Chapter XXIV: Introduction: To an Account of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses (11)

This play of _The Revenge_ is certainly a very indifferent piece of work; and in the hero of the story, _Alonzo_, Mr. Rae _bolted_ some very ranting speeches, blank verse and all, clean out of his mouth like shot from the mouth of a cannon, with a tone and emphasis that might have startled ears less accustomed to the ‘forced gait’ and high clattering hoofs of his voice than ours. By stamping so hard, too, he raises not only a shout in the upper-gallery, but a cloud of dust from the green baize on the stage-floor.

KEAN’S RICHARD III.

_The Times._] [_October 7, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

Mr. Kean has returned to us again (after no very long absence), in the character of _Richard the Third_. His performance of the part is so well known to the public, and has been so often criticised, that it would be superfluous to enter into particulars again at present. We observe no great alteration in him. If any thing, his voice is deepened, and his pauses are lengthened, which did not need to be. His habitual style of acting is apt to run into an excess of significance; and any studied addition to that excess necessarily tasks the attention to a painful degree. Mr. Pope resumed his situation as _King Henry_, and was stabbed in the Tower, according to the rules of art. We were glad to see him in the part, though we should have no objection to see the part itself omitted, to make room for the fine abrupt beginning of Shakspeare’s _Richard the Third_, with the soliloquy, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent,’ &c. In our opinion, the _Richard the Third_ which was manufactured by Cibber, and which has now obtained prescriptive possession of the stage, is a vile jumble; and we are convinced that a restoration of the original play (as written by the original author) would, with the omission of a few short scenes, be an advantage to the managers, and a gratification to the public. We understand, indeed, that something of this sort has been in agitation; and in order to contribute any little aid in our power to so laudable an attempt, we shall here give a few of the passages which are omitted in the common stage representation, but which appear to us particularly calculated for stage effect, and which would also fit Mr. Kean’s peculiar style of acting, as the glove fits the hand. One of these occurs almost immediately after the first opening soliloquy, in the dialogue between _Glo’ster_ and _Brackenbury_:—

_Glo’ster._—Even so! an’ please your worship, Brackenbury,
You may partake of any thing we say;
We speak no treason, man:—we say, the king
Is wise and virtuous; and his noble queen
Well strook in years: fair, and not jealous:
We say that Shore’s wife hath a pretty foot,
A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue:
That the queen’s kindred are made gentle folks:
How say you, Sir? can you deny all this?

_Brackenbury._—With this, my lord, myself have nought to do.

_Glo’ster._—What, naught to do with mistress Shore?
I tell thee, fellow,
He that doth naught with her, excepting one,
Were best to do it secretly, alone,

_Brackenbury._—What one, my Lord?

_Glo’ster._—Her husband, knave:—Would’st thou betray me?

We think, if any thing could give additional effect to the fine taunting irony of these lines, it would be Mr. Kean’s mode of delivering them. He is almost the only actor who does not spoil Shakspeare.

Again, a very spirited scene of a different description, which is an astonishing mixture of violence and duplicity, occurs when _Glo’ster_ rushes into the apartment where the _Queen’s_ friends are assembled, to complain of their taking advantage of his meekness and simplicity:—

_Glo’ster._—They do me wrong, and I will not endure it.
Who are they that complain unto the king,
That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not?
By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly,
That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours!
Because I cannot flatter, and speak fair,
Smile in men’s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,
Duck with French nods, and apish courtesy,
I must be held a rancorous enemy.
Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,
But thus his simple truth must be abus’d
By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

_Grey._—To whom in all this presence speaks your Grace?

_Glo’ster._—To thee, that hast nor honesty, nor grace?
When have I injured thee? When done thee wrong?
Or thee? or thee? or any of your faction?
A plague upon you all!

This is certainly an admirable conclusion to so modest an introduction. Any one who reads this passage, and who has seen Mr. Kean acquit himself in similar situations, must, we think, feel with us a desire to see him in this. We might multiply these instances of characteristic traits in the adroit and high-spirited _Richard_. We shall give one more, which is so fine in its effect, and besides, conveys so striking a picture of the outward demeanour which an actor, to fulfil the poet’s conception, ought to assume in the part, that we cannot resist giving it entire. It is the scene where he entraps the unsuspecting _Hastings_:—

_Hastings._—His grace looks cheerfully and smooth this morning:
There’s some conceit or other likes him well,
When he doth bid good-morrow with such spirit.
I think, there’s ne’er a man in Christendom,
Can lesser hide his love or hate than he;
For by his face straight shall you know his heart.

_Stanley._—What of his heart perceive you in his face,
By any likelihood he show’d to-day?

_Hastings._—Marry, that with no man here he is offended;
For, were he, he had shown it in his looks.’

Re-enter _Glo’ster and Buckingham_.

‘_Glo’ster._—I pray you all, tell me what they deserve
That do conspire my death with devilish plots
Of damned witchcraft; and that have prevail’d
Upon my body with their hellish charms?

_Hastings._—The tender love I bear your grace, my lord,
Makes me most forward in this noble presence
To doom the offenders: whosoe’er they be,
I say, my lord, they have deserved death.

_Glo’ster._—Then be your eyes the witness of their evil;
Look how I am bewitch’d; behold, mine arm
Is, like a blasted sapling, wither’d up;
And this is Edward’s wife, that monstrous witch,
Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,
That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.

_Hastings._—If they have done this deed, my noble lord—

_Glo’ster._—If? thou protector of this damn’d strumpet,
Talk’st thou to me of _ifs_!—Thou art a traitor:—
Off with his head! Now by St. Paul I swear,
I will not dine until I see the same.
Lovell and Catesby, look that it be done.
The rest, that love me, rise and follow me.

