the gratitude of Duke's place now compensated the failure of the author to move the Lords of the treasury. Bannister merited a statue for the very able performance of Sheva; though, subsequently, Cumberland used to talk of Dowton's as the finest act in the world. The epilogue, spoken by Miss Farren, set out with great pleasantry on the origin of woman, but dwindled away its point, and ended hardly intelligible. The Jew became popular all over these islands; and except the Wheel of Fortune, is clearly the best of Mr. Cumberland's latter pieces. I dined with him at Bannister's, and found him a little open to pleasantry: he sported paradox upon paradox- Handel was no composer"-"It was quite impossible for any man to reason, without depth in * mathematical science," and so on; but his own attainments were to be measured one day by the contemptuous logical restriction of Bishop Watson. 6 "I had too great contempt for his powers of argumentation to answer any thing he published against me: he had merit as a versifier and a writer of essays; but his head was not made for close reasoning. There are,' says Locke, some men of one, some of two syllogisms, and no more, and others that can advance but one step further. These cannot always discern that side on which the strongest proofs lie.' Mr. Cumberland was, at most, a two syllogism man."-The Bishop's Life, vol. i. p. 124. At the other house, a tragedy in three acts, called the Siege of Meaux, from the pen of the laureate Pye, was acted on the 19th of May, with applause. It must not be confounded with the celebrated and terrible siege of that place, in 1421, by our hero, the fifth Henry. It is narrow in its business, and of little interest, written with great purity, as was to be expected, being the work of so eminent a scholar. It is often extremely painful to be obliged to remind a man of genius and learning, that every profession must be learned; and the great effects of the drama can only proceed from intimate acquaintance with the stage. The drama, by its See, however, on this subject, the admirable discrimination of Warbur ton, at p. 19 of the Introduction to his Julian, 1751. "It may seem, perhaps, too much a paradox to say, that long habit in this science, incapacitates the mind for reasoning at large, and especially in the search of moral truth. And yet, I believe, nothing is more certain. The object of Geometry is demonstration, and its subject admits of it, and is almost the only one that doth. In this science, whatever is not demonstration is nothing, or at least below the sublime inquirer's regard. Probability, through, its almost infinite degrees, from simple ignorance up to absolute certainty, is the terra incognita of the Geometer. And yet here it is that the great business of the human mind is carried on, the search and discovery of all the important truths which concern us as reasonable beings." Tt occasional profits, tempts beyond the other walks of literature; a successful play producing, by less than 100 pages, a reward beyond quartos of historical research and painful elaboration. But Pye, though even the author of an epic poem, was not at all turned to tragedy. Mr. Henry Siddons, the son of the great actress, had dramatised the Sicilian Romance of Mrs. Radcliffe, and he allowed Middleton to act it for his benefit on the 28th. He had learned, at all events, to shape his ends" dramatically, and the work was creditable to his industry. Mr. Kemble had been amusing himself by translating, from the French, a musical romance, called Lodoiska. There is a bustle about it that will always interest strongly: it seems to have been the model of all the fortresses subsequently stormed. Kera Khan and his Tartars--Princess Lodoiska, Count Floriski, with flaming walls and delightful music, mixed excellently well together, and brought a mine of wealth into the theatre. Charles Kemble took a young Tartar, called Kajah, under that greatest of Tartar chiefs, Barrymore; and worked every night like a Turk, to come at last into broad day light. As Drury Lane Theatre had commenced its operations late in the season, it did not close them until the 8th of July, having, however, on the 2d, acted the Country Girl, with Jordan, for the benefit of those who were left desolate and destitute by the glorious deaths on the 1st of June. Cobb, one of the ready writers of that day, put a little afterpiece together, in which every body acted, and with the immense resources of the new stage, a sea-fight was given, in which a seaman might find something to admire. To this piece, called The Glorious First of June, Richardson wrote a prologue of great beauty, which Mr. Kemble himself spoke. The points were frequent, and yet graceful. "No; every eye, in generous drops bedew'd, The appeal to the gallant spirits, who had sealed, with their blood, the safety of their country, was extremely eloquente. g. "If of your former being ought survive, But the strong point was in the surprise, when the great here himself was named: "Glory itself at such a shrine may bow, I only add the dexterous union of the victors and the public "They who have won the laurel-You who give." Surely conviviality had few more accomplished victims than Joseph Richardson. The summer theatre was now to do its best to compensate the want of Mr. Kemble in Octavian. The young manager had been indecently accused of predilection for his own pieces. I should call it rather attention to his own interest. His productions had a decided fashion about them, that did not attend those of his