Chapter I: AM a blessed Glendoveer: {28b}

’Tis mine to speak, and yours to hear.
Midnight, {28c} yet not a nose
From Tower-hill to Piccadilly snored!
Midnight, yet not a nose
From Indra drew the essence of repose!
See with what crimson fury,
By Indra fann’d, the god of fire ascends the walls of Drury

Tops of houses, blue with lead,
Bend beneath the landlord’s tread.
Master and ’prentice, serving-man and lord,
Nailor and tailor,
Grazier and brazier,
Through streets and alleys pour’d—
All, all abroad to gaze,
And wonder at the blaze.
Thick calf, fat foot, and slim knee,
Mounted on roof and chimney, {29a}
The mighty roast, the mighty stew
To see;
As if the dismal view
Were but to them a Brentford jubilee.
Vainly, all-radiant Surya, sire of Phæton
(By Greeks call’d Apollo {29b}),
Hollow
Sounds from thy harp proceed;
Combustible as reed,
The tongue of Vulcan licks thy wooden legs:
From Drury’s top, dissever’d from thy pegs,
Thou tumblest,
Humblest,
Where late thy bright effulgence shone on high;
While, by thy somerset excited, fly
Ten million
Billion
Sparks from the pit, to gem the sable sky.
Now come the men of fire to quench the fires:
To Russell Street see Globe and Atlas run,
Hope gallops first, and second Sun;
On flying heel,
See Hand-in-Hand
O’ertake the band!
View with what glowing wheel
He nicks
Phoenix!
While Albion scampers from Bridge Street, Blackfriars—
Drury Lane! Drury Lane!
Drury Lane! Drury Lane!
They shout and they bellow again and again.
All, all in vain!
Water turns steam;
Each blazing beam
Hisses defiance to the eddying spout:
It seems but too plain that nothing can put it out!
Drury Lane! Drury Lane!
See, Drury Lane expires!

Pent in by smoke-dried beams, twelve moons or more,
Shorn of his ray,
Surya in durance lay:
The workmen heard him shout,
But thought it would not pay
To dig him out.
When lo! terrific Yamen, lord of hell,
Solemn as lead,
Judge of the dead,
Sworn foe to witticism,
By men call’d criticism,
Came passing by that way:
Rise! cried the fiend, behold a sight of gladness!
Behold the rival theatre!
I’ve set O. P. at her, {31}
Who, like a bull-dog bold,
Growls and fastens on his hold.
The many-headed rabble roar in madness;
Thy rival staggers: come and spy her
Deep in the mud as thou art in the mire.
So saying, in his arms he caught the beaming one,
And crossing Russell Street,
He placed him on his feet
’Neath Covent Garden dome. Sudden a sound,
As of the bricklayers of Babel, rose:
Horns, rattles, drums, tin trumpets, sheets of copper,
Punches and slaps, thwacks of all sorts and sizes,
From the knobb’d bludgeon to the taper switch, {32}
Ran echoing round the walls; paper placards
Blotted the lamps, boots brown with mud the benches;
A sea of heads roll’d roaring in the pit;
On paper wings O. P.’s
Reclin’d in lettered ease;
While shout and scoff,
Ya! ya! off! off!
Like thunderbolt on Surya’s ear-drum fell,
And seemed to paint
The savage oddities of Saint
Bartholomew in hell.

Tears dimm’d the god of light—
“Bear me back, Yamen, from this hideous sight;
Bear me back, Yamen, I grow sick,
Oh! bury me again in brick;
Shall I on New Drury tremble,
To be O. P.’d like Kemble?
No,
Better remain by rubbish guarded,
Than thus hubbubish groan placarded;
Bear me back, Yamen, bear me quick,
And bury me again in brick.”
Obedient Yamen
Answered, “Amen,”
And did
As he was bid.

There lay the buried god, and Time
Seemed to decree eternity of lime;
But pity, like a dew-drop, gently prest
Almighty Veeshnoo’s {34} adamantine breast:
He, the preserver, ardent still
To do whate’er he says he will,
From South-hill wing’d his way,
To raise the drooping lord of day.
All earthly spells the busy one o’erpower’d;
He treats with men of all conditions,
Poets and players, tradesmen and musicians;
Nay, even ventures
To attack the renters,
Old and new:
A list he gets
Of claims and debts,
And deems nought done, while aught remains to do.