Now this is despatching business in the true dramatic style. Poets cannot take the same bold licenses, with their characters on the stage, till kings are reinstated in their former plenitude of power. The incident which is here omitted in the acting play of _Richard III._ has been transferred to Rowe’s _Jane Shore_. We should like to see it restored to its original place, and justice done it by Mr. Kean’s distorted gestures, and smothered voice, suddenly bursting on the ear like thunder.

THE WONDER

_The Times._] [_October 9, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

_The Wonder_, or _A Woman keeps a Secret_, was performed here last night with admirable effect. Miss Brunton was the heroine of the piece, the charming _Violante_. We cannot speak in rapturous terms of her performance of the part. There is in the character itself an extreme spirit, and at the same time an extreme delicacy, which it is not easy to unite. Miss Brunton went through the different scenes, however, with a considerable degree of grace, vivacity, and general propriety, never falling below, and seldom rising above mediocrity. She does not

‘Snatch a grace beyond the reach of art;’

nor, according to another line of the same poet, which seems to convey a perfect idea of female comic acting,

‘Catch ere she falls the Cynthia of the minute.’

We have already objected to this young lady’s recitation, a certain didactic, monotonous _twang_, and we cannot upon the present occasion recant our criticism. Miss Foote was _Violante’s_ friend, _Donna Isabella_, and looked and lisped the part very mincingly. Charles Kemble’s _Don Felix_ is one of his best parts. He raves, sighs, starts, frets, grows jealous, and relents, with all the characteristic spirit of an amorous hero; and in the drunken scene with old _Don Lopez_, where he produces his pistol as the marriage-contract, is particularly excellent and edifying. Fawcett played _Lissardo_ as he plays almost every thing: he chattered like a magpie, and strutted like a crow in a gutter. But Emery’s _Gibby_ was the thing: the genius of Scotland shone through his Highland plaid and broad bluff face: he seemed evidently afraid neither of having his voice heard, nor his face seen. In person he resembled the figure of the Highlander which we see stuck up as a sign at tobacconists’ windows. We never see nor wish to see better acting than this. Emery’s acting is indeed the most perfect imitation of common nature on the stage. Abbott was respectable as _Colonel Briton_. Mrs. Gibbs’s _Flora_ was what every waiting-woman ought to be.

VENICE PRESERVED

_The Times._] [_October 10, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

Otway’s noble tragedy of _Venice Preserved_ was produced here last night. The effect upon the whole was not satisfactory. The novelties of the representation were Mr. H. Johnstone as _Pierre_, and Miss Campbell (from the Dublin Theatre) as _Belvidera_. Of Mr. Johnstone’s _Pierre_, after having seen Mr. Kemble in it, or even Mr. Young, we cannot speak in terms of applause. The character is not one of blunt energy, but of deep art. It is more sarcastic than fierce, and even the fierceness is more calculated to wound others than to shake or disturb himself. He is a master-mind, that plays with the foibles and passions of others and wields their energies to his dangerous purposes with conscious careless indifference. Mr. Johnstone was boisterous in his declamation, coarse in his irony, pompous and common-place in his action. Mr. Rae (as _Jaffier_), in the famous scene between these two characters, displayed some strong touches of nature and pathos. Miss Campbell, as _Belvidera_, did not altogether realize our idea of Otway’s heroine; one of ‘the most replenished sweet works of art or nature.’ Her face, though not handsome, is not without expression; but its character is strength, rather than softness. In her person she is graceful, and has a mixture of dignity and ease in her general deportment. Her voice is powerful, but in its higher tones it rises too much into a scream, and in its gentler ones subsides into a lisp, which is more infantine than feminine. In her general style of acting she put us sometimes in mind of Mrs Fawcit, sometimes of Miss Somerville, and more than once of Miss O’Neill. Her delineation of the part, if not sufficiently tender or delicate, was however forcible, impassioned, and affecting. We thought the last scene, in which she goes mad, and digs for her murdered husband in the grave, the best. We should indeed give her the preference over Miss O’Neill in this very trying scene. Her expression of the disordered wanderings of the imagination, and of the last desperate struggles of passion in her bosom, both by the intonations of her voice, and the varying actions of her body, were more natural, and less repulsive than the mere physical violence of Miss O’Neill in the same passage. The play was given out for repetition with some marks of disapprobation from a part of the audience.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

