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THE MIRROR OF TASTE,

AND

DRAMATIC CENSOR.

HISTORY OF THE STAGE.

CHAPTER III.

SOPHOCLES—EURIPIDES—DIONYSIUS.

Æschylus and Shakspeare have each been styled the father of the
drama of his country: yet their claims to this distinction stand on very
different grounds. Æschylus laid the plan and foundation of the Grecian
tragedy and built upon it; but to his successor belongs the glory of
improving upon his invention. Shakspeare raised the drama of his country
at once to the utmost degree of perfection: succeeding poets have been
able to do nothing more than walk in the path trod by him, at an immense
distance, and endeavour to copy but without equalling his
perfections.

The general admiration in which Æschylus was held, gave birth to a
herd of imitators, among whom were sons and nephews of his own; but as,
like most imitators, they could do little more than mimic his defects
without reaching his excellencies, they served only as a foil to set off
the lustre of his great successor Sophocles, who, while yet his scholar,
aspired to be his competitor, and gained the preeminence at the age of
twenty-five.

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Sophocles was born four hundred and
ninety-seven years before the birth of Christ, and at an early age
rendered himself, like his master Æschylus, conspicuous by his superior
talents in war and in poetry. It happened, when Sophocles was not yet
five and twenty, that the remains of Theseus were brought from Scyros to
Athens, where festivals and games were made in honour of that heroic
monarch, as well as to commemorate the taking of that island: among
those a yearly contest was instituted for the palm in tragedy. Sophocles
became a candidate, and though there were many competitors, and among
them Æschylus himself, he bore away the prize. The fondness of the
Greeks for the theatre was so passionately strong, that in order to
excite emulation among the poets, they gave rewards to those, who among
the competitors, were judged to have the preference; and they entrusted
the management of their theatres to none but persons of the most
considerable rank and character. Hitherto the prize was disputed by four
dramatic pieces only, three of which were tragedies—while the
fourth was a comedy; but Sophocles brought about a new arrangement, and
by opposing, in all cases, tragedy to tragedy, completely excluded
comedy from its pretensions.

Another and an excellent revolution in the drama was brought about by
this great man. He added one actor more to the dramatis personæ, and
raised the chorus to fifteen persons, introducing them into the main
action, and giving to all of them such parts to perform as tended to the
carrying on of one uniform, regular plot. Encouraged by the great
success of his pieces, the honours conferred upon him, and the deference
paid to his opinions, he continued to write with unabated enthusiasm for
the stage, and obtained the public prize no less than twenty different
times. The admiration and wonder with which his genius was spoken of
through all Greece, induced a general opinion that he was specially
favoured by heaven, and that he held an intimate communication with the
gods. Cicero himself has gone so far as to assert that Hercules had a
prodigious esteem for him; and
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Apollonius1 of Thyana, a Pythagorean philosopher, said in an
oration he delivered before the tyrant Domitian, that “Sophocles, the
Athenian, could tie up the winds, and stop their fury.”

That Sophocles was a man of transcendant powers of mind, no one has
ever doubted, Æschylus himself condescended to visit him at his own
house: Aristotle made his works the ground work of his Art of Poetry:
The eulogists of Plato compared the advancements made by that great man
in philosophy, to those made by Sophocles in tragedy: Cicero gives him
the epithet of “the divine”—Virgil decidedly preferred him to all
writers of tragedy; and to this day, his works make a part of the course
appointed for students in the Greek language in all the great colleges
and seminaries of Europe. The great rival of Sophocles was Euripides,
who, in their public contentions for the prize, divided with him the
applause of the populace. At that time the theatre was held to be an
object of the highest magnitude and importance, and made an essential
and magnificent part of their pagan worship. The Athenians, therefore,
were delighted by the contentions of these two prodigious men: but, as
it generally happens in cases of rivalship between public favourites,
the people divided into two parties, one of which maintained the
superiority of Sophocles, while the other insisted on the preeminence of
Euripides. The truth is, that though rivals, and perhaps equals in
talent, they could not afford a just subject of comparison. Magis
pares quam similes—they were rather equal, than like to each
other. In dignity and sublimity Sophocles takes the lead, as Euripides
does in tenderness, feeling, and pathetic expression.

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For the sake of human nature it is to be lamented that popular
applause produced envy, and jealousy between them, and notwithstanding
their divine talents, they sunk into the littleness that degrades the
lowest of the poets (irritabile genus) and regarded each other with
abhorrence. It is said, in vindication of the character of these great
men, that they were abused into a mutual dislike merely by the
calumnious misrepresentations of pretended friends. Finding, however,
that their animosities provoked general ridicule and contempt, and that
their quarrels had become the common theme with which the witlings and
poetasters of Greece amused the people,2 they judiciously resolved to treat each
other with the respect and confidence that became such exalted
characters, and became friends again. It should seem that Euripides was
the first to make an advance towards reconciliation; as appears from a
letter of his, in which he speaks thus: “Inconstancy is not my
character. I have retained every friend except Sophocles; though I
no longer see him, I do not hate him. Injustice has alienated me
from him; justice reproaches me for it. I hope time will cement our
reunion. What mortal ill is not caused at times by those wicked spirits
who are never so happy as when they sow dissension among those who by
nature and reason are meant to promote the felicity of each other.”

A weakness of voice under which Sophocles laboured often prevented
his appearing in his own tragedies; but this did not at all injure his
fame, for he continued to write into extreme old age with uniformly
increasing reputation. It is recorded that he composed one hundred and
twenty tragedies, of which not more than seven are extant—namely,
Ajax, Electra, Oedipus the
Tyrant, Antigone, The Trachiniæ, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at
Colonos. The last of those tragedies has been ever marked with
particular regard on account of a most interesting circumstance that
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attended its production, and made it the apex of that great man’s fame
and fortune.

Like old Lear, Sophocles was cursed with ungrateful children.
Shakspeare’s imagination went no further than TWO ungrateful daughters: Sophocles had in reality
four sons, all as ungrateful as those monsters of Shakspeare’s
brain. The extreme age and bodily infirmities of their venerable parent,
having for sometime inflamed their anxiety to become masters of his
possessions, they grew at last impatient and, weary of his living so
long, formed a conspiracy against him, and accused him before the
Areopagus, of being insane, a driveller incapable of governing his
family, or managing his concerns—in short, a fool,
a madman. He had fortunately, at that time, just finished his Oedipus at Colonos. When he heard the charge
made against him by his ingrate sons, he offered no defence but this
tragedy, which he read to the judges, and then with the boldness of
conscious superiority demanded of them whether the author of that piece
could be taxed with insanity. Heart-struck with the exquisite beauties
and sublime sentiments of the piece, and astonished at the vigorous
mind, the exalted truth, the profound moral wisdom, the accurate and
solid judgment, and the almost divinely persuasive language that
pervaded every act of it, they heaped honours along with their acquittal
upon his head, dismissed him with a shout of praise, and sent his sons
home covered with shame and confusion. If firm reliance can be placed on
the authority of Lucian, the sons were, by the
Areopagus, voted madmen for having accused their father.

Like Æschylus, Sophocles was a high military character, and was
ranked among the foremost defenders of his country. He commanded an army
in the war which the Athenians (by the desire of the renowned Pericles,
who so willed it at the instance of his mistress Aspasia) waged against
the inhabitants of Samos; and he returned from it triumphant.

Great men are seldom let to die like ordinary people: a man like
Sophocles of course must be provided with one or more modes of death
unlike those which take off other men.
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Some have said that on the extraordinary success of one of his
tragedies, he expired with extreme joy;—an effect rather extreme
for one who had for more than sixty years been accustomed to such
successes. Others have asserted that he dropped dead in consequence of
holding in his breath, while reading his tragedy of Antigonus, so long
that the action of his lungs ceased—an event not at all probable.
Another (Lucian) says he was choked by a grape-stone. These various
rumours destroying each other, not only by their contradiction but by
their improbability, leaves the cause of his death in that uncertainty
in which it might hitherto, and may forever remain, without any injury
to the subject. Men of ninety-five are likely enough to go off suddenly,
without violent joy—violent exertion, or even grape-stones. The
story of the grape-stone is told also of Anacreon. Perhaps in both cases
it was a poetical fiction to mark the love of wine which distinguished
these two personages; for Sophocles is accused by Athenæus of
licentiousness and debauchery, particularly when he commanded the
Athenian army. In like manner it is asserted by Pausanias that Bacchus
appeared to Æschylus under the shadow of a vine, and ordered him to
write tragedies, thereby figuratively alluding to the well known truth
that that poet drank wine excessively, and composed his tragedies while
he was drunk.

The public influence of Sophocles was so great that, at his instance,
the people of Athens went to the most unbounded expense in the
construction and decoration of their theatres. The additional
magnificence they derived from him is scarcely credible. In fact the
expense was carried so far that it became a reproach to the country, and
it was said that the Athenians lavished away more money on the
representation of a single play, than on all their wars with the
barbarians.

Some of the sons of Sophocles composed tragedy and wrote some lyric
poems. But there exist no remains of their works, nor anything
particular respecting themselves; some loose anecdotes excepted, which
Plutarch has related respecting one of them of the name of Antiphon, who
wrote a
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tragedy by which Dionysius the tyrant obtained a prize, long after he
had put the author to death for dispraising his compositions.

Euripides was born at Salamis in the
year four hundred and eighty-five before the Christian era, and on the
very day on which Themistocles with a handful of Grecians defeated the
immense army of Xerxes. He was nobly descended on the maternal side, and
was placed in due time under the first preceptors. From Prodicus he
learned eloquence; from Socrates, ethics, and under Anaxagoras he
studied philosophy. His parents having, before he was born, consulted
the oracle of Apollo respecting his fate, were informed that the world
should witness his fame, and that he would gain a crown. Of this answer
which, like all the responses of the oracle, was constructed with
purposed ambiguity, they could come to no decisive explanation: however,
thinking it unlikely that the oracle could mean any other than the
athletic crown, the father took especial care to fit him for a wrestler,
and with such success, that he actually won the athletic crown at the
games and festivals celebrated in honour of Ceres.

His original destination was to painting, to the study of which he
applied for sometime, and, as tradition informs us, with considerable
success. But nature, and the impulse of a vigorous genius, pointed out
another road to him. He abandoned the pencil, and devoted his whole
labours to the study of morality, philosophy and poetry. The drama being
most congenial to his mind, greatly engrossed his attention: he lamented
that the tragedies of even Æschylus and Sophocles themselves, contained
very little philosophy, and he diligently applied himself to the
effecting of a more intimate union between moral philosophy and dramatic
representation.

As he possessed the powers for accomplishing this valuable purpose in
an eminent degree, his writings became the subject of universal applause
and admiration with his countrymen. Indeed the effects that are related
to have been produced by his compositions, are so prodigious as almost
to stagger belief. His verses were in the mouths of persons
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in all countries in which the Greek language was spoken; if prisoners
pleaded their cause in his words, they were dismissed with freedom; and
it is an historical fact that the unfortunate Greeks who had accompanied
Nicias in his expedition against
Syracuse, and were enslaved in Sicily, obtained their liberty by
repeating some appropriate verses taken from one of his tragedies.

Sophocles was the great object first of his imitation, and then of
his envy and jealousy. In order to enable himself to contest the palm of
superiority with that great poet, Euripides frequently withdrew from the
haunts of men, and confined himself in a solitary cave near Salamis,
where he composed and finished some of the most excellent of his
tragedies. The full vein of philosophy which pervaded his dramatic
compositions, obtained for him the name of the philosophic poet, and so
loudly did fame proclaim his extraordinary excellence, that Socrates,
who never before visited the theatre, went constantly to attend the
tragedies of Euripides. Alexander admired him beyond all other
writers—Demosthenes confessed that he had learned declamation from
his works, and when Cicero was assassinated, the works of Euripides were
found clutched in his hands.

Together with this rare and felicitous genius, Euripides enjoyed the
blessing of a firm undaunted spirit, a great and bold dignity, and
a courage which nothing could shake. During the representation of one of
his tragedies, the audience took offence at some lines in the
composition and immediately ordered him to strike them out of the piece.
Euripides took fire at their presumption, and indignantly advancing
forward on the stage told the spectators that “he came there to instruct
them, and not to receive instruction.” Another time on the first
representation of a new play, the audience expressed great
dissatisfaction at a speech in which he called “riches the summum
bonum, and the admiration of gods and men.” The poet stepped
forward, reproved the audience for their hasty conclusion, and
magisterially desired them to listen to the play with the silent
attention that was due to it,
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and they would in the end find their error, as the catastrophe would
show them the just punishment which attended the lovers of wealth. The
last of these anecdotes is a proof of the moral excellence and chastity,
which the Grecian poets were constrained to observe in their public
compositions.

Of seventy-five tragedies which this admirable poet wrote and had
represented, nineteen only are in existence. The best of those are his
Phœnissæ, his Orestes, Medea,
Andromache, Electra, Iphigenia in
Aulis, Iphigenia in Tauris,
Hercules, and the Troades.

Euripides is particularly happy in expressing the passion of love,
especially when it is exalted to the most lively, ardent tenderness. His
pieces are not so perfect as those of Sophocles, but they are more
replete with those exquisite beauties which strike the heart with the
electrical fire of poetry, and his language is more soft and persuasive.
The drama is on the whole, however, much more indebted to Sophocles, to
whom Aristotle, who is certainly the very highest authority, gives the
precedence in point of general arrangement, disposition of parts, and
characteristic manner, and indeed in style also.

The most obvious point of inferiority in Euripides is the choice of
his subjects, which are charged with meanness and effeminacy; while
Sophocles and Æschylus chose for theirs the most dignified and noble
passions. He has moreover given very disgraceful pictures of the fair
sex, making women the contrivers, the agents, and the instruments of the
most impure and diabolical machinations. This unjust perversion was
attributed to a hatred he had to women, which occasioned him to be
called μισογυνης, or the woman-hater; but this he
sturdily refuted by insisting that in those bad characters he had
faithfully copied the nature of the sex. Notwithstanding this, he was
married twice; but was so injudicious in his choice of wives, that he
was compelled to divorce both. In his person Euripides was noble and
majestic, and in his deportment grave and serious.

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No poet ever took more pains than Euripides in polishing and
perfecting his tragedies. He composed very slow, and laboured his
periods with the greatest care and difficulty; anticipating the valuable
instructions long afterwards given by Horace to poets. A wretched
author, whose heart was as malicious as his poetry was miserable, once
sarcastically observed that he had written a hundred verses in
three days, while Euripides had written only three. “True,” replied
Euripides, “but there is this difference between your poetry and mine;
yours will expire in three days, but mine will live for ages.”

