But I abstain from such reproaches to a different, and, it may be, more popular school; satisfied myself that one of these delicacies conveyed in the suitable tones, and graced by that modest deportment which always attended Mrs. Siddons, was actually worth more to the heart and head of an audience, than whole acts of rude and intemperate merriment. But the million think such matters dull. To the million, certainly.

The 24th of May this year exhibited a scene of great stage. interest-a benefit at Drury Lane Theatre for Mrs. George Anne Bellamy, who had recently excited more than common attention by five volumes of her life, said (for what may not be said?) to be written by herself. She tells us therein, that she was born on St. George's day, 1733. Now it is unfortunate to stumble at the very threshold of a life, for this date must be inaccurate; she is put up in the bills for Miss Prue, in Love for Love, at Covent Garden Theatre, on the 27th March 1742, for Bridgewater's benefit, being her first appearance. This, to be sure, might be a failure from juvenile timidity; because we afterwards find Monimia, in the Orphan, to have been called her first performance, on the 22d November, 1744, and then her powers were so overcome by the novelty of her situation, that she could scarcely be endued with sense and motion till the fourth act, when her mind, by a sudden spring, seemed to recover its elasticity, and Quin had to embrace a young heroine of the genuine stuff. As the date given for that of her birth would show her at this time to have been only eleven years old, and as I suppose the audiences of that age not absolutely childish, I take it for granted that Chetwood was right when he dated her birth in the year 1727, and such an ascription will still leave a sufficient degree of precocity for fools to wonder at.

When Braganza had been performed, and Mrs. Yates had exerted her fine powers to a very crowded house, an address was expected from the brilliant speaker of a former day; but she had lost her faculties in the decline of life so completely, that at the age of fifty-eight she had become an imbecile helpless old woman, diminutive in stature, and uninteresting in countenance, and the delightful Farren made the acknowledgments for her benefit.

CHAPTER XI.

Close of the season of 1784-5.-No production of any conse quence.-Brief display of dramatic talent in Sheridan.His reported new Opera and Comedy.-Affectation as a subject.-Destouches.-Murphy-As to tragedy, nothing expected or desired.--Jephson characterised.-Our dresses. scenery. Mr. Kemble's revivals.-Colman the younger.Turk and No Turk.-Young Bannister.-His talents.Private excellence.--Kemble as a companion.-Miss E. Kemble.-Mrs. Inchbald's I'll Tell You What.--Colman, senior.--Gibbon.-Author becomes known to Mr. Colman. -Account of his manner.-Miss Younge married to Mr. Pope.-Miss Brunton.

SUCH was the close of the season 1784-5. The review here given of it has shown that there was no new production of the slightest consequence. Dramatic talent had made a dazzling, but brief display in Sheridan: the wit that might have divided the palm with Congreve, was forced from its natural seat, and condemned to the benches of the opposition in parliament. Sheridan, indeed, talked occasionally of returning to his dramatic pursuits, and announced that his opera of the Caravan should speedily appear, and rival the Duenna; and that he had a comedy in great forwardness,⚫ upon the subject of affectation.

But mixed up as he was with the endless struggles of the whig party, with the personal anxiety of placing his oratory upon a level with that of Burke and Fox, Mr. Sheridan could hardly be expected to find time for such a devotion of his powers as was necessary to the production of new dramas not inferior to the past; and in fact, Sheridan might be said to be afraid of the author of the School for Scandal. But that he longer retained the power itself, was, at times, not unreasonably questioned his mind had taken a decided bent towards politics, and I know not that the muses ever allowed so fierce an invasion of their territory. Such hoarse chidings are apt to frighten the mimic sisters from their haunt, and lead them to prefer a calmer residence, though on a less fer

tile soil.

Per

What the Caravan, at a happier season, might have been, as an opera, it will not be difficult for those to imagine, who remember the beauty and the sense of his songs in the Duenna. As to the subject of affectation, with all its laughable or loathsome singularities, in forming a whole comedy, whose characters are either to be its progeny, or its correctors, I cannot but think it one of the most tempting themes, that ever solicited the comic muse. But, alas! I know of no present writer, to whom it might be securely entrusted. haps if Destouches had previously treated the subject in the French mode*, Arthur Murphy once could have made something of it. But he should have learnt to point his prose more for the tongue, that the actor might have had a tune in his dialogue better worth the singing. "There is a tune (says the late Mr. Horne Tooke) in all good prose; and Shakespeare's was a sweet one." If Murphy be compared in this particular with Cibber, the Way to Keep Him, for instance, with the Careless Husband, it will appear how nerveless is his dialogue, and how unmeasured and lifeless most of his sentences. The French comedy, in its best specimens, being written in alternate masculine and feminine rhymes, has more care about its composition, and more point in its repartee. After Murphy had translated Tacitus, I know his comic dialogue would have been more like that of Congreve, and Vanburgh, and Cibber-but when Tacitus was finished, the age of invention was past with Murphy. I have heard him talk over the times in which he flourished, and of plays, which he would yet submit to this laggard age, if we had talent sufficient to act them. Alas! in this case, and in Cumberland's, these "jewels of their fathers" have been seen, and some of them tried upon our theatres, but none of them have repaid the trouble of the experiment; and their fate has a little redeemed the character of managers, too often, by an irritated author, deemed insensible to their proper interests.

