so translating them. No such effects are produced in their world. When we are among them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by their proceedings,— for they have none among them. No peace of families is violated,-for no family ties exist among them. No purity of the marriage bed is stained,-for none is supposed to have a being. No deep affections are disquieted,—no holy wedlock bands are snapped asunder,-for affection's depth and wedded faith are not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right nor wrong,gratitude or its opposite,-claim or duty,-paternity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to virtue, or how is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir Simon, or Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha; or who is the father of Lord Froth's, or Sir Paul Pliant's children?

The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at a battle of the frogs and mice. But like Don Quixote, we take part against the puppets, and quite as impertinently. We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease excluded. We have not the courage to imagine a state of things for which there is neither reward nor punishment. We cling to the painful necessities of shame and blame. We would indict our very dreams.

Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon growing old, it is something to have seen the School for Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out of Congreve and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that it should be now acted, though it continues, at long intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice-to express it in a word- the downright acted villany of the part, so different from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,—the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy,-which made Jack so deservedly a favourite in that character, I must needs conclude the present generation of playgoers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I freely confess that he divided the palm with me with his better brother; that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there are passages,-like that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a pittance to a poor relation,-incongruities which Sheridan was forced upon by the attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental comedy, either of which must destroy the other--but over these obstructions Jack's manner floated him so lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked you, than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality any pleasure; you got over the paltry question as quickly as you could, to get back into the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. The highly artificial manner of Palmer in this character counteracted every disagreeable impression which you might have received from the contrast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. You did not believe in Joseph with the same faith with which you believed in Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, the former a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous; a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities: the gaiety upon the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements.

A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would not dare to do the part in the same manner. He would instinctively avoid every turn which might tend to unrealize, and so to make the character fascinating. He must take his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as the death-beds of those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which I am sorry to say have disappeared from the windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Church-yard memory

His

-(an exhibition as venerable as the adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good man at the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions of the former, - and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting fork is not to be despised, so finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of the rod,-taking it in like honey and butter, -with which the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate mower? -John Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. He was playing to you all the while that he was playing upon Sir Peter and his lady. You had the first intimation of a sentiment before it was on his lips. His altered voice was meant to you, and you were to suppose that his fictitious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of it. What was it to you if that halfreality, the husband, was over-reached by the puppetry-or the thin thing (Lady Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was dying of a plethory? The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona were not concerned in it. Poor Jack has passed from the stage in good time, that he did not live to this our age of seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in good time. manner would scarce have passed current in our day. We must love or hate -acquit or condemn-censure or pity-exert our detestable coxcombry of moral judgment upon everything. Joseph Surface, to go down now, must be a downright revolting villain-no compromise-his first appearance must shock and give horror-his specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or was meant to come of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person of the scene-for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) must be loved, and Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it) were evidently as much played off at you, as they were meant to concern anybody on the stage, he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury-a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged-the genuine crim-con. antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph. To realize him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life-must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in a neighbour or old friend. The delicious scenes which give the play its name and zest, must affect you in the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin-those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your mirth-must be ripened by this hot-bed process of realization into asps or amphisbænas; and Mrs. Candour-O! frightful! become a hooded serpent. Oh who that remembers Parsons and Dodd-the wasp and butterfly of the School for Scandal-in those two characters; and charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part-would forego the true scenic delight-the escape from life-the oblivion of consequences-the holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection— those Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world—to sit instead at one of our modern plays--to have his coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals-dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without repose must be--and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without the spectators' risk, and fortunes given away that cost the author nothing?