The disputes between Sophocles and our poet, the jealousy and envy of
his great fame and endowments, and, as some say, the resentment of the
female part of Athens, subjected him to a degree of ridicule and
rancorous invective, which induced him to leave Athens; when he went
into Macedonia, and lived at the court of king Archelaus, who considered
it an honour to patronise such a great poet, bestowing upon him the most
conspicuous marks of his friendship and munificence, and even carrying
his esteem and admiration so far, as to make him his prime minister.
This dignified office Euripides held when he lost his life, in a manner
the most cruel and horrible that can be conceived.

In one of his solitary walks, in a wood to which he had been
accustomed to repair every evening, for the purpose of uninterrupted
contemplation, a pack of dogs belonging to the king set upon him
and tore him to pieces in the seventy-eighth year of his age. So
extraordinary and deplorable a death naturally gave rise to a multitude
of conjectures, and, of course, not very charitable ones. By some, the
creatures of Archelaus’s court who hated him as a successful rival, and
envied him the high favours bestowed upon him by the king, were
suspected of having purposely procured the dogs to be let loose upon, in
order to destroy him: a conjecture not at all probable. By others
again it has been suggested that he was torn to pieces by women in
revenge for his black pictures of the sex: a still more improbable
conjecture, and
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probably borrowed from the fate of Orpheus; but which still serves to
show how little kindness he was thought to deserve from the women; while
others more rationally concluded that his encountering the dogs and
their attacking him, was purely an accidental circumstance; and that
having in the abstraction and absence of mind, attendant upon very
profound meditation, encroached upon some part of the palace grounds,
which the dogs were appointed to guard, he found his mistake too late to
escape from their fury.

Sophocles outlived Euripides about a year, leaving behind him no one
capable of improving, or even of tolerably supporting the tragic stage
of Greece. The hopes of the Grecian drama was buried in the grave along
with him. Of those who succeeded him we know nothing; nor should we know
that any did succeed, if the history of Aristophanes did not inform us,
that there were such, who served only as butts for his malevolent
wit.

Never were greater honours conferred by national gratitude and pride
than those which were paid by Greece to the memory of Æschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides. Statues were erected to them by public edict,
and their works were recorded as matters of state in the archives of the
nation. This part of the history is worthy of very particular
consideration. That great, wise, and high spirited free nation, who
understood man’s nature, and national policy of the best kind, as well
as any other people that ever existed, knew the efficacy of the stage in
meliorating the morals, the manners, and the opinions of a people, and,
therefore, made use of it as a great state engine. Their poets
studiously interwove the public events of Greece into their dramatic
poetry, and made their tragedies national concerns, which, as such, were
sanctioned by law and supported out of the public treasury. Thus the
glories of their heroes were registered and rewarded—the influence
of their example extended—a lively ambition to excel in valour,
virtue, and wisdom was disseminated by the sentiments which the genius
and skill of the poets put into the mouths of their leading characters,
and young men
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endeavoured to model themselves by those characters and sentiments.

Dramatic criticism was not left by the Greeks, as it is by the
moderns, to operate at random, or yielded up to the will or the caprice
of vain, ignorant, presumptuous, or corrupt pretenders. A bench of
judges to the number of ten, selected for their learning, integrity, and
acknowledged excellence, were appointed by law to preside at theatric
representations, and to determine what was fit for the public to hear,
and what not. These were sworn to decide impartially, and they were
vested with an authority which extended to the infliction of summary
punishment on impure, mischievous, or offensive pieces. They had the
power to punish with whipping, and were authorised to bestow great
rewards for merit. Thus, Sophocles was awarded a dignified and lucrative
government for one of his pieces, and an unfortunate comic poet of the
name of Evangelus was publicly whipped. This circulated a spirit of
correctness, and a chaste and delicate taste through the people, as was
evidenced in the case already mentioned, of one of the tragedies
of Euripides, which was instantly censured for the introduction of a
vitious sentiment in favour of riches. How unlike our playhouse critics
of modern times were those Athenians. By them, no regard was paid to
private solicitation, to personal partiality, or to national, party, or
other prejudice. At these times it is otherwise, at least in Great
Britain and America; and the sentence to be passed on the piece or the
player, in common with most other popular decisions, too often turns on
the great master hinge of party spirit or personal prejudice. Imbecility
is bolstered up, and merit blasted by the clamours of an ignorant and
corrupt few, who, with roar and ruffian impudence spread their perverted
opinions, and at last pass them through the ignorant multitude with the
current stamp of public decision.

It would be unpardonable to omit in this part of the history the
circumstance of Dionysius, the horrible tyrant of Syracuse, having been
a candidate for fame in dramatic poetry. Though utterly destitute of
poetical talents, or of any means of obtaining approbation for his
writings, save only
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that of extorting it by terror, and even by the infliction of death, he
laboured under the most inveterate passion for poetic honours. By means
not known, he got possession of some loose writings and memorandums of
Æschylus, and from them patched up some pieces which he vainly
endeavoured to pass for his own: but the people were not to be deceived.
With a view to extend his fame he despatched his brother Theodorus to
Olympia, with orders to repeat there in public, some verses in his name,
in competition with some other poets for the poetical prize: the people,
however, had too much taste to endure them, and rewarded his muse with
groans and hisses. At Athens, however, he had better success; for he
obtained the prize there for a composition which he sent in his name,
but which was chiefly written by Antiphon, the son of Sophocles, whom he
put to death for declining to praise some of his verses. Conscious, as
he must have been, that the prize, though awarded to his name, did not
belong to himself, he was more overjoyed at obtaining it than at all the
victories he had ever obtained in the field of blood. And absurd as it
may appear, he had so obstinately set his heart upon being considered a
great poet, that he had recourse to the most mean as well as cruel
expedients to accomplish it. For this purpose, he endeavoured to suborn
a poet who lived under his patronage. The man, whose name was
Philoxenus, had lost the favour of the king, and was imprisoned by him
for the seduction of one of his female singers. Having written some
verses, the tyrant bethought him of establishing their reputation by
getting Philoxenus to express publicly his approbation of them, and for
that purpose ordered him from his prison: but the poet, too proud and
virtuous to purchase his liberty by the sacrifice of truth, refused; in
consequence of which, Dionysius ordered him to the quarries to work as a
slave. Some time afterwards, being released, he was asked at a public
feast, his opinion of some of the king’s verses; upon which, knowing
that the inquirers were the tyrant’s agents, he answered, by exclaiming
aloud, “Lead me back to the quarries!” His answer had such an effect
upon Dionysius that he forgave Philoxenus, and restored him to his
favour.

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BIOGRAPHY—FOR THE MIRROR.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE MR. HODGKINSON.

The illustrious lord Verulam,
detailing in one of his essays the various motives to envy in the human
bosom, says, “men of birth are noted to be envious towards new
men—for their distance is altered.” His lordship might with safety
have extended the proposition to those whom either wealth, or casualty
unconnected with high descent or personal merit, have raised to worldly
power and prosperity. Men who have been lifted to the summits of society
by the accumulation of money, still more than those who stand there in
right of the decayed merit of their ancestry look down with scorn upon
their fellow-beings who toil below, and too often view with jealousy and
repugnance, the endeavours of those who aspire to that eminence, of
which they themselves are so vain and ostentatious. Elevation from an
humble condition to conspicuity and rank, bespeaks superior personal
merit; and to many of those who figure in, what is called, high life, it
is to be feared that the bare mention of personal merit, would look like
an indirect reproach.

Not only in that class, however, but in most others of society, there
are multitudes who can boast of very different sentiments—men of
real worth and discernment, who do not disdain to contemplate the
exertions of a powerful mind in its aspirations to dignity, nor turn
with contempt from the man whom nature has enriched, though it should
have been his lot to come into the world under the depression of a needy
or obscure parentage.—Persons of liberal hearts, and luminous
minds well know that in the moral world there are natural laws, which
like those of gravitation in the physical, oppose the elevation of all
whom chance has thrown down to the bottom of life, rendering it
difficult or rather indeed utterly impracticable for them to rise, but
by means of the most gigantic powers; and therefore consider those who
emerge to the top by the fair exercise of their natural talents,
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as the only valuable levellers—the real and substantial
asserters of the equality of men.

No apology therefore can be expected, for offering to the public a
short sketch of the life of John Hodgkinson—a man, who, though
dropped, at his birth, a darkling, into the world, contrived by the
exercise of his personal endowments, without aid, friend, influence, or
advantage, save those which nature in her bounty vouchsafed him, to
mount to the highest rank in his profession—a profession to excel
in which, requires more rich endowments of mind and person jointly, than
any of those to which men have recourse for the acquisition of fame or
fortune.

There may be some to whom the history of such a man, and the
equitable adjudication of applause to such talents as he possessed will
not be very palatable. Feeble men, ever jealous, ever envious, sicken at
the praise of greatness, and pride will elevate its supercilious brow in
disdain, at the eulogy of the lowly born. But the former may set their
hearts at rest (if such hearts can have rest) when they are told that in
the present instance truth will qualify the praise so richly deserved,
with some alloy of censure not less so: and the latter, who affect to
despise the stage while they draw from it delight and instruction, will
perhaps forgive the man’s endowments in consideration of his calling,
and think the sin of his talents atoned by the penance of being a
player.

The paternal name of this extraordinary actor was
Meadowcroft;—but this he relinquished on a certain necessity that
will be mentioned hereafter, taking in its stead, that of his mother’s
family, which he continued to retain long after that necessity had
ceased to exist, and bore to the day of his death. At the time of his
birth his father was an humble husbandman, and lived not far from
Manchester; and very near to the mansion-house of —— Harrison, esquire. From this, he moved into
the city where he set up a public house well known to several persons
now in America, one of whom recollects to have seen young John figuring
there in capacity of waiter, or as it is commonly called in England,
pot-boy. His father
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dying, the widow married another husband—and John was put out to
an apprenticeship, in some inferior department of the silk trade.
Having, from his infancy, disclosed manifestations of that exquisite
voice and fine taste for music, which afterwards acquired him such fame
as a singer, he was put to sing with the boys in one of the churches of
Manchester, where he very soon distinguished himself not only for the
power and compass of one of the sweetest countertenor voices in the
world, but for a taste and accurate execution uncommon to his age and
untutored condition.

While the boy was drinking in, with rapture, the applause bestowed
upon his musical talents, his master earnestly deprecated, and violently
opposed the cultivation of them. In the contentions between this
applause and that opposition—between the charming flattery of the
one, and the mortifying severity of the other, the boy took that side
which it was natural for him to prefer; and genius, the parent of
courage and enterprise, suggested to him from time to time a variety of
expedients for baffling all his master’s designs, and eluding his
sharpest vigilance. He collected around him a number of boys of about
his own age, who by a weekly subscription which they contrived to
collect, rented a cellar in an obscure retired alley—provided
themselves with musical instruments, and, with paper decorations and
patchwork, formed a little theatre, whither they resorted, every moment
they could snatch by stealth or pretext, from their parents’ and
masters’ control, in order privately to practise music and dancing, to
spout and to perform (in their way) plays, operas and farces. At this
time the whole amount of the schooling which the boy had received,
barely enabled him to read a chapter in the testament, to scrawl a very
indifferent manuscript, and to form an indistinct notion of the two or
three first rules of vulgar arithmetic. Such was the cunning and address
with which these youngsters managed their theatre, that they
enjoyed it several months without THE OLD
ONES being able to discover where they wasted their time. One
answer always served John when
questioned by his master—“Where have you been
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miching now, you young rascal?”—“Nowhere sir!” This NOWHERE (so very indefinite) the master construed
into anywhere in the streets, playing at marbles, top, or
chuck-farthing; but of the true place he had not the most distant
conception. After some time they began to apprehend that their retreat
would be discovered either by accident or the vigilance of the old
folks, and this had the effect of increasing their caution and
sharpening their ingenuity and cunning. They affected to loiter and play
in distant streets, and courted detection there, in order to elude any
suspicions that might lead to a discovery of their playhouse; and as
they never ventured to indulge their ambition by figuring away before
any but their own little society, and were the only auditors, as well as
the actors of their pieces, they calculated upon being able to carry on
their scheme till time should set them free from parental control;
provided there should be no treachery among themselves. However, their
confidence in one another was great. “Of one only,” said Hodgkinson, to
this writer, “we entertained the least doubt, and you will smile to hear
the cause of it: it was, because he was the son of an attorney—he
was bottom however to the last, and is now as worthy a man as any in
society.”

Most of what is here related came to the knowledge of the writer in
desultory conversations with Hodgkinson, and two other persons now in
America. “I have very often,” said John, “reflected on the success
of our stratagems, and could not help inferring from it a truth which
moral philosophers have long since laid down; that little cunning is
most perfect in weakest minds. I am persuaded that our company
could not, when grown up to manhood, have acted with half the minute
ingenuity which we displayed on that occasion.” “I had one day,
continued he, put on my best clothes for the purpose of rehearsing Lionel. I panted for a suit of black for
it, but could not obtain one; so I was fain to put up with one of blue.
It was almost new to be sure, but was daubed over with brass buttons,
and therefore rather unfit for the clerical Lionel. That, however,
I dared not alter.
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Returning home when our play was over, I descried my master coming
towards me, and, convinced that he saw me, I turned into a corner,
as if to hide myself, knelt down in order to cover the knees of my small
clothes with dust, pulled out my bag of marbles and chalk, which I
always carried for the purpose of deception, and daubed my thumbs and
fingers, and even my sleeves and waistcoat with chalk, as if I had been
playing marbles. “Aha, you young villain, he cried, before he got up to
me, you have been playing marbles, have you! I’ll marble you, you
rascal.” Having accomplished my purpose, I ran away too fast for
him to catch me. That night I heard him say, “One would think the fellow
was too old to play marbles, by this time!—I dont know what the
d—l to do with him.” In fact (continued Hodgkinson) we were, like
birds, in the daily habit of playing a thousand tricks to draw away
intruders or suspicion from our nest.”

