ton. Hairbrain, or, as I should write it, Harebrain, has the heart of generosity to compensate for his levity; and therefore flies to the relief of his patron; but fortune had settled the prize unshared, and Dorrington learns, that Hudson's news was entirely unfounded. The joy of this event took from the poet all power of arranging the yet unavoidable nuptials of Dorrington and Olivia. The piece did not take greatly.

On the same evening at the other house, Morton produced the first of that series of pleasant comedies, by which the author and the theatre so considerably benefited. The expense of their production was trifling; a scene or two to be painted or altered, and a few smart coats and waistcoats. My readers all know, that I allude to that most agreeable mixture of the serious with the comic, called The Way to get Married; the plot of this play is rather loose, and the author has disclaimed all unity of design. His interest lies in a variety of distinct circumstances, combined sometimes rather forcibly, but always of consequence enough to move with pity or laughter, as his contrast requires. He gives himself a projector to cool down; selfishness to chastise; laxity of principle to be reclaimed by generosity; and filial piety to reproach, by unmerited consolation, the conscience of an erring parent. All this is achieved with great dexterity, in language usually energetic, or pointed, or gay, perhaps rather suited to the stage than the closet, as a play made to be acted rather than read. Its success was unbounded, and no theatre in these kingdoms was long without The Way to get Married. It is no very great improbability, that at one hour, în some one evening of the week, the whole play-going part of the community of Great Britain, through all her cities, were applauding the work of Morton.

On the 2d of February, the good fortune of the Covent Garden manager sent him a farce, called Lock and Key, written by that genius of entertainments, Prince Hoare. The effect of Munden in Old Brummagen, and of Fawcett's story in Ralph, kept the house in a state of unceasing laughter; and here again the manager was not obliged to buy his audience.

The Plain Dealer of Wycherley was revived by Mr. Kemble on the 27th of this month. His Manly yields in comedy only to his Penruddock. It is singular that our critics upon this play should turn only to the Misanthrope of Moliere for points of imitation; and not perceive the use that a man of the town, like Wycherly, has made of Shakspeare himself. Manly, Fidelia, and Olivia, are in the exact relative situations of Orsino, Viola, and Olivia, in Twelfth Night: the only difference in the treatment results from the manners of the authors or the times. Wycherley turns the purity of his model into profligacy; but

both the Olivias are equally captivated by the female nuncio in male attire; and the Fidelia and Viola are equally in love with the Manly and Orsino of the two comedies.

The Plain Dealer was beautifully acted upon the whole; though Bannister felt what it was to succeed Yates in Jerry Blackacre. Mr. Kemble, on the present occasion, was quite enchanted with the melody of Mrs. Jordan's speaking voice in Fidelia ; and expressed himself whimsically, I remember, in the language of Sterne's Sentimental Journey. The reader may in dulge his fancy in appropriating the passage.

Mrs. Goodall played the disgusting profligate Olivia, and her maid Lettice was given to Miss Mellon. Mrs. Hopkins had all the Blackacres in fee simple.

The power displayed by Colman in the Mountaineers had led the patentee of Drury Lane Theatre into a negotiation for a play with music, with a character written expressly up to the talents of Mr. Kemble; and it was stipulated that the author was to receive a thousand pounds for an attraction of such importance. In his summer prelude he had treated the great theatre with contempt-but nothing could be more obvious than the fact, that, as a manager of a theatre, one line of policy may be necessary; and that the mere author is a "chartered libertine," who may carry his commodity even to his managerical enemies. Colman had been struck with the strength of the incidents in Godwin's Caleb Williams, and was then quite indifferent to its political tendency. Innocence, persecuted by power, and chivalrous honour conducting to the most atrocious baseness, were incidents of sufficient interest to furnish a play; and if poor Larpent did not, or could not, see the libellous mischief of the whole business-how it endangered all that ennobled our nature, and sullied the purity even of our tribunals,-why then he was as a lincenser more than "sand blind, high gravel blind," and the state must run the peril, which its dramatic guardian of the night did not apprehend. I never knew how the author of the romance vindicated to his own candor the choice of the name of FALKLAND for so accomplished a villian as his victim of a high sense of honour.* The pure and unsullied adherent

to Charles the First merited at least an abstinence from his name on this occasion, even as a man of principle, acting, as the au

On this occasion my heart and head equally recognises the propriety of quoting perhaps the sublimest passage in the works of Bishop Hurd, an allusion of the great Platonist, More, to Falkland, Hyde, and Chillingworth. "Oh! profane not the glories of immortal, though successless virtue, with such reproaches. Those adored names shall preach honour to future ages and enthrone the majesty of virtue in the hearts of men, when wit, and parts, and eloquence, and poetry, have not a leaf of all their withered bays to recommend them." DIALOGUES, p. 36. ed. 1759,

thor might think, in error. But I take the liberty so say, on behalf of this high sense of honour, that it could not have been so wounded at all by the infliction of brutal violence. The first question that an honourable, highly-cultivated spirit would have asked was, whether the offender stood within the lists of gentlemanly appeal? If he did NOT, he would leave the laws to avenge their violated peace. The strength of ONE brute would have moved our genuine Falkland, no more than the KICK of another; and assassination plunged him below his rival; inasmuch as it was more ferocious violence equally remote from chivalrous principle, and a more outrageous violation of the laws. Thus all his crimes and his sufferings are made to reflect upon a principle, from which they never could spring, and the GENTLEMANLY FEELING is assailed, in consequence of actions which a gentleman would never commit.

