See Note at p. xiv. 12mo., 1833. The first published by Mr. Murray. The “Preface” was written by Horace Smith; the “Notes” to the Poems by James Smith. Samuel Whitbread, M.P. He died by his own hand in 1815. This was Horatio, the writer of the present Preface. The envelope which enclosed his Address to the Committee was sold with two volumes of the original Addresses at Mr. Winston’s sale, Dec. 14, 1849, and was inscribed inside “Horatio Smith, 36, Basinghall Street.” The passage, as originally written, continued thus: “and among others, so difficult is it to form a correct judgment in catering to the public taste, by the very bibliopolist who has now, after an interval of twenty [only seven] years, purchased the copyright from a brother bookseller, and ventured upon the present edition.” To this, on the proof-sheet, the late Mr. Murray appended the following note:—“I never saw or even had the MS. in my possession; but knowing that Mr. Smith was brother-in-law to Mr. Cadell, I took it for granted that the MS. had been previously offered to him and declined.” Mr. H. Smith consequently drew his pen through the passage. Between 1807 and 1810. The Monthly Mirror was edited by Edward Du Bois, author of “My Pocket-Book,” and by Thomas Hill; the original Paul Pry; and the Hull of Mr. Theodore Hook’s novel of “Gilbert Gurney.” Miss Lydia White, celebrated for her lively wit and for her blue-stocking parties, unrivalled, it is said, in “the soft realm of blue May Fair.” She died in 1827, and is mentioned in the diaries of Scott and Byron. See note on “The Beautiful Incendiary,” p. 56. “The first piece, under the name of the loyal Mr. Fitzgerald, though as good we suppose as the original, is not very interesting. Whether it be very like Mr. Fitzgerald or not, however, it must be allowed that the vulgarity, servility, and gross absurdity of the newspaper scribblers is well rendered.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review.
William Thomas Fitzgerald.—The annotator’s first personal knowledge of this gentleman was at Harry Greville’s Pic-Nic Theatre, in Tottenham-street, where he personated Zanga in a wig too small for his head. The second time of seeing him was at the table of old Lord Dudley, who familiarly called him Fitz, but forgot to name him in his will. The Viscount’s son (recently deceased), however, liberally supplied the omission by a donation of five thousand pounds. The third and last time of encountering him was at an anniversary dinner of the Literary Fund, at the Freemasons’ Tavern. Both parties, as two of the stewards, met their brethren in a small room about half an hour before dinner. The lampooner, out of delicacy, kept aloof from the poet. The latter, however, made up to him, when the following dialogue took place:
Fitzgerald (with good humour). “Mr. —, I mean to recite after dinner.”
Mr. —. “Do you?”
Fitzgerald. “Yes: you’ll have more of ‘God bless the Regent and the Duke of York!’”
The whole of this imitation, after a lapse of twenty years, appears to the Authors too personal and sarcastic; but they may shelter themselves under a very broad mantle:
“Let hoarse Fitzgerald bawl
His creaking couplets in a tavern-hall.”—Byron.
Fitzgerald actually sent in an address to the Committee on the 31st of August, 1812. It was published among the other Genuine Rejected Addresses, in one volume, in that year. The following is an extract:—
“The troubled shade of Garrick, hovering near,
Dropt on the burning pile a pitying tear.”
What a pity that, like Sterne’s recording angel, it did not succeed in blotting the fire out for ever! That failing, why not adopt Gulliver’s remedy? Mr. B. Wyatt, architect of Drury Lane Theatre, son of James Wyatt, architect of the Pantheon. In plain English, the Halfpenny hatch, then a footway through fields; but now, as the same bards sing elsewhere—
“St. George’s Fields are fields no more,
The trowel supersedes the plough;
Swamps huge and inundate of yore,
Are changed to civic villas now.”
Covent Garden Theatre was burnt down 20th September, 1808; Drury Lane Theatre (as before stated) 24th February, 1809. The east end of St. James’s Palace was destroyed by fire, 21 Jan., 1809. The wardrobe of Lady Charlotte Finch (alluded to in the next line) was burnt in the fire. Honourable William Wellesley Pole, now (1854) Earl of Mornington, married, 14th March, 1812, Catherine, daughter and heir of Sir James Tylney Long, Bart; upon which occasion he assumed the additional names of Tylney and Long. “The author does not, in this instance, attempt to copy any of the higher attributes of Mr. Wordsworth’s poetry; but has succeeded perfectly in the imitation of his mawkish affectations of childish simplicity and nursery stammering. We hope it will make him ashamed of his Alice Fell, and the greater part of his last volumes—of which it is by no means a parody, but a very fair, and indeed we think a flattering, imitation.”—Jeffery, Edinburgh Review. Jack and Nancy, as it was afterwards remarked to the Authors, are here made to come into the world at periods not sufficiently remote. The writers were then bachelors. One of them [James], unfortunately, still continues so, as he has thus recorded in his niece’s album:
“Should I seek Hymen’s tie,
As a poet I die—
Ye Benedicks, mourn my distresses!