After a concealment protracted to an astonishing length, however, the
nest was at last discovered, the poor birds were dispersed, and our hero
took his ill-fledged flight to perch upon distant sprays, and to pick
his meat from the hand that caters for the sparrow. This was the pivot
upon which the whole life of Hodgkinson turned. The irresistible impulse
of a vigorous genius would, most probably, under any other
circumstances, have sent him ultimately to the goal of his destination;
but this event hastened it, most unpropitiously hastened it, and, in an
evil hour, cast him forth upon the world, a youth, or rather a boy,
ill educated, untutored, unprotected, a precocious adventurer,
unprovided with money, and wholly dependant upon God and his own
efforts, not only for the food that was to sustain his existence, but
for the whole stock of prudence, moral rectitude, and knowledge that
were to carry him through life. On this part of the history of Mr.
Hodgkinson the candid reader will keep his eye steadily and unalterably
fixed. If men who have been brought up with every advantage of excellent
education, good breeding, and moral and religious instruction, and who
have not been let
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forth from the hand of guardianship, till their knowledge has been
established, and their morals confirmed by habit and good example, are
daily seen running headlong into vice, and, with shipwrecked morals,
sinking into ruin, can we at all wonder if a poor boy, cast forth into
the world in the circumstances of Hodgkinson, and, like a half decked
skiff, with lofty rigging and no ballast but its own intrinsic weight,
drifted out upon the tempestuous ocean of life, without compass, or
chart, or means of keeping reckoning, should have sometimes struck upon
those treacherous shelves which lay hidden in the track before him? Is
there not rather just cause for wonder that he did not speedily sink to
the bottom, but that, on the contrary, he kept afloat, advanced to
conspicuity and fame, and would, in all probability, have ultimately
come with flying colours to a mooring in the port of honour and
happiness, if Death had not unexpectedly arrested him in his
progress.

It was a little after the time when Hodgkinson had entered his
fifteenth year, that the retreating place of our little company of
players and musicians was discovered. They were all lads not only of
lively genius but of high mettle, and of vigorous animal spirits. Like
master Dick, in Murphy’s farce of the Apprentice, they had their heads
stuffed with scraps of plays, with which they interlarded their
discourse, cracked their jests, praised their favourites, and satirized
their enemies, among which last the very worst, in their opinions, were
their parents, guardians, and masters. “The character of Dick,” said
Hodgkinson more than once to this writer, “is not overcharged.” Our
youngsters were quite pat at stage gabble, and

Fathers have flinty hearts, no tears can move them,

with effusions of a similar tendency, every day resounded from their
theatrical cellar, followed by bursts of thoughtless merriment and
laughter.

One day our little cellar company were engaged in rehearsing Dibdin’s
comic opera of the Padlock. Being the best singer, Hodgkinson had the
part of Leander allotted to
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him, sore against his will, Mungo being at that time his favourite
character. As he played the first fiddle he was employed in scratching
away an accompaniment to the Mungo of the day, in the song of

Dear heart, dear heart, what a terrible life am I led,

when a noise was heard at the door of a passage that led to the
cellar, as if it were a person pushing against it. Interrupted thus
unseasonably, master Mungo, in apparent panic, suddenly ceased to sing.
“What do you stop for?” said John. “Didst thou not hear a noise?” said
the other, assuming the tone, and perhaps feeling the alarm too, of
Macbeth, in the dagger-scene. “Bravo, bravo!” cried Hodgkinson,
“excellent! You can’t do Mungo half so well. It is I, sir, I that
can do Mungo to the very life. Now I say, boys, with what feeling could
I pour out from my heart and soul,“Oh cussa heart of my old
massa—him damn impudence and his cuss assurance.” This he followed
with a spirited twang of “Dear heart” on the violin, accompanying it
with the words. Again a noise was heard. “What can it be?” said one.
“What can it be?” said another. There was a push at the door. “Oh!”
cried Hodgkinson, “it’s only one of the hogs that roam about the alley,
who, having more taste than the old ones, is come to hear our
mirth and music.” At this moment the door was burst open, and John’s
master entered. Before the latter had time to speak, or John to reflect,
the boy’s wit got the better of his prudence, and he roared out, in the
words of Hamlet, “Oh my prophetic spirit! did I not tell you that it was
a hog?” Hitherto the master had never gone so far as to strike him; but
now, enraged beyond all control at what he saw and heard, he struck the
boy with his fist in the face, wrung the fiddle out of his hand, and
smashed it to pieces on his head. John, who could run like a greyhound,
and well knew how far he could trust to his heels, no sooner got out of
the cellar than he let loose the floodgates of his wrath, and poured
forth upon his astonished master a torrent of invective, partly
209

the slang of the mob, and partly supplied from plays and farces by his
memory; then assuring “the ugly illnatured hunks” that he never should
see him again till he was able to make his thick scull ring with a
drubbing, he disappeared, and prepared to leave Manchester.

A few months antecedent to this event, a circumstance occurred to
Hodgkinson the relation of which properly comes in here. Two persons,
genteelly dressed, coming to his mother’s house, called for a room and
some beer, and asked if they could get dinner. It was Sunday, and John,
as usual, spent the day at home. He was busily employed in the entry
making a bridge for a fiddle, and, as he cut away, accompanied his
labour with a song, upon which a person belonging to the house3 chid him angrily
or rather very severely for singing on the sabbath. He made no other
reply than that of changing from a soft song, which he barely hummed, to
the laughing song of Linco in Cymon, which he roared out obstreperously,
by way of asserting his independence. A verbal scuffle ensued,
which he still interlarded with bursts of song and laughter; the door of
the room opened; the two gentlemen interfered, and calling him into the
parlour, requested him to sing Linco’s song through for them. He
complied; they lavished encomiums on his performance; and one of them
said to the other “I’ll be hanged if he does not sing it much better
than Wilder,”4 These words John never forgot; and he owned to this
writer, about six years ago, that they still tingled in his ear, though,
at the time they were uttered, he did not know who was meant by Wilder.
The person who said this patted him on the head, stroked down his hair,
affectionately, and added “You are a dear boy. May God Almighty bless
and prosper you!” The other gave him a
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crownpiece, and desired him to keep it for his sake. Had he given him a
hundred crowns they would have been nothing to the honied words of the
former. In truth, the leading foible of Hodgkinson through life, was
vanity—the great taproot of all his irregularities and errors. He
was quite agog to learn who those two men might be: he asked, but no one
knew them—they were strangers. In the afternoon, however, they
were joined by some players who were performing in the town; and from
one of those he learned that the two strangers were from
Ireland—He who gave him the crownpiece being a gentleman of the
name of Comerford, a merchant—he who gave him his blessing,
a Mr. Dawson, a player of Dublin, who was an acting assistant,
and a kind of purveyor for the manager of the theatre in that city, and
stepfather to the celebrated William Lewis. The Mr. Wilder alluded to
was many years an actor and singer in Dublin and the original Linco and
colonel Oldboy of that city.

That crownpiece John had put into the hands of his mother, to keep.
Having taken his resolution to leave Manchester, and seek his fortune,
he went home, took the crown piece from the place where it was
deposited, and getting up before break of day next morning, put on his
best clothes, packed up a shirt, and took leave of Manchester. His first
notion was to go to sea, to which end he took the road to Bristol,
knowing that his master would, by means of the constant intercourse
between Manchester and Liverpool, readily detect him if he went that
road—an event more terrible to him than death; the penalty for
runaway apprentices being very severe and disgraceful. It was on this
occasion he dropped the name of Meadowcroft, and adopted the much less elegant one,
of Hodgkinson.

Here the reader will naturally pause, in order to reflect upon the
very extraordinary picture now presented to him. A boy of little
more than fourteen years of age, unschooled; little better than
illiterate; destitute of useful knowledge; cut off from parents, friends
and connexions; and without any visible means of livelihood, rushing
forward into a world of strangers,
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undismayed at the prospect before him; “full of life, and hope, and
joy,” and, like the lark of a summer’s morning, caroling as he winged
his way. Any reader who has felt the fears and anxieties of a parent
when the dear boy of his heart has been for a short time missing, and
remembers the pangs of doubt, the apprehension, the painful forebodings,
nay, the despair itself into which an absence protracted beyond custom,
and not to be accounted for, has thrown him, will be able, from a
retrospect of his reflections on such an occasion, to imagine what must
have been the danger of this boy, and what the courage he must have had
to encounter it—and will, while pondering with admiration upon his
fortitude and manliness, tremble for his fate. This writer once asked
him if he was not horror-struck when he found himself in Bristol
separated from all his friends, and well remembers his
answer.—“No,” said he, “Though I was little instructed and no
book-scholar, I was not ignorant. Young as I was, I had formed
opinions of life from its pictures in plays and farces, and taken full
measure of my situation. I knew that I had nothing to expect in
Manchester, or any other place, but from my own exertions, and therefore
thought that the sooner I set to work the better. Those whom you call my
friends, could do little for me if they were ever so well disposed, and
I cannot say much for their disposition. I looked upon them and
their purposes respecting me, rather as clogs and fetters, than as aids;
and I am convinced I was right. I had no fear, because I had health
and strength to do several things to earn my bread, (I could sing if I
could do nothing else) and never once lost sight of the persuasion that
I should one time or other be something better than a pot-boy or a
mechanic. Nor did I meet in my journey anything to discourage me. Some
suspected me of being a runaway ’tis true, and looked severely at me;
but I minded them not; and one man, a wagoner who carried me a
whole night in his wagon, owned that he had taken me in gratuitously,
for the purpose of having me delivered up; but that I fairly sung and
talked him into a regard for me, during the night. Few charged me
anything for
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what I eat, and I brought more than half my crown into Bristol with me.
I had besides a pair of silver buckles in my shoes, and a silver
seal to my watch.”

You had a watch then?—

“Yes—value sixpence, one of those they sell at fairs.
I had bought it about half a year before—put a nice green
riband to it, and a twopenny key.—This it was that got me the
silver seal, and I’ll tell you how. The Sunday after I bought it,
I stood in the aisle of the church, looked at the great clock, and
pompously pulling out my pewter watch, and looking at it as proudly as
it were a real one, affected to wind it up and set it, studiously
comparing it with the church clock and putting it up to my ear.
A Mr. ——,5 a worthy man of
some opulence, who lived near us and was in the habit of coming to our
house to take his pint, came up to me and, with a serious air, pulling
out his old gold watch, with a gold dial plate, gravely said to me,
while he inwardly laughed—“Pray sir what is the time of the day by
your watch,—let us see, do our watches agree, sir:”
I blushed.—“Nay, said he, I do but jest with you my
child—you must not be angry with me. Come, come; if you have not a
gold watch, you shall have a silver seal to tie to your riband,” saying
which he brought me home and, taking one from the drawer of a black
inkstand, gave it to me. What had a boy to fear that had three shillings
in his pocket, a silver seal hanging to his watch string,
and a pair of large silver buckles in his shoes? nothing—at least
so I thought at that time.”

(To be continued.)

213

PORTRAIT OF THE CELEBRATED BETTERTON.

(Continued from page 140.)

Notwithstanding the extraordinary
power he showed in blowing Alexander once more into a blaze of
admiration, Betterton had so just a sense of what was true or false
applause, that I have heard him say, he never thought any kind of it
equal to an attentive silence; that there were many ways of deceiving an
audience into a loud one; but to keep them hushed and quiet was an
applause which only truth and merit could arrive at; of which art there
never was an equal master to himself. From these various excellencies,
he had so full a possession of the esteem and regard of his auditors,
that, upon his entrance into every scene, he seemed to seize upon the
eyes and ears of the giddy and inadvertent. To have talked or looked
another way would then have been thought insensibility or ignorance. In
all his soliloquies of moment, the strong intelligence of his attitude
and aspect drew you into such an impatient gaze, and eager expectation,
that you almost imbibed the sentiment with your eye, before the ear
could reach it.

As Betterton is the centre to which all my observations upon action
tend, you will give me leave, under his character, to enlarge upon that
head. In the just delivery of poetical numbers, particularly where the
sentiments are pathetic, it is scarce credible upon how minute an
article of sound depends their greatest beauty or inaffection. The voice
of a singer is not more strictly tied to time and tune than that of an
actor in theatrical elocution. The least syllable too long, or too
slightly dwelt upon in a period, depreciates it to nothing; which very
syllable, if rightly touched, shall, like the heightening stroke of
light from a master’s pencil, give life and spirit to the whole.
I never heard a line in tragedy come from Betterton wherein my
judgment, my ear, and my imagination were not fully satisfied, which,
since his time I cannot equally say of any one actor whatsoever; not but
it is possible to be much
214

his inferior with great excellencies, which I shall observe in another
place. Had it been practicable to have tied down the clattering hands of
the ill judges who were commonly the majority of an audience, to what
amazing perfection might the English theatre have arrived, with so just
an actor as Betterton at the head of it! If what was truth only could
have been applauded, how many noisy actors had shook their plumes with
shame, who, from the injudicious approbation of the multitude, have
bawled and strutted in the place of merit! If, therefore, the bare
speaking voice has such allurements in it, how much less ought we to
wonder, however we may lament, that the sweeter notes of vocal music
should so have captivated even the politer world into an apostacy from
sense to an idolatry of sound. Let us inquire whence this enchantment
rises. I am afraid it may be too naturally accounted for: for when
we complain that the finest music, purchased at such vast expense, is so
often thrown away upon the most miserable poetry, we seem not to
consider that when the movement of the air and the tone of the voice are
exquisitely harmonious, though we regard not one word of what we hear,
yet the power of the melody is so busy in the heart, that we naturally
annex ideas to it of our own creation, and, in some sort, become
ourselves the poet to the composer; and what poet is so dull as not to
be charmed with the child of his own fancy? So that there is even a kind
of language in agreeable sounds, which, like the aspect of beauty,
without words, speaks and plays with the imagination. While this taste,
therefore, is so naturally prevalent, I doubt, to propose remedies
for it were but giving laws to the winds, or advice to inamoratos. And
however gravely we may assert that profit ought always to be inseparable
from the delight of the theatre; nay, admitting that the pleasure would
be heightened by the uniting them, yet, while instruction is so little
the concern of the auditor, how can we hope that so choice a commodity
will come to a market where there is so seldom a demand for it?

215

It is not to the actor, therefore, but to the vitiated and low taste
of the spectator that the corruptions of the stage, of what kind soever,
have been owing. If the public, by whom they must live, had spirit
enough to discountenance and declare against all the trash and fopperies
they have been so frequently fond of, both the actors and the authors,
to the best of their power, must naturally have served their daily table
with sound and wholesome diet.—But I have not yet done with my
article of elocution.