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its parts as this

manager's comedy. Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abingdon in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the original Charles, had retired, when I first saw it. The rest of the characters, with very slight exceptions, remained. I remember it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble, who took the part of Charles after Smith; but, I thought, very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with a certain gaiety of person. He brought with him no sombre recollections of tragedy. He had not to expiate the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for. His failure in these parts was a passport to success in one of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part came steeped and dulcified in good humour. He made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only served to convey the points of his dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head the shafts to carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered each in succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any of them could be altered for the better. No man could deliver brilliant dialogue-the dialogue of Congreve or of Wycherley-because none understood it-half so well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for Love, was to my recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber over the level parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since him-the playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended to the players in Hamlet-the sportive relief which he threw into the darker shades of Richard -disappeared with him. [Tragedy has become a uniform dead weight. They have fastened lead to their buskins. She never pulls them off for the ease of a moment. To invert a commonplace from Niobe, she never forgets herself to liquefaction.] John had his sluggish moods, his torpors-but they were the halting-stones and resting-place of his tragedy-politic savings, and fetches of the breath--husbandry of the lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist rather, I think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less paiuful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable vigilance,—the "lidless dragon eyes," of present fashionable tragedy.

[The story of his swallowing opium pills to keep him lively on the first night of a certain tragedy, we may presume to be a piece of retaliatory pleasantry on the part of the suffering author; but, indeed, John had the art of diffusing a complacent equable dullness (which you knew not where to quarrel with), over a piece which he did not like, beyond any of his contemporaries. John Kemble had made up his mind early, that all the good tragedies which could be written, had been written; and he resented any new attempt. His shelves were full. The old standards were scope enough for his ambition. He ranged in them absolutely- and fair "in Otway, full in Shakespeare shone." He succeeded to the old lawful thrones, and did not care to adventure bottomry with a Sir Edward Mortimer or any casual speculator that offered. I remember, too actually for my peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put upon my friend G.'s "Antonio.' G., satiate with visions of political justice (possibly not to be realized in our time), or willing to let the sceptical worldlings see that his anticipations of the future did not preclude a warm sympathy for men as they are and have been-wrote a tragedy. He chose a story, affecting, romantic, Spanish -the plot simple, without being naked - the incidents uncommon, without being overstrained. Antonio, who gives the name to the piece, is a sensitive young Castilian, who, in a fit of his country honour, immolates his sister

But I must not anticipate the catastrophe -the play, reader, is extant in

choice English-and you will employ a spare half-crown not injudiciously in the quest of it.

The conception was bold, and the dénoument-the time and place in which the hero of it existed, considered-not much out of keeping; yet it must be confessed, that it required a delicacy of handling both from the author and the performer, so as not much to shock the prejudices of a modern English audience. G., in my opinion, had done his part.

John, who was in familiar habits with the philosopher, had undertaken to play Antonio. Great expectations were formed. A philosopher's first play was a new era. The night arrived. I was favoured with a seat in an advantageous box, between the author and his friend M—. G. sat cheerful and confident. In his friend M.'s looks, who had perused the manuscript, I read some terror. Antonio, in the person of John Philip Kemble, at length appeared, starched out in a ruff which no one could dispute, and in most irreproachable mustachios. John always dressed most provokingly correct on these occasions. The first act swept by, solemn and silent. It went off, as G. assured M., exactly as the opening act of a piece - the protasis-should do. The cue of the spectators was, to be mute. The characters were but in their introduction. The passions and the incidents would be developed hereafter. Applause hitherto would be impertinent. Silent attention was the effect alldesirable. Poor M. acquiesced-but in his honest, friendly face I could discern a working which told how much more acceptable the plaudit of a single hand (however misplaced) would have been than all this reasoning. The second act (as in duty bound) rose a little in interest, but still John kept his forces under-in policy, as G. would have it-and the audience were most complacently attentive. The protasis, in fact, was scarcely unfolded. The interest would warm in the next act, against which a special incident was provided. M. wiped his cheek, flushed with a friendly perspiration-'tis M.'s way of showing his zeal-" from every pore of him a perfume falls-I honour it above Alexander's. He had once or twice during this act joined his palms, in a feeble endeavour to elicit a sound--they emitted a solitary noise, without an echo-there was no deep to answer to his deep. G. repeatedly begged him to be quiet. The third act at length brought him on the scene which was to warm the piece, progressively, to the final flaming forth of the catastrophe. A philosophic calm settled upon the clear brow of G., as it approached. The lips of M. quivered. A challenge was held forth upon the stage, and there was a promise of a fight. The pit roused themselves on this extraordinary occasion, and, as their manner is, seemed disposed to make a ring,-when suddenly, Antonio, who was the challenged, turning the tables upon the hot challenger, Don Gusman (who, by the way, should have had his sister) baulks his humour, and the pit's reasonable expectation at the same time, with some speeches out of the New Philosophy against Duelling." The audience were here fairly caught-their courage was up, and on the alert-a few blows, dingdong, as R-s, the dramatist, afterwards expressed it to me, might have done the business, when their most exquisite moral sense was suddenly called in to assist in the mortifying negation of their own pleasure. They could not applaud for disappointment; they would not condemn for morality's sake. The interest stood stone still; and John's manner was not calculated to unpetrify it. It was Christmas time, and the atmosphere furnished some pretext for asthmatic affections. One began to cough-his neighbour sympathized with him-till a cough became epidemical. But when, from being half artificial in the pit, the cough got frightfully naturalized among the fictitious persons of the drama, and Antonio himself (albeit it was not set down in the stage directions) seemed more intent upon relieving his own lungs than the distresses of the author and his friends, then G. "first knew fear;" and, mildly turning to M., intimated that he had not been aware that Mr. K. laboured under a