_The Times._] [_October 15, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

Goldsmith’s comedy of _She Stoops to Conquer_ was played at this theatre last night: its reception was highly favourable. It bears the stamp of the author’s genius, which was an indefinable mixture of the original and imitative. His plot, characters, and incidents, are all new, and yet they are all old, with little variation or disguise—that is, the writer sedulously avoided common-place, and sought for singularity, but found it rather in the unhackneyed and out-of-the-way inventions of those who had gone before him than in his own stores. His _Vicar of Wakefield_, which abounds more than any of his works in delightful and original traits, is still very much borrowed from Fielding’s _Joseph Andrews_. Again, the characters and adventures of _Tony Lumpkin_ and his mother in the present comedy are a counterpart, even to the incident of the theft of the jewels, of those of the _Widow Blackacre_ and her booby son in Wycherley’s _Plain Dealer_. The change of character and the rustic disguise of _Miss Hardcastle_, by which she gains her lover, are also a faint imitation of _Letitia Hardy_ in _The Belle’s Stratagem_. This sort of plagiarism, which gives us a repetition of what are comparatively new and eccentric pictures of human life, is much to be preferred to the dull routine of trite, vapid, every-day common-places: but it is also more dangerous, as the stealing of pictures or family plate, where the goods are immediately identified, is surer of detection than the stealing of bank-notes or the current coin of the realm. Johnson’s sarcasm against some writer that ‘his singularity was not his excellence,’ cannot be applied to Goldsmith’s works in general: but we do not know whether it might not in severity be applied to _She Stoops to Conquer_. The incidents and characters are, some of them, exceedingly amusing; but it is a little at the expense of probability and _bienseance_. _Tony Lumpkin_ is certainly a very essential, and unquestionably comic personage; and his absurdities or his humours were very effectually portrayed by Liston. His impenetrability and unconscious confusion of mind and face in reading and spelling out the letter was admirable. Charles Kemble’s bashful scene with his mistress was irresistibly ludicrous, and excellently well played: but still it did not quite overcome our incredulity as to the existence of such a character in such circumstances. It is a highly amusing caricature, a ridiculous fancy, but no more. One of the finest and most delicate touches of real acting we ever witnessed was in the transition of this modest gentleman’s manner to the easy and agreeable tone of familiarity with the supposed chambermaid, which was not total and abrupt, but exactly such in kind and degree as such a character of natural reserve and constitutional timidity would undergo from the change of circumstances. Miss Brunton’s _Miss Hardcastle_ was a very correct and agreeable piece of acting. Mrs. Davenport’s _Mrs. Hardcastle_ was like her acting in all such characters, as good as it could possibly be.

KEAN’S MACBETH

_The Times._] [_October 21, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

Macbeth (with Matthew Lock’s music) was played here last night. Mr. Kean was _Macbeth_, Miss Campbell _Lady Macbeth_. We never saw the former to such advantage in the part. Mr. Kean’s _Macbeth_ did not use to be a great favourite with us, except in the murder scene: but he last night, we thought, lifted the general character to almost an equality with this single scene. At least, he played the whole in a style of boldness and grandeur which we have not seen before. He was ‘proud and lion-hearted, and lacked fear.’ A thousand hearts seemed swelling in his bosom. His voice rolled from the bottom of his breast like thunder, and his eye flashed scorching flame. Instead of going back (as some cunning critics who have been peeping out of their cells at him ever since he began his career, to watch for his first failure, and to fall upon him magnanimously at a disadvantage, have been predicting), he advances even beyond himself with manly steps and a heroic spirit. In the banquet-scene he was particularly excellent; and called forth, with complete effect, those deep tones of nature and passion, recoiling upon and bursting with a convulsive movement from the heart, which are his very best and surest resource, though he has as yet made the least use of them. Let him go on, and open all the sluices of passion in his breast which are yet unlocked. He has done much: let him do as much more, by giving as much depth of internal emotion (where it is required) as he has done of external vehemence, by adding stateliness and a measured march to infinite force and truth, that he may be the greatest poet, as he unquestionably is the greatest prose-actor of the stage. When we speak of him as deficient in these qualities, we only do so in comparison with Mrs. Siddons: it would be a mockery both of him and the public to compare him with any one else. But she had something of _divine_ about her which Mr. Kean has not; he in general only shows us the utmost force of what is _human_. Of Miss Campbell’s _Lady Macbeth_ we are almost afraid to speak, because we cannot speak favourably of it; yet a failure in this part is by no means decisive against the general merits of an actress. But she was altogether too tame and drawling for _Lady Macbeth_; and some attempts at originality failed of effect from the timidity with which they were executed.

KEAN’S OTHELLO

_The Times._] [_October 27, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

_Othello_ was played here on Saturday to a crowded house. There were two new appearances—Mr. Maywood as _Iago_, and a young lady as _Desdemona_. The name of this young _debutante_ is not announced; but her reception was exceedingly flattering. Her face is handsome, her person elegant, her voice sweet, and her general deportment graceful and easy. There was also a considerable portion of tenderness and delicacy of feeling in several of the passages; but perhaps less than the character would bear. The only faults which we think it necessary to mention in her performance were, a too continual movement of the hands up and down, and sometimes a monotonous cadence in the recitation of the blank verse. Mr. Maywood’s _Iago_ had some of the faults which we have noticed in his former characters; but in the most trying scenes in the third act with _Othello_, we thought him exceedingly happy and successful. His conception was just, and his execution effective. There was a cold stillness in his manner which was more frightful than the expression of the most inveterate malignity. He seemed to crawl and watch for his prey like the spider, instead of darting upon it like the serpent. In the commencement of the part his timidity appeared to prevent him from doing justice to his intention, and once or twice his voice grew loud and unmanageable, so as to excite some marks of disapprobation. Mr. Kean’s _Othello_ is, we suppose, the finest piece of acting in the world. It is impossible either to describe or praise it adequately. We have never seen any actor so wrought upon, so ‘perplexed in the extreme.’ The energy of passion, as it expresses itself in action, is not the most terrific part; it is agony of his soul, showing itself in looks and tones of voice. In one part, where he listens in dumb despair to the fiend-like insinuations of _Iago_, he presented the very face, the marble aspect of Dante’s _Count Ugolino_. On his fixed eyelids ‘Horror sat plumed.’ In another part, where a gleam of hope or of tenderness returns to subdue the tumult of his passions, his voice broke in faltering accents from his overcharged breast. His lips might be said less to utter words, than to bleed drops of blood gushing from his heart. An instance of this was in his pronunciation of the line ‘Of one that loved not wisely but too well.’ The whole of this last speech was indeed given with exquisite force and beauty. We only object to the virulence with which he delivers the last line, and with which he stabs himself—a virulence which _Othello_ would neither feel against himself at that moment, nor against the turbaned Turk (whom he had slain) at such a distance of time. His exclamation on seeing his wife, ‘I cannot think but _Desdemona’s_ honest,’ was ‘the glorious triumph of exceeding love;’ a thought flashing conviction on his mind, and irradiating his countenance with joy, like sudden sunshine. In fact, almost every scene or sentence in this extraordinary exhibition is a master-piece of natural passion. The convulsed motion of the hands, and the involuntary swellings of the veins of the forehead in some of the most painful situations, should not only suggest topics of critical panegyric, but might furnish studies to the painter or anatomist.