As we have sometimes great composers of music, who cannot sing, we
have as frequently great writers that cannot read; and though, without
the nicest ear, no man can be master of poetical numbers; yet the best
ear in the world will not always enable him to pronounce them. Of this
truth Dryden, our first great master of verse and harmony, was a strong
instance. When he brought his play of Amphytrion to the stage, I heard him
give it his first reading to the actors, in which, though it is true, he
delivered the plain sense of every period; yet the whole was in so cold,
so flat, and unaffecting a manner, that I am afraid of not being
believed when I affirm it.

On the contrary, Lee, far his inferior in poetry, was so pathetic a
reader of his own scenes, that I have been informed by an actor who was
present, that while Lee was reading to major Mohun, at a rehearsal,
Mohun, in the warmth of his admiration, threw down his part and said,
Unless I were able to play it as well as you read it, to what purpose
should I undertake it? And yet this very author, whose elocution, raised
such admiration in so capital an actor, when he attempted to be an actor
himself, soon quitted the stage in an honest despair of ever making any
profitable figure there.

From all this I would infer, that let our conception of what we are
to speak be ever so just, and the ear ever so true, yet, when we are to
deliver it to an audience (I will leave fear out of the question) there
must go along with the whole a natural freedom and becoming grace, which
is easier to conceive than to describe: for without this inexpressible
somewhat,
216

the performance will come out oddly disguised, or somewhere defectively
unsurprising to the hearer. Of this defect too, I will give you yet
a stranger instance, which you will allow fear could not be the occasion
of. If you remember Estcourt, you must have known that he was long
enough upon the stage, not to be under the least restraint from fear, in
his performance. This man was so amazing and extraordinary a mimic, that
no man or woman, from the coquette to the privy-counsellor, ever moved
or spoke before him, but he would carry their voice, look, mein, and
motion instantly into another company. I have heard him make long
harangues, and form various arguments, even in the manner of thinking,
of an eminent pleader at the bar, with every the least article and
singularity of his utterance so perfectly imitated, that he was the very
alter ipse, scarce to be distinguished from his original. Yet
more; I have seen upon the margin of the written part of Falstaff,
which he acted, his own notes and observations upon almost every speech
of it, describing the true spirit of the humour, and with what tone of
voice, look, and gesture each of them ought to be delivered; yet, in his
execution upon the stage, he seemed to have lost all those just ideas he
had formed of it, and almost through the character, laboured under a
heavy load of flatness. In a word, with all his skill in mimickry, and
knowledge of what ought to be done, he never, upon the stage, could
bring it truly into practice, but was upon the whole, a languid
unaffecting actor. After I have shown you so many necessary
qualifications, not one of which can be spared in true theatrical
elocution, and have at the same time proved, that with the assistance of
them all united, the whole may still come forth defective, what talents
shall we say will infallibly form an actor? This, I confess, is one
of Nature’s secrets, too deep for me to dive into. Let us content
ourselves, therefore, with affirming, that Genius, which Nature only
gives, only can complete him. This genius then was so strong in
Betterton, that it shone out in every speech and motion of him. Yet
voice and person are such necessary supporters to
217

it, that, by the multitude, they have been preferred to genius itself,
or at least often mistaken for it. Betterton had a voice of that kind
which gave more spirit to terror than to the softer passions; of more
strength than melody. The rage and jealousy of Othello became him better
than the sighs and tenderness of Castalio: for though in Castalio he
only excelled others, in Othello he excelled himself, which you will
easily believe, when you consider, that, in spite of his complexion,
Othello has more natural beauties than the best actor can find in all
the magazine of poetry, to animate his power and delight his judgment
with.

The person of this excellent actor was suitable to his voice, more
manly than sweet, not exceeding the middle stature, inclining to the
corpulent; of a serious and penetrating aspect; his limbs nearer the
athletic than the delicate proportion; yet however formed, there arose
from the harmony of the whole a commanding mein of majesty, which the
fairer faced, or as Shakspeare calls them, the curled darlings of his
time, ever wanted something to be equal masters of. There was some years
ago to be had, almost in every print-shop, a mezzotinto, from
Kneller, extremely like him.

In all I have said of Betterton, I confine myself to the time of his
strength, and highest power in action, that you may make allowances from
what he was able to execute at fifty, to what you might have seen of him
at past seventy: for though to the last he was without his equal, he
might not then be equal to his former self; yet so far was he from being
ever overtaken, that for many years after his decease, I seldom saw
any of his parts in Shakspeare supplied by others, but it drew from me
the lamentation of Ophelia upon Hamlet’s being unlike what she had seen
him.

The last part this great master of his profession acted was
Melantius, in the Maid’s Tragedy, for his own benefit,
218

when being suddenly seized by the gout, he submitted, by extraordinary
applications, to have his foot so far relieved, that he might be able to
walk on the stage, in a slipper, rather than wholly disappoint his
auditors. He was observed that day, to have exerted a more than ordinary
spirit, and met with suitable applause; but the unhappy consequence of
tampering with his distemper was, that it flew into his head, and killed
him in three days, I think, in the seventy-fourth year of his
age.

That Betterton was as good an actor as ever lived, and that he shone
most conspicuously in parts of dignity and fire, is pretty certain; yet
his externals were such as would at first sight be thought very
unfavourable. The famous Tony Aston, in
a work called “A brief Supplement to Colley Cibber,” gives the following
picture of Mr. Betterton, the fidelity of which has never been
questioned.

“Mr. Betterton though a superlative good actor, laboured under ill
figure, being clumsily made, having a great head, a short thick
neck, stooped in the shoulders, and had fat short arms, which he rarely
lifted higher than his stomach. His left hand frequently lodged in his
breast, between his coat and waistcoat, while with his right he prepared
his speech. His actions were FEW, BUT
JUST. He had little eyes and a broad face, a little
pock-frecken, a corpulent body, and thick legs, with large feet. He
was better to meet than to follow; for his aspect was serious, venerable
and majestic. In his latter time he was a little paralytic. His voice
was naturally low and grumbling; yet he could tune it by an artful
climax, which enforced universal attention, even from the fops
and orange-girls. He was incapable of dancing even in a country dance,
as was Mrs. Barry; but their good qualities were more than equal to
their deficiencies. Betterton was the most extensive actor from
Alexander to sir John Falstaff.”

“His younger cotemporary, Powel, who was only forty, when Betterton
was sixty-three, attempted several of Betterton’s parts, as
Alexander, Jaffier, &c. but lost his credit, as in
219

Alexander he maintained not the dignity of a king, but out-heroded
Herod; and in his poisoned mad scene out-raved all probability, while
Betterton kept his passion under, and showed it most, as fume smokes
most when stifled. If I was to write of him all day, I should still
remember fresh matter in his behalf.”

The following facetious story of Betterton and a country tenant of
his is related by Aston.

Mr. Betterton had a small farm near Reading, in Berkshire, and the
countryman came, in the time of Bartholomew fair, to pay his rent. Mr.
Betterton took him to the fair, and going to one Crawley’s puppet-show,
offered two shillings for himself and Roger, his tenant. “No, no, sir,”
said Crawley, “we never take money from one another.” This
affronted Mr. Betterton, who threw down the money, and they entered.
Roger was hugely diverted with Punch, and bred a great noise, saying
that he would drink with him, for he was a merry fellow. Mr. Betterton
told him he was only a puppet, made up of sticks and rags.
However Roger still cried out that he would go and drink with Punch.
When Master took him behind where the puppets hung up, he swore he
thought Punch had been alive. However, said he, though he be but
sticks and rags, I’ll give him sixpence to drink my health. At
night Mr. Betterton went to the theatre, when was played the Orphan, Mr.
Betterton acting Castalio, Mrs. Barry Monimia. “Well,” said Master, “how
dost like this play, Roger?” “Why, I don’t know,” said Roger,
“it’s well enough for sticks and rags.”

This anecdote is falsely related of Garrick.

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DRAMATIC CENSOR.

I have always considered those combinations which are formed in the
playhouse as acts of fraud or cruelty. He that applauds him who does not
deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public. He that hisses in
malice or in sport is an oppressor and a robber.

Dr. Johnson’s Idler, No. 25.

Master Payne’s performances concluded.

Of the characters represented by
this young gentleman, those in which he has evinced greatest powers are
Douglas, Tancred, and Romeo, while that in which he is least
exceptionable, is Frederick in Lover’s Vows. In his Octavian, which
followed next after Douglas, some of the pathetic passages were
beautifully expressed. Mrs. Inchbald, in her prefatory remarks to the
play of the Mountaineers, says, “This true lover requires such
peculiar art, such consummate skill in the delineation, that it is
probable his representative may have given an impression of the whole
drama unfavourable to the author. Nor is this a reproach to the actor
who fails; for such a person as Octavian would never have been created,
had not Kemble been born some years before him. But, notwithstanding the
difference of their ages, it is likely they will both depart this life
at the same time.” While the difficulty of delineating Octavian, and the
merit of a living performer of it are such, that it is scarcely possible
to think of the play without thinking of Kemble, it has so happened that
scarcely any character has been attempted by so many actors of all
qualities—nor is there one in which so few have come off with
actual disgrace. Men who could scarcely be endured in third or fourth
rate parts, have selected Octavian to figure in, on their benefit
nights. One man who
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was laughed at in every other character, was supposed by a misjudging
audience to play Octavian well; nay, to our knowledge, was preferred to
Hodgkinson and Cooper in it. The reason is plain: to the portraying of
madness, the injudicious can imagine no limits. The more a madman raves
and roars, the better; rags, slovenliness, and matted hair, and beard
too, are the usual associates of awkwardness and vulgarity. Any man,
therefore, who can rant and play the extravagant, no matter how
ungracefully, may pass with some audiences for a very natural
Octavian—an abominable absurdity! For these two reasons, Octavian
is a very hazardous part for a performer who aims at substantial fame,
to attempt. In Master Payne’s performance of it, there was no
extravagance to censure; nothing that had the least tendency to enrol
him among the Bedlamite butchers of the character, nor was there, on the
other hand, a complete uniform delineation of Octavian to afford
him the same rank in that, which criticism willingly allows him in some
other characters.

Not so Frederick, his performance of which was one consistent piece
of natural, affecting, and indeed skilful acting. In the scenes of
filial tenderness with his mother, and in the solemn but spirited
remonstrances with the baron Wildenheim, he displayed such equal
excellence that criticism might incur the charge of injustice by giving
the preference to either. The character, as Master Payne acted it, was
made up by him from the two antecedent translations of Mrs. Inchbald and
Mr. Thompson;—by a union of both of which this youth has produced
a better acting play than either. He lately published it at Baltimore
with an advertisement prefixed, written by himself, to which we refer
our readers, with a strong recommendation to them to peruse it.

In the characters selected by Master Payne there are but four which
we can think judiciously chosen. For the whole selection we should find
it difficult to account, if we did not know that they had before been
chosen for Master Betty; by thus closely walking in the steps of whom,
Master Payne
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has, in our opinion, wronged himself. It is evident that in choosing
characters for the infant Roscius of England, his instructors had it
more in view to exhibit the boy as a prodigy, than the characters well
acted. The people were to be treated to an anomalous exhibition, and the
greater the anomaly the better the treat. What but a determination to
inflame public curiosity to the highest pitch by a contrast as absurd as
unnatural, could have induced them to put forward a little boy of twelve
years old in the formidable tyrant Richard? like modern composers of
music, their object was not to produce harmony or natural sweetness, but
to execute difficulties. As the actor was a boy loitering on the verge
of childhood, the plan, if not correct, was at least politic. But the
public do not look on Master Payne in that light, and therefore, he
ought to have selected parts more suitable to his time of life and
talents. Parts calculated to aid and not depress him. What judicious
actor is there now living who would not think it injurious to him to be
put forward by a manager in Selim or in Zaphna? The united powers of
Mossop in Barbarosa, and Garrick in Selim could barely keep that play
alive. We have seen Mossop play it to a house of not ten pound, though
aided by the first Zaphira in the world, Mrs. Fitzhenry. From either of
those characters Master Payne could not derive the least aid. His Hamlet
we put out of the question—we did not see it.

On his Tancred we can dwell with very different sensations.
Considering the materials he had to work upon, his delineation of the
character was highly creditable to his talents. For the love part,
little more can be done by a good actor, than by a good reader;—as
poetry, it is soft, and sweet, and flowing; as a practical
representation of that passion it is mawkish: yet, in the performance of
Master Payne, it was not entirely destitute of interest. In all the
rest; in every scene with Siffredi, particularly in his warm
expostulations with the honest, but mistaken old statesman; in his
subsequent indignation and despair; in his lofty bearing and menaces to
Osmond, and thence onward to his death, he was
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truly excellent, seemed perfect master of the scene, and in depicting
the tumult of passions which struggle in the bosom of the lordly
Tancred, evinced that he possesses the legitimate genius, and true
spirit that should inform the actor.

For his benefit he personified Romeo. The house was so crowded, and
in all places that were accessible after the doors were opened, there
was so much pressing, confusion, ill-mannered noise and struggle, and
rudeness, that few but those who had places taken in the front boxes
could see or hear the play out. From the upper gallery, where with
difficulty we at last got a seat, we indistinctly saw what passed on the
stage, and could hear a little by snatches. What we did hear and see
induced us to lament our not hearing and seeing more, and to wish that
we may speedily have another opportunity of witnessing a performance
respecting which there is but one opinion, and that highly favourable to
Master Payne’s reputation.

MR. COOPER.

Scarcely had master Payne disappeared in his transit southward, when
Mr. Cooper followed, and, in describing his annual orbit, was seen here
for nine nights; during which he performed the following characters.

Of all the actors we have ever seen in the old world or in the new,
he who imposes the most difficult task upon the critic is Mr. Cooper. It
is scarcely possible to generalize his
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acting. The great inequality of his performance, the defects of some
parts, the doubtfulness of others, and the amazing beauties which he
frequently displays, forbid the critic, if he have a due regard to
truth, to give to the different parts of any one character Mr. Cooper
performs the same measure of praise or disapprobation.

Hardly have our nerves ceased to vibrate, and our hearts to leap in
consequence of perhaps a series of electrical strokes of irresistible
effect and beauty, when our patience is put to trial by some defect, or
our feelings left to grow cold and languid for want of an appropriate
continuous excitement. To walk step by step with him through those
alternations, and to decide in circumstantial detail upon this
gentleman’s title to critical applause, would require a minuteness of
description incompatible with the scheme of this publication; yet, since
the high rank which he very deservedly holds in his profession renders
it important that just opinions should be formed upon the subject of his
performances, and that his merits should be as closely as possible
canvassed, and as precisely ascertained, it would be inconsistent with
the duty of a public critic wholly to decline the task, however
difficult and laborious he may find it.

