Chapter XXI: Introduction: To an Account of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses (8)

It was formerly understood to be the business of literature to enlarge the bounds of knowledge and feeling; to direct the mind’s eye beyond the present moment and the present object; to plunge us in the world of romance, to connect different languages, manners, times together; to wean us from the grossness of sense, the illusions of self-love;—by the aid of imagination, to place us in the situations of others and enable us to feel an interest in all that strikes them; and to make books the faithful witnesses and interpreters of nature and the human heart. Of late, instead of this liberal and useful tendency, it has taken a narrower and more superficial tone. All that we learn from it is the servility, egotism, and upstart pretensions of the writers. Instead of transporting you to faery-land or into the _middle ages_, you take a turn down Bond Street or go through the mazes of the dance at Almack’s. You have no new inlet to thought or feeling opened to you; but the passing object, the topic of the day (however insipid or repulsive) is served up to you with a self-sufficient air, as if you had not already had enough of it. You dip into an Essay or a Novel, and may fancy yourself reading a collection of quack or fashionable advertisements:—Macassar Oil, Eau de Cologne, Hock and Seltzer Water, Otto of Roses, _Pomade Divine_ glance through the page in inextricable confusion, and make your head giddy. Far from extending your sympathies, they are narrowed to a single point, the admiration of the folly, caprice, insolence, and affectation of a certain class;—so that with the exception of people who ride in their carriages, you are taught to look down upon the rest of the species with indifference, abhorrence, or contempt. A school-master in a black coat is a monster—a tradesman and his wife who eat cold mutton and pickled cabbage are wretches to be hunted out of society. That is the end and moral of it: it is part and parcel of a system. The _Dandy School_ give the finishing touch to the principles of paternal government. First comes the political sycophant, and makes the people over to their rulers as a property in perpetuity; but then they are to be handled tenderly, and need not complain, since the sovereign is the father of his people, and we are to be all one family of love. So says the _Austrian Catechism_. Then comes the literary sycophant to finish what the other had begun; and the poor fools of people having been caught in the trap of plausible professions, he takes off the mask of _paternity_, treats them as of a different species instead of members of the same family, loads them with obloquy and insult, and laughs at the very idea of any fellow feeling with or consideration towards them, as the height of bad taste, weakness, and vulgarity. So say Mr. Theodore Hook and the author of _Vivian Grey_. So says not Sir Walter. Ever while you live, go to a man of genius in preference to a dunce; for let his prejudices or his party be what they may, there is still a saving grace about him, for he himself has something else to trust to besides his subserviency to greatness to raise him from insignificance. He takes you and places you in a cottage or a cavern, and makes you feel the deepest interest in it, for you feel all that its inmates feel. The _Dandy School_ tell you all that a dandy would feel in such circumstances, viz. that he was not in a drawing-room or at Long’s. Or if he does forfeit his character for a moment, he at most brings himself to patronise humanity, condescends to the accidents of common life, touches the pathetic with his pen as if it were with a pair of tongs, and while he just deigns to notice the existence or endure the infirmities of his fellow-creatures, indemnifies his vanity by snatching a conscious glance at his own person and perfections. Whatever is going on, he himself is the hero of the scene; the distress (however excruciating) derives its chief claim to attention from the singular circumstance of his being present; and he manages the whole like a piece of private theatricals with an air of the most absolute _nonchalance_ and decorum. The WHOLE DUTY OF MAN is turned into a butt and bye-word, or like Mr. Martin’s bill for humanity to animals, is a pure voluntary, a caprice of effeminate sensibility: the great business of life is a kind of masquerade or melo-drame got up for effect and by particular desire of the Great. We soon grow tired of nature so treated, and are glad to turn to the follies and fopperies of high life, into which the writer enters with more relish, and where he finds himself more at home. So Mr. Croker (in his place in the House of Commons) does not know where Bloomsbury Square is: thus affecting to level all the houses in the metropolis that are not at the court-end, and leaving them tenantless by a paltry sneer, as if a plague had visited them. It is no wonder that his _protégés_ and understrappers out of doors should echo this official impertinence—draw the line still closer between the East and West-end—arrest a stray sentiment at the corner of a street, relegate elegance to a fashionable square—annihilate all other enjoyments, all other pretensions but those of their employers—reduce the bulk of mankind to a cypher, and make all but a few pampered favourites of fortune dissatisfied with themselves and contemptible to one another. The reader’s mind is so varnished over with affectation that not an avenue to truth or feeling is left open, and it is stifled for want of breath. Send these people across the Channel who make such a fuss about the East and West-end, and no one can find out the difference.[41] The English are not a nation of _dandies_; nor can John Bull afford (whatever the panders to fashion and admirers of courtly graces may say to the contrary) to rest all his pretensions upon that. He must descend to a broader and more manly level to keep his ground at all. Those who would persuade him to build up his fame on frogged coats or on the embellishments of a snuff-box, he should scatter with one loud roar of indignation and trample into the earth like grasshoppers, as making not only a beast but an ass of him.

