CHAP. V.

Winter season of 1791-2.-Mr. Fawcett at Covent Garden. -Mr. Charles Kemble.-Drury Lane removed to the Haymarket.-New prices.-Prelude.-Oscar and Malvina, by Byrne.-Reynolds's notoriety.-Mrs. Billington.-Ryder dies.-Day in Turkey.—Lady Mary Wortley Montague.Warburton's singularity as to her letters.-Mrs. Jordan.Public opinion. Her apology.-Mr. Kemble's difficulties. ---Cymon revived.-Huniades.-Mrs. Siddons acts Q. Elizabeth in Richard III.—Mr. Kemble forced into a duel by Mr. J. Aickin.-Road to Ruin.-Richardson's Comedy of the Fugitive.-Jealous Wife.-Mr. Kemble and Mrs. Siddons.-Drury Italianized.-P. Hoare's Dido.-Little Theatre. Mrs. Whitelock.-Mrs. Sheridan's death.-Mrs. Bannister retires.

THE winter season of 1791-2 was opened by Covent Garden with the Dramatist, in which Mrs. Merry, formerly Miss Brunton, acted for the first time since her marriage. To have yielded to the ardour and accomplishments of Merry could be a matter of no surprise to any person who had enjoyed his society. Bating his tendency to play, which was a fever in him that nothing could render intermittent, he was one of the most original and captivating men whom I have ever known. But unhappily for himself and his former associates, he now became perfectly rabid with the French revo lution associated himself with the radical press, and spoke its furious and disgusting language; by degrees he detached himself from men who could not echo, and disdained to humour him; and though complexionally indolent, his political passion lashed him into a daily ridicule of all that ages have respected, and he became one of the eyes of Argus (a newspaper so named,) and amused himself with what he called "common stuff" and "stars and strings." Over this transformation even the muse possessed no power; and the poet and the gentleman vanished together.

The 21st of September brought upon the boards of Covent Garden Theatre Mr. Fawcett, the younger, from the York company. He made his entré in Caleb, in He would be a Soldier, a part of great nonsense and rattle, in which a man

of Fawcett's sound common sense descends to amuse vulgarity; conscious at the same time that he possesses powers of higher value; which, without any great refinement, interest deeply, and urge the moral lesson home to the heart. There is in this actor, whenever the opportunity is given, as great a command over the tender affections as can be displayed in characters of middle life. I have a pleasure in thus detaching his real excellencies from a crowd of buffooneries, which he always seems to disdain while he exhibits them; and for which there are beings naturally gifted.

Mr. Kemble, during the summer, had been greatly alarmed by the very serious illness of his brother Charles, then a youth of fifteen, whom he had placed, three years before, at the College of Douay, in order to his obtaining all those advantages which he had himself formerly derived. The reported attainments of his brother gave him the highest satisfaction. But on this journey he expected to find him in a very dangerous state of health. He had, however, happily recovered; and, under the care of a friend, was proceeding on his way to England. They met upon the road.

Mr. Kemble was sitting alone in his carriage, reading, as the other carriage advanced in the opposite direction, he raised his eyes from the book, and exclaimed, "Charles!" The meeting was quite theatrical; for, though neither Henry the Eighth nor Francis the First, yet certainly one day the Wolsey and Cromwell of the drama, like the monarchs just named,

"Those two lights of men Met in the vale of Arde;"

and probably in their embraces, as much exceeded the kings in sincere affection, as the latter in splendour surpassed every previous exhibition of royal fraternity. Mr. Kemble was never an "inquisitive traveller;" he wanted only to see his brother; he now saw him quite restored, and they returned to this country in company.

Upon his arrival, Mr. Charles Kemble, for a short time, accepted a situation in the Post Office, and he was removed from one position in it to another; but the foreign department proving no more to his taste than the inland, with the tendency of all his family, he resolved to try his fortune on the stage. He soon, therefore, quitted Lombard street, to make that experiment, which, after a year's rustication, sent him to the metropolis: a result which has so gratified the public, and, I can fairly add, done honour to the profession.

The removal of the Drury Lane company to a theatre so

uncommonly splendid as Novosielski's Opera-house, seemed to the patentees a favourable opportunity for asking a small increase of the prices of admission; and, after much noise and clamour, they established six shillings for the boxes and three shillings and sixpence for the pit. A prelude, called Poor Old Drury! slight, but well enough aimed, and written by Cobb, suffered more than any thing in the contest. The great joke was the damage done in transferring the scenery and the properties from one house to the other. But the spectators seemed to think that the splendid theatre itself suffered most by these invasions. Nothing but a conflagration ever produces uniform scenery. The old, though too low for the increased size, is found too good and too plentiful to be thrown away, and its adaptation is always a very disjointed business. To one point of this prelude a reasonable objection may be raised.-It is said most ridiculously by an Italian singer and a French dancing master, that dancing and the opera should always go together in contempt of sense and nature. It would be well if writers who sport such ideas as these, in compliment to old prejudices, would a little enquire what they mean. It did not become the author of the Siege of Belgrade, a mere farrago from a hundred Italian operas, to talk in this way; and those who at best in dancing reach only as far as divertisement, might learn a little respect for the learned and enchanting ballets of Noverre. I once sat with Dr. Charles Burney during the representation of Iphigenie en Aulide, and his classic mind was in perfect ecstacy at the deep interest and graceful splendour of that beautiful version of Grecian history or fable. And then, here comes a farce writer, in his rudiments, and lectures away upon sense and nature! And all this, moreover, in a house constructed for opera, and soon to exhibit operas again; and which had afforded the destitute a seasonable shelter for the sense and nature to which they so exclusively pretended. The period, too, when most of these qualities were to be found in us, produced a beautiful species of entertainment combining both the opera and the ballet: I allude to the MASQUE of which Jonson was the actual inventor, and which Milton, in emulation of that great poet, did not disdain to compose.