We have now before us a criticism upon Mr. Cooper which once appeared
in a periodical publication at Charleston S. C. and in which I find
the following passage.

“Nature husbands her gifts so carefully that where equality appears
in all the parts of any object, supreme excellence is rarely seen; where
great beauties are found, they are generally mixed with some
considerable alloy. Of all the actors we have ever seen, Mr. Mossop was
the one whom Mr. Cooper, in this respect, most resembles. With him, when
it was not a blaze, it was a cloud. No man, not Garrick himself ever
equalled his beauties; but his defects were great. The beauties,
however, were so far superior in numbers to the defects, and in quality,
to the excellencies of all other men, that he obtained from the greatest
critic of that day, the tide of the Tragedy Sheet Anchor.” All
this is strictly true; but there
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is this difference between that great actor and Mr. Cooper, Mossop never
committed a fault from negligence; studiously, I might almost say
superstitiously, devoted to the cultivation of his professional talents,
he left nothing undone which industry could accomplish, and whenever he
went wrong, failed from an almost pedantic desire to do too
much—from a stiffness and stateliness of deportment, and an
embarrassment of which he had begun to get rid but a few years before
his death. Mr. Cooper labours under no obstruction of this kind.

The natural talents displayed by Mr. Cooper in most of his
performances forbid it to be believed that his failures result from
incompetency; or that there is any excellence, to which the actors of
the present day attain, too great for his grasp, if his industry were
nearly equal to his personal endowments. But the honest and zealous
critic loses all patience, when he sees first talents supinely
contenting themselves with less than first honours. What are the
natural or acquired endowments of Kemble or Cooke, whether mental or
corporeal? Certainly not superior to those of Mr. Cooper. How do they
respectively stand in the records of professional fame? It would be
invidious to give the answer.

If one could, with certainty, estimate a player’s actual performance
from his untried talents, and were asked what disqualifying circumstance
exists to prevent Mr. Cooper from playing Richard, Othello, Zanga or
Hotspur as well as any man—we should answer none! But when, having
seen him act, we come in the capacity of public critics to adjudge him
his rights, we feel the mortifying necessity of speaking other
language.

In Othello and Zanga, the inequality of Mr. Cooper’s acting is
strikingly conspicuous. Of the great distinction between the colloquial
familiarity suitable to ordinary dialogue, and the solemn, dignified,
and lofty delivery becoming the orator in a great public assembly, Mr.
Cooper seems to have entirely lost sight in the celebrated speech to the
senate, the first lines of which may serve as a lesson how the whole
should be spoken.

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The pompous sound of these words, as well as the awfulness of the
place, and the august character of the assembly to which they are
addressed, sufficiently indicate the manner in which they ought to be
uttered. Instead of this Mr. Cooper (no doubt with the view to avoid
pomposity and bombast) threw into them an air of familiarity like that
of a person narrating a private transaction to an intimate friend or
acquaintance: Yet no sooner does he come to the impassioned parts, where
strong emotions call forth the manly energies, than he flames up with
the character. In the third scene of the second act, he displays much
force and dignity in the following lines:

And afterwards:

And indeed through the whole of that scene he was impressive and
important: nor, with the exception of those occasional lapses which we
have to regret in almost every character he plays, even in his Macbeth,
and the liberties he occasionally takes with the text, was there any
reason to complain, while every now and then, he emitted some of those
splendid scintillations of light which distinguish his acting from that
of every competitor in America.

In the last act, his performance was superlatively great. So great
indeed, that if all the other parts had been nearly equal to it,
we should not at all hesitate to put it in competition with
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the Othello of any man now living. As it was, we pay it no compliment in
saying that it was in every part much superior to that of Pope, the
quondam Othello of Covent Garden.

Zanga.

The character of Zanga would at first sight seem to be well
calculated for Mr. Cooper’s talents: yet we cannot say that we very much
admire him in it. That in his execution of the part Mr. Cooper
goes beyond Mr. Kemble is certain, while his conception of it is nearly
the same. In the latter, both are deficient. If there ever was a
character which only one man in the world could play perfectly, Zanga is
that character, and Mossop was that man. In a mixed company some years
ago at Mr. Foote’s, the celebrated doctor John Hill lanched out in
praise of Mossop. Foote likewise admired him, but could not refrain from
ridiculing and mimicking some of that great actor’s stately
singularities; upon which Richard Malone said, and Garrick was present,
“You must own this one truth, however, because I have it from the
highest authority (bowing to Garrick) that Mossop is the only man who
was ever known so to act a character that the judgment of a nation has
not been able to mark a fault in it.” “I have often said,” replied
Garrick, “that Mossop’s Zanga is perfectly faultless—but that is
too little to say of it—it is a brilliant without a speck.”

Upon that extraordinary actor’s performance of Zanga, every word and
action of which Fancy, while we are writing this, whispers in our ears
and figures to our eyes, we build our conception of the character; and,
in conformity to that conception, pronounce Mr. Cooper and Mr. Kemble to
be both wrong in material points, chiefly in the first part of it. In
the year 1800 we saw Kemble attempt the Moor, and endured great pain
from his efforts; for not only his reading (as it is called) of
the part was erroneous, but his organs were too feeble for the
character; a defect of which Mr. Cooper has not to complain.

Of Mossop’s Zanga, there was not one line from the beginning to the
end which, while he was uttering it, a spectator
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would not believe to be the best. In every part the grandeur of Zanga’s
character broke through the clouds of horror and humiliation that
surrounded him; and in the very first scene the magnanimity of the
poet’s Moor, was exalted to something of more than human sublimity, by
the player. In the disclosing of his discontent to Isabella, the
painting to her of his mental agonies, and the avowal of his hatred to
Alonzo, the emotions which Mossop excited in the spectators were too
awful and interesting to be imagined by those who have not felt them.
The deep and affecting solemnity of his narrative, interrupted by the
occasional flashes of passion which burst from him, was in strict
congeniality with the dreadful elementary storm in which it is
introduced. In the hands of other actors this part makes little
impression.

The loftiness of the Moor’s nature, and his conscious pride were by
the peculiar delivery of the second line, as perfectly unfolded as they
could be by volumes. Again:

The words comprehended in parentheses, are occasional starts of
digression dictated by rage, and should be uttered passionately, we do
not mean loudly, but with vehement indignation! So Mossop uttered them,
changing his key and speaking the words with the rapidity expressive of
rage—and then, after a struggle, falling down to the solemn level
of his narrative again. These, however, Mr. Kemble spoke rather in a
tone of whining lamentation. The limited organs of Mr. K. might make it
policy in him to do so; but Mr. Cooper
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has not that plea to offer. Be that as it may, the character is defaced
by it. The Moor’s fire is not supposed to be extinguished; it is only
covered up, to break out with more terrible fury, when the
accomplishment of his purpose will allow it. In going over the sad
recital of his woes, to a confidential friend, the poet, in order the
more perfectly to unfold his character, makes the hidden fire burst
forth in momentary blazes. To sink this is to deprive the character of
one of its most essential beauties; to give it the directly opposite
expression of piteous lamentation is, indeed, reversing the noble
character of the Moor.

One of the wonderful excellencies of Mossop in this part was his
artful display of hypocrisy in the words and purpose, while his external
port silently asserted his superiority, and the native majesty of his
looks and manner bespoke the magnitude of the sacrifice he was making to
vengeance, thereby giving a deeper colouring to the inexorable
vindictiveness of his nature, and more forcibly illustrating the
inflexible firmness of his soul. All other actors that we have ever seen
reduce Zanga to a mere slavish croucher in all points; and destroy the
very basis of the character by an overacted humiliation, highly improper
because too glaring not to excite Alonzo’s suspicions. He must be a dull
Alonzo indeed, if he could not look through such flimsy
dissimulation.

Yet with all these defects, for which, as well as many other
transgressions, the modern crop of young actors are indebted to the
example of Mr. Kemble, Mr. Cooper gave us in several places as great
satisfaction as with our remembrance of “THE Zanga,” we ever hoped to experience. From the
time he avows his villany to Alonzo, on to the end, he deserved
unqualified praise; nor can we imagine how any one who had not made up
his mind upon the great original, to whom we have alluded, could wish or
conceive it to be more happily performed.

Mr. Wood’s Alonzo was an animated and respectable piece of
acting.

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Richard III.

Mr. Cooper conceives that crookbacked usurper with sufficient
accuracy, reads it with tolerable correctness, and acts it with great
spirit. In this character he evidently has the greatest model extant
[Cooke] in his eye. When first, some five years ago, we saw Mr. Cooper
perform Richard, we thought he played it tolerably, but wanted weight.
He is much improved in this respect since that time, and has acquired in
those few years a sufficiency of the personal importance requisite for
the character of Richard.

Venice Preserved.

Pierre is a character admirably
suited to Mr. Cooper’s talents. There are but few of his performances to
which we sit with more pleasure. Few in which he is so little
exceptionable. On this occasion he was supported by his friend Jaffier in a manner that reflects much credit
on Mr. Wood. And Mr. Wood is not a little indebted to his
Belvidera also. Could we speak as favourably of his Iago, we should have
introduced him in the proper place. Mr. Cooper’s grenadier’s cap, added
nothing, to say no worse of it, to his appearance.

A fashion has prevailed for some years (introduced by the doctors of
the perspective and statuary school of action) which sometimes increases
the difficulty of giving verisimility to the scene, or rather destroys
it altogether. We allude to the actors, in all possible cases, entering
from the back, or near it. This though sometimes right, is peculiarly
improper when the entering character is to speak aside as he
enters, and is supposed by the cunning of the scene not to be heard by
the character who is on the stage before him. It was particularly
observable in the performances of Othello and Venice Preserved. In the
third scene of the third act, when Othello, followed by Iago, enters to
Desdemona, Emilia, and Cassio, (which last takes his leave suddenly on
the Moor’s approach) and Iago, in prosecution of his plan, exclaims, so
as to be heard by Othello only, “Ha!
I like not that,” Mr. Cooper and Mr. Wood entering too far
from
231

the stage, rendered it necessary for the latter to utter those words
(aside) so loud, that they must necessarily have been heard by
all the other characters on the stage.

Again, in Venice Preserved, in the night-scene on the Rialto, Jaffier
being on the stage in his proper place, soliloquizing, Pierre enters and
says what certainly neither Jaffier nor any but the audience should be
presumed to hear. Mossop, Sheridan, Henderson, et id genus omne,
entered so near the stage, that the voice of Pierre might be supposed to
reach the audience, without passing through Jaffier’s ear. Side speaking
ought always to be done in that way. Mr. Cooper, on the contrary,
entered from the wing next the back scene, so that Jaffier stood between
him and the audience, and must of course be supposed to have heard him,
if the audience heard him; as they did, very distinctly too, from the
remote end of the stage, say aloud,

Exclusive of which a great injury to the necessary illusion arises
from the side speaker being obliged to speak so high that not
only the characters on the stage, but the people in the neighbouring
houses must be supposed to be all let into the secret, and he cannot,
therefore, be thought to intend to speak aside. In the good old times
they were as scrupulously exact in these matters, as they are now most
blamably lax.

Hamlet.

Many of Mr. Cooper’s admirers set down his Hamlet as the best of his
performances; a proposition to which we can never accede. Some
parts of it, no doubt, are excellent, and in the play scene before the
court, he is scarcely surpassed by any one. But in our opinion his
Hamlet fades from the sight, when put in competition with his

Macbeth,

in which he unquestionably takes the lead of all the actors that have
ever appeared in this country; and is in our judgment preferable, in
many parts, to either Kemble or Cooke;
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far, very far, superior to Holman. His dagger-scene is inimitably fine;
but by following Mr. Kemble’s idea, he loses much in his return from the
scene of murder. Before Mr. Kemble every actor followed the plan of
Garrick with more or less success; and from them, viz. Sheridan, Mossop,
Reddish, Henderson, all of whom we have seen, we can state the
difference between the old and new school in this most trying scene. We
have never witnessed the performance of Garrick; but have seen pictures
of him in that very part, one particularly by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of
which there is an engraving, and which exactly corresponds with the
action of all of his whole school, of whom the best was certainly Mr.
Sheridan. Just as lady Macbeth, who is waiting his return from the
chamber of blood, says, in soliloquy,

the noise of a hasty foot was heard within, she paused, and then
proceeded,

At that moment the door opened and Macbeth appeared, a frightful
figure of horror, rushing out sideways with one dagger, and his face in
consternation, presented to the door, as if he were pursued, and the
other dagger lifted up as if prepared for action. Thus he stood as if
transfixed, seeming insensible to every thing but the chamber,
unconscious of any presence else, and even to his wife’s address of “my
husband.” In this breathless state, he hastily said in a whisper, as if
to himself,

then, after a pause, in a tone of anguish and trepidation, without
ever taking his eyes from the chamber, he still whispered in a quick,
sharp tone,

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Nor did he quit this attitude, but with eyes still fixed upon the
chamber door continued to carry on the broken dialogue that follows, in
fearful whispers.

Then for the first time he drew his hands together with the daggers
in them, and in the most heart-rending accents exclaimed,

“This is a sorry sight.”

Thus represented by Mr. Sheridan, this scene was perhaps the most
interesting in the drama. What then must it have been when done by
Garrick. A critic now before us speaking of Garrick and Mrs.
Pritchard in this part, says, “His distraction of mind and agonizing
horrors were finely contrasted by her apathy, tranquillity, and
confidence. The beginning of the scene, after the commission of the
murder, was conducted in terrifying whispers. Their looks and action
supplied the place of words. The poet here gives only an outline of the
consummate actor—“I have done the deed,” &c. “Didst thou not
hear,” &c. The dark colouring given by Garrick to these abrupt
speeches made the scene tremendous to the auditors. The wonderful
expression of heart-felt horror which Garrick felt when he viewed his
bloody hands, can only be conceived by those who saw him.” Murphy, who confirms this account by Davies, says
that when Garrick reentered the scene with the bloody daggers in his
hands, he [Murphy] was absolutely scared out of his senses. It is
but fair to add, that the great dramatic censor who wrote in 1770 says
“Without any exaggeration of compliment to Mr. Sheridan, we must place
him in a very
234

respectable degree of competition with Mr. Garrick in the dagger-scene;
and confess a doubt whether any man ever spoke the words “this is a
sorry sight,”
better.