A writer of this accomplished stamp, comes forward to tell you, not how his hero feels on any occasion, for he is above that, but how he was dressed, and makes him a mere lay-figure of fashion with a few pert, current phrases in his mouth. The Sir Sedley Clarendels and Meadowses of a former age are become the real fine gentlemen of this. Then he gives you the address of his heroine’s milliner, lest any shocking surmise should arise in your mind of the possibility of her dealing with a person of less approved taste, and also informs you that the quality eat fish with silver forks. This is all he knows about the matter: is this all they feel? The fact is new to him: it is old to them. It is so new to him and he is so delighted with it, that provided a few select persons eat fish with silver forks, he considers it a circumstance of no consequence if a whole country starves: but these privileged persons are not surely thinking all the time and every day of their lives of that which Mr. Theodore Hook has never forgotten since he first witnessed it, viz. that _they eat their fish with a silver fork_. What then are they thinking of in their intervals of leisure—what are their feelings that _we_ can be supposed to know nothing of? Will Mr. Theodore Hook, who is ‘comforted with their bright radiance, though not in their sphere,’ condescend to give us a glimpse of these, that we may admire their real elegance and refinement as much as he does a frogged coat or silver fork? It is cruel in him not to do so. ‘The _court_, as well as we, may chide him for it.’ He once criticised a city feast with great minuteness and bitterness, in which (as it appears) the side-board is ill-arranged, the footman makes a blunder, the cook has sent up a dish too little or too highly seasoned. Something is wanting, as Mr. Hook insinuates is necessarily the case whenever people in the neighbourhood of Russell square give dinners. But that something is not the manners or conversation of gentlemen—this never enters his head—but something that the butler, the cook or the valet of people of fashion could have remedied quite as well (to say the least) as their masters. It is here the cloven foot, the under-bred tone, the undue admiration of external circumstances breaks out and betrays the writer. Mr. Hook has a fellow-feeling with low life or rather with vulgarity aping gentility, but he has never got beyond the outside of what he calls _good society_. He can lay the cloth or play the buffoon after dinner—but that is the utmost he can pretend to. We have in _Sayings and Doings_ and in _Vivian Grey_ abundance of Lady Marys and Lady Dorothys, but they are titles without characters, or the blank is filled up with the most trite impertinence. So a young linen-draper or attorney’s clerk from the country, who had gained a thirty thousand pound prize in the lottery and wished to set up for a fine gentleman, might learn from these Novels what hotel to put up at, what watering place to go to, what hatter, hosier, tailor, shoemaker, _friseur_ to employ, what part of the town he should be seen in, what theatre he might frequent; but how to behave, speak, look, feel and think in his new and more aspiring character he would not find the most distant hint in the gross caricatures or flimsy sketches of the most mechanical and shallow of all schools. It is really as if, in lieu of our royal and fashionable ‘Society of Authors,’ a deputation of tailors, cooks, lacqueys, had taken possession of Parnassus, and had appointed some Abigail out of place perpetual Secretary. The Congreves, Wycherleys, and Vanbrughs of former days gave us some taste of gentility and courtly refinement in their plays: enchanted us with their _Millamants_, or made us bow with respect to their _Lord Townleys_. It would seem that the race of these is over, or that our modern scribes have not had access to them on a proper footing—that is, not for their talents or conversation, but as mountebanks or political drudges.

At first it appears strange that persons of so low a station in life should be seized with such a rage to inveigh against themselves, and make us despise all but a few arrogant people, who pay them ill for what they do. But this is the natural process of servility, and we see all valets and hangers-on of the Great do the same thing. The powdered footman looks down on the rabble that dog his master’s coach as beneath his notice. He feels the one little above him, and the other (by consequence) infinitely below him. Authors at present would be thought gentlemen, as gentlemen have a fancy to turn authors. The first thing a _dandy scribbler_ does is to let us know he is dressed in the height of the fashion (otherwise we might imagine him some miserable garretteer, distinguished only by his poverty and learning)—and the next thing he does is to make a supercilious allusion to some one who is not so well dressed as himself. He then proceeds to give us a sparkling account of his Champagne and of his box at the Opera. A newspaper hack of this description also takes care to inform us that the people at the Opera in general, the Mr. Smiths and the Mr. Browns, are not good enough for him, and that he shall wait to begin his critical lucubrations, till the stars of fashion meet there in crowds and constellations! At present, it should seem that a seat on Parnassus conveys a title to a box at the Opera, and that Helicon no longer runs water but champagne. Literature, so far from supplying us with intellectual resources to counterbalance immediate privations, is made an instrument to add to our impatience and irritability under them, and to nourish our feverish, childish admiration of external show and grandeur. This rage for fashion and for fashionable writing seems becoming universal, and some stop must be put to it, unless it cures itself by its own excessive folly and insipidity.