KEAN AND MISS O’NEILL

_The Times._] [_December 2, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

The tragedy of _Venice Preserved_ was acted here last night to rather an empty house. Mr. Young’s _Pierre_ is one of his very best and most spirited performances. Mr. C. Kemble did to the character of _Jaffier_ all the justice it deserves. But the great attraction of this piece, as it is at present acted, is Miss O’Neill’s _Belvidera_. In this, however, we think her less excellent than on her first appearance in it. Her pathos is less simple, less touching, and her action more outrageous and violent. Perhaps the reason of this change may be, that, acting in such parts from an impulse of real sympathy with the heroine, as she repeats the character, her immediate interest in it becomes gradually diminished, and she is compelled to make up for the want of genuine feeling by the external vehemence of her manner. Be this as it may, she at present carries this violence of manner to the utmost pitch at which it can be borne. Her screams almost torture the ear, her looks almost petrify the sight. It is time that she should return to her first style of acting, which did not ‘o’erstep the modesty of nature.’ We speak thus of her from a sense of justice, and of respect, not of contempt, for her powers: for we think she owes it to those powers _not to abuse them_. As _Belvidera_ is one of her most prominent characters, we shall take this opportunity to sum up in a few words our opinion of her general merit as a tragic actress; and perhaps we shall be able to do this best by pointing out the difference between her and another celebrated performer of the day.

Mr. Kean affects the audience from the force of passion rather than of sentiment, or subsides into the pathetic after the violence of action, but seldom rises into it from the depth of natural feeling. In this respect, he presents almost a direct contrast to Miss O’Neill. Her energy appears to rise out of her sensibility: distress takes possession of, and overwhelms, her faculties: she triumphs in her weakness, and vanquishes by yielding. Mr. Kean is chiefly great in the conflict of passions, and resistance to his fate—in the opposition of his will to circumstances—in the keen excitement of his understanding. It is not without some reluctance, and after a good deal of reflection, that we should say, that the finest parts of his acting are superior to the finest parts of hers: for instance, to her parting with _Jaffier_ in _Belvidera_,—to her terror and joy in meeting with _Biron_ in _Isabella_,—to the death-scene in the same character,—and to the scene in the prison with her husband as Mrs. Beverley. Her acting is more correct, equable, and faultless throughout than Mr. Kean’s, and it is also quite as overpowering at the time, in the most impassioned parts; but it does not leave the same impression on the mind afterwards. It adds little to the stock of our ideas, or to our materials for reflection, but passes away with the momentary illusion of the scene. And this difference of effect perhaps arises from the difference of the parts they have to sustain on the stage. In the female characters which Miss O’Neill plays, the distress is in a great measure physical and involuntary, or such as is common to every woman in similar circumstances. She abandons herself to the impulses of grief or tenderness, and revels in the excess of an uncontrollable affliction. She can call to her aid with perfect propriety and the greatest effect, all the weaknesses of her sex; tears, sighs, convulsive sobs, shrieks, death-like stupefaction, and laughter more terrible than all: but it is not the same in the parts which Mr. Kean has to act. There must here be a manly fortitude, as well as a natural sensibility. There must be a restraint constantly put upon the feelings by the understanding and the will. He must in part be ‘as one in suffering all, who suffers nothing.’ He cannot give way entirely to his situation or his feelings, but must endeavour to become master of them and of himself. This, in our conception, must make it more easy to give the utmost effect and interest to female characters on the stage, by rendering the expression of the passion more simple, obvious, and natural; and must also make them less rememberable afterwards, by leaving less scope for the exercise of intellect, and for the distinct and complicated reaction of the character upon circumstances. At least, we can only account in some such way for the different impression which the acting of these two admired performers makes on our minds, when we see or when we think of them. As critics, we particularly feel this. Mr. Kean affords a never-failing source of observation and discussion: we can only praise or blame Miss O’Neill. The peculiarity and the strong hold of Mrs. Siddons’s acting was, that she in a wonderful degree united both the extremes of excellence here spoken of, that is, the natural frailties of passion, or its inarticulate and involuntary expression, with a commanding strength of intellect, and the loftiest flights of imagination. Her person could also endure more violence of action than Miss O’Neill’s; whose tender frame is hardly able to ‘abide the beating of so strong a passion,’ as she often has to assume, and whose fair face is injured by the least distortion.