For what little fame
Is annexed to my name
Is derived from Rejected Addresses.”
The blunder, notwithstanding, remains unrectified. The reader of poetry is always dissatisfied with emendations: they sound discordantly upon the ear, like a modern song, by Bishop or Braham, introduced in Love in a Village. This alludes to the Young Betty mania. The writer was in the stage-box at the height of this young gentleman’s popularity. One of the other occupants offered, in a loud voice, to prove that Young Betty did not understand Shakespeare. “Silence!” was the cry; but he still proceeded. “Turn him out!” was the next ejaculation. He still vociferated. “He does not understand Shakespeare;” and was consequently shouldered into the lobby. “I’ll prove it to you,” said the critic to the doorkeeper. “Prove what, sir?” “That he does not understand Shakespeare.” This was MoliÈre’s housemaid with a vengeance.
Young Betty may now [1833] be seen walking about town—a portly personage, aged about forty—clad in a furred and frogged surtout; probably muttering to himself (as he has been at college), “O mihi prÆteritos!” &c. [He is still alive, 1854. Master Betty, or the “Young Roscius,” was born in 1791, and made his first appearance on a London stage as Achmet in “Barbarossa,” at Covent Garden Theatre, on the lst of December, 1804. He was, therefore, “not quite thirteen.” He lasted two seasons.] A “Phoenix” was perhaps excusable. The first theatre in Drury Lane was called “The Cock-pit or Phoenix Theatre.” Whitbread himself wrote an address, it is said, for the occasion; like the others, it had of course a Phoenix. “But Whitbread,” said Sheridan, “made more of the bird than any of them; he entered into particulars, and described its wings, beak, tail, &c.; in short, it was a poulterer’s description of a Phoenix.” For an account of this anonymous gentleman, see Preface, xiii. “The author has succeeded better in copying the melody 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.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. This would seem to show that poet and prophet are synonymous, the noble bard having afterwards returned to England, and again quitted it, under domestic circumstances painfully notorious. His good-humoured forgiveness of the Authors has already been alluded to in the Preface. Nothing of this illustrious poet, however trivial, can be otherwise than interesting. “We know him well.” At Mr. Murray’s dinner-table the annotator met him and Sir John Malcolm. Lord Byron talked of intending to travel in Persia. “What must I do when I set off?” said he to Sir John. “Cut off your buttons!” “My buttons! what, these metal ones!” “Yes; the Persians are in the main very honest fellows; but if you go thus bedizened, you will infallibly be murdered for your buttons!” At a dinner at Monk Lewis’s chambers in the Albany, Lord Byron expressed to the writer his determination not to go there again, adding, “I never will dine with a middle-aged man who fills up his table with young ensigns, and has looking-glass panels to his book-cases.” Lord Byron, when one of the Drury-lane Committee of Management, challenged the writer to sing alternately (like the swains in Virgil) the praises of Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, who, by-the-bye, was hissed off the stage for an imputed intimacy of which she was quite innocent.
The contest ran as fellows:
“Wake, muse of fire, your ardent lyre,
Pour forth your amorous ditty,
But first profound, in duly bound,
Applaud the new Committee;
Their scenic art from Thespis’ cart
All jaded nags discarding,
To London drove this queen of love,
Enchanting Mrs. Mardyn.
Though tides of love around her rove,
I fear she’ll choose Pactolus—
In that bright surge bards ne’er immerge.
So I must e’en swim solus.
‘Out, out, alas!’ ill-fated gas,
That shin’st round Covent Garden,
Thy ray how flat, compared with that
From eye of Mrs. Mardyn!”
And so on. The reader has, no doubt, already discovered “which is the justice, and which is the thief.”
Lord Byron at that time wore a very narrow cravat of white sarsnet, with the shirt-collar falling over it; a black coat and waist-coat, and very broad white trousers to hide his lame foot—these were of Russia duck in the morning, and jean in the evening. His watch-chain had a number of small gold seals appended to it, and was looped up to a button of his waistcoat. His face was void of colour; he wore no whiskers. His eyes were grey, fringed with long black lashes; and his air was imposing, but rather supercilious. He under-valued David Hume; denying his claim to genius on account of his bulk, and calling him, from the Heroic Epistle,
“The fattest hog in Epicurus’ sly.”
