XII.

Is it for these ye rear this proud abode? Is it for these your superstition seeks To build a temple worthy of a god, To laud a monkey, or to worship leeks? Then be the stage, to recompense your freaks, A motley chaos, jumbling age and ranks, Where Punch, the lignum-vitæ Roscius, squeaks, And Wisdom weeps, and Folly plays her pranks, And moody Madness laughs and hugs the chain he clanks.

'The author has succeeded better in copying the moody and misanthropic sentiments of _Childe Harold_, than the nervous and impetuous diction in which his noble biographer has embodied them. The attempt, however, indicates very considerable power; and the flow of the verse and the construction of the poetical period are imitated with no ordinary skill.'--_Edinburgh Review._

TO THE

SECRETARY OF THE MANAGING COMMITTEE OF DRURY-LANE PLAYHOUSE.

SIR,

To the gewgaw fetters of _rhyme_ (invented by the monks to enslave the people) I have a rooted objection. I have therefore written an address for your theatre in plain, homespun, yeoman's _prose_; in the doing whereof hope I am swayed by nothing but an _independent_ wish to open the eyes of this gulled people, to prevent a repetition of the dramatic _bamboozling_ they have hitherto laboured under. If you like what I have done, and mean to make use of it, I don't want any such _aristocratic_ reward as a piece of plate with two griffins sprawling upon it, or a _dog_ and a _jackass_ fighting for a ha'p'worth of _gilt gingerbread_, or any such Bartholomew-fair nonsense. All I ask is, that the door-keepers of your playhouse may take all the _sets of my Register_ now on hand, and _force_ every body who enters your doors to buy one, giving afterwards a debtor and creditor account of what they have received, _post-paid_, and in due course remitting me the money and unsold Registers, _carriage-paid_.

I am, &c. W. C.[13]

IN THE CHARACTER OF

A HAMPSHIRE FARMER.

----Rabidâ qui concitus irâ Implevit pariter ternis latratibus auras, Et sparsit virides spumis albentibus agros. OVID.

MOST THINKING PEOPLE,

When persons address an audience from the stage, it is usual, either in words or gesture, to say, 'Ladies and Gentlemen, your servant.' If I were base enough, mean enough, paltry enough, and _brute beast_ enough, to follow that fashion, I should tell two lies in a breath. In the first place, you are _not_ Ladies and Gentlemen, but I hope something better, that is to say, honest men and women; and in the next place, if you were ever so much ladies, and ever so much gentlemen, I am not, _nor ever will be_, your humble servant. You see me here, _most thinking people_, by mere chance. I have not been within the doors of a playhouse before for these ten years; nor, till that abominable custom of taking money at the doors is discontinued, will I ever sanction a theatre with my presence. The stage-door is the only gate of _freedom_ in the whole edifice, and through that I made my way from Bagshaw's[14] in Brydges Street, to accost you. Look about you. Are you not all comfortable? Nay, never slink, mun; speak out, if you are dissatisfied, and tell me so before I leave town. You are now, (thanks to _Mr. Whitbread_,) got into a large, comfortable house. Not into a _gimcrack palace_; not into a _Solomon's temple_; not into a frost-work of Brobdingnag filigree; but into a plain, honest, homely, industrious, wholesome, _brown brick playhouse_. You have been struggling for independence and elbow-room these three years; and who gave it you? Who helped you out of Lilliput? Who routed you from a rat-hole, five inches by four, to perch you in a palace? Again and again I answer, _Mr. Whitbread_. You might have sweltered in that place with the Greek name[15] till doomsday, and neither _Lord Castlereagh_, _Mr. Canning_, no, nor the _Marquess Wellesley_, would have turned a trowel to help you out! Remember that. Never forget that. Read it to your children, and to your children's children! And now, _most thinking people_, cast your eyes over my head to what the builder (I beg his pardon, the architect) calls the _proscenium_. No motto, no slang, no popish Latin, to keep the people in the dark. No _veluti in speculum_. Nothing in the dead languages, properly so called, for they ought to die, aye and be _damned_ to boot! The Covent Garden manager tried that, and a pretty business he made of it! When a man says _veluti in speculum_, he is called a man of letters. Very well, and is not a man who cries O. P. a man of letters too? You ran your O. P. against his _veluti in speculum_, and pray which beat? I prophesied that, though I never told any body. I take it for granted, that every intelligent man, woman, and child, to whom I address myself, has stood severally and respectively in Little Russell Street, and cast their, his, her, and its eyes on the outside of this building before they paid their money to view the inside. Look at the brick-work, _English Audience_! Look at the brick-work! All plain and smooth like a quakers' meeting. None of your Egyptian pyramids, to entomb subscribers' capitals. No overgrown colonnades of stone, like an alderman's gouty legs in white cotton stockings, fit only to use as rammers for paving Tottenham Court Road. This house is neither after the model of a temple in Athens, no, nor a _temple_ in _Moorfields_, but it is built to act English plays in; and, provided you have good scenery, dresses, and decorations, I daresay you wouldn't break your hearts if the outside were as plain as the pikestaff I used to carry when I was a sergeant. _Apropos_, as the French valets say, who cut their masters' throats[16]--_apropos_, a word about dresses. You must, many of you, have seen what I have read a description of, Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth, with more gold and silver plastered on their doublets than would have kept an honest family in butcher's meat and flannel from year's end to year's end! I am informed, (now mind, I do not vouch for the fact,) but I am informed that all such extravagant idleness is to be done away with here. Lady Macbeth is to have a plain quilted petticoat, a cotton gown, and a mob cap (as the court parasites call it;--it will be well for them, if, one of these days, they don't wear a _mob cap_--I mean a _white cap_, with a _mob_ to look at them); and Macbeth is to appear in an honest yeoman's drab coat, and a pair of black calamanco breeches. Not _Sal_amanca; no, nor _Talavera_ neither, my most Noble Marquess; but plain, honest, black calamanco stuff breeches. This is right; this is as it should be. _Most thinking people_, I have heard you much abused. There is not a compound in the language but is strung fifty in a rope, like onions, by the Morning Post, and hurled in your teeth. You are called the mob; and when they have made you out to be the mob, you are called the _scum_ of the people, and the _dregs_ of the people. I should like to know how you can be both. Take a basin of broth--not _cheap soup, Mr. Wilberforce_--not soup for the poor, at a penny a quart, as your mixture of horses' legs, brick-dust, and old shoes, was denominated--but plain, wholesome, patriotic beef or mutton broth; take this, examine it, and you will find--mind, I don't vouch for the fact, but I am told--you will find the dregs at the bottom, and the scum at the top. I will endeavour to explain this to you: England is a large _earthenware pipkin_; John Bull is the _beef_ thrown into it; taxes are the _hot water_ he boils in; rotten boroughs are the _fuel_ that blazes under this same pipkin; parliament is the _ladle_ that stirs the hodge-podge, and sometimes----. But, hold! I don't wish to pay _Mr. Newman_[17] a second visit. I leave you better off than you have been this many a day: you have a good house over your head; you have beat the French in Spain; the harvest has turned out well; the comet keeps its distance;[18] and red slippers are hawked about in Constantinople for next to nothing; and for all this, _again and again_ I tell you, you are indebted to _Mr. Whitbread_!!!

THE LIVING LUSTRES.

BY T. M.[19]

Jam te juvaverit Viros relinquere, Doctæque conjugis Sinu quiescere. SIR T. MORE.