It is well that the Editor of the _John Bull_ wrote the _Sayings and Doings_. It solves the problem with how small a quantity of wit a person without character or principle may set up for a political mouthpiece. Nothing but the dullness of the one could account for the impudence and the effect of the other. No one who could write a line of wit or sense could bring himself from any inducement to repeat the same nickname, the same stale jest, for weeks and months together. If the Editor of the _John Bull_ had any resources in himself beyond the most vulgar _slang_ and hackneyed abuse, if he had any sense of shame at resorting to the same wretched pun or more wretched calumny, week after week, as he is paid for it, he would be unfit for his task: he would no longer be the complete and unequivocal organ of the dulness, prejudices, malice, and callous insensibility of his party. No argument tells with a minister of State like calling a man a Jacobin and a Reformer for the fortieth time: the sleek Divine chuckles at a dirty allusion for the fortieth time with unabated glee. Mr. Hook, among wits, might be called _the parson’s nose_: or perhaps the title of Mr. Vivacity Dull would suit him as well. What a dearth of invention, what a want of interest, what a fuss about nothing, what a dreary monotony, what a pert _slipslop_ jargon runs through the whole series of the author’s tales! But what a persevering, unabashed confidence, what a broad-shouldered self-complacency, what robust health, what unrelenting nerves he must possess to inflict them on his readers! Not one ray, not one line—but all the refuse of the _Green-room_, the locomotions of a booth at a fair, the humours of a Margate hoy, the grimace of a jack-pudding, the sentimentalities and hashed-up scandal of a lady’s maid, the noise and hurry of a chaise and four, the _ennui_ and vacancy of a return post-chaise! The smart _improvisatori_ turns out the most wearisome of interminable writers. At a moment’s warning he can supply something that is worth nothing, and in ten times the space he can spin out ten times the quantity of the same poor trash. Would the public read _Sayings and Doings_? Would Mr. Colburn print them? No, but they are known to be the work of the Editor of the _John Bull_, of that great and anonymous abstract of wit, taste, and patriotism, who, like a Ministerial trull, calls after you in the street, dubs Mr. Waithman Lord Waithman, cries _Humbug_ whenever humanity is mentioned; invades the peace of private life, out of regard to religion and social order; cuts a throat out of good-nature, and laughs at it; and claps his Majesty familiarly on the shoulder, as the best of Kings! Do you wonder at the face, the gravity, the impenetrable assurance required to do all this, and to do it not once, but once a week? Read _Sayings and Doings_, and the wonder ceases; you see it is because he can do nothing else! He will feel obliged to us for this character: his patrons were beginning to forget his qualifications.

ACTORS AND THE PUBLIC

_The Examiner._] [_March 16, 1828._

We once happened to be present, and indeed to assist in the following conversation between a young lady and an elderly gentleman pretty much of our own standing in such matters. ‘I believe, papa, grand-papa did not think so highly of Mr. Garrick as most people did?’ ‘Why, my dear, your grand-papa was not one of those who liked to differ very openly with the world; but he had an opinion of his own, which he imparted only to a few particular friends. He really thought Mr. Garrick was a quack, a better sort of Barthelemy-fair actor. He used to say (for he was a man that knew the world) ‘that the real secret of Mr. Garrick’s success was, that his friend Bate Dudley had puffed him into notice, as he afterwards did the Prince of Wales.’ We on this observed, in our individual capacity, that at least the dispenser of popularity had been more successful in the one case than in the other. ‘I believe, papa, you yourself were never a great admirer of Mrs. Siddons?’ ‘Why no, my dear, one does not like to say those things, but she always appeared to me one of the great impositions on the world. There was nothing in her, a mere tragedy-queen.’—‘Pray, ma’am, have you read Sir Walter’s last novel?’—‘Why no, I really cannot say I have. I have tried to get through one or two, but I find them so dry I have given up the attempt. I like “Sayings and Doings” much better. Pray, sir, can you tell me the name of the author?’ ‘Mr. Theodore Hook.’—‘Bless me, what a pretty name; I wish papa would invite him to dinner.’—Here we have the genealogy of modern taste. ’Fore gad, they were all in a story—three generations in succession thinking nothing of Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, and the author of ‘Waverley,’ and preferring Mr. Theodore Hook before the quintessence of truth and nature. And such is the opinion of nine-tenths of the world, if we could get at their real thoughts. The vulgar in their inmost souls admire nothing but the vulgar; the common-place admire nothing but the common-place; the superficial nothing but the superficial. How should it be otherwise? The rest is cant and affectation: and as to those who know better and have pretensions themselves, they are actuated by envy and malice, or some preconceived theory of their own. Instead of a great actor, for instance, they are looking for a hat and feather, are disappointed at not finding what they fondly expect, and more disappointed still at coming in collision with a power that shocks all their previous sympathies, rules, and definitions. Let a great man ‘fall into misfortune’ (like _Captain Macheath_) and then you discover the real dispositions of the reading, seeing, believing, loving public towards their pretended idol. See how they set upon him the moment he is down, how they watch for the smallest slip, the first pretext to pick a quarrel with him, how slow they are to acknowledge worth, how they never forgive an error, how they trample upon and tear ‘to tatters, to very rags,’ the common frailties, how they overlook and malign the transcendant excellence which they can neither reach nor find a substitute for! Who has praised Sir Walter, who has not had a _fling_ at him, since he lost all that he was worth? Oh! if he would but write the ‘Life of George IV.!’ Who that had felt Kean’s immeasurable superiority in _Othello_, was not glad to see him brought to the ordinary level in a vulgar _crim. con_? No: a man of true genius and common observation, instead of being disappointed at not carrying the prize by acclamation, and exciting gratitude equal to the pleasure he gives, ought to be thankful that he is not hooted from the stage, and torn in pieces by the rabble, as soon as he quits his lair of solitary obscurity. Every man of that sort is assuredly looked upon by the vulgar as having dealings with the devil, because they do not see ‘the spells, the mighty magic he hath used’ and they would make an _auto-da-fé_ of him if they durst, as they formerly burnt a witch! They contrive to torture him enough, as it is. What was it made men burn astrologers and alchemists in former times, but the sense of power and knowledge which the illiterate hind did not possess? Are the _reading_ different from the _unreading_ public? Believe it not. But this power was supposed to be exercised for evil purposes, whereas genius has a beneficial influence. _That_ doubles the obligation, and fixes the ingratitude. The critical public view the appearance of an original mind with the sidelong glances and the _doux yeux_ with which the animals at Exeter-’Change regard the strange visitants; but if any one trusting to the amiable looks and playful gambols of the one or the other opens the door of his own folly to let them out, he will soon see how it will fare with him. There are a million of people in this single metropolis, each of whom would willingly stand on the pedestal which you occupy. Will they forgive you for thrusting them from their place, or not triumph if they see you totter? Beware how you climb the slippery ascent; do not neglect your footing when you are there. Such is the natural feeling; and then comes the philosophical critic, and tells you with a face of lead and brass that ‘no more indulgence is to be shewn to the indiscretions of a man of genius than to any other!’ What! you make him drunk and mad with applause and then blame him for not being sober, you lift him to a pinnacle, and then say he is not to be giddy, you own he is to be a creature of impulse, and yet you would regulate him like a machine, you expect him to be all fire and air, to wing the empyrean, and to take you with him, and yet you would have him a muck-worm crawling the earth! But it is a Scotch critic who says this—let us pass on. If an actor is indeed six feet high, with a face like a pasteboard mask, he may pass in the crowd and will have the mob on his side; but if he can only boast