One of this extraordinary man’s allegations was, that “fat is an oily dropsy.” To stave off its visitation, he frequently chewed tobacco in lieu of dinner, alleging that it absorbed the gastric juice of the stomach, and prevented hunger. “Pass your hand down my side,” said his Lordship to the writer; “can you count my ribs?” “Every one of them.” “I am delighted to hear you say so. I called last week on Lady —; ‘Ah, Lord Byron,’ said she, ‘how fat you grow!’ But you know Lady — is fond of saying spiteful timings!” Let this gossip be summed up with the words of Lord Chesterfield, in his character of Bolingbroke: “Upon the whole, on a survey of this extraordinary character, what can we say, but ‘Alas, poor human nature!’”
His favourite Pope’s description of man is applicable to Byron individually:
“Chaos of thought and passion all confused,
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created part to rise and part to fall,
Great lord of all things, yet a slave to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled—
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.”
The writer never heard him allude to his deformed foot except upon one occasion, when, entering the green-room of Drury-lane, he found Lord Byron alone, the younger Byrne and Miss Smith the dancer having just left him, after an angry conference about a pas suel. “Had you been here a minute sooner,” said Lord B., “you would have heard a question about dancing referred to me:—me! (looking mournfully downward) whom fate from my birth has prohibited from taking a single step.” The first stanza (see Preface) was written by James Smith; the remainder by Horace. See Note, p. 8. “Holland’s edifice.” The late theatre was built by Holland the architect. The writer visited it on the night of its opening [April 21, 1794]. The performances were Macbeth and the Virgin Unmasked. Between the play and the farce, an excellent epilogue, written by George Colman, was excellently spoken by Miss Farren. It referred to the iron curtain which was, in the event of fire, to be let down between the stage and the audience, and which accordingly descended, by way of experiment, leaving Miss Farren between the lamps and the curtain. The fair speaker informed the audience, that should the fire break out on the stage (where it usually originates), it would thus be kept from the spectators; adding, with great solemnity—
“No! we assure our generous benefactors
’Twill only burn the scenery and the actors!”
A tank of water was afterwards exhibited, in the course of the epilogue, in which a wherry was rowed by a real live man, the band playing—
“And did you not hear of a jolly young waterman?”
Miss Farren reciting—
“Sit still, there’s nothing in it,
We’ll undertake to drown you in a single minute.”
“O vain thought!” as Othello says. Notwithstanding the boast in the epilogue—
“Blow, wind—come, rack, in ages yet unborn,
Our castle’s strength shall laugh a siege to scorn”—
the theatre fell a victim to the flames within fifteen years from the prognostic! These preparations against fire always presuppose presence of mind and promptness in those who are to put them into action. They remind one of the dialogue, in Morton’s Speed the Plough, between Sir Able Handy and his son Bob:
“Bob. Zounds, the castle’s on fire!
Sir A. Yes.
Bob. Where’s your patent liquid for extinguishing fire?
Sir A. It is not mixed.
Bob. Then where’s your patent fire-escape?
Sir A. It is not fixed.
Bob. You are never at a loss?
Sir A. Never.
Bob. Then what do you mean to do?
Sir A. I don’t know.”
A rather obscure mode of expression for Jews’-harp; which some etymologists allege, by the way, to be a corruption of Jaws’-harp. No connection, therefore, with King David. The Weekly Register, which he kept up without the failure of a single week from its first publication till his death—a period of above thirty-three years. Bagshaw. At that time the publisher or Cobbett’s Register. The old Lyceum Theatre, pulled down by Mr. Arnold. That since destroyed by fire [16th Feb., 1830] was erected on its site. [The Drury Lane Company performed at the Lyceum till the house was rebuilt.] The present colonnade in Little Russell Street formed no part of the original design, and was erected only a few years back. An allusion to a murder then recently committed on Barnes Terrace. [The murder (22nd July, 1812) of the Count and Countess D’Antraigues (distantly related to the Bourbons), by a servant out of livery of the name of Laurence—an Italian or Piedmontese, who made away with himself immediately after.] At that time keeper of Newgate. The present superintendent (1833) is styled Governor! A portentous one that made its appearance in the year 1811; in the midst of the war,
“with fear of change
Perplexing nations.”
