Wellesleys and the Russells, the Stanleys and the Howards. It is one which the scribblers, sprung from a dunghill, may be assured that there are few men of blood and birth who will disavow. In fact, the enthusiasm of Claude is far more that of a soldier than a citizen ;* and it is not the reasoner nor the politician, but the man, with his feelings and his struggles, with whom the audience sympathize when he glories in the redemption of his name. It is perfectly clear that nei ther the English author nor the English audience can recognise much in harmony with their own sentiments when Claude declares that the gold he has won in the campaign of Italy “is hallowed in the cause of nations !” The question for us to consider is, not whether an Englishman or a philosopher would think that there was any sanctity in the principles of that brilliant war, but whether an enthusiastic soldier under Napoleon would not have believed it. Our national prepossessions and prejudices; our closeness to an age, the false glitter of which we can so well detect, alike, I hope, guard us against all political infection from a play cast in a time when the coming shadow of a military despotism was already darkening the prospects of an unwise and weak republic; and if there be anywhere the antipodes The allusion to the rapidity of promotion in the French army was absolutely necessary to the conduct of the story; and, after all, it is expressed in language borrowed and adapted from that very ja. cobinical authority, Horatio Viscount Nelson. Nor is easy to conceive how the sentiment, that merit, not money, should purchase promotion in the army, can be called a republican doctrine; since, though it certainly did pervade the French republican army, it incul. cates a principle far more common in despotic countries than under free institutions. We must look to the annals of the East for the most frequent examples of the rise of fortunate soldiers. to the French Jacobin of the last century, it is the English reformer of the present. For my own part, I never met with any one, however warm a lover of abstract liberty, who had a sympathy with the principles of the directory and the government of M. Barras. But enough in contradiction of a charge which the whole English public have ridiculed and scouted, and which has sought to introduce into the free domains of art all the miserable calumnies and wretched spleen of party hostilities. The faults of the play itself I do not seek to defend : such faults are the fair and just materials for criticism and cavil. I am perfectly aware that it is a very slight and trivial performance, and, being written solely for the stage, may possess but a feeble interest in the closet. It was composed with a twofold object. In the first place, sympathizing with the enterprise of Mr. Macready, as manager of Covent Garden, and believing that many of the higher interests of the drama were involved in the success or failure of an enterprise equally hazardous and disinterested, I felt, if I may so presume to express myself, something of the brotherhood of art; and it was only for Mr. Macready to think it possible that I might serve him to induce me to make the attempt. Secondly, in that attempt I was mainly anxious to see whether or not certain critics had truly declared that it was not in my power to attain the art of dramatic construction and theatrical effect. I felt, indeed, that it was in this that a writer, accustomed to the narrative class of composition, would have the most both to learn and to unlearn. Accordingly, it was to the development of the plot and the arrangement of the incidents that I directed my chief attention; and I sought to throw whatever belongs to poetry less into the diction and the "felicity of words" than into the construction of the story, the creation of the characters, and the spirit of the pervading sentiment. With this acknowledgment, may I hazard a doubt whether any more ornate or more elevated style of language would be so appropriate to the rank of the characters introduced, or would leave so clear and uninterrupted an effect to the strength and progress of that domestic interest which (since I do not arrogate the entire credit of its invention) I may, perhaps, be allowed to call the chief attraction of the play. Having, on presenting this drama to the theatre, confided the secret of its authorship to the manager alone; having, therefore, induced no party, no single friend or favourer of my own, to attend the early performances which decided its success, I hope that on my side "The Lady of Lyons" has been fairly left to the verdict of the public; let me now also hope an equal fairness from those who wish to condemn the politician in the author. I have no intention of writing again for the stage; and, therefore, so far as my own experiment is concerned, I have but little to hope or fear. Do not let those who love the literature of the drama discourage other men, immeasurably more fitted to adorn it, solely because in a free country they may, like the author of this play, have ventured elsewhere to express political opinions. I cannot conclude without expressing my high sense of the care with which the "Lady of Lyons" was introduced on the stage; of its obligations to Mr. Macready, not less as a manager who neglected no detail that could conduce to the effect of the representation, than as an actor who realized and exalted every design of the author. The power and pathos which Miss Faucit's acting infused into language that will seem comparatively tame and cold to the reader; the easy skill with which Mr. Bartley threw his own racy and vigorous humour into the character of Colonel Damas the zeal and ability which, in. Mr. Elton's Beauseant, relieved and elevated a part necessarily unpleasing to an actor of his station; and the performances, so ac curate and spirited, of the characters less prominent in the development of the story, especially of Mrs. Clifford and Mr. Meadows, have already received a far higher reward than the acknowledgment of the author, in the cordial applauses of the audience. |