‘The fiery soul, that working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o’er informed the tenement of clay’—

he stands in equal peril of the unthinking many, and the fastidious few. Or, if an actress is a foreigner, she may escape ‘the envy of less happier lands,’ and be encouraged as a luxury for the great—be wafted to us on a name, and take back with her our sighs and tears. Yet how frail is the tenure of fashion! Where is Madame Catalani now? Where does the siren’s voice flutter in the sunshine of her smiles?—

It was some time since we had seen Mr. Kean’s _Shylock_. Fourteen years ago we were desired to go and see a young actor from the country attempt the part at Drury-lane; and, as was expected, add another to the list of failures. When we got there, there were about fifty people in the pit, and there was that sense of previous damnation which a thin house inspires. When the new candidate came on, there was a lightness in his step, an airy buoyancy and self-possession different from the sullen, dogged, _gaol-delivery_ look of the traditional _Shylocks_ of the stage. A vague expectation was excited, and all went on well; but it was not till he came to the part, when leaning on his staff, he tells the tale of Jacob and his flock with the garrulous ease of old age and an animation of spirit, that seems borne back to the olden time, and to the privileged example in which he exults, that it was plain that a man of genius had lighted on the stage. To those who had the spirit and candour to hail the lucky omen, the recollection of that moment of startling, yet welcome surprise, will always be a proud and satisfactory one. We wished to see after a lapse of time and other changes, whether this first impression would still keep ‘true touch,’ and we find no difference. Besides the excellence of the impassioned parts of Mr. Kean’s acting, there is a flexibility and indefiniteness of outline about it, like a figure with a landscape back-ground—he is in Venice with his money-bags, his daughter and his injuries, but his thoughts take wing to the East, his voice swells and deepens at the mention of his sacred tribe and ancient law, and he dwells delighted on any digression to distant times and places, as a relief to his vindictive and rooted purposes. Of all Mr. Kean’s performances, we think this the most faultless and least _mannered_, always excepting his _Othello_, which is equally perfect and twenty times more powerful. Mr. Kean succeeded so well in this part in which he came out, that with the diffidence of the abilities of others so natural to us, it was concluded by the managers he could do nothing else, and he was kept in it so long that he had nearly failed in _Richard_, till the dying scene bore down all opposition by a withering spell, and as if a preternatural being had visibly taken possession of his form, and made the enthusiasm the greater from the uncertainty that had before prevailed. The _Sir Giles Overreach_ stamped him with the players and the town, and _Othello_ with the critics. He who has done a single thing that others never forget, and feel ennobled whenever they think of, need not regret his having been, and may throw aside this fleshly coil, like any other worn-out part, grateful and contented!