“The Living Lustres appears to us a very fair imitation of the fantastic verses which that ingenious person, Mr. Moore, indites when he is merely gallant, and, resisting the lures of voluptuousness, is not enough in earnest to be tender.” —Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. This alludes to two massive pillars of verd antique which then flanked the proscenium, but which have since been removed. Their colour reminds the bard of the Emerald Isle, and this causes him (more suo) to fly off at a tangent, and Hibernicise the rest of the poem. “The Rebuilding is in the name of Mr. Southey, and is one of the best in the collection. It is in the style of the Kehama of that multifarious author, and is supposed to be spoken in the character of one of his Glendoveers. The imitation of the diction and measure, we think, is nearly almost perfect; and the descriptions as good as the original. It opens with an account of the burning of the old theatre, formed upon the pattern of the Funeral of Arvalan.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. For the Glendoveer, and the rest of the dramatis persona of this imitation, the reader is referred to the “Curse of Kehama.” “Midnight, and yet no eye
Through all the Imperial City closed in sleep.”
Southey. This couplet was introduced by the Authors by way of bravado, in answer to one who alleged that the English language contained no rhyme to chimney. Apollo. A gigantic wooden figure of this deity was erected on the roof. The writer (horrescit referens!) is old enough to recollect the time when it was first placed there. Old Bishop, then one of the masters of Merchant Tailors’ School, wrote an epigram upon the occasion, which, referring to the aforesaid figure, concluded thus:
“Above he fills up Shakespeare’s place.
And Shakespeare fills up his below.”
Very antithetical; but quÆre as to the meaning? The writer, like Pluto, “long puzzled his brain” to find it out, till he was immersed “in a lower deep” by hearing Madame de StaËl say, at the table of the late Lord Dillon, “Buonaparte is not a man, but a system.” Inquiry was made in the course of the evening of Sir James Mackintosh as to what the lady meant? He answered, “Mass! I cannot tell.” Madame de StaËl repeats this apophthegm in her work on Germany. It is probably understood there. O. P. This personage, who is alleged to have growled like a bull-dog, requires rather a lengthened note, for the edification of the rising generation. The “horns, rattles, drums,” with which he is accompanied, are no inventions of the poet. The new Covent Garden Theatre opened on the 18th Sept., 1809, when a cry of “Old Prices” (afterwards diminished to O. P.) burst out from every part of the house. This continued and increased in violence till the 23rd, when rattles, drums, whistles, and cat-calls having completely drowned the voices of the actors, Mr. Kemble, the stage-manager, came forward and said that a committee of gentlemen had undertaken to examine the finances of the concern, and that until they were prepared with their report the theatre would continue closed. “Name them!” was shouted from all sides. The names were declared, viz., Sir Charles Price, the Solicitor-General, the Recorder of London, the Governor of the Bank, and Mr. Angerstein. “All shareholders!” bawled a wag from the gallery. In a few days the theatre re-opened: the public paid no attention to the report of the referees, and the tumult was renewed for several weeks with even increased violence. The proprietors now sent in hired bruisers, to mill the refractory into subjection. This irritated most of their former friends, and, amongst the root, the annotator, who accordingly wrote the song of “Heigh-ho, says Kemble,” which was caught up by the ballad-singers, and sung under Mr. Kemble’s house-windows in Great Russell-street. A dinner was given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, to celebrate the victory obtained by W. Clifford in his action against Brandon the box-keeper, for assaulting him for wearing the letters O. P. in his hat. At this dinner Mr. Kemble attended, and matters were compromised by allowing the advanced price (seven shillings) to the boxes. The writer remembers a former riot of a similar sort at the same theatre (in the year 1792), when the price to the boxes was raised from five shillings to six. That tumult, however, only lasted three nights. “From the knobb’d bludgeon to the taper switch.” This image is not the creation of the poets: it sprang from reality. The Authors happened to be at the Royal Circus when “God save the King” was called for, accompanied by a cry of “Stand up!” and “Hats off!” An inebriated naval lieutenant, perceiving a gentleman in an adjoining box slow to obey the call, struck his hat off with his stick, exclaiming, “Take off your hat, sir!” The other thus assaulted proved to be, unluckily for the lieutenant, Lord Camelford, the celebrated bruiser and duellist. A set-to in the lobby was the consequence, where his lordship quickly proved victorious. “The devil is not so black as he is painted,” said one of the Authors to the other; “let us call upon Lord Camelford, and tell him that we were witnesses of his being first assaulted.” The visit was paid on the ensuing morning at Lord Camelford’s lodgings, in Bond-street. Over the fire place in the drawing-room were ornaments strongly expressive of the pugnacity of the peer. A long thick bludgeon lay horizontally supported by two brass hooks. Above this was placed parallel one of lesser dimensions, until a pyramid of weapons gradually arose, tapering to a horsewhip:
“Thus all below was strength, and all above was grace.”