THE HONEY MOON

_The Times._] [_December 3, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

The favourite comedy of the _Honey Moon_ was performed here last night; the part of the _Duke_ by Mr. H. Johnston. Upon the whole he acquitted himself well in it, with spirit and effect. More than that the character does not require; and it would be hard if the critic required of the actor what the poet has not clearly and intelligibly exacted from him. When, indeed, an accomplished performer, who happens to be a man of genius, lends additional graces to a character, and places it in a brilliant light of his own, we are bound to thank him: when he merely gives ‘what is set down for him’ with force and fidelity, we are bound to be content. Mr. Johnston, we thought, sometimes too coarse, and sometimes too sarcastic; but in this sort of assumption of character, it is hard to say exactly how far the habitual manners and sentiments are to modify and appear through those which are put on to answer the purpose of the moment. In this species of the _mock-heroic_, which is a sort of equivocal mixture of comedy and tragedy, half pompous and half playful, Elliston, who was the first _Duke Aranza_, excelled all those who have succeeded him. ‘Plautus was too light, Seneca was too heavy for him.’ He just aspired to something above comedy, he just fell short of tragedy; but _he hit the stage between wind and water_. Mr. H. Johnston’s energy is more fierce, his irony more virulent: but still he moved, and looked, and spoke, if not like a lord, like a very lordly husband, and gave the essential interest to the part. He danced much at his ease, and recited the speech in which the Duke describes his idea of what his wife’s dress should be, with propriety and feeling. Knight’s countryman was admirable: his hysteric laughter at the dispute between his host and hostess, and his sheepish confusion when discovered, were equally perfect. His wonder at the manner in which Johnston rates his wife was ecstatic:

‘And near him sat ecstatic Wonder,
Listening the hoarse applauding thunder.’

His jaws relaxed to their utmost expansion, and his nose ‘grew sharp as a pen.’ Miss Kelly was too pert and forward, and too much like my lady’s chambermaid. Nor can we speak in praise of Mrs. Davison’s _Juliana_. She pouts, flounces, and lumbers about the stage strangely. Mr. Harley did the _Mock Duke_ well; he seemed like Sancho Panza in his government. The _Honey Moon_ is a very pleasing drama: it is a cento of passages from old plays modernized; it is an ingenious plagiarism from beginning to end. The author was a most incorrigible pilferer, but so expert in his art, that we would say to other authors, ‘Go thou and do likewise!’

MR. KEAN

_The Times._] [_December 16, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

_Mr. Kean_, after an absence of nearly six weeks, owing to serious indisposition, last night resumed his professional duties at this theatre, in the arduous character of _Richard the Third_. He was received on his appearance with all that warm greeting and enthusiastic applause, which are perhaps the highest meed of histrionic talent, and which are unfailingly called forth by this distinguished actor, after every suspension, however short, of the exercise of his art. This expression of good-will was increased, we think, in the present instance, by the recollection that the privation was caused by illness, and that it was possible the stage might have been deprived of one of its greatest ornaments. The acclamations, the waving of hats and handkerchiefs, continued for some minutes. Mr. Kean looks somewhat thinner than before his indisposition, but betrayed no deficiency of power; on the contrary, on account probably of our having for sometime past been doomed to witness very inferior performances, he appeared to surpass himself. He exhibited all that energy and discrimination, that faculty of identifying himself with the character he represents, which is to be ranked among the greatest efforts of human talents; he realized our conceptions of a being whose soul

‘Not Fate itself could awe.’

The fine passages of this piece of acting are well known to the public; to quote them would be to extract the whole play. The conclusion of his career was marked by nearly as much applause as the commencement. The theatre was well filled, notwithstanding the extreme wetness of the evening.

KING JOHN

_The Times._] [_December 18, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

Shakspeare’s tragedy of _King John_ was acted last night at this theatre. Miss O’Neill performed the part of _Constance_; and though everything undertaken by this excellent actress must have a large proportion of good in it, we think that she is less successful in this than in most of her other characters: for this, physical causes, her youth for example, may be assigned; and her perfect delineation of _Constance_ is, perhaps, reserved to the maturity of her age and her talents. She did not convey to us that warmth of temper, that susceptibility to grief and anger, which mark this injured Princess. Her speeches on the conclusion of the marriage with _Blanch_, which admit great variety of expression, were simple declamation, without passion and nearly in the same tone: but we would rather dwell on beauties than defects. Two or three lines at the end of the scene just mentioned made amends for all; when she says,

‘To me, and to the state of my great grief,
Let kings assemble.’

she utters the passage with beautiful feeling, and leaves nothing to be wished. The burst of indignation when Austria endeavours to silence her, subsiding instantly into a tone of the keenest contempt, was no less striking. Her very best effort was on quitting the stage, when, having uttered those pathetic exclamations for the loss of her son, she goes out in all the wildness of despair, as if occupied by no other thought than to seek him through the world. Young was a little too violent in some parts of the character of _King John_; but, on the whole, it may be considered a fine piece of acting: the two scenes with _Hubert_, and his ‘dying scene, were excellent. _Faulconbridge_, the bastard, is one of Charles Kemble’s happiest hits; his manly figure, and martial appearance, well bear him out in his scoffs at the _Duke of Austria_; he is no sooner knighted, than he seems made for his rank, and leads out _Queen Elinor_ like a ‘lordly gallant.’ Some of the nobles of _John’s_ court did not convey the idea of much dignity either in their dress or persons: we wish that the managers, who have the power of issuing patents of nobility at pleasure, would consider whether the general effect might not be improved by a little more attention to this point.

THE PRESS—COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND BENTHAM

_The Yellow Dwarf._] [_January 3, 1818._

A debate has been lately going on, in the French House of Commons, respecting the Liberty of the Press. M. Jollivet said, ‘the Liberty of the Press is less necessary in a Representative Government than in any other.’ ‘The press’ he added, ‘is represented as the only instrument by which truth can be made known; but the passions of men are too impetuous, to permit the Press that liberty which some demand. _The real national representation is in the King_;[44]—the legitimate inheritance of his Crown, from whence all powers and honours are derived, fixes there, with the destinies of the people. This is the primitive representation, from which all others emanate. There is the sacred depot of sovereignty. The powers established by the Charter are only the means of that sovereignty, for the dispensation of order and justice. We must then leave out of the question this pretended influence of the Liberty of the Press upon our representative Government, in favour of the branch called the Democratic. We must reject principles which can never return in France. By this course we may perhaps lose some commentaries upon the rights of man, but all classes of society will find their repose in it.’