·

cold; and that the performance might possibly have been postponed with advantage for some nights farther-still keeping the same serene countenance, while M. sweat like a bull. It would be invidious to pursue the fates of this ill-starred evening. In vain did the plot thicken in the scenes that followed; in vain did the dialogue wax more passionate and stirring, and the progress of the sentiment point more and more clearly to the arduous development which impended. In vain the action was accelerated, while the acting stood still. From the beginning John had taken his stand; had wound himself up to an even tenor of stately declamation, from which no exigence of dialogue or person could make him swerve for an instant. To dream of his rising with the scene (the common trick of tragedians) was preposterous; for, from the onset, he had planted himself, as upon a terrace, on an eminence vastly above the audience, and he kept that sublime level to the end. He looked from his throne of elevated sentiment upon the under-world of spectators with a most sovereign and becoming contempt. There was excellent pathos delivered out to them an they would receive it, so; an they would not receive it, so; there was no offence against decorum in all this; nothing to condemn, to damn. Not an irreverent symptom of a sound was to be heard. The procession of verbiage stalked on through four and five acts, no one venturing to predict what would come of it, when towards the winding up of the latter, Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed to stagger Elvira herself-for she had been coolly arguing the point of honour with him--suddenly whips out a poniard, and stabs her sister to the heart. The effect was as if a murder had been committed in cold blood. The whole house rose up in clamorous indignation, demanding justice. The feeling rose far above hisses. I believe at that instant, if they could have got him, they would have torn the unfortunate author to pieces. Not that the act itself was so exorbitant, or of a complexion different from what they themselves would have applauded upon another occasion, in a Brutus or an Appius, but for want of attending to Antonio's words, which palpably led to the expectation of no less dire event, instead of being seduced by his manner, which seemed to promise a sleep of less alarming nature than it was his cue to inflict upon Elvira: they found themselves betrayed into an accompliceship of murder, a perfect misprision of parricide, while they dreamed of nothing less. M., I believe, was the only person who suffered acutely from the failure; for G. thenceforward, with a serenity unattainable but by the true philosophy, abandoning a precarious popularity, retired into his fasthold of speculation,-the drama in which the world was to be his tiringroom, and remote posterity his applauding spectators at once and actors.]

The Praise of Chimney Sweepers.

(The London Magazine, May, 1822).

[As originally printed, this charming essay had prefixed to it as a sub-title "A May Day Effusion.' The hero of it, James White, or more familiarly Jem White, was the "J. W." already referred to by Elia towards the close of his paper on "Distant Correspondents." His one literary effusion, the supposititious "Letters of Sir John Falstaff," already named in the note prefixed to that essay, Charles Lamb, for the sake of the quaint old-fashioned humour scattered through its pages, regarded with the highest