Lord Camelford received his visitants with great civility, and thanked them warmly for the call; adding, that their evidence would be material, it being his intention to indict the lieutenant for an assault. “All I can say in return is this,” exclaimed the peer with great cordiality, “if ever I see you engaged in a row, upon my soul I’ll stand by you.” The Authors expressed themselves thankful for so potent an ally, and departed. In about a fortnight afterwards [March 7, 1804] Lord Camelford was shot in a duel with Mr. Best. Veeshnoo. The late Mr. Whitbread. Levy. An insolvent Israelite who [18th January, 1810] threw himself from the top of the Monument a short time before. An inhabitant of Monument-yard informed the writer that he happened to be standing at his door talking to a neighbour, and looking up at the top of the pillar, exclaimed, “Why, here’s the flag coming down.” “Flag!” answered the other, “it’s a man.” The words were hardly uttered when the suicide fell within ten feet of the speakers. “‘Drury’s Dirge,’ by Laura Matilda, is not of the first quality. The verses, to be sure, are very smooth, and very nonsensical—as was intended; but they are not so good as Swift’s celebrated Song by a Person of Quality; and are so exactly in the same measure, and on the same plan, that it is impossible to avoid making the comparison.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. The Authors, as in gallantry bound, wish this lady to continue anonymous. From the parody of Walter Scott we know not what to select—it is all good. The effect of the fire on the town, and the description of a fireman in his official apparel, may be quoted as amusing specimens of the misapplication of the style and metre of Mr. Scott’s admirable romances.—Quarterly Review.
“‘A Tale of Drury,’ by Walter Scott, is, upon the whole, admirably executed; though the introduction is rather tame. The burning is described with the mighty minstrel’s characteristic love of localities . . . The catastrophe is described with a spirit not unworthy of the name so venturously assumed by the describer.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review.
“Thus he went on, stringing one extravagance upon another, in the style his books of chivalry had taught him, and imitating, as neat as he could, their very phrase.”—Don Quixote.
Sir Walter Scott informed the annotator, that at one time he intended to print his collected works, and had pitched upon this identical quotation as a motto;—a proof that sometimes great wits jump with little ones. Alluding to the then great distance between the picture-frame, in which the green curtain was set, and the band. For a justification of this, see below—“Dr. Johnson.” The old name for London:
For poets you can never want ’em
Spread through Augusta Trinobantum—Swift.
Thomson in his “Seasons” calls it “huge Augusta.” Old Bedlam, at that time, stood “close by London Wall.” It was built after the model of the Tuileries, which is said to have given the French king great offence. In front of it Moorfields extended, with broad gravel walks crossing each other at right angles. These the writer well recollects; and Rivaz, an underwriter at Lloyd’s, his told him that he remembered when the merchants of London would parade these walks on a summer evening with their wives and daughters. But now, as a punning brother bard sings,—
“Moorfields are fields no more.”
A narrow passage immediately adjoining Drury Lane Theatre, and so called from the vineyard attached to Covent or Convent Garden. The Hand-in-Hand Insurance Office was one of the very first insurance offices established in London. To make the engineer of the office thus early in the race is a piece of historical accuracy intended it is said, on the part of the writer. Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!