FRENCH PLAYS

_The Examiner._] [_March 23, 1828._

Monsieur Perlet is certainly a pearl of an actor. He does every part well, and every part varied from another. He is, however, a jewel set in lead: the rest of the company to which he belongs are but indifferent. He is exactly what a London _star_, engaged for a few nights to gratify the ‘upturned eyes of wondering audiences,’ is in a tattered troop of country-actors. Those who fancy that they see here a thorough sample of French acting, the _elite_ of the capital of civilised society, are mistaken; and we perhaps should not undeceive them, but that we can assure them that they have a pleasure to come, something to look forward to, and something to look back upon, and which (we believe) can be found only at Paris. Oh! Paris, thou hast the Louvre, the garden of the Thuilleries, and the _Thêatre Français_; Madame Pasta we share by turns with you, as the sun sheds its light on either world—the rest is barbarous and common. A friend of ours once received a letter from a friend of his, dated ROME, with three marks of admiration after it, which he answered by writing LONDON, with four marks of admiration after it: ‘and why shouldn’t he, since we had St. Paul’s, the Cartoons, the Elgin Marbles, and the Bridges?’ As to the three first, they were not ours; and as to the fourth, the reasoning puts me a little in mind of Sir William Curtis’s, who remarked that ‘it was very good of God, that wherever there was a great city, he had made a river by the side of it!’ There was another proud distinction, which our patriotic friend did not enumerate, though it was a thumping make-weight in the scale, and might have claimed a fifth mark of admiration, which was, that he himself was there. This is the triumphant argument in every Englishman’s imagination,—wherever he is, is the centre of gravity; whatever he calls his own, is the standard of excellence. It is our desire to shake off this feeling as much as possible that makes us frequent the theatre at the English Opera-house, and try (all we can) to ‘leave our country and ourselves’ at the door. Why in truth should an English Nobleman be convinced in himself and speak upon that conviction in his place in Parliament, that because he keeps a French cook, the French have no genius for anything but cookery? Or why, my dear Madam, should you have taken it in your head, that because you wear a French bonnet, there is nothing in Paris but milliners’ girls who are no better than they should be? Nay, that is what you really imagine, however you may deny it—but be assured, good, gentle, honest, reflecting reader of either sex, who feel your own existence so solid that every thing else is a fable to it, or your own virtue so clear that everything else is a spot to it, that there are things out of England besides what are imported into it—that French women not only make caps and bonnets, but wear them with a peculiar grace; that they have eyes glancing from under them full of fire and discretion; that they do not make a false step at every turn, though they do not walk like Englishwomen, that is, as if their limbs were an incumbrance to them; that the Chamber of Deputies think your Lordship’s speeches dry and tasteless, for want of a little French seasoning; that there are cities not built of bricks, faces not made of dough, a language that has a meaning though it is not ours, and virtue that is neither a statue nor a mask! For instance, we think good-manners is one part of ethics, and we do wish _en passant_ that our fine gentlemen at the play would not loll on their seats, whistle, and thrust their sticks nearly in your face to show their superiority to the vulgar; and that those of the other sex, who are admitted on their good behaviour could be prevailed on not to talk and laugh so loud, not to nod or wink, not to slap their acquaintance on the back, or shut the doors with such violence after them, to attract admirers and shew an independent spirit. Strange that the English notion of independence consists in giving offence to and displaying your contempt for others! They order these things better in France, where they consult decency of appearance at least, and Venus is a prude in public—not a hoyden or a bully!

‘Our Cupid is a blackguard boy,
That thrusts his link in every face.’