So says M. Jollivet; and so sings a modern bard:—

‘Kiuprili—Had’st thou believ’d thine own tale, had’st thou _fancied_
Thyself the rightful successor of Andreas,
Would’st thou have pilfer’d from our school-boys’ themes
These shallow sophisms of a _popular choice_?
What people? How convened? or, if convened,
Must not the magic power that charms together
Millions of men in council, needs have power
To win or wield them? Better, O far better
Shout forth thy titles to yon circling mountains
And with a thousand-fold reverberation
Make the rocks flatter thee, and the volleying air,
Unbribed, shout back to thee, King Emerick!
By wholesome laws t’imbank the sov’reign power,
To deepen by restraint, and by prevention
Of lawless will t’amass and guide the flood,
In its majestic channel, is man’s task
And the true patriot’s glory! _In all else
Men safelier trust to Heaven, than to themselves_
When least themselves in the mad whirl of crowds
Where folly is contagious, and too oft
Even wise men leave their better sense at home
To chide and wonder at them when return’d.’
_Coleridge’s Zapolya._

Whether M. Jollivet, the French speaker, was one of the Orators of the Human Race in the time of Robespierre, we do not know; but this we know, that Mr. Coleridge was at that time delivering _Conciones ad populum_ in a tone of mob-sycophancy, the height and heat of which could, it seems, only be qualified by the doctrines of Divine Right and Passive Obedience. The above exquisite morceau of political logic, and dramatic recantation of the author’s popular harangues, was intended for representation at Drury-Lane Theatre, and was one of the passages pointed out, if we are to believe Mr. Coleridge, as a reason for the rejection of this spurious offspring of his loyal Muse.

Mr. Southey has not yet given us a poetical version of the true _Jus Divinum_. We should like to know what he says to this speech of M. Jollivet—Content or Not Content—and whether this was the result he anticipated when he so sweetly and loudly, about three years ago, invited France ‘restored and shaking off her chain’ to join in his (Mr. Southey’s) triumphal song,—

‘_Glory to God on high, Deliverance to Mankind._’

Can that laurel wreathe which adorns his brows (if it still adorns them) any longer hide or prevent those blushes, deep and lasting, which should suffuse his once well-meaning face for having been the shameful dupe of a cozenage so shameful?

As to Mr. Wordsworth, another of these heroic deliverers, he is ‘a full solemne man,’ and you cannot get much out of him. But we should like to hear his opinion—Aye or No—of M. Jollivet’s allied notions of liberty and the rights of man. Is this sort of legitimate clapping down under the hatches the deliverance for which he mouthed out deep-toned Odes and Sonnets? Is this repose, the repose of lasting slavery and avowed, barefaced annihilation of the rights of human nature, the consummation devoutly to be wished, which kindled in him so much disinterested zeal against all his old friends and feelings? If he were to say so, the very echoes of his favourite mountains, ‘with thousand-fold reverberation,’ would contradict him. But he says nothing. He is profoundly silent. He will not answer Mum to our Budget. From the elevation of his former well-timed enthusiasm against tyrants and conquerors, he slid into a place: and he will never rise out of it by any ill-timed intemperance. _Snug’s the word._ St. Peter is well at Rome; and Mr. Wordsworth is attached to the Excise. What is it to him, seated on Rydal Mount, what M. Jollivet, a prating Frenchman, says to that poor creature, Louis XVIII? It is enough for Mr. Wordsworth that he signs his stamped receipts and distributes them:—he is not bound, _by his office_, to subscribe to M. Jollivet’s doctrines, or to circulate them in this country. He is a customhouse officer, and no longer a citizen of the world. He keeps himself quiet, like the philosopher of old, lest the higher powers should hear him. If he were to mutter a syllable against any one act of legitimate despotism, he knows (in his sleeve) that not all his odes on Hoffer and Schill, and the Cortes, or even to the King, would save him one hour. He is wise. After having endorsed the accommodation bills of the Allied Sovereigns on liberty and independence, with a pen which ought to have been sacred to humanity, he now leaves it to the people of France, Spain, Italy, to us, to the world, to take up these dishonoured forgeries, and will not utter a word of resentment or indignation, or contempt, against those who have made him a poor accomplice in a fraud upon mankind!