Were the last words of Marmion. Whitbread’s shears. An economical experiment of that gentleman. The present portico, towards Brydges-street, was afterwards erected under the lesseeship of Elliston, whose portrait in the Exhibition was thus noticed in the Examiner “Portrait of the great Lessee, in his favourite character of Mr. Elliston.” “Samuel Johnson is not so good: the measure and solemnity of his sentences, in all the limited variety of their structure, are indeed imitated with singular skill; but the diction is caricatured in a vulgar and unpleasing degree. To make Johnson call a doer ‘a ligneous barricado,’ and its knocker and bell its ‘frappant and tintinnabulant appendages,’ is neither just nor humorous; and we are surprised that a writer who has given such extraordinary proofs of his talent for finer ridicule and fairer imitation, should have stooped to a vein of pleasantry so low, and so long ago exhausted; especially as, in other passages of the same piece, he has shown how well qualified he was both to catch and to render the true characteristics of his original. The beginning, for example, we think excellent.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. The celebrated Lord Chesterfield, whose Letters to his Son, according to Dr. Johnson, inculcate “the manners of a dancing-master and the morals of a —,” &c. Lord Mayor of the theatric sky. This alludes to Leigh Hunt, who, in The Examiner, at this time kept the actors in hot water. Dr. Johnson’s argument is, like many of his other arguments, specious, but untenable; that which it defends has since been abandoned as impracticable. Mr. Whitbread contended that the actor was like a portrait in a picture, and accordingly placed the green curtain in a gilded frame remote from the foot-lights; alleging that no performer should mar the illusion by stepping out of the frame. Dowton was the first actor who, like Manfred’s ancestor in the Castle of Otranto, took the liberty of abandoning the canon. “Don’t tell me of frames and pictures,” ejaculated the testy comedian; “if I can’t be heard by the audience in the frame, I’ll walk out of it!” The proscenium has since been new-modelled, and the actors thereby brought nearer to the audience. “‘The Beautiful Incendiary,’ by the Honourable W. Spencer, is also an imitation of great merit. The flashy, fashionable, artificial style of this writer, with his confident and extravagant compliments, can scarcely be said to be parodied in such lines.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. Sobriety, &c. The good-humour of the poet upon occasion of this parody has been noticed in the Preface. “It’s all very well for once,” said he afterwards, in comic confidence, at his villa at Petersham, “but don’t do it again. I had been almost forgotten when you revived me; and now all the newspapers and reviews ring with this fashionable, trashy author.’” The sand and “filings of glass,” mentioned in the last stanza, are referable to the well-known verses of the poet apologising to a lady for having paid an unconscionably long morning visit; and where, alluding to Time, he says—
“All his sands are diamond sparks,
That glitter as they pass.”
Few men in society have more “gladdened life” than this poet. He now [1833] resides in Paris, and may thence make the grand tour without an interpreter—speaking, as he does, French, Italian, and German, as fluently as English. 10th of October, 1812, the day of opening. Congreve’s plug. The late Sir William Congreve had made a model of Drury Lane Theatre, to which was affixed an engine that, in event of fire, was made to play from the stage into every box in the house. The writer, accompanied by Theodore Hook, went to see the model at Sir William’s house in Cecil-street. “Now I’ll duck Whitbread!” said Hook, seizing the water-pipe whilst he spoke, and sending a torrent of water into the brewer’s box. See Byron, afterwards, its Don Juan:—
“For flesh is grass, which Time mows down to hay.”
But as Johnson says of Dryden, “His known wealth was so great, he might borrow without any impeachment of his credit.” “‘Fire and Ale,’ by M. G. Lewis, exhibits not only a faithful copy of the spirited, loose, and flowing versification of that singular author, but a very just representation of that mixture of extravagance and jocularity which has impressed most of his writings with the character of a sort of farcical horror.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review.
Matthew Gregory Lewis, commonly called Monk Lewis, from his once popular romance of that name, was a good-hearted man, and, like too many of that fraternity, a disagreeable one—verbose, disputatious and paradoxical. His Monk and Castle Spectre elevated him into fame; and he continued to write ghost-stories till, following as he did in the wake of Mrs. Radcliffe, he quite overstocked the market. Lewis visited his estates in Jamaica, and came back perfectly negro-bitten. He promulgated a new code of laws in the island, for the government of his sable subjects: one may serve for a specimen: “Any slave who commits murder shall have his heed shaved, and be confined three days and nights in a dark room.” Upon occasion of printing these parodies, Monk Lewis said to Lady H[olland], “Many of them are very fair, but mine is not at all like; they have made me write burlesque, which I never do” “You don’t know your own talent,” answered the lady.
Lewis aptly described himself, as to externals, in the verses affixed to his Monk, as having
“A graceless form and dwarfish stature”
He had, moreover, large grey eyes, thick features, and an inexpressive countenance. In talking, he had a disagreeable habit of drawing the fore-finger of his right hand across his tight eye-lid. He affected, in conversation, a sort of dandified, drawling tone: young Harlowe, the artist, did the same. A foreigner who had but slight knowledge of the English language might have concluded, from their cadences, that they were little better than fools—“just a born goose,” as Terry the actor used to say. Lewis died on his passage homeward from Jamaica, owing to a dose of James’s powders injudiciously administered by “his own mere motion.” He wrote various plays, with various success, he had admirable notions of dramatic construction, but the goodness of his scenes and incidents was marred by the badness of his dialogue. “Mr. Coleridge will not, we fear, be as much entertained as we were with his ‘Playhouse Musings,’ which begin with characteristic pathos and simplicity, and put us much in mind of the affecting story of old Poulter’s mare.”—Quarterly Review.