This brings us back to the French Theatre. As we do not approve every thing foreign or French, we are more bound to acknowledge and do justice to what we do like. _Imprimis_, we abhor French pictures. In the second place, we tolerate French tragedy. Thirdly, we adore French comedy. The characteristic of this in its best state, and as compared with our utmost efforts in the same line, is, that it is equally perfect throughout; and as that great philosopher of idleness (Mr. Coleridge) once wisely and wittily observed, ‘there is something in the idea of perfection exceedingly satisfactory to the mind of man.’ It is not as with us at present (it was not always so—or is it the haze of time, the tints of youth that made the difference?) where the most we can expect is one or two actors of disproportioned excellence, and all the others merely to fill the stage; but there all are in their place, and all are first-rate. Oh! it is a fine thing to see one of Moliere’s comedies acted (as they should be) at the _Thêatre Français_, with the sense of every pregnant line fully understood and developed, with the passion and character delineated to the life, every situation painted, and every shade and difference of absurdity hit off and realised; and not only this, but the whole so managed, with such studious attention to the public and respect to the art, that not the least bit of costume is out of place, and (what is more important) that every part is filled by an actor or actress not only who comprehends and enters into the spirit of it, but who seems made for it in person, gesture and features, as if they had been cast in a dramatic mould, or kept in a glass-case for that purpose from the first representation to the present day. Thus the long, nasal speeches are delivered by an actor with the prominent, pasteboard nose and arched eyebrows of the Oratory, and whose unusual height and shambling figure serve him as it were for a rostrum; the poetical dedicator in the _Misanthrope_ has sparkling eyes and teeth, smiling delighted on his patron and himself; the confidante of _Celimene_, in the same piece, is slender, fragile, timid in appearance, a contrast to the firm precision and maturer _enbon-point_ of Mademoiselle Mars; Orgon has a little, round, dimpled, credulous face, and easy contented corpulence; the _Tartuffe_ has the sneaking sanctity of a monk and the grin of a monkey. Thus you have not only the poet’s verse exactly expressed and recited; but you have, in addition, the natural history of the part, the drapery, the grouping. The age of Louis XIV. revives again in all its masqued splendour; the folding-doors are thrown open, and you see men and women playing the fool deliciously, ‘new manners and the pomp of elder days,’ court-airs, court-dresses, the strut, the shrug, the bow, the curtsey, the paint, the powder, the patches, the perfume, the laced ruffles, the diamond buckle, the hoop-petticoat. Happy time! Enviable time to think of! When vanity and folly expanded in full bloom, and were spread out ostentatiously like the figures in a gaudy tapestry, instead of being folded up and thrust into a corner by the hand of a cynic and austere philosophy; when personal appearance and amorous intrigue were all in all; when a marquis stalked the God of his own idolatry, and _Madame la Marquise_ was held for something divine by _Monsieur Jourdain_; when the whole creation was supposed to be concentred in the fantastic circle of lords and ladies, and the universal, the abstract, and the critical were held in the utter contempt which they deserve—and which they receive at the hands both of the ignorant and the adept! Nothing that we know of is a specific for conjuring up this shadow of the past, and making you (if you are in the mood) feel like a great booby school-boy, with a large _bouquet_ at your breast, or an antiquated fop with a bag-wig and sword—but sitting at the _Thêatre Français_ with Mademoiselle Mars and the whole _corps dramatique_ drawn up on the stage. Then you have the very thing before you: it glitters in your eyes; it tingles in your ears, it sinks into the heart, and makes warm tears roll down the cheek of those, who have ever felt either what the present or the past is! It is said to be an ill wind that blows nobody good; and probably we owe it to the very exclusion of French players from general society, and their being compelled in self-defence to devote themselves wholly to their profession, that they keep up this sort of traditional copy of the manners, peculiarities, and tone of another age, ‘unmixed with baser matter.’ We could wish that a certain happy-spirited writer (who first gave the true _pine-apple_ flavour to theatrical criticism, making it a pleasant mixture of sharp and sweet) would resume the subject of the age of Charles II. (our nearest approach to that of Louis XIV.) and as he has shocked the upstart petulance of _Some of his Contemporaries_, restore in his inimitable careless manner the wit and graces of a former period.

We expected to have seen Monsieur Perlet on Thursday evening in the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_; and to make sure of the ground, had read three acts in the morning with great care and an anticipated relish of the acting. We were therefore disappointed; and the reader must accept of a rhapsody in lieu of a criticism. We think it bad policy to have many new pieces; for the English part of the audience in general require to peruse the text beforehand in order to follow the performance. We like to know exactly what we are about; and it is both a pride and a pleasure to have an excuse for rubbing up our acquaintance with an old and esteemed author. The universality of the French language is not an unalloyed advantage to them: it saves the trouble of learning any other, but the necessity of acquiring a new language is like the necessity of acquiring a new sense. It is an increase of knowledge and liberality. We are proud of understanding their authors. Why do they despise ours? Because they are ignorant of them. If they had known what ‘stuff’ we are made of, very likely we should not have beaten them. M. Perlet played the part of a strolling comedian in the new piece of the _Landau_, and eats and drinks in an admirable _bravura_ style at a gentleman’s house on the road, where he passes himself off as a great man, and with that lively absorption in the present enjoyment and disregard of the consequences of his imposture, which are, we suspect, national traits. In the _Landes_ which followed, he was equally happy in a poor, frightened servant, and expressed the surprises of fear and the tricks and disjointed pantomime antics, to which it resorted to screen itself, with admirable quaintness and drollery. The swagger and self-possession of the one character was totally opposed to the imbecility and helplessness of the other. Madame Falcoz made her first appearance in the _Tyran Domestique_ as _Madame Valmont_. She is an elegant woman and an interesting actress, though with too much appearance of _still-life_. This is not the case with Madame Daudel. She has all the vivacity and bustle of a chambermaid. She ought always to come in with a broom in her hand; or rather, it is quite unnecessary.

FRENCH PLAYS—(_Continued_)

