sion, which placed the School for Scandal before the Plain Dealer, which suggested it, and surpassed in stage effect, while it at least equalled in wit, the Double Dealer of Congreve.

The plan of the School for Scandal was said to have been derived from a MS. piece by a young lady, which was found in the presented stores of Drury Lane house. To grace the improbable by the pathetic, this prodigy of scenic invention died of a consumption at Bristol, and was the daughter of a merchant in Thames Street. Genius is superior to locality. Don Quixote was written in a prison, and the Araucana of Ercilla amid the often hasty marches, and insecure encampments of an army. But here there was known and acknowledged power in minds of the highest character-difficulty might even be friendly to production, as the flame bursts fiercer forth the more it is compressed. My youth was passed in the midst of the mercantile world, but we certainly never heard of this wonder of the river Thamesfor I look upon the invention of the screen-scene* in the School for Scandal as without a parallel in the drama.

A slight hint for such a situation might, however, be conceived, from Fielding's novel of Tom Jones; in which the fall of a rug in the private apartment of Molly Seagrim, discovers the moral philosopher, Square, in a position very ill suited to the "eternal fitness of things." The probability of such a recollection is strengthened by the certainty that the Charles and Jo

A friend of mine told me that, on this memorable evening, he was passing hastily through the passage of the Rose Tavern, in front of Garrick's Theatre, when, on a sudden, he heard a roar or shout beyond what he thought any scenic triumph could excite-more like to the exulting enjoyment in Milton of the whole Philistian multitude, when Samson was performing for their amusement feats exceeding human. It was excited by the falling of this screen in the 4th Act. What I myself heard, afterwards, was still beyond any sound I had witnessed previously in the theatre-though the Duenna excited very hearty merriment. It has only one little spot of incongruity in its management-Joseph should say nothing about his "opposite neighbour and her anxious temper," when he is afterwards to place the very person, for whose concealment he draws the screen, between that and the window. The line too has no inference from it, and may therefore properly be omitted-and the direction to the servant stand thus; "Stay, stay; draw that sercen before the window that will do.”

B*

X

seph Surface of the play, are but portraits modernised of the profligate but generous Jones, and the decorous hypocrite Blifil.

There is absolute proof that he found some aid in the genius of his own family. In the Rivals Falkland rushes into Julia's dressing-room, tells her that he has killed his adversary, that his life is forfeited, that he wishes first to call her his, and then that, without preparation, she would fly the country with him.-Rivals, Act. V. Sc. 1.

In the Memoirs of Sidney Biddulph, written by his excellent mother, the hero, a Falkland, too, observe-enters to the heroine in the same perturbed state--tells the same distracted story, and urges the same sacrifice from the lady. In the romance the story is true, in the play it is merely feigned to try the constancy of Julia. Compare the third volume of the novel from p. 240, of the second edition, printed 1761.

In the same volume, at page 102, the reader will see Warner trying the dispositions of his two cousins, as a poor relation; prepared by immense wealth to reward the liberal indigence of the one, and confound the arrogance and inhumanity of the other. Here is certainly the Sir Oliver Surface of the School for Scandal, who, in the disguise of old Stanley, sounds the hearts of his two nephews, with the same ability to reward and punish.

If, after all, it cannot be credited, that the great writer of dialogue should also possess the knowledge of structure, but that he must only embellish the edifices reared by other hauds-(and for such an hypothesis a better reason may be found in his indolence, than can be inferred from his powers,) I should then consider it more likely, that so much stage effect was the actual property of the author of the Discovery, with all the experience of old Sheridan to aid her;-THAT she might once have really dramatised incidents from her own romance; and thus have left among the family papers two, perhaps weak, comedies, for her son to embellish by his wit, as he afterwards graced the Stranger

and Pizarro by his energy and pathos. Something more may be found in aid of this supposition-the ingenuity of her Nourjahad will not easily be paralleled.

The other productions of the stage between the death of Mr. Garrick and the arrival of Mr. Kemble in the metropolis, are but few in number,-I mean those of any lasting merit. Mrs. Cowley took firm possession of the town by her luxuriant farce called Who's the Dupe? acted the first time on the 10th of April, 1779; and as her fancy had great fertility, the following February saw her Belle's Stratagem ranking with the happiest efforts of her sex.