This sort of shuffling on the side of principle, and tenaciousness on the side of power, seems to be the peculiar privilege of the race of modern poets. The philosophers, if not much wiser, appear to be honester. Some of these had been taken in, but they want to be let out. They declare off in time to save at least their own characters, and will not sign and seal ‘a dateless bargain to all-engrossing despotism,’ when she unfolds the long dark scroll of her rotten parchment bonds to them, and they see it ‘stretching out even to the crack of doom.’ They had got into a bad house, it is true, thinking, though the owners were the same, they had changed their calling, in company with an old bawd masked, who pretended to have just escaped being robbed and ravished, if not murdered. They were proud of such an opportunity of shewing their gallantry. But as soon as the old lady pulled off her mask of Legitimacy, and shewed herself ‘the same, that is, that was, and is to be,’ our philosophers went to the window, threw up the sash, and alarmed the neighbourhood; while the poets, either charmed, with the paint and patches of the hag, or with her gold and trinkets, put a grave face upon the matter, make it a point of conscience, a match for life—_for better or worse_, stick to their filthy bargain, go to bed, and by lying quiet and keeping close, would fain persuade the people out of doors that all is well, while they are fumbling at the regeneration of mankind out of an old rotten carcase, and threatening us, as the legitimate consequence of their impotent and obscene attempts, with the spawn of Bible and Missionary Societies, Schools for All, and a little aiery of children, with a whole brood of hornbooks and catechisms,—a superfetation more preposterous than that of Mrs. Tofts, the rabbit-breeding lady in Hogarth.—Mr. Bentham was one of the philosophers who were so taken in by the projects of the Holy Alliance, but who did not chuse to continue so with his eyes open. He had lent an ear to the promises of kings. He thought tyrants had taken a sudden fancy to the abstract principles of sound legislation. With a little exuberance of philosophical vanity, and a little want of philosophical penetration, he thought he could ‘charm these deaf adders wisely.’ He thought absolute sovereigns, having suffered persecution, had learnt mercy: that they were convinced, by their own experience, of the value of justice, truth, and liberty. He did not suspect their appeal to humanity was the cry of the crocodile to allure and destroy: he, like many more, thought their tears were ‘drops which sacred pity had engendered.’ Not so. He soon found his mistake; and no sooner found, than he hastes to amend it. He does not try (half fool, half knave) to hush up the affair, to screen their villainy, or salve his own idle vanity. Out the whole story comes, in a book which he has just published,[45] containing an account of the papers, and correspondence which passed between himself and the Emperor Alexander. Mr. Bentham sent the autocrat a plan of legislation, and the sovereign sent him a snuff-box in return. The Emperor however took no other notice of the plan, and the legislator returned the snuff-box. This was as it should be. It is of course the favourite object of Alexander to be lord over millions of slaves: it must be Mr. Bentham’s greatest ambition to be a wise and honest man. He had committed his character for wisdom sufficiently in supposing that the lord of millions of slaves would, in the pure coxcombry of his heart, and in the giddy round of gold snuff-boxes, and in his delight in the infinite multiplication of his own pictures set in brilliants, set millions of slaves free! The Emperor would as soon let Mr. Bentham cuckold him as resign his people to the Platonic embraces of Mr. Bentham’s legislative genius. But having gone thus far on a wrong calculation of the characters of rulers, Mr. Bentham was too honest a man to try to repeat the imposition upon others of which he had been made the momentary dupe himself. He was not ambitious any longer to remain that tool

‘Which knaves do work with, called a fool.’

He would not be made a mild decoy of humanity, and go a dottrel-catching with the Emperor Alexander in Finland, in Poland, or in South America. He would not be made an amiable stalking-horse of liberty and equality for royal sportsmen to catch their silly prey, the human race, and then to be turned loose, stripped of his netting and his ribbons, to graze where he could. He had a spirit above it. He could not brook this league with detected hypocrisy and barefaced power. He had not the stomach to swallow a lie for truth. He could not bring himself to say, or by any tampering with his own mind to believe that a thing _was_ what he knew _it was not_. He was by habit a logician—by nature, a plain, literal man. ‘The Gods had not made him poetical.’ That is, Mr. Bentham had not, like Messrs. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, been playing at fast and loose with fiction, till he could like them believe whatever he pleased of matter of fact, and stand to it stoutly too with ‘a mingled air of cunning and of impudence,’—to the equal satisfaction of his understanding and his conscience!

MR. COLERIDGE’S LECTURES

_The Yellow Dwarf._] [_February 21, 1818._

‘On Friday evening Mr. Coleridge gave his first Lecture on Shakspeare to a numerous and genteel audience. He stated the permanent objects Shakspeare had in view in drawing his characters, and how obviously he disregarded those that were of a transitory nature. The character of _Caliban_, as an original and caricature of Jacobinism, so fully illustrated at Paris during the French Revolution, he described in a vigorous and lively manner, exciting repeated bursts of applause. He commenced an inquiry into the order of succession in which Shakspeare wrote his plays, and decided that _Love’s Labour Lost_ must have been the first, as there are so many allusions in it such as a youth would make, few or none resulting from an experience of the world. That play and _The Tempest_ were the chief objects of his discourse, into which, however, he introduced a great variety of new and striking remarks, not confined to any particular play. As for instance, he said, wherever Shakspeare had drawn a character addicted to sneering, and contempt for the merits of others, that character was sure to be a villain. Vanity, envy, and malice, were its certain accompaniments: too prudent to praise itself, it fed its concentrated egotism by sarcasm and lowering others. This is but a poor description of the very glowing language, ample detail, and profound thought, Mr. Coleridge displayed on this topic, which produced a thunder of applause.’—_Courier_, Feb. 9.

