to join him; and Othello himself owes his misfortunes, in the first instance, to his having repulsed the applications of Iago to be made his lieutenant. He himself affects to be blunt and unmannerly in his conversation with Desdemona. There is no appearance of any cordiality towards him in Othello, nor of his having been a general favourite (for such persons are not usually liked), nor of his having ever been employed but for his understanding and discretion. He every where owes his success to his intellectual superiority, and not to the pleasantness of his manners. At no time does Othello put implicit confidence in Iago’s personal character, but demands his proofs; or when he founds his faith on his integrity, it is from the gravity of his manner: ‘Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more,’ etc.[94]

Your Correspondent appeals to the manners of women of the town, to prove that ‘there is a fascination in an open manner.’ I do not see what this has to do with Iago. Those who promise to give only pleasure, do not of course put on a melancholy face, or ape the tragic muse. The Sirens would not lull their victims by the prophetic menaces of the Furies. Iago did not profess to be the harbinger of welcome news. The reference to Milton’s Satan and Lovelace is equally misplaced. If Iago had himself endeavoured to seduce Desdemona, the cases would have been parallel. Lovelace had to seduce a virtuous woman to pleasure, by presenting images of pleasure, by fascinating her senses, and by keeping out of sight every appearance of danger or disaster. Iago, on the contrary, shews to Othello that he has ‘a monster in his thought’;[95] and it is his object to make him believe this by dumb show, by the knitting of his brows, by stops and starts, etc. before he is willing to commit himself by words. Milton’s devil also could only succeed by raising up the most voluptuous and delightful expectations in the mind of Eve, and by himself presenting an example of the divine effects produced by eating of the tree of knowledge. Gloom and gravity were here out of the question. Yet how does Milton describe the behaviour of this arch-hypocrite, when he is about to complete his purpose?

‘She scarce had said, though brief, when now more bold The Tempter, but with shew of zeal and love To man and indignation at his wrong, New part puts on, and as to passion moved, Fluctuates disturb’d yet comely and in act Rais’d, as of some great matter to begin, As when of old some orator renown’d In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence Flourish’d, since mute, to some great cause address’d, Stood in himself collected, while each part, Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue; Sometimes in height began, as no delay Of preface brooking through his zeal of right; So standing, moving, or to height upgrown, The Tempter all-impassion’d thus began:’[96]

If this impassioned manner was justifiable here, where the serpent had only to persuade Eve to her imagined good, how much more was it proper in Iago, who had to tempt Othello to his damnation? When he hints to Othello that his wife is unfaithful to him—when he tells his proofs, at which Othello swoons, when he advises him to strangle her, and undertakes to dispatch Cassio from his zeal in ‘wronged Othello’s service,’[97] should he do this with a smiling face, or a face of indifference? If a man drinks or sings with me, he may perhaps drink or sing much as Mr. Kean drinks or sings with Roderigo and Cassio: if he bids me good day, or wishes me a pleasant journey, a frank and careless manner will well become him; but if he assures me that I am on the edge of a precipice, or waylaid by assassins, or that some tremendous evil has befallen me, with the same fascinating gaiety of countenance and manner, I shall be little disposed to credit either his sincerity or friendship or common sense.

Your Correspondent accounts for the security and hilarity of Iago, in such circumstances, from his sense of superiority and his certainty of success. First, this is not the account given in the text, which I should prefer to any other authority on the subject. Secondly, if he was quite certain of the success of his experiment, it was not worth the making, for the only provocation to it was the danger and difficulty of the enterprise; and at any rate, whatever were his feelings, the appearance of anxiety and earnestness was necessary to the accomplishment of his purpose. ‘He should assume a virtue, if he had it not.’[98] Besides, the success of his experiment was not of that kind even which has been called negative success, but proved of a very tragical complexion both to himself and others. I can recollect nothing more to add, without repeating what I have before said, which I am afraid would be to no purpose. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

W. H.

Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE

-----

Footnote 1:

A child that has hid itself out of the way in sport, is under a great temptation to laugh at the unconsciousness of others as to its situation. A person concealed from assassins, is in no danger of betraying his situation by laughing.

