Rejected Addresses Part 14

{43} The Authors, as in gallantry bound, wish this lady to continue anonymous.

{44} 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 a.s.sumed 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. {44a}

{44a} 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.

{45} 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."

{46} The old name for London:

For poets you can never want 'em Spread through Augusta Trin.o.bantum--SWIFT.

Thomson in his "Seasons" calls it "huge Augusta."

{47} 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."

{48} A narrow pa.s.sage immediately adjoining Drury Lane Theatre, and so called from the vineyard attached to Covent or Convent Garden.

{49} 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.

{50} Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!

Were the last words of Marmion.

{51} 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."

{52} "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 pa.s.sages 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.

{53} 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.

{54} 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," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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.

{55} "'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.

{56} 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 gla.s.s,"

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 pa.s.s."

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.

{56} 10th of October, 1812, the day of opening.

{57} 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.

{58} See Byron, afterwards, its Don Juan:-

"For flesh is gra.s.s, 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."

{58a} "'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 pa.s.sage 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.

{59} 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.

{60} "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.]

{61} "Oh, Mr. Whitbread!" Sir William Grant, then Master of the Rolls, repeated this pa.s.sage aloud at a Lord Mayor's dinner, to the no small astonishment of the writer, who happened to sit within ear- shot.

{62} "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.

{63} "'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.

{64} 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.

{65} "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 a.s.sumed the parts of senators at a short notice.

"Members of parliament!" was their important e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n 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.