Indeed Covent Garden Theatre, on the 20th of October, exhibited a very captivating ballet, called Oscar and Malvina, which the good taste of Mr. Byrne had rendered a nearly permanent attraction of the theatre. Byrne himself took Oscar, and Follet strode through his fierce rival Carrol; and for Malvina he brought over Mad. St. Amand from Paris; and her ease and grace, her pointed action and just expression.

delighted the spectators. Scenery and music lent their brilliant aids to the inventor of the ballet, and thus Mr. Byrne drew interest from the page of Ossian, as Noverre had done from that of Euripides.

The Crusade had not drawn Reynolds very widely away from his proper sphere, for by the fifth of November he was ready with another dramatist under the title of Notoriety. The title implies the passion of Nominal, the hero. As the first comedy aimed to make dramatic effects popular; the second endeavoured to render popular effects dramatic; and they succeeded equally, and by means somewhat similar; for the characters were conceived to run tolerably parallel to each other. In short it was the gay and entertaining effort of a young author, with a very quick discernment of the ridiculous in life; who occasionally threw in very happy points of dialogue, and whom dulness never approached for a moment. Among those points which amused the audience, he allowed himself a joke at the sleeping partners of the greatest house in the nation. This in Reynolds was rather taste than politics. He hated long speeches much; but he at all times hated faction more, and should not have raised a laugh for the gloomy assailants of our representatives. It may be as well to show, as a lesson to managers, that Mr. Harris cast into Notoriety, Lewis, Quick, Wilson, Munden, Johnstone, and Farren, the father of the present actor of that name. The ladies were Mrs. Webb, Mrs. Wells, and

Mrs. Esten.

The success of the music at the rival theatre led Mr. Harris to re-engage Mrs. Billington, who had been absent for a couple of seasons. Kemble immmediately added Madame Mara to his operatical strength, and she appeared in Mandane on the 17th November. There was little, to be sure, in which Madame Mara could be employed, unless a series of operas had been written for her of the complexion of Artaxerxes. She was in truth a most exquisite musician, but not the least of an actress. Majesty she could not assume; she was too feeble in her person; and even when to sing in an orchestra, sometimes gave offence, because she was compelled to be seated, when she was expected to be standing. Add to this that she never spoke our language tolerably, and much could not reasonably be expected. Yet she sang the melodies of Arne, as she did those of Handel, in a style so pure, and in a manner so easy, as to place her first most decidedly among the greatest singers of her time, or any time.

Mr. Ryder, the commedian, died on the 25th of this month,

at Sandy Mount in Ireland. He had a great deal of hard and diversified talent: was always useful, but never, I think, pleasing. He was a man of reading and reflexion; and one of his daughters was singularly accomplished. I have read some of her translations of modern latinity, in which she could have had no predecessor or guide; and her versification was exact and elegant. While this praise is given to the lady, it is necessarily reflected upon the father; for to what less than parental care could such accomplishment be owing? Rudiments, particularly of the dead languages, are always too painful to be the objects, I think, of female choice: those once given, to proceed may be pleasing, as it gratifies curiosity, and confers distinction.

On the 3d of December Mrs. Cowley brought out her comedy called A Day in Turkey, or the Russian Slaves. The charming letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague are in every hand, and in consequence every body became enabled to display the secrets of Turkish harems; our fancies teemed with visions of lazy luxury, and the turban'd Turk became a resource to our dramatist at second hand, when actual observation fell short, and domestic life among ourselves supplied no novelty. Female plays usually build a good deal upon the sex; Mrs. Cowley secured the talents in her present comedy of Mrss. Pope, Esten, Mattocks, and Martyr. The interest springs from the hatred of Russians and Turks and was by no means strongly felt by the audience. That happened to Mrs. Cowley, which has happened to others; that things glorious in imagination are but cold in their realities. In her Belle's stratagem the enthusiasm with which she points to some of the incidents of the present play, might have led one to expect uncommon effort in their exhibitionbut there was much bustle to little purpose. The piece should clearly have been an opera.

As I have alluded to Lady Mary Wortley's letters, I take the opportunity of showing a degree of literary blindness, insensibility, or prejudice, seldom I believe, equalled. I have now before me a manuscript letter from bishop Warburton, dated from Prior Park, July 1763, and intended to amuse the ladies at Mount Edgecombe. He thus speaks of the genius, that his friend Pope had adored. "But literary news, while I have my senses is more in my province. I suppose, as fashionable ladies, (for you see I am not disposed to compliment) you have read Lady Mary's letters with great eagerness, and laid them aside with as much contempt. I suppose they are genuine, even from their very insignificance." That editors adopt the passions of the authors whom they