_The Examiner._] [_March 30, 1828._

We exhausted that subject last week, and were complimented upon it, which we took ill. Probably advisable to be ill this week, to let our absence be felt, or to make up with scraps and quotation. To transcribe four different accounts of the _Tartuffe_, Sir Walter Scott’s, Mr. Leigh Hunt’s, Monsieur Perlet’s, and one of our own, and to make it understood that the last is the best. To remark that Monsieur Perlet, ‘that soul of pleasure and that life of whim,’ is a provoking actor—for there is no fault to be found with him, and to give the reader an idea of his peculiar excellence is next to impossible. Whatever he does, his ease, self-possession, and spirit are the same. To make it a rule not to tell any one who asks me the plot of the _Ecole des Maris_, but to tell it myself. Borrowers of plots are like borrowers of snuff:—every one his own _box-keeper_. (_Ha, ha, ha!_) The laugh here comes from a friend of ours to whom we read this, and who kept repeating the whole evening—‘Every man his own box-keeper.’ (_Ha, ha, ha!_) Very well indeed. _Sganarelle_ and _Ariste_ are two brothers, both of them in years, who have two wards, _Isabelle_ and _Leonore_, whom they propose to marry. _Sganarelle_ is an old blockhead, who brings up his intended bride with the greatest severity, and will let her see no plays, go to no balls, receive no visits, lest it should corrupt her manners or divert her affection from him. He is very angry at his brother _Ariste_, who gives full liberty to his mistress _Leonore_, and contends that bars, bolts, female Arguses, and ill-humour are not the way to make women in love with virtue, or to prevent their inclination from wandering. _Sganarelle_ laughs at him, but he turns out a true prophet. _Isabelle_, not thinking the _disagreeable_ the most _agreeable_ thing in the world, meets with a lover (_Valere_) more to her mind than her guardian. And here begins the interest of the plot. Having no other mode of communication, she sends _Sganarelle_ to him, to let him know that she is apprized of the state of his affections, and to beg him not to persecute her with his amorous thoughts, if he has any regard for her honour or peace of mind. He understands the hint, and sends the supposed husband away, delighted with his confusion and repulse, who has no sooner returned to his intended, than she desires him to go back with a letter, which _Ariste_ has just had the assurance to send her in his absence, full of his absurd passion. This _Sganarelle_ consents to do, but proposes to open the letter first, which she will not allow him to do, saying it would betray curiosity to break the seal, and no woman of virtue should feel even a wish to know the improper sentiments entertained towards her. Her guardian delivers the letter with an air of triumph and pity for his rival, which _Valere_ reads, and finds it a frank and passionate declaration of _Isabelle’s_ attachment to him. Not satisfied with this, she informs _Sganarelle_ that he has a design to carry her off by force, who goes to reproach him with the baseness of his conduct and the pretended terror and uneasiness of his ward. _Valere_ affirming that _Sganarelle_ has no authority to bring him these disdainful messages from the lady, _Sganarelle_ brings them together in his presence, when an admirable scene of _double-entendre_ follows: _Isabelle_ declaring that she sees two objects before her, one which she adores, the other which she abhors, _Sganarelle_ taking to himself the preference which is intended for _Valere_, and the latter rapturously kissing her hand behind his back, while her guardian affectionately embraces her. But in recompense for her fondness, he proposes to marry her the next day instead of at the end of eight days; and this driving _Isabelle_ to despair, she takes the resolution to quit the house in the middle of the night, but is met by her guardian, who asking the meaning of this nocturnal expedition, she tells him that her sister has come to her house, violently in love with _Valere_, whom she is going in search of, to console her; but _Sganarelle_ not being satisfied with this assignation, will not allow her to remain, and presently after turns his own bride out of doors, thinking it to be his brother’s ward _Leonore_, and goes with great glee to inform _Ariste_ of the adventure, and to lecture him on the difference of their schemes of female education. In the meantime _Leonore_ comes in from a ball, is scandalized at the story that she hears told of her; and the Notary that _Sganarelle_ had sent for to witness her elopement and the treachery of _Valere_, having married him to _Isabelle_, she comes out from his house, and explains the whole mystery to the delight of every one but _Sganarelle_.—The plot is charming, and the style is profuse of sense and wit; but there is this remark to be made here, as on other of Moliere’s plays, that however elegant, ingenious, or natural, the scene must be laid in France, that the whole passes under that empire of words, which is confined to her airy limits, and that there is a credulous and unqualified assent to verbal professions necessary to carry on the plot, which can be found nowhere but in France. This comedy was correctly but somewhat faintly represented. Mademoiselle Falcoz, who played _Isabelle_, was dressed as we have an idea servants were formerly dressed, with a full handkerchief and a black silk apron. Perhaps it was the costume of young ladies at that period; but we suspect that this is carrying literal correctness too far, where it shocks instead of assisting the imagination, and instructing us at the expense of our amusement, which is against the law of dramatic propriety. If the play was not done quite as it might be, it received a brilliant comment from the looks of some of the audience: and as the stage is a mirror to nature, so these are a mirror to the stage itself. Bright eyes! Laughing lips! Tell-tale eyebrows! spare us or we retire incontinently from the French play,—‘To the woods, to the waves, to the winds we’ll complain’ of your inexorable cruelty and endless persecution!