How vapid, meagre, frigid, and unaffecting has been the performance
of this part since Mr. Kemble’s reign. According to his institutes,
Macbeth closes the door with the cold unfeeling caution of a practised
house-breaker, then listens, in order to be secure, and addresses lady
Macbeth as if, in such a conflict, Macbeth could be awake to the
suggestions of the lowest kind of cunning.

In his entrance to the witches in the cauldron scene, Mr. Cooper
suffers the character to sink. This is one of the parts with which the
audience, at one time, used to be most gratified by the powers of their
great actors. The critic from whom we have cited above, adverting to
Henderson’s Macbeth, which was astonishingly great, says, “In the
masterly conjuration of the witches, in the cavern, so idly
omitted by Kemble, he was wonderfully impressive.”

Yet there is upon the whole so little exceptionable, and such
abundant beauties in Mr. Cooper’s Macbeth, that we think he ought there
to plant his standard. Imagination figures to us the magnificent
exhibition he might make of it, by studying from the best authorities
and descriptions, the various attitudes and action of Garrick in the
scenes alluded to, which are recorded not only in several books and
portraits, but in the memory of many men living.

Henry iv.

Of Mr. Cooper’s Hotspur we do not wish to speak in depreciation, nor
are we prepared greatly to praise it. To compensate, however, for this,
to our own wishes, we confess our inability to say too much of his
performance of Leon. And we feel pleasure in adding that in

Adelgitha,

he reaped a whole harvest of laurels. His Michael Ducas, being not
only a masterly, but an original performance, one which we cannot
reasonably hope to see excelled, and which we may in vain, perhaps,
expect to see equalled.

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We have a long arrear against us on account of the theatre. But we
hope to discharge it in regular order and in due time. Meantime we
cannot refrain from expressing by forestallment our great satisfaction
at the successful run and favourable reception of “The Foundling of the
Forest.” If the manager and actors are indebted to the public for the
great encouragement and approbation bestowed upon that play, the public
are no less indebted to the manager for his zeal, unsparing expense, and
judicious arrangements in the casting of the parts, and to the actors,
particularly Mr. Wood, for their excellent performance of it. But upon
that subject we shall enlarge hereafter.

THEATRICAL INTELLIGENCE.

Mr. Dwyer.

The American stage has received, in
the person of Mr. Dwyer, one of the greatest acquisitions that it has
ever had to boast of. We have never had the pleasure of seeing this
gentleman’s performance; but we have collected from the periodical
publications of Great Britain sufficient to convince us that he is an
actor of great merit, and, in his line, of the first promise. No man
treads so closely on the heels of the inimitable Lewis as Mr. Dwyer.
“Light dashing comedy,” says a judicious British critic, “is his forte,
and in it he is almost faultless.” In Belcour, Charles Surface, and
characters of that cast, he excels, and his Liar is acknowledged to be
the first on the British boards.

From a professional gentleman of this city of acknowledged taste and
erudition, who saw him in England, we have had a description of Mr.
Dwyer. He says that nature has been uncommonly bountiful to this actor.
That he is very
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handsome, has a fine person, and might, in lively, bustling, genteel
comedy, be as great as any man, if his industry were equal to his
natural endowments.

Mr. Dwyer has played Hamlet and other tragic characters; but the
critics we have read seem so intent upon his excellence in the sock,
that they forget to say anything particular of his merits in the
buskin.

In this dearth of theatrical talents, every lover of the drama will
rejoice at this new acquisition to the American theatre. Mr. Dwyer is
said to be an Irishman. His name says it for him. No doubt his
countrymen will be not a little proud of him; for he is reported to
possess, in no common measure, all the recommendations to the eye on
which they nationally set such value—stature, bone, muscle,
symmetry, and comeliness.

State of the British stage.

Notwithstanding the losses sustained by the death of some actors, and
the defection of others, the stock of talents is not likely to be
entirely exhausted. Though nothing has for years appeared that has a
tendency to fill up the void which succeeded the Augustan age of acting,
which ended with the death of Garrick, Barry, and Mossop, still
meritorious performers, both male and female, arise, who promise to
preserve the stage from sinking into utter disrepute.

Foremost among these is a Mr. Young, who bids fair to outstrip all
competitors, as a general actor. The extent of his powers, the
versatility of his talents, and the advantages of his face and person
are stated by the critics, in the public prints, to be very
extraordinary; and we feel great pleasure in having it in our power to
say that the opinions of those are amply confirmed by the verbal reports
of American gentlemen of taste and discernment, who, in the course of
the last year, frequently saw Mr. Young perform. Some think he excels in
comedy; the majority prefer his tragedy. Admitting the Stranger to fall
under the latter denomination, Mr. Young must stand higher in the buskin
than in the sock,
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since that is allowed to be his most perfect performance. In
confirmation of which little more need be advanced than that it is
admitted he very seldom, if ever, falls short of the great original, Mr.
Kemble, in that character, and sometimes goes beyond him.

In Don Felix, Belcour, Charles Surface, and characters of that cast,
he stands conspicuous for ease, elegant hilarity, gayety of manners, and
vivacity of action. In tragic characters, not only in the fiery, the
impassioned, and the grand, but in those of pomp and solemnity, he is
said to be original, great, and striking. On his Hamlet and Macbeth the
critics seem to have dwelt with peculiar attention and pleasure.

Speaking of Mr. Y’s Hamlet, a learned and perspicuous critic says “A
performance exhibiting stronger marks of genius, finer animation, or
happier display of intellect we have seldom witnessed. Mr. Young has
studied this masterpiece of Shakspeare with infinite care, not merely as
to the text and general scope of the character, but throughout all its
shades and gradations, discriminating with the utmost truth and nicety,
each particular feature of Hamlet, and presenting a whole so finished
and forcible, as to leave the strongest impressions on the mind of his
audience.” The same critic enters, with a spirit derived from a lively
admiration of his subject, into the whole of Mr. Young’s Hamlet, of
which he speaks in a strain of warm eulogy. Adverting to the
instructions given by Hamlet to the players, he pays Mr. Y. this elegant
compliment: “The instructions to the players could not be better
delivered. His own sensible performance was an apposite illustration of
the excellent lesson which Shakspeare has in this scene bequeathed to
the profession.” And he concludes thus: “He is indeed an acquisition of
importance. Of intellectual actors we have very few.
Strutters and bellowers we have in abundance. We therefore
hail Mr. Young’s appearance with more than usual satisfaction; and the
more so, since we hear that his manners are highly estimable in private
life. On and off the stage he will thus prove an ornament
to his profession.”

238

Mr. Young has played, besides the characters already named, Rolla,
Penruddock, Lothaire, Othello, George Barnwell, Octavian, Osmond (Castle
Spectre) Hotspur, Frederick in Lovers Vows, Petruchio, Gondebert, and
many others, if not all with equal excellence, at least with so much as
to rank him among the first masters of the art.

Mr. Young’s face and person are said to be of a superior order.
A good height, his figure is well formed; his features expressive
and flexible; his voice, from the lowest note to the top of its compass,
excellent, and his action and deportment gentlemanly and graceful.

An actress of as great promise as any that has appeared on the
British theatre in the memory of man, has lately come forth at Covent
Garden, in the arduous character of Lady Macbeth, in which, if we are to
trust the London critics, she at once started to a level with Mrs.
Siddons. Her name is Smith. She has, like Mrs. Siddons, been on the
stage from childhood, without being noticed by any but the happy few,
some of whom augured highly of her from the first, and she has fully
accomplished their prognostications. The first impressive trace we find
of her in theatrical annals is in an Edinburgh criticism. “As I think
most highly of this juvenile performer,” says that writer, “and
entertain most sanguine hopes of seeing her soon at the head of her
profession, I will not insult her by indiscriminate panegyric or
mawkish praise. Her comedy is by no means satisfactory to me. The
disadvantage of a petite figure is not, in this department
compensated by any high excellencies. Her comedy is generally speaking,
rather meagre and unadorned, and in a degree pointless and
ineffective.—But her tragedy merits every praise. In richness and
variety of tone; in propriety and justness of action and gesture; in
picturesque and impressive attitude, in a nervous mellowed modulation;
in appropriate deportment—above all in the discriminating delicacy
of taste, by which she distinguishes and expresses the feelings and
workings of the heart, she is above praise.”

239

Miss Smith next meets us in London in 1808, playing lady Macbeth at
Covent Garden, and is spoken of as follows:

“Macbeth by Mr. Kemble so frequently the subject of remark, and often
of well-earned eulogy, affords little occasion for notice at this time;
but concerning “his NEW partner of
greatness”, as there was much to be admired, it is fit that something
should be said. A just personification of lady Macbeth is perhaps
the most difficult and dangerous undertaking an actress can enter upon:
that silent but efficient aid, derived from the contagion of the gentler
affections, from pity, sorrow, love; or even from the turbulent emotions
of the mind, from anger, jealousy, revenge, “she must not look to have”
in the sympathetic bosoms of hearers or spectators; her only operant
power is terror, a frigid and unsocial passion, and hence perhaps
it is that no actress, at least in modern times, has been found fully
adequate to the task; the according testimony indeed of the best living
or recent opinions may warrant a belief that Mrs. Pritchard displayed
successfully the portraiture of this singular character; but when we
hear a performer of our day, whom the public has long and deservedly
applauded, extolled as a perfect representative of lady Macbeth, and
find this part held forth and distinguished as the pattern of her
excellence, true criticism must reject the fallacy of the assertion, and
the injustice it imposes upon that great actress herself, who in many
other situations of the drama, sustains an eminence above all rivalship;
physical defects may often be lessened or concealed; but they will
sometimes be too stubborn for the force of art, and thus, in the
language of venal compliment, the poet said “Pritchard’s genteel and
Garrick’s six feet high” it cannot be denied that the former was
eclipsed by the easy elegance of Mrs. Woffington, and the latter
overborne by the majestic stature and deportment of Barry. The first
appearance of Miss Smith last night in lady Macbeth, could not fail to
conjure up, perversely to our mental view, the comparative superiority
of Mrs. Siddons’s person; the effect was strong, but it was momentary;
a delicate yet powerful and distinct varied voice, a pure,
correct,
240

and exemplary enunciation, guided at once by a sound understanding,
a correct ear, and a discriminating taste, a frame and
expression of features not inferior to that of Mrs. Siddons herself,
with action always just and frequently commanding, soon led us to the
forgetfulness of her moderate stature, though oppressed, incidentally,
by the towering dignity of her lord: It is the duty of an artist to
contemplate the works of a renowned predecessor or contemporary with
unaffected reverence, but not with servile devotion, and Miss Smith
occasionally varied, and with advantage, from the model that was before
her. When Macbeth, incited to the murder of Duncan, interposes—“if
we should fail,” Mrs. Siddons with cool promptitude replies “we fail.”
The punctuation indeed was suggested by Mr. Steevens; but it appears
much too colloquially familiar for the temper and importance of the
scene; a failure, which here must be ruin, is an idea that could
never be urged with temerity or indifference, and we heard the words
with more decorum and much better effect from Miss Smith “we fail?” i.e.
is it to be supposed that we, possessing as we do, the power to overcome
every obstacle, can miscarry? In the sleeping scene too, we have
generally observed that the candlestick was deliberately placed upon the
table in order to let the lady act the washing her hands more freely,
but Miss Smith contrived to represent this action of a dream more
naturally with the light in one hand. 

Some faults no
doubt were discoverable, the most material of which was an emotion of
tenderness at times, and a querulous sensibility not proper to the
character of lady Macbeth’s cool, deliberate, and inflexible resolution
by which the poet has distinguished her. Great allowance is due for the
perturbation of the actress in so perilous and trying a
situation, and into these, perhaps, much of the objection just hinted
may be resolved: enough however was displayed of power, judgment, and
execution to warrant a prediction, that as Miss Smith has already
advanced to the first class in her profession, lady Macbeth bids fair to
rank among the first of her performances. 

241

Master Payne.

From some English papers now in our possession, we find that the fame
of this young gentleman has already reached Europe; in such sort too, as
in all probability will ensure him a very favourable reception there, if
he should be disposed to try the experiment. Even at this time, the
intercourse between the two countries is such that nothing worthy of
notice passes in one, without being soon known in the other. English
gentlemen, who were lately in America, spoke, on their return to London,
in such terms of Master Payne’s performances, as if they thought he
would eclipse young Betty. However, we hope that the justice of his own
country will prevent the necessity of merit such as his seeking
encouragement in strange and distant lands.

MISCELLANY.

THEOBALDUS SECUNDUS,

OR

SHAKSPEARE AS HE SHOULD BE.

NO. II.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

When the celebrated Nat Lee was reproached with writing like a
madman, his answer was, “It is very difficult to write like a madman,
but very easy to write like a fool.” This sentence involves two
assertions; the former is proved to be true by the play now under
consideration, and the latter by the numerous commentators it has
produced. Doctor Farmer has obligingly
exhausted all his learning to prove that Shakspeare had none. “Animasque in vulnere
ponunt.” And Mr. Malone has thought
it necessary to borrow
242

queen Elizabeth’s ruff, and eat beef-steaks with her maids of
honour, in order, by living that age over again, to qualify himself to
decypher the local allusions of our great bard. Poor Malone! if he had ever heard the old adage, that
“none but a poet
should edit a poet,” he would have saved his midnight oil, and
solicited a ray from Phœbus. Now, I take the road to poetry to be
just as plain as the road to Clapham. In the latter journey you have
nothing to do but to invoke Rowland Hill, and in the former to invoke
the sacred nine, and your business is done. You are dubbed one of the
elect from that time forth, and nothing but Bedlam or the mint can
invalidate your title. For myself, I can attribute my profound
knowledge of the real text of my author, to no other than the following
cause. On turning accidentally to volume I, page 409, of cunning little
Isaac’s edition, I happened to
alight upon certain antique instructions, “how a gallant should
behave himself in a playhouse.” This code of dramatic laws I found
ushered in by the following sentence: “The theatre is your poet’s
exchange, upon which their Muses (that are now turned to merchants)
meeting, barter away that light commodity of words, for a lighter ware
than words, plaudities, and the breath of the great beast,
which, like the threatenings of two cowards, vanish all into air.” This
great beast I take to be, “The many headed monster of the pit,”
mentioned in after times by Pope, and
the renowned John Bull, celebrated by
me, Theobaldus Secundus, in my
dedication of last month. Be that however, as it may, I read the
treatise through, and was so smitten with the accurate view it exhibited
of the theatres of these days, that I immediately determined to
transport myself, as well as I could, to the golden times of the
beheader of Mary Queen of Scots. I instantly ran to the
water-side, bartered for a garret, purchased the wares of a strolling
company at a bargain, and I now pen this dissertation reclining on clean
straw, on a stage of my own construction, and smoking a pipe of Maryland
tobacco, according to the authority above quoted. “By spreading your
body on the stage, and
243

by being a justice in examining plaies, you shall put yourself into such
a true scænical authority, that some poet shall not dare to present his
Muse rudely before your eyes, without having first unmasked her, rifled
her, and discovered all her bare and most mystical parts before you at a
taverne, when you, most knightly, shall for his paines, pay for both
their suppers.” If all these paines do not produce a proportionate
modicum of inspiration, then know I nothing of Parnassus. Let us now
proceed to business.