“‘Playhouse Musings,’ by Mr. Coleridge, a piece which is unquestionably Lakish, though we cannot say that we recognise in it any of the peculiar traits of that powerful and misdirected genius whose name it has borrowed. We rather think, however, that the tuneful brotherhood will consider it as a respectable eclogue.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. “He of Blackfriars’ Road,” viz. the late Rev. Rowland Hill, who is said to have preached a sermon congratulating his congregation on the catastrophe. [See before:—
Meux’s new brewhouse shows the light,
Rowland Hill’s Chapel, and the height
Where Patent Shot they sell.]
“Oh, Mr. Whitbread!” Sir William Grant, then Master of the Rolls, repeated this passage aloud at a Lord Mayor’s dinner, to the no small astonishment of the writer, who happened to sit within ear-shot. “Padmanaba,” viz., in a pantomime called Harlequin in Padmanaba. This elephant [Chunee], some years afterwards, was exhibited over Exeter ’Change, where, the reader will remember, it was found necessary [March, 1826] to destroy the poor animal by discharges of musketry. When he made his entrance in the pantomime above mentioned, Johnson, the machinist of the rival house, exclaimed, “I should be very sorry if I could not make a better elephant than that!” Johnson was right: we go to the theatre to be pleased with the skill of the imitator, and not to look at the reality. “‘A New Halfpenny Ballad,’ by a Pic-Nic Poet, is a good imitation of what was not worth imitating—that tremendous mixture of vulgarity, nonsense, impudence, and miserable puns, which, under the name of humorous songs, rouses our polite audiences to a far higher pitch of rapture than Garrick or Siddons ever was able to inspire.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review. Mr. Whitbread—it need hardly be added for the present generation of Londoners—was a celebrated brewer. Fifty years hence, and the allusion in the text may require a note which, perhaps even now (1854), is scarcely out of place. “Winsor’s patent gas”—at that time in its infancy. The first place illumined by it was [Jan. 28, 1807] the Carlton-house side of Pall Mall; the second, Bishopsgate Street. The writer attended a lecture given by the inventor: the charge of admittance was three shillings, but, as the inventor was about to apply to parliament, members of both houses were admitted gratis. The writer and a fellow-jester assumed the parts of senators at a short notice. “Members of parliament!” was their important ejaculation at the door of entrance. “What places, gentlemen?” “Old Sarum and Bridgewater.” “Walk in, gentlemen.” Luckily, the real Simon Pures did not attend. This Pall Mall illumination was further noticed in Horace in London:—
“And Winsor lights, with flame of gas.
Home, to King’s Place, his mother.”
“Ticket-nights.” This phrase is probably unintelligible to the untheatrical portion of the community, which may now be said to be all the world except the actors. Ticket-nights are those whereon the inferior actors club for a benefit: each distributes as many tickets of admission as he is able among his friends. A motley assemblage is the consequence; and as each actor is encouraged by his own set, who are not in general play-going people, the applause comes (as Chesterfield says of Pope’s attempts at wit) “generally unseasonably, and too often unsuccessfully.” Originally:—“Back to the bottom leaping with a bound,” altered 1833. “This journal was, at the period in question, rather remarkable for the use of the figure called by the rhetoricians catachresis. The Bard of Avon may be quoted in justification of its adoption, when he writes of taking arms against a sea, and seeking a bubble in the mouth of a cannon. The Morning Post, in the year 1812, congratulated its readers upon having stripped off Cobbett’s mask and discovered his cloven foot; adding, that it was high time to give the hydra-head of Faction a rap on the knuckles!” The Rev. George Crabbe.—The writer’s first interview with this poet, who may be designated Pope in worsted stockings, took place at William Spencer’s villa at Petersham, close to what that gentleman called his gold-fish pond, though it was scarcely three feet in diameter, throwing up a jet d’eau like a thread. The venerable bard, seizing both the hands of his satirist exclaimed with a good-humoured laugh, “Ah! my old enemy, how do you do?” In the course of conversation, he expressed great astonishment at his popularity in London; adding, “In my own village they think nothing of me.” The subject happening to be the inroads of time upon beauty, the writer quoted the following lines:—
“Six years had pass’d, and forty ere the six,
When Time began to play his usual tricks:
My locks, once comely in a virgin’s sight,
Locks of pure brown, now felt th’ encroaching white;
Gradual each day I liked my horses less,
My dinner more—I learnt to play at chess.”