Mr. Coleridge, in his prospectus, modestly observed, that the attending his course of Lectures on Poetry, and ‘those fair parts that there adjacent lie,’ would enable any grown gentleman to talk on all subjects of polite conversation, except religion and politics. By the above extract, and from what we have heard, it should appear that Mr. Coleridge has gone beyond his engagement, and given his grown gentleman a slice of religion and politics in the same dish with his account of the Dark Ages. Not like a lady who puts her mind into the postscript, Mr. C. does that first which he promised last. Whatever may be the case with his metaphysical hypercriticisms, his religious and political opinions seem pretty transparent. As he has sent a passage against Jacobinism to his friend Mr. Stuart, of the _Courier_, we wonder that he could not (as he still retains all his old sentiments, with only the advantage of new light added to them) have vamped up a sly passage from his _Conciones ad Populum_, in favour of the _so-called_ Jacobin principles he formerly professed, to have sent it to us. We should gladly do all in our power to assist Mr. Coleridge in publishing a harmony of his opinions, which are, we suspect, too liberal and multifarious to be comprised, in all their speculative and practical bearings, in a shabby Evening Paper. As to this argument about _Caliban_, we suspect it must have been sadly curtailed and _scissarsed_ by Mr. Stuart, in order to fit his cloth to his coat, and to bring Mr. Coleridge’s ‘unhouselled free conditions into the circumscription and confine’ of the Editor’s party politics. _Caliban_ is so far from being a prototype of modern Jacobinism, that he is strictly the legitimate sovereign of the isle, and _Prospero_ and the rest are usurpers, who have ousted him from his hereditary jurisdiction by superiority of talent and knowledge. ‘This island’s mine, by _Sycorax_ my mother;’ and he complains bitterly of the artifices used by his new friends to cajole him out of it. He is the Louis XVIII. of the enchanted island in _The Tempest_: and Dr. Stoddart would be able to prove by the civil law, that he had the same right to keep possession of it, ‘independently of his conduct or merits, as Mr. Coke has to his estate at Holkham.’ Even his affront to the daughter of that upstart philosopher _Prospero_, could not be brought to bar his succession to the natural sovereignty of his dominions. His boast that ‘he had peopled else this isle with _Calibans_,’ is very proper and dignified in such a person; for it is evident that the right line would be supplanted in failure of his issue; and that the superior beauty and accomplishments of _Ferdinand_ and _Miranda_ could no more be opposed to the legitimate claims of this deformed and loathsome monster, than the beauty and intellect of the Bonaparte family can be opposed to the bloated and ricketty minds and bodies of the Bourbons, cast, as they are, in the true _Jus Divinum_ mould! This is gross. Why does Mr. Coleridge provoke us to write as great nonsense as he talks? Why also does he not tell, in his general ‘lunes and abstractions,’ what to think of _Prospero’s_ brother, the Duke, who usurped his crown, and drove him into banishment; or of those finished Court-practitioners, _Sebastian_ and _Antonio_, who wanted to murder the sleeping King? Were they Jacobins like _Caliban_, or legitimate personages, like Mr. Coleridge? Did they belong to the new school or the old? That is the question; but it is a question which our lay-preacher will take care not to answer. Shakespear, says Mr. Coleridge, always spoke of mobs with contempt, but with kindness. Mr. Coleridge does better: he speaks of mobs with contempt, and of Courts with kindness. Again, says this critical discoverer of a meaning in a millstone, _Caliban_ had that envy of superior genius and virtue, which was a mark of the true Jacobins in the time of the French Revolution. We are sorry to hear, that on one occasion Mr. C. was interrupted in a tirade upon this favourite topic, on which he was led out of pure generosity, to enlighten the grown gentlemen who came to hear him, by a person calling out in good broad Scotch, ‘But you once praised that Revolution, Mr. Coleridge!’ The worst is, that Mr. Coleridge praised that Revolution when it was triumphant, going on ‘conquering and to conquer,’ as it was thought; and now that it is fallen, this man of mighty mind,—of gigantic genius, and superiority to interested motives and mob-sycophancy, insults over it,—tramples on the carcase,—kicks it with his asinine hoofs,—and brays a long, loud, dreary, doleful bravura over it. Of what the Jacobins were in the year 1793, this person has a right to speak, both from experience and observation. The worst he can say of them is, that he was once one of the set. He says that Jacobins are envious people,—and that envious people, not being able to praise themselves openly, take an indirect method of doing this, by depreciating and secretly slandering others. Was it upon this principle that the reformed Jacobin, Mr. Coleridge (what is bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh) took such pains, two years ago, to praise himself by depreciating and canting profound German mysticism against Mr. Maturin’s successful tragedy of _Bertram_, which he proved, being himself in the secret, to be ultra-Jacobinism, and quite different in its philosophical and poetical tendency from his own sweet injured _Zapolya_,—the harbinger of Legitimacy and the Bourbons, which was offered to Mr. Whitbread for his acceptance, as a piece of ultra-Royalism, and accordingly rejected by that friend of constitutional government and the people; but which any one may see represented to the life at the Royal Circus, accompanied with music, and compressed into three acts, to make it ‘tedious and brief.’ Or was it from the remains of the Jacobin leaven in our philosophical poet, that in a public library at Bristol he endeavoured to advance his own reputation on the ruins of that of a friend, by that lofty panegyric which he pronounced on our laurel-honouring laureat:—‘The man may indeed be a reviewer, but God help him if he fancies himself a poet?’ And is this the man to talk about the envy of the people towards hereditary virtue and wisdom, as the cause and root of Jacobinism? This—

‘Fie, Sir! O fie! ’tis fulsome,
Sir, there’s a soil for that rank weed flattery
To trail its poisonous and obscene clusters:
A poet’s soul should bear a richer fruitage—
The aconite grew not in Eden. Thou,
That thou, with lips tipt with the fire of Heaven,
’Th’ excursive eye, that in its earth-wide range
Drinks in the grandeur and the loveliness,
That breathes along this high-wrought world of man,
That hast within thee apprehensions strong
Of all that’s pure, and passionless, and heavenly—
That thou, a vapid and mawkish parasite,
Should’st pipe to that witch Fortune’s favourites!
’Tis coarse—’tis sickly—’tis as though the eagle
Should spread his sail-broad wings to flap a dunghill;
As though a pale and withering pestilence
Should ride the golden chariot of the sun;
As one should use the language of the Gods
To chatter loose and ribald brothelry.’—FAZIO.