Footnote 2:

His words are—‘If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand consists quickness of parts, in this of having them unconfused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists in a great measure the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence, perhaps, may be given some reason of that common observation, that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason. For wit lying mostly in the assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another.’ (Essay, vol. i. p. 143.) This definition, such as it is, Mr. Locke took without acknowledgment from Hobbes, who says in his Leviathan, ‘This difference of quickness in imagining is caused by the difference of men’s passions, that love and dislike some one thing, some another, and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way, some another, and are held to and observe differently the things that pass through their imagination. And whereas in this succession of thoughts there is nothing to observe in the things they think on, but either in what they be like one another, or in what they be unlike, those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit, by which is meant on this occasion a good fancy. But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which is called distinguishing and discerning and judging between thing and thing; in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a good judgment; and particularly in matter of conversation and business, wherein times, places, and persons are to be discerned, this virtue is called discretion. The former, that is, fancy, without the help of judgment, is not commended for a virtue; but the latter, which is judgment or discretion, is commended for itself, without the help of fancy.’ Leviathan, p. 32.

Footnote 3:

Unforced.

Footnote 4:

See his Lives of the British Poets, Vol. I.

Footnote 5:

‘And have not two saints power to use A greater privilege than three Jews?’

* * * * *

‘Her voice, the music of the spheres, So loud it deafens mortals’ ears, As wise philosophers have thought, And that’s the cause we hear it not.’

Footnote 6:

‘No Indian prince has to his palace More followers than a thief to the gallows.’

Footnote 7:

‘And in his nose, like Indian king, He (Bruin) wore for ornament a ring.’

Footnote 8:

‘Whose noise whets valour sharp, like beer By thunder turned to vinegar.’

Footnote 9:

‘Replete with strange hermetic powder, That wounds nine miles point-blank would solder.’

* * * * *

‘His tawny beard was th’ equal grace Both of his wisdom and his face; In cut and die so like a tile, A sudden view it would beguile: The upper part thereof was whey, The nether orange mixed with grey. This hairy meteor did denounce The fall of sceptres and of crowns; With grisly type did represent Declining age of government; And tell with hieroglyphic spade Its own grave and the state’s were made.’

* * * * *

‘This sword a dagger had his page, That was but little for his age; And therefore waited on him so, As dwarfs upon knight errants do.’

Footnote 10:

‘And straight another with his flambeau, Gave Ralpho o’er the eyes a damn’d blow.’

* * * * *

‘That deals in destiny’s dark counsels, And sage opinions of the moon sells.’

Footnote 11:

‘The mighty Tottipottimoy Sent to our elders an envoy.’

Footnote 12:

‘For Hebrew roots, although they’re found To flourish most in barren ground.’

Footnote 13:

‘Those wholesale critics that in coffee- Houses cry down all philosophy.’

Footnote 14:

‘This we among ourselves may speak, But to the wicked or the weak We must be cautious to declare Perfection-truths, such as these are.’

Footnote 15:

The following are nearly all I can remember.—

‘Thus stopp’d their fury and the basting Which towards Hudibras was hasting.’

It is said of the bear, in the fight with the dogs—

‘And setting his right foot before, He raised himself to shew how tall His person was above them all.’

* * * * *

‘At this the knight grew high in chafe, And staring furiously on Ralph, He trembled and look’d pale with ire, Like ashes first, then red as fire.’

* * * * *

‘The knight himself did after ride, Leading Crowdero by his side, And tow’d him if he lagged behind, Like boat against the tide and wind.’

* * * * *

‘And rais’d upon his desperate foot, On stirrup-side he gazed about.’

* * * * *

‘And Hudibras, who used to ponder On such sights with judicious wonder.’

