von, the pilgrim in the arbour, starts from his hiding place, and frustrates the whole stratagem.

The actress, indeed, expressed in the happiest way the unbounded devotion of her love to Athelwold, and exhibited a model of purity and grace to a chorus of stage virgins, which is, as Sir Hugh says, "pretty virginity"-but there was one occasion, afforded by the intelligence of Athelwold's murder by the amorous king, that Mrs. Siddons seized so powerfully, that the sublimest artist never approached her expression. The passage is this:

"Nay, come not round me, virgins, nor support me.

I do not swoon, nor weep. I call not heaven

T" avenge my wretchedness. I do not wish

This tyrant's hands may wither with cold palsics.
No, I am very patient.”

It will, I should think, be obvious to most readers, that the poet's ear still felt the modulation of Lear's address to Goneril :

"I pr'ythee, daughter, do not make me mad;
I will not trouble thee, my child. Farewell!
We'll no more meet, no more see one another; 1
Let shame come when it will, I do not call it !
I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot,

Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove!

Mend when thou can'st, be better at thy leisure;

I can be patient."

Upon her father's recommending Elfrida, in her agony, to go in and seek tranquillity, nothing could be more pathetic than the rejoinder of Mrs. Siddons.

"Tranquillity!

I know her well; she is death's pale-eyed sister;
She's now in yonder grove, closing the lids
Of my poor Athelwold."

There was something, too, awfully interesting in the devotion of her widow'd life to cloistered holiness; and at every suspension of her address to heaven, the iteration of the chorus, "Hear, angels, hear," in the same words, evinced the poet's fine taste and true feeling. Still, however, Elfrida could not be thought to have business sufficient for the stage; and the nation may be contented to enjoy the drama of its own creation, without looking for the incompatible union, conceived above by Mr. Mason, of Shakspeare with Racine.

I am tempted here to notice, to the credit of the old stage, that on the 28th of April, the Tempest of Shakspeare was

acted at Drury Lane, pure and unmixed. They had not yet embraced the additions of Davenant and Dryden; it will, therefore, be a fit opportunity to take leave of that simple enchanting production. The exquisite beauty of Miss Philips was not more characteristic of Miranda, than her manner of speaking the language. Bensley was the Prospero of the night, and in truth the only Prospero. Old Bannister's Caliban contrasted finely with the Ariel of Miss Field. Some prejudice existed against the masque introduced by the immortal author, and it was, therefore, here omitted. To prove that it is beautiful, and that it can be done upon the stage, my friend Reynolds has introduced it in Twelfth Night, where it is greatly attractive, but has no business whatever besides, that there, having no magic for the means, it becomes an interlude pour passer le temps, and all imagination is forcibly extinguished.

I take the liberty to remark here upon an inadvertency in the conduct of the Tempest, which I do not recollect to have been noticed by any of the critics upon Shakspeare.

When Prospero and Miranda are put on board the rotten carcase of a boat, and exposed to the waves that roared to them, and the winds that did them loving wrong by returning their sighs, Gonzalo provides the duke with many articles that stood him in great stead; among them were books which were more precious than his dukedom. In a word, they were the volumes that in his prosperity had wrapt him in secret studies, and on his landing in the island enabled him to command the elements, and the spirits "native and indued to them," to serve his purposes. But we have always difficulty, in the case of these necromancers, to know why he who can do so much cannot do more-why the prescience, that is so alive to the affairs of others, sleeps so profoundly as to their own? Prospero was totally ignorant of his danger, till it involved him in wretchedness; and his magical skill is no use to him, in the exposure to which his daughter and he are subjected. Surely he had nothing to do but seize one of his dark volumes, and provide himself with a royal vessel. Ariel, or, if he was strictly confined to his pine, some spirit of equal power, might have "flamed amazement" to the fleet of his enemies, and compelled them to return him to his dukedom. If every thing is left to preordination, what is magic? If such powers can be given by art, why is there difficulty? The only answer must be that, in his dukedom, Prospero, though wrapt in secret studies, was not much inspired; and that it was owing to the profound application of his twelve years' residence, that he became the absolute mas

ter of external nature, commanded the lightnings of Jove, and even the grave to awaken its sleepers, and they obeyed him. He had, therefore, as her schoolmaster, not only made his daughter profit beyond other princesses, in studies becoming her youth and sex, but had grown himself at length consummate in his art. To be sure, it was upon his arrival, that he heard the sorrows of Ariel, in the cloven pine, to which Sycorax had condemned him; and it was by his art, that Prospero made the tree gape, and gained a faithful servant by thus setting the spirit at liberty.* The objection cannot be much lessened. Enough.