THE THEATRES AND PASSION-WEEK

_The Examiner._] [_April 6, 1828._

This being _Passion-week_, there was no play. ‘Because thou art virtuous, shall we not have cakes and ale?’ In truth, however, we have no objection to this alternation of festivity and mourning: it mimics the order of the natural world. We require a truce with pleasure as well as pain, to enable us to endure the one or to enjoy the other: and we must put a stop at some period or other to the whirl of dissipation, unless we would grow quite stupid or giddy. One week out of the fifty-two, in which the theatres shut their doors in your face, in which the play-bills do not flaunt on either side of the way, and you are not followed through the streets while the letter-bell is ringing in your ears, with the importunate repetition of ‘A Bill for Covent Garden or Drury Lane,’ is not amiss or out of reason; and the cry of ‘Hot-cross buns’ fills up the vacancy, and dallies with the interval of suspense not disagreeably. There is a large class of persons who only go to the play during Easter: it is hard if we cannot stay away from it during Passion-week. Our expectations and satisfaction are enhanced by the short restraint put upon them, and outward prevarication with our scruples. Without a little spice of hypocrisy or gravity the world would lose its savour: and by the periodical mark of reprobation thus set upon it, the play becomes a sort of pleasant sin all the rest of the year. As for the holiday-folks, Passion-week is to them a kind of bleak desert, beyond which they behold the land of promise,—a _ha-ha_, or line of circumvallation round the enchanted castle of Pleasure, over which they rush to storm the citadel with double eagerness and obstreperous glee, escaping from the formal gloom of Ash-Wednesday and Good-Friday, into the bright radiance of Easter-Sunday, as from the grave to a bridal, and ‘seizing their pleasures

‘With rough strife,
Thorough the iron gates of life.’

We do not think the flutter of hope, the sparkle of joy, in the young or old adventurers, on these occasions of mirth and licence, would be complete, were it not for the sense of general restraint and privation which precedes them, and makes the release from the dead pause, the involuntary self-denial of the past week, a more precious achievement to all parties concerned. At least, this inference is pretty plainly discernible in the smiling looks and uneasy delight of the truant visitors in the boxes, and the noise and uproar of the overflowing galleries. To those who object to the disorderly interruptions of the latter, and consider the being present at an Easter-play as vulgar on that account, it may be proper to observe that there is no part of an audience so quiet and attentive as the galleries after the curtain once draws up, if it is not the fault of the actors or the author, who do not make themselves heard or understood so far; and again, we conceive it might be of service to dramatic writers sometimes to hazard their persons or compromise their dignity in the gallery, to see what impression their scenes make on hearts fresh from nature’s mint, instead of stationing themselves in the dress-boxes, to overhear polite whispers, or moulding their features in the glass of newspaper criticism the next day. The tears shed in silence by these untutored spectators, the breath held in, the convulsive sob, the eager gaze, the glance of delight, would afford better hints and lessons how to revive the spirit and the pathos of the primitive stage, than any instructions derived from drivelling Jerdan or from ranting Croly—nay, than from our own columns, the only ones, as modest Mr. Blackwood would say, worthy of the least attention in such matters. As to the players themselves, we do not know how Passion-week sits upon them. One would think it would be welcome to them as a break in the routine of business, as a pause in the wear-and-tear of life: but there is no saying. For they are so ‘stretched upon the rack of ecstasy,’ that almost any respite from it may be scarcely endurable. The public eye, the public voice, becomes a part of a man’s self, which he can hardly do without, even for an instant. The player out of his part is like the dram-drinker without his dram, the snuff-taker without his box. What organ is so sensitive as that of vanity? What thirst so insatiable, so incessant, as that of praise? The meagre days of Lent, one would argue previously, would be ‘gaudy-days’ to his Majesty’s servants, the drudges of public recreation,—snatched from the town, and given to retirement and oblivion,—brief interval to allay the feverish irritation of popular applause, to soothe the smart of mortification and disappointment. But no! the successful candidate thinks every moment lost in which he is robbed of the need of admiration; the unsuccessful is impatient to retrieve some error, to convince the public of theirs:—the hopeless performer thinks it better to be hissed than not noticed at all. Even the scene-shifters and candle-snuffers (to talk in the old style) fancy themselves, in a full house and busy night, persons of importance; and when left to themselves, must feel like fish out of water:—nothing else but the want of the customary excitement could probably enable actors to repeat their parts night after night: they stagger through them like drunken men. Many of the most fortunate seem uneasy, listless, and dissatisfied, when off the stage, because they do not see a thousand faces beaming with delight, because they do not hear at every step the shouts of Gods and men. Why do they not resort to Bartholomew-fair, where they may act every half-hour during the day, and not get a wink of sleep at night for the noise of cymbals and rattles? This is as if a man could never be easy unless he saw his person reflected in a thousand mirrors, or heard every word he utters repeated by a hundred echoes. Contempt, poverty, pain, want, and ‘all the natural ills that flesh is heir to,’ are preferable to this attainment of all that can be desired, and the craving after more. The lady in _Love’s Labour Lost_ condemns her lover _Biron_, for his excess of levity, ‘to jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.’ For ourselves, we would impose it as a useful penance on those who are spoiled by the admiration of friends, to take the stage to the _Land’s End_, and return by themselves, so as to breathe for a few days out of the atmosphere of habitual adulation; and as to actors (who are anything more than _walking gentlemen_) we think they should be bound over never to sing a song, or tell a story in private. Their theatrical pulse is already at a hundred, without shining in company. Those who have nothing to say but ‘what is set down for them,’ stand the best chance for repose and moderation, and are also likely to make the best actors. An actor has not to study his own part, but somebody else’s, as a painter should not be taken up with himself, but his sitters.