* * * * *

The beginning of the account of the procession in Part II. is as follows:—

‘Both thought it was the wisest course To wave the fight and mount to horse, And to secure by swift retreating, Themselves from danger of worse beating: Yet neither of them would disparage By uttering of his mind his courage. Which made ’em stoutly keep their ground, With horror and disdain wind-bound. And now the cause of all their fear By slow degrees approach’d so near, They might distinguish different noise Of horns and pans, and dogs and boys, And kettle-drums, whose sullen dub Sounds like the hooping of a tub.’

Footnote 16:

Love in a Tub, and She Would if She Could.

Footnote 17:

Why Pope should say in reference to him, ‘Or more wise Charron,’ is not easy to determine.

Footnote 18:

As an instance of his general power of reasoning, I shall give his chapter entitled One Man’s Profit is another’s Loss, in which he has nearly anticipated Mandeville’s celebrated paradox of private vices being public benefits:—

‘Demades, the Athenian, condemned a fellow-citizen, who furnished out funerals, for demanding too great a price for his goods: and if he got an estate, it must be by the death of a great many people: but I think it a sentence ill grounded, forasmuch as no profit can be made, but at the expense of some other person, and that every kind of gain is by that rule liable to be condemned. The tradesman thrives by the debauchery of youth, and the farmer by the dearness of corn; the architect by the ruin of buildings, the officers of justice by quarrels and law-suits; nay, even the honour and function of divines is owing to our mortality and vices. No physician takes pleasure in the health even of his best friends, said the ancient Greek comedian, nor soldier in the peace of his country; and so of the rest. And, what is yet worse, let every one but examine his own heart, and he will find that his private wishes spring and grow up at the expense of some other person. Upon which consideration this thought came into my head, that nature does not hereby deviate from her general policy; for the naturalists hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase of any one thing is the decay and corruption of another:

_Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit, Continuo hoc mors est illius, quod fuit ante._ i.e.

For what from its own confines chang’d doth pass, Is straight the death of what before it was.’

Vol. 1. Chap. xxi.

Footnote 19:

No. 125.

Footnote 20:

The antithetical style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was so fond of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the substantive, such as ‘proud submission and dignified obedience,’ are, I think, first to be found in the Tatler.

Footnote 21:

It is not to be forgotten that the author of Robinson Crusoe was also an Englishman. His other works, such as the Life of Colonel Jack, &c., are of the same cast, and leave an impression on the mind more like that of things than words.

Footnote 22:

The Fool of Quality, David Simple, and Sidney Biddulph, written about the middle of the last century, belong to the ancient regime of novel-writing. Of the Vicar of Wakefield I have attempted a character elsewhere.

Footnote 23:

The Waiter drawing the cork, in the Rent-day, is another exception, and quite Hogarthian.

Footnote 24:

When Meg Merrilies says in her dying moments—‘Nay, nay, lay my head to the East,’ what was the East to her? Not a reality but an idea of distant time and the land of her forefathers; the last, the strongest, and the best that occurred to her in this world. Her gipsy slang and dress were quaint and grotesque; her attachment to the Kaim of Derncleugh and the wood of Warrock was romantic; her worship of the East was ideal.

Footnote 25:

I have only to add, by way of explanation on this subject, the following passage from the Characters of Shakspeare’s Plays: ‘There is a certain stage of society in which people become conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities, affect to disguise what they are, and set up pretensions to what they are not. This gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and to make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast between the real and the affected character as severely as possible, and denying to those, who would impose on us for what they are not, even the merit which they have. This is the comedy of artificial life, of wit and satire, such as we see it in Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, &c. To this succeeds a state of society from which the same sort of affectation and pretence are banished by a greater knowledge of the world, or by their successful exposure on the stage; and which by neutralizing the materials of comic character, both natural and artificial, leaves no comedy at all—but the sentimental. Such is our modern comedy. There is a period in the progress of manners anterior to both these, in which the foibles and follies of individuals are of nature’s planting, not the growth of art or study; in which they are therefore unconscious of them themselves, or care not who knows them, if they can but have their whim out; and in which, as there is no attempt at imposition, the spectators rather receive pleasure from humouring the inclinations of the persons they laugh at, than wish to give them pain by exposing their absurdity. This may be called the comedy of nature, and it is the comedy which we generally find in Shakspeare.’ P. 256.