Yamen beheld, and wither’d at the sight;
Long had he aim’d the sunbeam to control,
For light was hateful to his soul:
“Go on!” cried the hellish one, yellow with spite,
“Go on!” cried the hellish one, yellow with spleen,
“Thy toils of the morning, like Ithaca’s queen,
I’ll toil to undo every night.”

Ye sons of song, rejoice!
Veeshnoo has still’d the jarring elements,
The spheres hymn music;
Again the god of day
Peeps forth with trembling ray,
Wakes, from their humid caves, the sleeping Nine,
And pours at intervals a strain divine.
“I have an iron yet in the fire,” cried Yamen;
“The vollied flame rides in my breath,
My blast is elemental death;
This hand shall tear your paper bonds to pieces;
Ingross your deeds, assignments, leases,
My breath shall every line erase
Soon as I blow the blaze.”

The lawyers are met at the Crown and Anchor,
And Yamen’s visage grows blanker and blanker;
The lawyers are met at the Anchor and Crown,
And Yamen’s cheek is a russety brown:
Veeshnoo, now thy work proceeds;
The solicitor reads,
And, merit of merit!
Red wax and green ferret
Are fixed at the foot of the deeds!

Yamen beheld and shiver’d;
His finger and thumb were cramp’d;
His ear by the flea in ’t was bitten,
When he saw by the lawyer’s clerk written,
Sealed and delivered,
Being first duly stamped.

“Now for my turn!” the demon cries, and blows
A blast of sulphur from his mouth and nose.
Ah! bootless aim! the critic fiend,
Sagacious Yamen, judge of hell,
Is judged in his turn;
Parchment won’t burn!
His schemes of vengeance are dissolved in air,
Parchment won’t tear!!

Is it not written in the Himakoot book
(That mighty Baly from Kehama took),
“Who blows on pounce
Must the Swerga renounce?”
It is! it is! Yamen, thine hour is nigh:
Like as an eagle claws an asp,
Veeshnoo has caught him in his mighty grasp,
And hurl’d him, in spite of his shrieks and his squalls,
Whizzing aloft, like the Temple fountain,
Three times as high as Meru mountain,
Which is
Ninety-nine times as high as St. Paul’s.

Descending, he twisted like Levy the Jew, {36}
Who a durable grave meant
To dig in the pavement
Of Monument-yard:
To earth by the laws of attraction he flew,
And he fell, and he fell
To the regions of hell;
Nine centuries bounced he from cavern to rock,
And his head, as he tumbled, went nickety-nock,
Like a pebble in Carisbrook well.

Now Veeshnoo turn’d round to a capering varlet,
Array’d in blue and white and scarlet,
And cried, “Oh! brown of slipper as of hat!
Lend me, Harlequin, thy bat!”
He seized the wooden sword, and smote the earth;
When lo! upstarting into birth
A fabric, gorgeous to behold,
Outshone in elegance the old,
And Veeshnoo saw, and cried, “Hail, playhouse mine!”
Then, bending his head, to Surya he said,
“Soon as thy maiden sister Di
Caps with her copper lid the dark blue sky,
And through the fissures of her clouded fan
Peeps at the naughty monster man.
Go mount yon edifice,
And show thy steady face
In renovated pride,
More bright, more glorious than before!”
But ah! coy Surya still felt a twinge,
Still smarted from his former singe;
And to Veeshnoo replied,
In a tone rather gruff,
“No, thank you! one tumble’s enough!”

VIII. DRURY’S DIRGE. {38a}

BY LAURA MATILDA. {38b}

“You praise our sires; but though they wrote with force,
Their rhymes were vicious, and their diction coarse:
We want their _strength_, agreed; but we atone
For that, and more, by _sweetness_ all our own.”—GIFFORD.

I.

BALMY Zephyrs, lightly flitting,
Shade me with your azure wing;
On Parnassus’ summit sitting,
Aid me, Clio, while I sing.

II.

Softly slept the dome of Drury
O’er the empyreal crest,
When Alecto’s sister-fury
Softly slumb’ring sunk to rest.

III.