In the very first scene of this celebrated tragedy, I find
matter of discussion.

This word has never (mirabile dictu) excited a single comment;
but in my opinion it implies that Bernardo enters with his arms
folded. The judicious player will remember this, and when thus
accosted will immediately throw back his arms, and discover his under
vestments, like the “Am I a beef-eater now?” in the critic.

Mr. Malone merely observes that this sentence appears to have been
the watchword. So it was; but, in my mind, the watchword of rebellion.
The times, as Hamlet afterwards observes, were out of joint, and
the ambitious Bernardo, as it appears to me, was desirous of
mounting the throne, having doubtless as good a right to do so, as the
murderer Claudius. The answer of Francisco favours my
construction. If the loyal exclamation had been pointed at king
Claudius, Francisco would have said Amen; instead of which he
says, “Bernardo,” signifying, What! you king? and Bernardo
cooly answers, “He,” signifying “Yes, I.” Francisco
contents himself with replying, “You come most carefully upon your
hour,” and the rejoinder of the future monarch puts my reading out
of all doubt.

244

Bernardo. ’Tis now struck twelve, get
thee to bed Francisco.

This so exactly resembles the charge of the usurper, Macbeth,
to his torch-bearing domestic,

Thus the guilt of Bernardo is proved by all laws of analogy.
Here then we have two beef-eaters in disguise. Ay, beef-eaters!
and I’ll prove it by the next sentence.

Thus all the editors, without a single comment—Oh the
blockheads! Listen to my reading.

Francisco. For this good beef much
thanks: ’tis better cold, &c.

Bernardo should in this place present an edge-bone to his
friend, who should courteously accept it, like a good natured visiter,
who bolts into the dining-room when dinner is half over and endeavours
to avert the frowns of the lady of the house, by saying “O! make no
apologies—it’s my own fault—I like it better cold,
&c. Let the property man, when this play is next acted, remember the
beef. In the same scene Bernardo inquires “Is Horatio
here?” who answers “A piece of him.” Warburton, that bow-wow,
“dog in forehead,” says this signifies his hand, which direction
should be marked. But how if his hand be not marked? It is not every
player who has committed manslaughter on anybody but his author. In my
opinion, an actor who scorns to be a mannerist will take it to signify
his leg, which is quite as good a piece of him, as his hand, and,
if he be a dancer, a much better. My interpretation of this passage
is strengthened by the usage of the clown in the dramatic entertainment
entitled Mother Goose. When the late Mr. Lewis Bologna, as
Pantaloon, proffered his hand in token of amity and forgiveness, Mr.
Joseph Grimaldi protruded his foot into his master’s palm. His reading
was certainly the right one.

245

In the course of conversation, Horatio asks, “What! has this
thing appeared again to night?” which is both irreverent and nonsensical.
A ghost is not a thing. Macbeth says to that
of Banquo, “Unreal mockery, hence!” The passage should be
“Has this king appeared?”

This allusion to fortified ears, implies that the parties wore
helmets that covered these organs. For we two nights, therefore,
read “we two knights.” Knights were at that time soldiers. So Joppa in
his prophecy of the year 1790.

The ghost now enters, and retreats like lord Burleigh, in the
critic.

Bernardo. See, it stalks away.

Walks, if you please, Mr. Bernardo. I have heard
of stalking horses indeed, and that of Troy made many ghosts. But
ghosts themselves walk. In speaking to it
afterwards, Horatio says, “You spirits oft walk,” “He durst as soon have
met the devil in fight,” as have said “stalk.” The shades of
difference in the meaning of these two words were nicely marked in a
pantomime song of the late Mr. Edwin,
in which he courteously applied the word “walk” to the softer sex,

246

The following letter received from an
unknown correspondent at Boston, was intended to be placed in the
biographical part of the number, by way of supplement to the life of
Mrs. Warren. Having been omitted, we offer it to our readers in the
Miscellany.

To the editor of the Dramatic Censor.

Sir,

In No. II, of the Dramatic Censor, I notice with pleasure a biography
of Mrs. Warren, in which, however, all mention of her appearance in
Boston is omitted. That she excited enlightened admiration there,
the following lines may evince, which were published there soon after
her decease, and in which her voice is not unhappily commended.
I transcribe them, that you may hereafter insert them or not,
according to your opinion of their intrinsic merit.

LINES, ON THE DEATH OF MRS. WARREN, FORMERLY MRS. MERRY, OF THE
LONDON THEATRE.

They appeared in a paper of limited circulation and would now possess
to most readers the charm of novelty. The English of these lines seems
to the writer of this to fall upon the ear with hardly less mellifluence
than the fine latinity of Wranghams’s.

Your humble servant,
 
A FRIEND TO YOUR WORK.

Boston, March 1810.

ANECDOTES OF MACKLIN.

One night sitting at the back of the front boxes with a gentleman of
his acquaintance, (before the alterations at Covent Garden theatre took
place) one of the under-bred box-lobby loungers, so like some of this
city of the present day, stood up immediately before him, and his person
being rather large, covered the sight of the stage from him. Macklin
took fire at this; but managing himself with more temper
248

than usual, patted him gently on the shoulder with his cane, and with
much seeming civility, requested of him, “when he saw or heard anything
that was entertaining on the stage, to let him and the gentleman with
him know of it: for you see, my dear sir,” added the veteran, “that at
present we must totally depend on your kindness.” This had the desired
effect, and the lounger walked off.

Talking of the caution necessary to be used in conversation among a
mixed company, Macklin observed, Sir, I have experienced to my
cost, that a man in any situation should never be off his guard—a
Scotchman never is; he never lives a moment extempore, and that
is one great reason of their success in life.

A COMPARISON BETWEEN MILTON AND SHAKSPEARE.

Among the compositions of our own country, Comus certainly stands
unrivalled for its affluence in poetic imagery and diction; and, as an
effort of the creative power, it can be paralleled only by the Muse of
Shakspeare, by whom, in this respect, it is possibly exceeded.

With Shakspeare, the whole, with exception to some rude outlines or
suggestions of the story, is the immediate emanation of his own mind:
but Milton’s erudition prohibited him from this extreme originality, and
was perpetually supplying him with thoughts which would sometimes obtain
the preference from his judgment, and would sometimes be mistaken for
her own property by his invention. Original, however, he is; and of all
the sons of song inferior, in this requisite of genius, only to
Shakspeare. Neither of these wonderful men was so far privileged above
his species as to possess other means of acquiring knowledge than
through the inlets of the senses, and the subsequent operations of the
mind on this first mass of ideas. The most exalted of human
intelligences cannot form one mental phantasm uncompounded of this
visible world. Neither Shakspeare nor Milton could conceive a sixth
corporal sense, or a creature absolutely distinct
249

from the inhabitants of this world. A Caliban, or an Ariel;
a devil, or an angel, are only several compositions and
modifications of our animal creation; and heaven and hell can be built
with nothing more than our terrestrial elements newly arranged and
variously combined. The distinction, therefore, between one human
intelligence and another must be occasioned solely by the different
degrees of clearness, force, and quickness, with which it perceives,
retains, and combines. On the superiority in these mental faculties it
would be difficult to decide between those extraordinary men who are the
immediate subjects of our remark: for, if we are astonished at that
power, which, from a single spot as it were, could collect sufficient
materials for the construction of a world of its own, we cannot gaze
without wonder at that proud magnificence of intellect, which, rushing
like some mighty river, through extended lakes, and receiving into its
bosom the contributary waters of a thousand regions, preserves its
course its
name, and its character, entire. With Milton, from whatever mine the ore
may originally be derived, the coin issues from his own mint with his
own image and superscription, and passes into currency with a value
peculiar to itself. To speak accurately, the mind of Shakspeare could
not create; and that of Milton invented with equal, or nearly equal,
power and effect. If we admit, in the Tempest, or the Midsummer’s Nights
Dream, a higher flight of the inventive faculty, we must allow a
less interrupted stretch of it in the Comus: in this poem there may be
something, which might have been corrected by the revising judgment of
its author; but its errors in thought and language, are so few and
trivial that they must be regarded as the inequality of the plumage, and
not the depression or unsteadiness of the wing. The most splendid
results of Shakspeare’s poetry are still separated by some interposing
defect; but the poetry of Comus may be contemplated as a series of gems
strung on golden wire, where the sparkle shoots along the line with
scarcely the intervention of one opake spot.

250

KEMBLE AND COOKE COMPARED.

A German gentleman of the name of Goede, after having travelled in
different parts of the world, arrived in England in 1802, where he
resided for two years. On his return to Germany, he communicated his
observations to his countrymen in five volumes, from which translations
have been made and given to the world under the name of “The Stranger in
England.” His remarks are deemed in general just. He has particularly
expatiated at some length on the English stage, which he thinks on the
decline, and, in his strictures, has shown great knowledge of the
subject, and exemplary liberality. Of Cooke and Kemble he
speaks thus in one place; “The countenance of Kemble is the most noble
and refined; but the muscles are not so much at command as those of
Cooke, who is also a first rate comedian; but Kemble almost wholly
rejects the comic muse. Both are excellent in the gradual changes of the
countenance; in which the inward emotions of the soul are depicted and
interwoven as they flow from the mind. In this excellence I cannot
compare any German actors with them, unless it be Issland and Christ.
Among French tragedians even Talma and Lafond are far inferior to
them.”

Again—“Kemble has a very graceful manly figure, is perfectly
well made, and his naturally commanding stature appears extremely
dignified in every picturesque position, which he studies most
assiduously. His face is one of the noblest I ever saw on any stage,
being a fine oval, exhibiting a handsome Roman nose, and a well-formed
and closed mouth; his fiery and somewhat romantic eyes retreat as it
were, and are shadowed by bushy eyebrows; his front is open and little
vaulted; his chin prominent and rather pointed, and his features so
softly interwoven that no deeply marked line is perceptible. His
physiognomy, indeed, commands at first sight; since it denotes in the
most expressive manner, a man of refined sentiment, enlightened
mind, and correct judgment. Without the romantic look in his eyes, the
face of Kemble would be that of a well-bred, cold, and selfish man of
the
251

world; but this look from which an ardent fancy emanates, softens the
point of the chin and the closeness of the mouth. His voice is pleasing,
but feeble; of small compass but extreme depth. This is, as has been
previously observed, the greatest natural impediment with which he, to
whom nature has been thus bountiful, has still to contend.

“Cooke does not possess the elegant figure of Kemble; but his
countenance beams with great expression. The most prominent features in
the physiognomy of Cooke are a long and somewhat hooked nose,
a pair of fiery and expressive eyes, a lofty and somewhat
broad front, and the lines of his muscles which move the lips are
pointedly marked. His countenance is certainly not so dignified as that
of Kemble, but it discovers greater passion; and few actors are,
perhaps, capable of delineating, in such glowing colours the storm of a
violent passion, as Cooke. His voice is powerful and of great compass;
a preeminence he possesses over Kemble, of which he skilfully
avails himself. His exterior movements are by far inferior in the
picturesque to those of Kemble.”

GERMAN THEATRE.

It has for a considerable time been
fashionable to declaim against the theatrical performances translated
from the German. They are pretty generally charged with having corrupted
the English dramatic taste, and been the means of introducing the
ribaldry and nonsense which, particularly in the form of songs, have so
frequently appeared of late, and disgraced the London audiences, who
countenanced such trash. This charge is more than insinuated in the
first number of this miscellany, page 97, and by way of illustration,
the sublime, refined, and admirable song of Alderman Gobble is
introduced.

On this point I hold an opinion diametrically opposite, and hope to
convince the reader that the allegations against the German writers are
entirely groundless. In no German play that I have ever seen is there to
be found any thing of this species. The true character of the German
theatre is
252

the very antipodes to this. Strong bold sentiment—incidents
numerous and interesting—a dramatis personæ of the boldest and
most finished kind—and in fact every thing that can command the
most marked and pointed attention of the reader or spectator. And all
this notwithstanding the disadvantages of appearing in foreign dress;
for it hardly need be stated how wretchedly many of the translations
have been executed.

That many of the German plays are highly exceptionable in their
tendency is equally lamentable as it is undeniable. And when they are
adapted for representation here, they ought to be altered and modified
to suit the taste, the manners, and the state of society in this
country. I allude to the Stranger, Lovers’ Vows, and others of this
cast.

But the depravation of taste of which such loud complaints are now
made, and which is so freely charged to the account of the German
theatres, existed on the London stage before any of the German plays
were translated. I have not in my possession at this moment means
of deciding with certainty when the first made its appearance. But from
an examination of a small history of the stage, which now lies before
me, I am inclined to believe that the Stranger was among the
earliest of them, and that its first appearance was in the year 1798.
One thing, however, is absolutely certain, that not one of them was
acted previous to the year 1788: as “Egerton’s Theatrical Remembrancer,”
published in that year, and containing “a complete list of all
the dramatic performances in the English language,” makes no mention of them. If I
prove that this depraved taste existed anterior to 1788, it therefore
finally decides the question.

This, I presume, is tolerably plain and clear. I now proceed to
fix a much earlier origin for those vile slang songs. To O’Keefe they
may be fairly traced. His motley productions contained many of them, and
paved the way for the deluge of them that has since followed; for his
successful example has been too frequently copied since by other
writers.

253

“The Castle of Andalusia” was performed in 1782, and contains a
song6
which, I think, fully proves my position. An audience who could not
only tolerate but applaud such rank nonsense and folly as that song,
richly deserves to be regaled even to surfeiting with Tom Gobble, and
Jem Gabble, and ribaldry of the like kind. It would indeed be “throwing
pearls before swine” to offer them such delicate effusions as are to be
found in Love in a Village, Lionel and Clarissa, the Maid of the Mill,
and the Duenna. It is hardly possible for sublimity and elegance to be
relished by persons of so depraved a taste as is necessary to hear such
trash without disgust. Were I to be called upon to make a choice, and
pronounce between O’Keefe’s Galloping Dreary Dun, and Alderman Gobble,
I should give a preference to the latter without hesitation: for,
notwithstanding the detestable St. Giles’s slang it contains, it has the
merit of containing something of a delineation of a character too
common, I mean that of an epicure. Whereas, “Draggle Tail Dreary
Dun” has no such recommendation to rescue it from universal
execration.

