quently be the extent of their range. Dialogue, to be relished, must be heard; and unless an actor be gifted with the lungs of a Stentor, so as to discharge a bon-mot with the impetus and report of a fowlingpiece, it evaporates like a flash in the pan, which may startle the exhibitor, and one or two of his brother sportsmen, but can never produce an effect upon that against which it is levelled. It is a remark as old as Cicero, that impressions are less vividly received through the ear, than through the eye: in addressing the former organ, we have also to contend with the variety of tastes arising from the difference of mental faculties, as originally constituted, or affected by education; and hence a dramatic colloquy, which may be precisely adapted to the level of the medium ranks of intellect, may be too refined for the vulgar, and too familiar for the cultivated classes of society. But in communicating with the eye, there is no distinction of ranks, no shades of comprehension, no limitations of language or of nation, no exposure to keen and angry criticism. Large as our theatres are, all can see; and if we would speak to all, we must approach them through the only universal medium-the eye. Such being the advantages of the ocular over the auricular stile of dramatic writing, can we wonder that it is eagerly adopted even by those who may perhaps despise the lenten entertainment which is alone adapted to the mansion and the guests; and who, instead of the "feast of reason and the flow of soul," are compelled to invent wooden or earthenware Dram. Pers., to exchange repartees between joint-stools and tables, -to elicit wit from mahogany, and affect an audience with the catastrophe of crashing china? To be a good comic dramatist, in the old and genuine acceptation of the word, required a combination of no ordinary talents. To the illumination of wit, that heavenly meteor of the mind which is not to be lighted up at the midnight lamp, nor conveyed to us by reflection, he was expected to add a solid judgment adequate to restrain and regulate the fire of his genius:-a penetration that, like the electric fluid, should perforate and decompound every object on which it alighted:a keen perception of the fantastic inconsistencies which such an intuition will discover, and a happy faculty of bringing them forward in the most ludicrous attitudes:-fancy, to invent an action which would develope his characters, and interest an audience, without outraging nature:-erudition, to ennoble his dialogue, and embellish his dramatic structure with classical images:-taste, to preside over all, like a tutelary deity, and round it into beauty by her graceful touches. These were the qualifications formerly deemed essential in the composition of a perfect dramatist; and while such an opinion existed, we cannot be surprised that those who ventured into the arena were combatants of no vulgar prowess. Still less can we be surprised, if in these days, when the art itself has degenerated into pantomime, artists, utterly ungifted with the lofty endowments we have enumerated, should start from their Baotian abodes, take possession of the stage, and be able to arrest the degrading applauses of a degraded audience by every species of mountebank mummery. From the moment it became established that dialogue alone was insufficient to fill these vast edifices, it was easy to foresee that the Temple of Thalia would quickly be converted into her mausoleum; that the stage would be successively trodden by beings progressively declining in the scale of reason, and finally become polluted by the beasts of the field. Nor has the debasing influence of these stupendous theatres been limited to authors: performers have participated in their baneful operation, and have been tempted, if not compelled, to become instrumental in the degradation of the drama. With a jealous sensibility, constantly and keenly awake to the manifestations of popular applause, on which their existence so materially depends, they could not fail to discover that they, too, must address themselves to the eyes rather than to the understandings of their spectators; that no joke was half so productive of applause as a practical one; and that muscular sallies and manual rejoinders were the species of wit best calculated for general demand, and best paid by ready returns of applause. "For this hands, lips, and eyes, are put to school, And each instructed feature has its rule." If a performer be furnished with a clap-trap or a joke, to usher his entrance or his exit; if his dialogue be just laced at the skirts with a bit of point, he is very little solicitous for what further he may have to say; but extremely anxious that he should have abundance to do. "Give me situation-give me action-give ་ me scope for limb drollery,"-these are the exclamations with which a writer for the stage is sure to be assailed; and instead of sitting down to work up his dialogue, which he is conscious would be a very idle waste of labour, he considers only how he may work these human telegraphs so as to make them the communicants of acceptable intelligence to the audience. Thus it becomes the interest, and of course the practice, of both parties, to despise moral when compared with physical means of attraction; to exalt matter over mind, to sacrifice intellect and dialogue at the shrine of splendour and pantomime, and convert a histrionic artist into a mummer and a mime. Even where a performer has an unexceptionable colloquy to deliver, and a genuine passion to develope, he must keep his lungs perpetually on the stretch to become audible, and distort his face into caricature to produce adequate expression. As the scenes must be highly over-coloured and bedaubed with coarse patches of paint or tinsel, to have any effect in the remote boxes, so must the actors, who may be termed the living scenery of the stage, spread out their features into grimace, and assume a broad foreground of buffoonery, that the picture they present may be visible to the distant spectators. Hence all those miniature touches, those delicate and evanescent shadowings of passion, which flit over the countenance to foretell the coming storm, like the shadows of clouds coursing athwart the mirror of the deep, are totally lost, and with them disappears the essence of the actor's art, and the proper principle of the spectator's delight.-Garrick himself, were he to revisit us, and perform as in his happiest days, would be Garrick to the stage boxes only: the rest of the audience could no more follow the finer fluctuations of his countenance, or catch the undertones of his voice, than if they were gazing upon his statue in Westminster Abbey. THE POET'S WINTER SONG. TO HIS WIFE. THE birds that sang so sweet in the summer skies are fled, We too, my faithful wife, feel our winter coming on, And our dreams of early life like the summer birds are gone: My head is silver'd o'er, while thine eyes their fire have lost, And thy voice, so sweet of yore, is enchain'd by age's frost. But the founts that live and shoot through the bosom of the earth, Still prepare each seed and root to give future flowers their birth; And we, my dearest Jane, spite of age's wintry blight, ; For Love's declining sun shall with Friendship's rays be fed. wife, Thus as happy as when young shall we both grow old, my weather, Till in ripeness of old age we both drop to earth together! |