If such was the state of the modern theatre, as to comedy, it may be still more securely affirmed, that, in tragedy, nothing was now expected nor indeed desired. "The table was full," and any unbidden guest was deemed unqualified and presumptuous. Jephson had in two instances exhibited his power to supply the modern stage with at least musical versification, and a vein of thinking that was elegant and pure, if it was

* I consider his Glorieux to be the best specimen of that mode, and in deed a chef d'œuvre of structure and composition.

+ Diversions of Purley, vol. ii. p. 61.

never very impassioned or characteristic. In Ireland, his muse had been powerfully aided by the genius of Kemble, and the nationality of his countrymen had raised him to the summit of his ambition. In England, his Count of Narbonne was deemed inferior to the romance from which it was derived the supernatural was rather hinted than shown: the author seemed conscious that the stage, at all events, was cold to the wonders of the gothic muse; that the scenic castles could no longer be haunted by the midnight spectre, nor be overclouded by a mysterious and avenging fatality. I will not here examine the propriety of his inference, but I can readily admit that Jephson was not the man to describe the magic circle, and perform the long disused ceremonies of the enchanter, The wand of Prospero had been broken, and beyond all modern sounding his "book had been sunk." If he failed, therefore, in one great spring of tragic emotion— terror, he was not gifted in any striking degree with the other-pity. He had little pathos, for he was not a natural writer; and it is not by elaborate woe that the heart is ever subdued. The reader of discernment will find the requisites of tragic composition, admirably discussed in the "Elements of Criticism," by Lord Kames, chap. xvi. Upon the whole, the tragedies of Jephson are laboured into great correctness; his dialogue is flowing and energetic, his sentimenss are always pure and just; but his characters have little discrimination, as human beings, and it may be said, that their condition even produces but slight mental difference between them.

In this state of the drama, as to novelty, Mr. Sheridan may be pardoned as a manager, if he did not lend any very favourable ear to the various solicitations for his favour: the pieces he did read may be presumed a fair sample of the commodity, and no human patience could possibly get through the whole. He, therefore, easily became a convert to a favourite opinion of Mr. Kemble. My late friend, like any other great artist, must have been expected to think deeply, as to the exercise of his own peculiar talent: he saw that the elder dramatists alone afforded him sufficieut scope, and he was too excellent a critic not to feel the palpable deficiency of the writers for the modern stage. It struck him accordingly that it was a waste of time and money to repeat perpetually these "modern instances" of total or partial failure; and that a grand and permanent attraction might be given to Drury Lane by increasing the power of Shakspeare. This he proposed to effect by a more stately and perfect representation of his plays-to attend to all the details as well as

the grand features, and by the aid of scenery and dress to perfect the dramatic illusion. In Paris, something of this nature had already been attempted; the fine genius and good taste of La Clairon in particular, meditated the manners and the costume of the ancients; and we may credit much of the account which she herself in advanced life gave of this matter, because it is in every essential point confirmed by the cotemporary relations of Marmontel and Voltaire.

Upon the London stage, nearly every thing, as to correctness, was to be done. The ancient kings of England, or Scotland, or Denmark, wore the court dress of our own times; as to shape; and as to colour, the rival monarchs of England and France opposed their persons to each other in scarlet and gold-lace, and white and silver. At the moment I am writing, King John has revived the exact habiliments of the 13th century, and either as to materials or elegance, the dresses of the mimic scene might have been admitted at the ancient court. The old scenery exhibited architecture of no period, and excited little attention. The powers of De Loutherbourg's pencil were devoted to the decoration of some catching novelty of the time-a picturesque forest night aid the enchantments of Arthur and Emeline, and an exact view of Tilbury Fort form a back ground to the sleeping sentinels in the critic; but nothing could be less accurate, or more dirty, than the usual pairs of low flats that were hurried together, to denote the locality of the finest dialogue that human genius ever composed. The error was too universal to admit of a speedy or radical corrective. The vast old stock could not be entirely condemned, and the treasury could seldom bear the expense of any very considerabie novelties. The scale of dimension was also too small to admit of magnificent designs. The structure, for it really was one, that latter years saw erected for the play of de Monfort, would have been condemned as unnecessary, or pronounced impracticable by the artists of Garrick's theatre. But the great reform was to take place in those parts of representation, which nothing but propriety can raise above derision or disgust-the whole tribe of mobs, whether civil or military plebeians, and their pasteboard and leathern properties. Whatever credit might be taken by managers, and the newspapers and playbills gave them much, for liberality in their expenditure, the fact is certain, that the expense which attended one of Mr. Kemble's revivals would have defrayed the demands during a whole season of any former management. Such a change in theatrical arrangements he always desired, and through life steadily pursued; until at length he carried