DRAMATICUS.

DESCENT INTO ELYSIUM, FOR A STAGE POET.

Suggested by a scene in Aristophanes.

It is necessary to mention that this was written when Mr. Sheridan
was in office, and before Mr. Colman had written his best piece, the
Africans. Nothing however has occurred to alter the author’s
opinions.

The idea was suggested by a scene in the frogs of Aristophanes. It is
a dialogue between Hercules and Bacchus. Bacchus asking Hercules the way
to the infernal regions, is naturally interrogated as to his reasons for
going. He answers he is going for a poet. On this a short dialogue
ensues concerning the living poets of Athens, in which Aristophanes
takes occasion to satirize some of his brother dramatists.

Comic Muse, and Porter of Elysium.

MUSIC.

Reviews of late publications.

Respecting the overture to the opera
of Il don Giovanni lately published, and the manner in which it
was composed, the following singular anecdote is related. The celebrated
Mozart had completed the whole of the opera, with the exception
of the overture, and as the performance was to take place in a few days,
the managers began to be alarmed, lest in his usual habit of
procrastination, he should leave his task incomplete, and thus
disappoint the public.

Messengers were sent to remind him of the shortness of the time, and
urge him to finish the undertaking—but in vain; Mozart was nowhere
to be found. At length he was discovered in a billiard-room, half
intoxicated, earnestly engaged in a critical part of this very
fascinating game. The person who came in search of him, aware of
Mozart’s passionate fondness for this amusement, contrived to remove the
queues
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out of the way, and refused to let the game proceed till the overture
was written. Mozart, therefore, called for music-paper, &c. and in
the state of mind we have described (the agitation of which must have
been considerably increased by the vexation of being interrupted in his
favourite game) actually completed the overture while leaning over the
billiard-table. After this wonderful effort of genius (for such it must
be called) he resumed his game as if nothing had happened—

Where shall the lover rest, the song of I. Eustane, from
Scott’s Marmion, has been set to music by three different
composers—but that of sir John Stephenson is preferred far before
the others—the melody being tasteful and elegant—the words
judiciously distributed, and the passages well adapted to the different
voices allotted to perform them. The accompaniment is ingenious and
expressive, and the symphonies tasteful and much in the style of
Moore.

A duet composed by V. Rauzzini, and sung at the Bath concerts
by Mrs. Billington and Signora Cimador, has deservedly received the
greatest approbation. It is called “Care luci
inamorati”—the style is truly Italian; being simple, natural,
and of course pleasing.

Sweet Ellen, Sorrows Child, a ballad set to music by Rauzzini
also, is spoken of with great applause. The ballad itself is censured as
being too long, it consisting of four verses, which produces a slight
monotony, notwithstanding that the composer has displayed vast ingenuity
in varying the accompaniment to each verse. The most beautiful melody
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is generally found to become tiresome after a third repetition. The
present is sweetly plaintive and well adapted to the words.

The Sigh and the Tear, a duet—the words by Cumberland,
the music by Hawes, is very particularly recommended by the reviewers of
music. The words are excellent, the music well adapted and finely
impressive. The melody, particularly of the first movement, elegant,
pathetic and graceful—the harmonies scientific, and the
accompaniments varied and appropriate. “We recommend it,” say the
reviewers, “to our fair readers as one of the most pleasing duets we
have met with for a long time.”

Of “A grand Sonata” for the piano-forte, composed by
J. B. Cramer, fame speaks largely. An eminent connoisseur and
reviewer speaks of it in these words: “We here recognise the genuine
style of J. B. Cramer—this is really a grand sonata.
It consists of three different movements, each so excellent in its kind,
that it is difficult to decide which is best!

“The first is expressive and majestic, in which are introduced
several novel and ingenious ideas. One hand takes the chord of the 6-4,
and the other the chord of the 7th, and by a very quick alternation an
effect is produced similar to a triple shake. 

“The passage at the beginning of page 5 is exceedingly
beautiful—the whole movement will require considerable practice
from the most expert performers.

“The second movement is an adagio, which for beauty and
originality we think equal to any thing of the kind that Mr. Cramer has
written. The change of time to triple, at the part marked
scherzando is unexpected and strikingly original. This idea is
carried on till near the conclusion, when the movement again resumes the
majestic character with which it commences.

“Upon the whole we think this sonata superior to any Mr. Cramer has
published since those he dedicated to Haydn.”

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Irish music is quite the ton now in England. Corri the composer has
published “The Feast of Erin, a fantasy for the piano-forte,” in
which the original Irish airs of ‘Flanerty Drury,’ ‘The Summer is
Coming,’ ‘Erin go Bragh,’ and ‘Fly not Yet’ are introduced. Mr. C. (says
the reviewer) has displayed some judgment in the selection of these
airs, particularly in Erin go Bragh, which is one of the most
expressive and pathetic melodies ever written. We are sorry we cannot
bestow equal praise on the manner in which he has arranged them. We
candidly confess that we would rather hear the original airs performed
with a tasteful simplicity, than with the embellishments and episodes of
Mr. Corri.

Lays of Erin, arranged as rondeaus for the
piano-forte, by the most eminent composers.

Of this publication the reviewers speak thus:

“We are happy to find a work commenced which will render more
familiar to the English ear, the beautiful melodies of the sister
kingdom.

“The air selected on this occasion is “St. Patrick’s Day,” and the
manner in which Mr. Logier has arranged it, is such as to give us a very
favourable opinion of his abilities. The little imitation introduced at
bar 9, page 1, discovers considerable ingenuity. The return to the
subject in the key of F, is well arranged. The minor is uncommonly
spirited, and the conclusion playful and striking.”

Under the head “Music” in a former
number, allusion was made to the airs of the celebrated bard of Ireland,
Carolan—particularly to one called Gracey Nugent, the music of
which is published with accompaniments by sir John Stephenson and Mr.
Moore. The following translation of that song from the original
Irish is done by Miss Brooke.

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SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

Remarks on modern pedestrianism.

“They leap, exulting, like the bounding roe.”

Many of our modern gentlemen seem to
take infinite delight in reversing the original order of things; for
instance, placing the heels where the head should be, as nothing
possibly can confer so much honour upon a gentleman, as being able to
vie with a Venetian running footman of former times, who would post at
the rate of some eight miles an hour, with a dozen, pounds weight of
lead clapped in each pocket, by way of expediting his progress. In these
remarks, however, I do not intend to level the least sarcasm at
pedestrianism, which, if properly attended to, may, in the lapse
of time, render the properties of the canine race of no utility
whatsoever; nor, indeed, does it at all signify how the game be caught,
for a troop of Mercury-heeled puppies would do just as well as a full
pack of hounds. To be sure I am at a loss on the score of scent,
and the nose is confessedly a most material point to be considered,
unless to this leg exercise we allow the man to possess the keen
sight of the greyhound, which will remove the objection, though the odds
are much against him, as he makes so little use of his eyes as never to
see that which he ought to do.

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But in order the better to establish a running system,
I shall have recourse to the Classics, to prove, that the pursuit
will confer honour upon its practitioners; for instance, has not Ovid
recorded the gallopings of the lovely Atalanta, who, being determined to
live in a state of celibacy, positively ran away from the male sex? This
establishes the vast antiquity of running, and nothing can possibly
stand the test of inquiry, which has not such a voucher as antiquity to
bear it out against the growlings of scepticism.

Athletic exercises have, in all ages, been considered conducive to
the health, strength, and perfection, of youthful citizens, and
consequently to the welfare of the state. In this point of view, the
feats of our pedestrian candidates for fame who run against old Time
himself, are certainly entitled to popular applause; and should the
passion for running become general, we may soon expect to behold an
exhibition, unparalleled even at the Olympic games formerly celebrated
in Greece. The art of running is, like that of dancing, acquirable from
a master; but gracefulness of motion is not essential to the perfection
of the runner, swiftness being the principal requisite. Hence, whether
the performer display his agility by bounding along on the light
fantastic toe, or waddling with the zig-zag respectability of a
corpulent alderman, if he can first reach the destined goal within a
given period of time, he is rewarded, not with a civic crown—but a
purse of gold.

Captain Barclay has obtained much notoriety, by an exhibition of his
personal agility; he seems, from his attainments, eminently qualified to
fill the office of running footman—an establishment, the revival
of which would give permanence to this gymnastic exercise; but it is to
be hoped that he will find few imitators in the British army. Celerity
of movement might, indeed, be very advantageous in the field of battle,
and a column, advancing at the rate of ten miles an hour, might attack
the artillery of the enemy with success; but should a sudden panic on
any occasion seize the troops, they might prove their agility by running
away, to the great disgrace of our national honour. The introduction of
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Captain Barclay’s improvement in the motion of legs and feet into the
army, might therefore be attended with disastrous consequences.

This excellent art, however, will probably supersede equestrian
performances on the turf. The horse will no longer be tortured for the
amusement of man; but fellow bipeds, equipped in querpo, will
start for the prize, and, with the fleetness of a North-American Indian,
bound along the lists, amid the acclamations and cheers of admiring
multitudes. The competition between man and man in the modern foot-race
is certainly fair; but, for the better regulation of the movements of
public runners, it might be expedient that an amateur, mounted on an
ass, should keep pace with the performers, and, by the judicious
application of a whip, prevent any of the tricks belonging to the turf,
such as crossing and jostling, that gamesters might have a fair chance
for their money. As for those gymnastic heroes, who, like captain
Barclay, merely run against old Time, they are, indeed, unentitled to
the fame they pant for. It may be thought ungenerous to oppose
youthful agility to the hobbling pace of the old gentleman, yet, as he
is well known to be sound in wind, he probably will run the briskest of
them down at last.

The art of running only requires the sanction of some man of quality,
to establish it at the head of all our modern amusements. There is a
certain sameness in other divertisements, which must become irksome to
the spectator. But in the noble exhibitions of the foot-race there will
be no danger of satiety, for the art of running may be diversified by
such innumerable modifications, that it will appear “ever charming, ever
new.” For instance, let the competitors for fame in the celerity of
motion always be selected according to the strictest laws of decorum,
consequently a lord and a lady cannot, without great impropriety, start
against each other.

But if persons of rank and respectability choose to take an airing on
their own legs, instead of an equestrian exhibition, for the
amusement of the public, there is no necessity that they should
be of equal size and weight. Every individual
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must be the best judge of his own muscular powers; and if the duke of
Lumber should think proper to challenge my lord Lath, to run four times
round the canal in St. James’s Park, for 10,000l. the contrast in their
figure would only render the diversion more entertaining to the admiring
spectators.

As the ladies have ever been emulous to distinguish themselves, and
their proficiency in dancing is an excellent preparative to running, we
may soon hope to see them exhibit themselves in the gymnastic lists, as
candidates for that public admiration which seems to be the great
business of their lives. The disparity between the competitors will
doubtless be very amusing, as well as edifying.—When we behold the
fat duchess of ——, with a face
like Cynthia in all her glory, boldly approach the promenade in
Kensington Gardens, in open defiance of public decorum, and, unzoned and
divested of superfluous drapery, prepare for the race, in opposition to
a slim vestal from ———,
how shall we be able to restrain our risibility? The running ladies
will, however, labour under one great disadvantage. Their muscular
exertions must affect the lungs, and, in a great degree, suspend the
exercise of their blandiloquence, not only during the race, but for some
minutes after its termination.

On a general view of the national utility resulting from this modern
amusement, it appears admirably well calculated for the exercise of the
legs of our nobility, gentry, and merchants, and may operate as an
efficacious remedy for indolence, alias laziness. It will also be
conducive to the benefit of those ingenious individuals who devote their
talents to the fabrication of ornaments; and we may soon expect to see,
in the advertisements of mantuamakers, milliners, hosiers, and tailors,
a list of patent bounding corsets, Atalanta robes,
and winged bonnets, for the equipment of female adventurers in
the lists of gymnastic glory; while flying trowsers, elastic
jackets, and feathered buskins, fit for Mercury himself, will
contribute at once to the adornment, the swiftness, and the reputation,
of our noble and ignoble racers.

266

BACKSWORD PLAYING—MIDDLESEX PASTIME.

At Wilsden Green, a hat, and a purse
of twenty shillings, were played for at backsword, and, as an
encouragement for young players, five shillings were given to the winner
of every head, and two shillings to the loser. On the umpire’s
proclaiming the game, a hat was thrown into the ring (being the
ancient mode of defiance) another soon followed, and the owners entered
and played several bouts with much good humour, till the blood trickled
down the head of the least fortunate. Other gamesters followed, to the
number of seventeen, affording most excellent sport to a numerous and
well-dressed field. The prize was won by a Dorsetshire lad, who, by
breaking four heads proved himself to be the best man.

CURIOUS PEDESTRIANISM.

A very extraordinary wager was
decided upon the road between Cambridge and Huntingdon. A gentleman
of the former place, had betted a very considerable sum of money, that
he would go, at a yard distance from the ground, upon stilts, the
distance of twelve miles within the space of four hours and a
half: no stoppage was to be allowed except merely the time taken up
in exchanging one pair of stilts for another, and even then his feet
were not to touch the ground. He started at the second milestone from
Cambridge in the Huntingdon road to go six miles out and six in: the
first he performed in one hour and fifty minutes, and did the distance
back in two hours and three minutes, so that he went the whole in three
hours and fifty-three minutes, having thirty-seven minutes to spare
beyond the time allowed him. He appeared a good deal fatigued; and his
hands we understand were much blistered from the continued pressure upon
one part. This, we believe, is the first performance of the kind ever
attempted; but as novelty appears to attract, as well as direct the
manners of the age, stilting may become as fashionable in these,
as tilting formerly was in better times.

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Twenty-four gamesters contended manfully at Harrow-on-the-Hill for a
prize of a hat and purse, at the right valiant game of backsword.
Many a crown was cracked and many a heavy blow was given with right good will,
and received with true humour. Much skill also in assault and defence in
this game (the most lively picture of war) was evinced. Jack Martin of
Harrow played the best stick among the Harrow lads—but the prize,
alas was actually borne away by—a London
tailor. Fourteen broken heads graced the ring.