On the 30th of this month, Mrs. Siddons, for the first time in London, acted the part of Rosalind, in As You Like It. Upon no occasion within memory, was more nonsense uttered than upon this. To hear some people, it might have been inferred, that the very term comedy, implied incessant laughter; and because Mrs. Siddons was delicate, modest, and never forgot that she was both a princess and unfortunate, she must, therefore, fail to give the slightest idea of Rosalind. But it might be worth while to consider at all times, in the performance of this enchanting character, whether its "better parts," as Orlando has it, are not quite. thrown down by too decided an enjoyment of male attire, and too brave an exposure of the person of the retiring sex; and that if, under the mannish habit, Rosalind do play the saucy forester, and talk somewhat freely, it can never be allowed her to throw away the modesty of her manners, and act, without shame, the indecencies of a wanton. The recollec tion of many readers will readily supply the instances at which I have just hinted.

Very early, indeed, it was apparent what would be gained by having so fine a speaker in the character. Upon her indicating a disposition to converse with Orlando after the wrestling, nothing could exceed the beauty of

again

"My pride fell with my fortunes"

"And overthrown-more than your enemies."

• It is not unamusing to think that Ariel should be threatened with a ha bitation of harder digestion than the pine:

"If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak,

And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till

Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters."

You groan'd in the soft pine of Sycorax; how will your tender aërial being like the tough and knotty clasping of the oak, condemned therein to a confinement as long as that you first endured, and equal to the time your gentle service to me has lasted: "twelve winters?"

But I abstain from such reproaches to a different, and, it may be, more popular school; satisfied myself that one of these delicacies conveyed in the suitable tones, and graced by that modest deportment which always attended Mrs. Siddons, was actually worth more to the heart and head of an audience, than whole acts of rude and intemperate merriment. But the million think such matters dull. To the million, certainly.

The 24th of May this year exhibited a scene of great stage interest-a benefit at Drury Lane Theatre for Mrs. George Anne Bellamy, who had recently excited more than common attention by five volumes of her life, said (for what may not be said?) to be written by herself. She tells us therein, that she was born on St. George's day, 1733. Now it is unfortunate to stumble at the very threshold of a life, for this date must be inaccurate; she is put up in the bills for Miss Prue, in Love for Love, at Covent Garden Theatre, on the 27th March 1742, for Bridgewater's benefit, being her first appearance. This, to be sure, might be a failure from juvenile timidity; because we afterwards find Monimia, in the Orphan, to have been called her first performance, on the 22d November, 1744, and then her powers were so overcome by the novelty of her situation, that she could scarcely be endued with sense and motion till the fourth act, when her mind, by a sudden spring, seemed to recover its elasticity, and Quin had to embrace a young heroine of the genuine stuff. As the date given for that of her birth would show her at this time to have been only eleven years old, and as I suppose the audiences of that age not absolutely childish, I take it for granted that Chetwood was right when he dated her birth in the year 1727, and such an ascription will still leave a sufficient degree of precocity for fools to wonder at.

When Braganza had been performed, and Mrs. Yates had exerted her fine powers to a very crowded house, an address was expected from the brilliant speaker of a former day; but she had lost her faculties in the decline of life so completely, that at the age of fifty-eight she had become an imbecile helpless old woman, diminutive in stature, and uninteresting in countenance, and the delightful Farren made the acknowledgments for her benefit.

CHAPTER XI.

Close of the season of 1784-5.-No production of any conse quence.-Brief display of dramatic talent in Sheridan.His reported new Opera and Comedy.-Affectation as a subject.-Destouches.-Murphy-As to tragedy, nothing expected or desired.--Jephson characterised.Our dresses. scenery. Mr. Kemble's revivals.-Colman the younger.Turk and No Turk.-Young Bannister.-His talents.Private excellence.--Kemble as a companion.-Miss E. Kemble.-Mrs. Inchbald's I'll Tell You What.--Colman, senior.--Gibbon.-Author becomes known to Mr. Colman. --Account of his manner.-Miss Younge married to Mr. Pope-Miss Brunton.

SUCH was the close of the season 1784-5. The review here given of it has shown that there was no new production of the slightest consequence. Dramatic talent had made a dazzling, but brief display in Sheridan: the wit that might have divided the palm with Congreve, was forced from its natural seat, and condemned to the benches of the opposition in parliament. Sheridan, indeed, talked occasionally of returning to his dramatic pursuits, and announced that his opera of the Caravan should speedily appear, and rival the Duenna; and that he had a comedy in great forwardness, upon the subject of affectation.

But mixed up as he was with the endless struggles of the whig party, with the personal anxiety of placing his oratory upon a level with that of Burke and Fox, Mr. Sheridan could hardly be expected to find time for such a devotion of his powers as was necessary to the production of new dramas not inferior to the past; and in fact, Sheridan might be said to be afraid of the author of the School for Scandal. But that he longer retained the power itself, was, at times, not unreasonably questioned: his mind had taken a decided bent towards politics, and I know not that the muses ever allowed so fierce an invasion of their territory. Such hoarse chidings are apt to frighten the mimic sisters from their haunt, and lead them to prefer a calmer residence, though on a less fertile soil.