contemporaries; and I know that he never refused his stage to a novelty of decent promise. The Mountaineers was of necessity to be played, though the delightful Octavian could not sacrifice any more time to its performance in town. I saw Mr. Palmer in the character. Though not naturally a tragedian, he was an able actor-he had energy, he had pathos-he had a fine, yet rather full, figure; but his countenance, though handsome, was not marking; and his attitudes, though bold, were not picturesque. His appearance indicated nothing of solitude and distraction, and blighted hope. He was a living contradiction in terms, and his Octavian implied a miracle. There was yet another important substitute this season, Fawcett for John Bannister, who went to Liverpool. Much of Bannister, Fawcett could not touch--age must be given to the character to force out the pathetic that was in him. His humour, too, did not seem to spring from flight :-absurdity looked considerate in Fawcett. But Colman soon found out his peculiar force, and wrote for him admirably. The attention of this worthy man, and able actor, was always unfailing to every duty of his profession. In the midst of the son's triumphs as a writer, the elder Colman was drawing to the close of an existence suffering under mental alienation. After the termination of his season, in the year 1785, he had gone to Margate, and was there affected by palsy; but it was not until 1789, that any disorder of the intellect became apparent. He was reduced to a condition of nervous imbecility; and died at a house in Paddington, under proper care, on the 14th of August, aged 62. Mr. Colman was born at Florence, where his father was resident for his Britannic majesty; and this procured the honour of a royal godfather, in the person of King George the Second. His mother was a sister of the Countess of Bath. He received his education at Westminster and at Christ Church, Oxford. He took his degree of master of arts on the 18th of March, 1758, and brought out his first farce in the year 1760. School friendships are often decisive of future engagements. The associate of Lloyd, Churchill, and Bonnel Thornton, was infinitely more likely to become a connoisseur than a lawyer. The Jealous Wife proved him to possess the very highest power as a comic writer; his Terence established his fame as the neatest of all translators. By the deaths of Lord Bath and General Pulteney in 1764 and in 1767, he found himself in circumstances, vehemently to be desired by all followers of the muses. His taste led him to the theatre; and he purchased first into Covent Garden, and finally into the Haymarket. The numerous productions of his pen are before the public, and will long remain so he collected even his fugitive pieces, and was sufficiently alive to his reputation as an author, to think of correctness even in trifles. As a critic, he had that integrity of judgment which leads to the exact truth; while spirits equally, perhaps more, subtle, fly often away after hypotheses, useless and untenable. His achievement as to the epistle of Horace AD PISONES has had the highest praise. His skill in the Latin language was particularly acknowledged by Dr. Johnson. He lived in the full affluence of fame, beloved by the greatest and the best of men, till a cloud gathering in the decline of his course, he was covered from our view, and shortly after sunk below the horizon. CHAPTER VIII. Mr. Harris restores a one shilling gallery.-Holcroft's Prelude.-Mrs. Davenport.-Reynolds, The Rage.-Mr. Kemble acts Publius.-Baddeley's death.-Mrs. Robinson.-Her comedy of Nobody.-Author's acquaintance with that lady-Variety of new pieces.-Mr. Kemble revives All's Well that Ends Well, and Measure for Measure.--Death of the admirable Parsons.-Mr. Kemble, with D'Egville for his ballet-master, gives the Splendid Progress of Alexander the Great.-Mr. Kemble's particular attention to the Wheel of Fortune.-Novosielski dies.-First Love.-Mr. Boaden's Secret Tribunal.-Want of helmets.-Zorinski.--Mrs. S Kemble.The Knights.-Miss Mansell.-Cumberland's hurry.-Reynolds's speculation succeeds.-Mr. Kemble acts Alexander-Cooper fails in Macbeth.-Days of Yore.Holcroft's Man in Ten Thousand.--Morton's Way to Get Married.-Novelties.-Iron Chest. THE merits of our stage 'architecture are discernible at first sight; a second usually dispels the charm. Covent Garden had recently cost a large sum, to be rendered perfect. A shilling gallery had been left out of the original plan, but was placed at length so as to render the gods invisible to men below. Indeed, those far-seeing powers had no common obstruction to their own view. "Phidias," says the great lecturer, "had discovered in the nod of the Homeric Jupiter the characteristic of majesty, inclination of the head: this hinted to him a higher elevation of the neck behind, a bolder protrusion of the front, and the increased perpendicular of the profile." All these sublime arts had in vain been practised by our theatric gods: for any earthly enjoyment, they might as well have been in heaven, as where they were. Now, however, by cutting away a painted gallery, the shilling was permitted to see the stage; indeed, the whole ceiling was new. The frontispiece also a new one. The former column became a pilaster. The general character of the house was a fawn colour, with green and gold pannels. The cappings of the boxes were of green morocco leather; the seats stuffed of the same colour. The seats through the whole house were raised. Behind the curtains some red borders were so |