Colman found in Gilpin's Forest Scenery some poachers, and other persons of a picturesque cast that enabled him to compose a picture as though some anachronism had combined Salvator Rosa with Spagnoletti. Storace, poor fellow, sang the last melancholy breathings of his spirit upon the present occasion, to complete the gloomy work, from which so much was expected.

On the 12th of March it was produced, and found to be heavy, and insufferably long. Every disaster had attended its progress. Its author was too ill to attend its rehearsals; and no body would venture, for him, to cut away those excrescences, which that very useful critic, a stop-watch, must necessarily have pointed out. In addition to all this, his great actor was himself as ill as the part he played is stated to be; and we all know, that spirits worn down by indisposition are, and must be, unequal to the display of the fierce struggle of the mind forcing an emaciated body into action. It is a call upon the actor for all the energy he can have to be at his command, checked and kept down occasionally by exhaustion and remitting vehemence. I have said this, because it was absurdly enough stated, that Mr. Kemble's own illness assisted him in the just exhibition of Sir Edward Mortimer. As for many reasons, I paid the greatest attention to this performance, I must be allowed to say that, skilful as Mr. Kemble was in lulling and stifling his cough, he was THAT night too ill, to do more than walk through any thing. He ought by no means to have brought out the play, whatever the treasury required. When a crowded audience in full expectation, is teased rather than delighted, it fastens upon a harmless levity, as often as a tiresome solemnity, in the declaration of its displeasure. Old Adam Winterton, a sort of superannuated Vellum, in the Drummer, felt their displeasure on more than one occasion; and though the part was beautifully acted by

Dodd, it put the whole play in peril, to produce him on the stage. There was a great deal of very perfect acting in the piece-Wroughton's plain country-gentleman, Fitzharding, was admirable. Bannister's Wilford was full of nature, and at times terrific. Miss Decamp stamped upon Judith an impress, that has lasted in stage prescription, as the only, because true, mode of exhibiting a variety of Amazons, quite unconscious of such an origin. Of the music, the opening glee will not easily be paralleled; and the dialogue and chorus have great merit; but, the finale seemed built upon the idea of surrounding seraphs whispering peace to a departing spirit.

The author was severely annoyed by the treatment of his play, and wrote a very angry preface, which the good-humoured world valued at a GUINEA! and though it has been long omitted, I should yet be afraid, in a sale room, to mark the comparative prices of the Iron Chest with the bloody knife of the author's vengeance, and of one without it. Among the very usual things in this play is a passage describing some of the antiquarian pursuits, which were attributed commonly to the great actor: the anticipated application of them, I fancy, diverted the author too much to allow him to question their delicacy or wisdom.

"Edward is all deap reading, and black letter;

He shows it in his very chin. He speaks

Mere dictionary; and he pores on pages

That give plain men the head-ache. Scarce and curious'
Are baits his learning nibbles at. His brain

Is cram'd with mouldy volumes, cramp and useless,
Like a librarian's lumber-room."

It

The object of all this is not in the play. Mortimer is no such person. The "black-letter" was in daily use in his time and long after. The "scarce and curious," too, of the library wanted TIME, to become "baits for learning to nibble at." is obvious modern satire, and, were it stands, is an anachronism. I heard this, at the time, from one person interested in the play; but it was certainly not Mr. Kemble; who I verily believe, would have spoken the lines, had he found them in his part, so perfectly insensible was he to what the multitude might think of him or his pursuits. With a very sincere regard for both these gentlemen, I yet determined, that it would be unmanly to avoid the subject altogether. Mr. Kemble never replied to the preface himself; there were, perhrps, too many, eager to thurst themselves into the order, which the French, with characteristic equivocation, call avocats officieux.

Mr. Colman brought out his play at the little theatre, and certainly established there, that the most vigorous health was

required to sustain the almoat infernal agonies of the hero. Never did any actor in my time make such dreadful exertions as were made by Elliston, then in the vigour of his youth, and in the command of a voice unequalled, perhaps in power. I remember well the effects he produced; he will forgive me, but the melancholy shade of original greatness was not there; the fiendlike composure of calculated falsehood, and the internal struggles of not quite annihilated principle, were not to be seen, as a palsy upon the countenance, that should have awed by purity and beauty. No; these were only to be found in the art, or wonderful expression of Kemble. So identified, I may say, was he with Sir Edward Mortimer, that, if his voice had utterly failed him, and he had been merely able to act and look the part, he would have conveyed a more graphic exhibition of it, than all the actors from 1796 to the present hour have been able to supply. But it was quite impossible for the play to recover itself at Drury Lane Theatre. Some years elapsed, I believe, without the least approach of the parties to reconciliation; and Mr. Kemble himself told me, that such a thing was impossible, and I must leave it where it stood: however, to Lord Mulgrave and to Frank North, he at last yielded up the point; the parties met, "wine exerted its natural power upon dramatic as well as other kings;" and he, I am quite sure, excused what was too gross in the attack, and at all events unjust to his talents, by considering the usual irritability of authors, and the absolute injury of his own unlucky indisposition. Mr. Kemble knew, too, that he had really taken very great pains in the preparations for this play, and studiously decorated it with all the truth of scenery that the studies of Capon could supply. It would be folly to ascribe those aids to any other taste or zeal than those of Mr. Kemble. The artist invariably worked by his instruction. For Vortigern, let me say, he only altered two scenes. For the Iron Chest, he executed an ancient baronial hall, the architecture of the times of Edward IV. and Henry VI. The library of Sir Edward Mortimer, from the most perfect specimens of the Gothic in existence. The vaulting of the groined ceiling, taken from a part of the beautiful clositer of the monks of St. Stephen, Westminster; the very book-cases had similar antiquity and beauty.