“That’s very good!” cried the bard;—“whose to it?” “Your own.” “Indeed! hah! well, I had quite forgotten it.” Was this affectation, or was it not? In sooth, he seemed to push simplicity to puerility. This imitation contained in manuscript the following lines, after describing certain Sunday newspaper critics who were supposed to be present at a new play, and who were rather heated in their politics:—
“Hard is the task who edits—thankless job!—
A Sunday journal for the factious mob
With bitter paragraph and caustic jest,
He gives to turbulence the day of rest;
Condemn’d, this week, rash rancour to instil,
Or thrown aside, the next, for one who will:
Alike undone or if he praise or rail
(For this affects his safety, that his sale),
He sinks at last, in luckless limbo set,
If loud for libel, and if dumb for debt.”
They were, however, never printed; being, on reflection, considered too serious for the occasion.
It is not a little extraordinary that Crabbe, who could write with such rigour, should descend to such lines as the following:—
“Something bad happen’d wrong about a bill
Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill,
So, to amend it, I was told to go
And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co.”
Surely “Emanuel Jennings,” compared with the above, rises to sublimity.
[“‘The Theatre,’ by the Rev. G. Crabbe, we rather think, is the best piece in the collection. It is an exquisite and most masterly imitation, not only of the peculiar style, but of the taste, temper, and manner of description of that most original author; and can hardly be said to be in any respect a caricature of that style or manner—except in the excessive profusion of puns and verbal jingles—which, though undoubtedly to be ranked among his characteristics, are never so thick sown in his original works as in this admirable imitation. It does not aim, of course, at any shadow of his pathos or moral sublimity, but seems to us to be a singularly faithful copy of his passages of mere description,”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review.] You were more feeling than I was, when you read the excellent parodies of the young men who wrote the “Rejected Addresses.” There is a little ill-nature—and I take the liberty of adding, undeserved ill-nature—in their prefatory address; but in their versification they have done me admirably. They are extraordinary men; but it is easier to imitate style than to furnish matter.—Crabbe (Works, 1 vol. Ed., p. 81). A street and parish in Lime Street Ward, London—chiefly inhabited by Jews. “We come next to three ludicrous parodies—of the story of The Stranger, of George Barnwell, and of the dagger-scene in Macbeth, under the signature of Momus Medlar. They are as good, we think, as that sort of thing can be, and remind us of the happier efforts of Colman, whose less successful fooleries are professedly copied in the last piece in the volume.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Renew. A translation from Kotzebue by Thompson, and first acted at Drury Lane, 24th March, 1798. Mrs. Siddons was famous in the part of Mrs. Haller. See Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. iii.; and Lillo’s tragedy, “The London Merchant; or, the History of George Barnwell.” 8vo. 1731. Theodore Hook, at that time a very young man, and the companion of the annotator in many wild frolics. The cleverness of his subsequent prose compositions has cast his early stage songs into oblivion. This parody was, in the second edition, transferred from Colman to Hook. Then Director of the Opera House. At that time the chief dancer at this establishment. Vauxhall Bridge then, like the Thames Tunnel at present [1833], stood suspended in the middle of that river. Dr. Busby gave living recitations of his translation of Lucretius, with tea and bread-and-butter. He sent in a real Address to the Drury Lane committee, which was really rejected. The present imitation professes to be recited by the translator’s son. The poet here, again, was a prophet. A few evenings after the opening of the Theatre Dr. Busby sat with his son in one of the stage-boxes. The latter to the astonishment of the audience, at the end of the play, stepped from the box upon the stage, with his father’s real rejected address in his hand, and began to recite it as follows:—
“When energising objects men pursue,
What are the prodigies they cannot do?”
Raymond, the stage-manager, accompanied by a constable, at this moment walked upon the stage, and handed away the juvenile dilettante performer.
The Doctor’s classical translation was thus noticed in one of the newspapers of the day, in the column of births:—“Yesterday, at his house in Queen Anne-street, Dr. Busby of a still-born Lucretius.” [Bushy’s Monologue was parodied by Lord Byron: see Byron’s works, p. 553.]
“In one single point the parodist has failed—there is a certain Dr. Busby, whose supposed address is a translation called ‘Architectural Atoms, intended to be recited by the translator’s son.’ Unluckily, however, for the wag who had prepared this fun, the genuine serious absurdity of Dr. Busby and his son has cast all his humour into the shade. The Doctor from the boxes, and the son from the stage, have actually endeavoured, it seems, to recite addresses, which they call monologues and unalogues; and which, for extravagant folly, tumid meanness, and vulgar affectation, set all the powers of parody at utter defiance.”—Quarterly Review.
“Of ‘Architectural Atoms,’ translated by Dr. Busby, we can say very little more than that they appear to us to be far more capable of combining into good poetry than the few lines we were able to read of the learned Doctor’s genuine address in the newspapers. They might pass, indeed, for a very tolerable imitation of Darwin.”—Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review.