Footnote 26:

See Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees.

Footnote 27:

This ingenious and popular writer is since dead.

Footnote 28:

See the Fudge Family, edited by Thomas Brown, jun.

Footnote 29:

The defects in the upper tones of Mr. Kean’s voice were hardly perceptible in his performance of Shylock, and were at first attributed to hoarseness.

Footnote 30:

For a fuller account of Mr. Kean’s Othello, see one of the last articles in this volume.

Footnote 31:

An old gentleman, riding over Putney-bridge, turned round to his servant, and said, ‘Do you like eggs, John?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Here the conversation ended. The same gentleman riding over the same bridge that day year, again turned round, and said, ‘How?’ ‘Poached, sir,’ was the answer.—This is the longest pause upon record, and has something of a dramatic effect, though it could not be transferred to the stage. Perhaps an actor might go so far, on the principle of indefinite pauses, as to begin a sentence in one act, and finish it in the next.

Footnote 32:

The Examiner.

Footnote 33:

It will be seen, that this severe censure of Munden is nearly reversed in the sequel of these remarks, and on a better acquaintance with this very able actor in characters more worthy of his powers.

Footnote 34:

In the last edition of the works of a modern Poet, there is a Sonnet to the King, complimenting him on ‘his royal fortitude.’ The story of the Female Vagrant, which very beautifully and affectingly describes the miseries brought on the lower classes by war, in bearing which the said ‘royal fortitude’ is so nobly exercised, is very properly struck out of the collection.

Footnote 35:

The scene where the screen falls and discovers Lady Teazle, is without a rival. Perhaps the discovery is delayed rather too long.

Footnote 36:

What Louis XVIII. said to his new National Guards.

Footnote 37:

It was about this time that Madame Lavalette assisted her husband to escape from prison.

Footnote 38:

A Mr. Bibby, from the United States.

Footnote 39:

‘’Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill Appear in writing, or in judging ill.’

Pope.

Footnote 40:

This young lady has since acted Beatrice in ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ with considerable applause.

Footnote 41:

So the old song joyously celebrates their arrival:—

‘The beggars are coming to town, Some in rags, and some in jags, and some in velvet gowns,’

Footnote 42:

The story of the Heart of Midlothian was, we understand, got up at the Surrey Theatre last year by Mr. Dibdin, in the most creditable style. A Miss Taylor, we hear, made an inimitable Jenny Deans, Miss Copeland was surprising as Madge Wildfire, Mrs. Dibdin as Queen Caroline, was also said to be a complete piece of royal wax-work, and Dumbydikes was done to the life. Would we had seen them so done; but we can answer for these things positively on no authority but our own. If they make as good a thing of Ivanhoe, they will do more than the author has done.

Footnote 43:

Miss Baillie has much of the power and spirit of dramatic writing, and not the less because, as a woman, she has been placed out of the vortex of philosophical and political extravagances.

Footnote 44:

We have given this sentence in marks of quotation, and yet it is our own. We should put a stop to the practices of ‘such petty larceny rogues’—but that it is not worth while.

Footnote 45:

Generosity and simplicity are not the characteristic virtues of poets. It has been disputed whether ‘an honest man is the noblest work of God.’ But we think an honest poet is so.

Footnote 46:

‘Or mouth with slumbery pout.’ Keats’s Endymion.

