jection of it to the decent remark, "that it did not strongly enough assert the authenticity of the play."

Another poet presented himself, who had not been alarmed into equal discretion, or whose usual critical judgment had been blasted with extacy," and Sir James Bland Burges assured the audience, in his prologue, with undoubting confidence, that

"Before the court immortal SHAKSPEARE stands."

That court was thronged to suffocation; but the row in the front boxes, which I had secured, gave me the complete view of the box inhabited by the "great possessors" of the treasures; and no earthly sum could compensate the agonies, which I saw them endure that evening. INTEGRITY, TALENT, PROFIT were all in jeopardy-

"The storm was up and all things on the hazard."

The fatal mischief was the want of interest in the play-it was a dull chronicle put in action, enlivened occasionally by the lubberly awkwardness of Dignum and Phillimore; and now and then pressed into a laborious comparison with some REAL flight of the poet, too accurately remembered by the author. Mr. Kemble himself had one of these fine things in his custody, which he gave with remarkable energy to the house.

Vortigern.

"Full fifty breathless bodies struck my sight;

And some with gaping mouths did seem to mock me;
Whilst others, siniling in cold death itself,

Scoffingly bade me look on that, which soon

Would wrench from off my brow this sacred crown,

And make me too a subject like themselves.

Subject!--to whom?-to thee, O sovereign Death!
Who hast for thy domain this world immense.
Church-yards and charnel-houses are thy haunts,
And hospitals thy sumptuous palaces.

And when thou wouldst be merry, thou dost choose
The gaudy chamber of a dying king.

O, then thou dost ope wide thy hideous jaws,
And with rude laughter and fantastic tricks
Thou clapp'st thy rattling fingers to thy sides,
And when the solemn mockery is o'er,
With icy hand thou tak'st him by the feet,
And upward so, till thou dost reach the heart,
And wrap him in the cloak of lasting night."

This passage is a good deal in the taste of Dr. Blair's poem of the Grave, with some palpable struggles after the frantic

imagery of King John and the melancholy of Richard II. The reference to Falstaff's death and the handy action of poor Mrs. Quickly convulsed the audience with merriment. The solemn mockery was indeed over, and a lasting night threatened to enfold the genius of the Pseudo-Shakspeare.

An Epilogue, written by Merry, and still keeping up the positive ascription of the play to Shakspeare, was spoken, with much effort, by Mrs. Jordan; and on the following morning the Treasury accounted with the elder Ireland, for the receipt of the night, 2067.; charges being first deducted. The son got 607., he tells us, out of the 3007. paid down ; and 30%. more out of the 1037.; the half of the ONLY receipt out of the promised SIXTY.

Such was the close of this unadvised and unprincipled attempt upon the prejudices and purses of the public. It was a defeat from which there was no rallying-exposure brought on confession--sincerity, if it really spoke at last, spoke without belief; the father refused to credit the talent that was in his son--alienation, resentment, shame, and unceasing perplexity, have followed from the opening of this modern CHEST of Pandora, out of which even Hope itself had now flown.

But let me find, in this record of ruin, a few lines to regret, that a really poetical mind should have been sacrificed to this tempting imposition. By whomsoever written, the following lines in the play of Henry the Second, came from the same source; and that source if a man is to be believed upon his oath, was the fancy of a youth, not eighteen years

of age:

"Henry. That I could mellow now this iron tongue,
And fashion it to music of soft love!

But so it is, that from my childhood upwards,

I have been bred in hoarse and jarring war.
My spring of youth within a camp was spent:
There have I sat upon a soldier's knee;
Whilst round my neck was twin'd a GIANT ARM
So toughly set, that one might say indeed
The sinews that did work it were of BRASS."

Surely the young nurseling of a camp never sat for his por-
trait to an abler painter.

That Mr. Kemble was very deeply concerned at this failure, I do not affect to say. The proprietors of the theatre had thought proper to enter into competition with Mr. Harris for this play of Vortigern. But it was written, with the exception of Mrs. Powell, for the people who acted it and as an affair of business, perhaps the speculation was worth the

이

trial. But the 3007. down was an extraordinary oversight; because the whole of that sum was lost, and all that had been laid out in scenery and decorations. The play, bad as it was, turned out the only source of profit to the Irelands. The BOOK was detected before it could be subscribed off or sold; and many reams of most magnificent paper hung as a heavy debt over the head of the editor. I incline to think that, had the illegible MSS. been kept, at all events, longer from the press, and been rendered the mere heralds of the plays, suspicion, it is true, could not have been banished; but discovery would have been averted or delayed. The plays, under the notion of curtailment (always necessary to Shakspeare it seems,) might have been purified sufficiently for success; our enthusiasm would soon have heightened to the wonderful any tolerable passages they might contain; and, at the PRESENT HOUR, Some people might have thought it possible for Shakspeare to have written Vortigern! In the mean time, money, for either benefit nights or copyright, would have poured in upon the projectors of the scheme: but, when once the book exhibited the autographs to the world in general, the whole business was demonstrated to be a forgery. The MUSEUM had shown, that Lord Southampton, the patron of the poet, if he wrote at all to Shakspeare, communicated not only in legible, but elegant, penmanship. The signature of that nobleman never varied; and the handwriting is in every turn confirmed by the copy of Sidney's Arcadia, in my library (the folio, 1593); on the title page of which he has inscribed his name. IRELAND, not being able to tell how his Lordship signed himself, took his own left hand into use for the occasion, and made him scrawl his benevolence to the poet in characters that disgraced it. I shall leave this short chapter of IMPOSITION "unmixed with baser matter," for a reason that seldom occurs; namely, that, at least in literary subjects, none baser will easily be found.