Poor Reddish, on the 5th of May, had a benefit, and it was resolved to try whether he could not go through the character of Posthumus. He was now infirm, and upon the fund; in common occurrences imbecile, but to be excited by his former profession, or by nothing. That amiable spectre of Poet's Corner, the late John Ireland, gave an affecting detail of this attempt. He met his friend on this important evening an hour before the performance began. Reddish entered the room with the step of an idiot, his eye wandering, and his whole countenance vacant. Mr. Ireland congratulated him, that he was sufficiently recovered to perform his favourite Posthumus. "Yes," said he, "and in the garden scene I shall astonish you." "The garden scene, Mr. Reddish! I thought you were to play Posthumus?" "No, Sir, I play Romeo." His friend assured him, that Posthumus was the part he was to act-and he walked to the theatre, reciting Romeo all the way.

When dressed for Posthumus, and in the green-room, it was still hard to undeceive him-at length he was pushed upon the stage, to take the chance of former habits recovering him to the proper business of the night. Mr. Ireland, in anxious expectation, got close to the orchestra, and had a perfect view of his face. The instant he came in sight of the audience, his recollection seemed to return; his countenance resumed meaning,

his eye became lighted up, he made the modest bow of respect, and played the scene as well as he had ever done. But Romeo again met him the Green-room, and it was only the stage cue that had the power to unsettle this delusion; and that never failed to do it through the whole play. Mr. Ireland thought him, on this occasion, less assuming and more natural than he had seemed in the full enjoyment of his reason.

Dr. Kenrick, the foul asperser of Mr. Garrick, did not long survive him; he died on the 10th of June, 1779. Dr. Johnson had the honour to be persecuted by him on many occasions-he assailed his Dictionary, and his Shakspeare. But his petulance was greater than his power; and his cotemporaries smiled when they read in the attack," that Dr. Johnson's name was much better known than the merit of his writings." Kenrick was not without talent, and accordingly gave, what is now seldom done by translators, a readable version of two foreign works-the Eloisa and Emilius of Rousseau. As a dramatic writer, he has, in Falstaff's Wedding, shown a respectable power of imitation; a rather intimate perception of Shakspeare's art of displaying character by a crowd of congenial images-if I dare use the term, a redundancy of wit.

The principle of association leads me here to notice another death connected with the works of Shakspeare-that of Mr. Edward Capell, one of his best editors. He was a man of laborious diligence, and perverse pedantry-what he meant to say was commonly right; but his expression was often obscure, and always affected-he published the poet's works unaccompanied by his notes; accurately pointed and tastefully printed.

6.

Dr. Farmer and Capell at one time seemed to be closely united in the study of Shakspeare; but Steevens had given medicines" to the master of Emanuel, and he soon after whistled off our haggard note-writer, “ and let him down the wind to prey at fortune." But in the edition of Steevens, I think I sometimes discern a note

of Capell, through the medium of translation. He died in possession of that amusing office, deputy licenser of plays, on the 24th of February, 1781.

The 10th of May of that year witnessed the first performance of Macklin's Man of the World. It was indeed an agony for a man of ninety to stand before the audience as the author and actor of Sir Pertinax Mac Sycophant. The opposition was commensurate with the bitterness of the satire; but the veteran stood his ground, and the insidious artifices of success are now taught, while they are derided, from the stage.

As to the professors themselves, there is no great variety of incidents to attract us. In Sept. 1779, Mr. Henderson and Miss Younge left Drury Lane Theatre for that of Covent Garden; and on the 26th of May, 1780, Mrs. Green, the original Duenna, quitted the stage in Mrs. Hardcastle.

But it is every way worthy of record, that, in the month of September, 1782, Tom King became the manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and as a cause or consequence of his management, that amazing tragedian, Mrs. Siddons, returned to the London stage on the 10th of October, after an absence of six years. And thus the few links are supplied which unite in stage history the death of Mr. Garrick with the appearance in town of Mr. Kemble the year following.

It will not be unamusing to the reader to have the actual condition of our theatres in former times brought authentically under his immediate inspection. He has heard of SPRANGER BARRY, of the grace and beauty of his figure, and the soul-subduing qualities of his voice. Judging of past things by the present, he will frame to himself no very mean notion of the theatre itself, which such an actor, in the capital of the sister island, enriched by his performances and those of Mrs. Barry. By the great kindness of an old friend of Mr. Kenible's, he will find, among the illustrations at the end of the present volume, an exact inventory of all the rare and not precious moveables, which were passed over to Mr. Ryder in the year 1776, with the theatre in Crow-street,