The phrase might be applied to Miss Stephens: though it is a vile phrase, worse than Hamlet’s ‘beautified’ applied to Ophelia. Indeed it has been remarked that Mr. Keats resembles Shakspeare in the novelty and eccentricity of his combinations of style. If so, it is the only thing in which he is like Shakspeare: and yet Mr. Keats, whose misfortune and crime it is, like Milton, to have been born in London, is a much better poet than Mr. Wilson, or his Patroclus Mr. Lockart; nay, further, if Sir Walter Scott (the sly Ulysses of the Auld Reekie school,) had written many of the passages in Mr. Keats’s poems, they would have been quoted as the most beautiful in his works. We do not here (on the banks of the Thames) damn the Scotch novels in the lump, because the writer is a Sawney Scot. But the sweet Edinburgh wits damn Mr. Keats’s lines in the lump, because he is born in London. ‘Oh Scotland, judge of England, what a treasure hast thou in one fair son, and one fair son-in-law, neither of whom (by all accounts) thou lovest passing well!’

Footnote 47:

The Fancy is not used here in the sense of Mr. Peter Corcoran, but in a sense peculiar to Mr. Coleridge, and hitherto undefined by him.

Footnote 48:

This expression is borrowed from Dr. Johnson. However, as Dr. Johnson is not a German critic, Mr. C. need not be supposed to acknowledge it.

Footnote 49:

This was Godwin, who saw Venice Preserved at Norwich. See Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, I. 10.

Footnote 50:

She Stoops to Conquer, Act I.

Footnote 51:

Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 1.

Footnote 52:

Cf. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 5.

Footnote 53:

The Rivals, Act V. Sc. 3.

Footnote 54:

James William Dodd (1740?-1796).

Footnote 55:

The Rivals, Act III. Sc. 3.

Footnote 56:

Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.

Footnote 57:

By Arthur Murphy (1756).

Footnote 58:

Elizabeth Pope (1744?-1797) wife of Alexander Pope the actor. She made her first appearance in 1768 and became famous in a wide range of parts.

Footnote 59:

Better known as Mrs. Barry. Ann Spranger Barry (1734-1801) first appeared at Drury Lane in 1767-8, and soon acquired a great reputation both in tragedy and comedy. She married Spranger Barry the actor in 1768.

Footnote 60:

See post, note to p. 184.

Footnote 61:

Cowley, Horace, Odes, III. 1.

Footnote 62:

Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

Footnote 63:

‘His honours and his valiant parts.’ Ibid.

Footnote 64:

Ibid.

Footnote 65:

Pope, The Rape of the Lock, II. 17-18.

Footnote 66:

See Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Life of Edmund Smith.

Footnote 67:

Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

Footnote 68:

William Dimond of Bath, the author of a great number of plays.

Footnote 69:

Cf. ante, pp. 411-12.

Footnote 70:

Cf. ‘In their trinal triplicities on bye.’ The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto I. St. 38.

Footnote 71:

Cf. ‘Their lips were four red roses on a stalk.’ Richard III., Act IV. Sc. 3.

Footnote 72:

A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.

Footnote 73:

L’Allegro, 14 et seq.

Footnote 74:

By Richard Lalor Shell.

Footnote 75:

Dr. John Stoddart, who had left The Times early in 1817, and started The Day and New Times, afterwards known as The New Times.

Footnote 76:

Founded on Bickerstaffe’s Love in the City, and first produced 1781.

Footnote 77:

Comus, 476-7.

Footnote 78:

Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

Footnote 79:

‘Blasted with excess of light.’ Gray, The Progress of Poesy, III. 2, 7.

Footnote 80:

Cowper, The Task, IV. 486.

Footnote 81:

Pope, Moral Essays, II. 114.

Footnote 82:

The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Sc. 2.

Footnote 83:

Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Sc. 2.

Footnote 84:

L’Allegro, 147.

Footnote 85:

As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 2.

Footnote 86:

Pope, Moral Essays, III., 309-10.

Footnote 87:

Cf. the essay ‘Of persons one would wish to have seen.’

Footnote 88:

Horace, Ars Poetica, 343.

Footnote 89:

Hazlitt has omitted the number. The reference is perhaps to No. 42.

Footnote 90:

Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

Footnote 91:

Paradise Lost, III. 444-6.

Footnote 92:

Christopher Anstey’s (1724-1805) New Bath Guide (1766).

Footnote 93:

Addison, The Campaign, 292.

Footnote 94:

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