"Such then, said Una, as she seemeth here,
Such is the face of Falshood; such the sight
Of fowle Duessa, when her borrowed light
Is laid away, and counterfesaunce knowne.

Thus when they had the witch disrobed quight,
And all her filthy feature open showne,

They let her goe at will, and wander waies unknowne."

Faerie Queene, b. 1. c. viii, s. 49.

CHAP. X.

Consequences of the failure to Mr. Kemble.-Miss Lee's Ab. meyda.--Mahmoud.-Kirk's Cruelties.-Mr. Bensley retires from the Stage.-Mrs. Kemble also.-Colman'sElliston.-Acts Octavian.-Preparatory to Sir Edward Mortimer.-Preface to the Iron Chest.--Death of Dodd.No true successor to him.-Lamash.-Difficulties in Drury. -Mr. Kemble throws up the Management.-Mr. Pitt, a Glance at him.-Elliston at Covent Garden.-Mademoiselle Parissot.-Dowton.-Thomson's Edward and Eleonora.Alcestis.-Fortune's Fool.-Jephson.-Holman.--Holcroft. -Force of Ridicule.-Miss Farren.-Arnold.--Cure for the Heart Ache.-Mrs. Pope's death.-Garrick and that Actress.--Miss Farren's marriage.--Reynolds goes to Drury Lane.-Garrick's Monument.

SHAKSPEARE being now left to his legitimate honours; and the indifference or bad taste of the proprietors of Drury Lane having received not only a check, but an exposure, a good deal of irritation remained, and the ratification of Mr. Kemble's sentence by the public, however agreeable to himself, could not be expected to be palatable to those who had infringed upon his province to the detriment of their property! The elder Ireland, too, kept up a constant battery against Kemble, as having by his conduct injured his employers equally with the author of the play, by which one convenient moral principle is established; THAT a stage manager owes nothing to the public, to Shakspeare, to truth, to honour: he is a man bound to fetter his understanding; to lend a lie the confidence of truth, and swallow his own disgrace; although he has been as confident all along of the imposition, as he was of his own remonstrance. It was unfortunate, too, that the management was not prepared with any tragedy, that promised very brilliant success: the spurious was bad, and the genuine not good. Miss Lee, a lady of considerable talent, turned perhaps rather to romance than tragedy, had long been known to Mrs. Siddons, who accepted the character of Almeyda, in her tragedy so called. The principal male character, Alonzo, was acted by Mr. Kemble. This was a

poetical and busy play, but it lived only four nights, and it is therefore useless to go into its fable.

The opera of Mahmoud, by Prince Hoare, had been the last work of magnitude undertaken by Stephen Storace; and, as the piece had been powerfully written, Mr. Kemble acted the hero in his happiest style; and the opera succeeded to the full wishes of its modest author, who presented his profits to the widow of his friend, the composer. The elder son of the sultan being supported by our great tragedian, the younger was sustained by Mr. Braham, who thus commenced his exertions upon the stage of a theatre royal, to which he was destined to impart a perfection of musical science and execution hitherto unconnected with our opera, and to which eight-and-twenty years have never offered the shadow of a rival.

Mr. Hoare was now so popular, that a tragedy formerly composed by him upon the subject of Kirk's cruelties, and called Such Things Were, was acted on the stage of Drury Lane for Mrs. Siddons's benefit, on the 2d of May, two days after the appearance of his opera. As to his farces, they were constantly before the public.

The 6th of May, 1796, witnessed the last performance of Mr. Bensley on the English stage. He acted Evander in the Grecian Daughter, and embraced an Euphrasia worthy of him in the person of Mrs. Siddons. I have not, I hope, slighted the peculiar talents of this very accomplished gentleman, whose retirement added no few parts to the range of Mr. Kemble's performances: he could now, if he chose, relinquish Jaffier for Pierre, and Othello occasionally for Iago; but where, then, could be found an equal substitute for the conspirator and the moor? Wroughton did not quite rise to heroic tragedy; and Palmer, except in a few tragedies, hardly seemed to be in earnest. Barrymore was not above second rate; and Charles Kemble yet young and almost untried. Bensley was therefore a serious loss in the current business; besides the respectability that his name, his literature, and his connexions conferred upon any theatrical community. A retirement of an honourable kind was provided for him, the appointment of Barrack-master, at Knightsbridge; Mr. Bensley having originally served in the army.

There was yet another retirement this season from the same theatre. Mrs. Kemble had sustained a line of business on the stage, of a very interesting though not a striking kind. The reader will understand the cast by one instance, Maria, in the School for Scandal. Her comedy, though sprightly and sensible, had never any great force; and she had not in