Lo! from Lemnos limping lamely,
Lags the lowly Lord of Fire,
Cytherea yielding tamely
To the Cyclops dark and dire.

IV.

Clouds of amber, dreams of gladness,
Dulcet joys and sports of youth,
Soon must yield to haughty sadness;
Mercy holds the veil to Truth.

V.

See Erostratus the second
Fires again Diana’s fane;
By the Fates from Orcus beckon’d,
Clouds envelope Drury Lane.

VI.

Lurid smoke and frank suspicion
Hand in hand reluctant dance:
While the God fulfils his mission,
Chivalry, resign thy lance.

VII.

Hark! the engines blandly thunder,
Fleecy clouds dishevell’d lie,
And the firemen, mute with wonder,
On the son of Saturn cry.

VIII.

See the bird of Ammon sailing,
Perches on the engine’s peak,
And, the Eagle firemen hailing,
Soothes them with its bickering beak.

IX.

Juno saw, and mad with malice,
Lost the prize that Paris gave:
Jealousy’s ensanguined chalice
Mantling pours the orient wave.

X.

Pan beheld Patroclus dying,
Nox to Niobe was turn’d;
From Busiris Bacchus flying,
Saw his Semele inurn’d.

XI.

Thus fell Drury’s lofty glory,
Levell’d with the shuddering stones;
Mars, with tresses black and gory,
Drinks the dew of pearly groans.

XII.

Hark! what soft Eolian numbers
Gem the blushes of the morn!
Break, Amphion, break your slumbers,
Nature’s ringlets deck the thorn.

XIII.

Ha! I hear the strain erratic
Dimly glance from pole to pole;
Raptures sweet and dreams ecstatic
Fire my everlasting soul.

XIV.

Where is Cupid’s crimson motion?
Billowy ecstasy of woe,
Bear me straight, meandering ocean,
Where the stagnant torrents flow.

XV.

Blood in every vein is gushing,
Vixen vengeance lulls my heart:
See, the Gorgon gang is rushing!
Never, never let us part!

IX. A TALE OF DRURY LANE.

BY W. S. {42}

[SIR WALTER SCOTT.]

[Sir Walter Scott died 21st September, 1832, in his 62nd year.]

* * * * *

[_To be spoken by Mr. Kemble_, _in a suit of the Black Prince’s armour_, _borrowed from the Tower_.]

SURVEY this shield, all bossy bright—
These cuisses twain behold!
Look on my form in armour dight
Of steel inlaid with gold;
My knees are stiff in iron buckles,
Stiff spikes of steel protect my knuckles.
These once belong’d to sable prince,
Who never did in battle wince;
With valour tart as pungent quince,
He slew the vaunting Gaul.
Rest there awhile, my bearded lance,
While from green curtain I advance
To yon foot-lights—no trivial dance, {43a}
And tell the town what sad mischance
Did Drury Lane befall.

THE NIGHT.

On fair Augusta’s {43b} towers and trees
Flitted the silent midnight breeze,
Curling the foliage as it pass’d,
Which from the moon-tipp’d plumage cast
A spangled light, like dancing spray,
Then re-assumed its still array;
When, as night’s lamp unclouded hung,
And down its full effulgence flung,
It shed such soft and balmy power
That cot and castle, hall and bower,
And spire and dome, and turret height,
Appeared to slumber in the light.
From Henry’s chapel, Rufus’ hall,
To Savoy, Temple, and St. Paul;
From Knightsbridge, Pancras, Camden Town,
To Redriffe, Shadwell, Horsleydown,
No voice was heard, no eye unclosed,
But all in deepest sleep reposed.
They might have thought, who gazed around
Amid a silence so profound,
It made the senses thrill,
That ’twas no place inhabited,
But some vast city of the dead—
All was so hush’d and still.

THE BURNING.

As Chaos, which, by heavenly doom,
Had slept in everlasting gloom,
Started with terror and surprise
When light first flash’d upon her eyes—
So London’s sons in nightcap woke,
In bed-gown woke her dames;
For shouts were heard ’mid fire and smoke,
And twice ten hundred voices spoke—
“The playhouse is in flames!”
And, lo! where Catherine Street extends,
A fiery tail its lustre lends
To every window-pane;
Blushes each spout in Martlet Court,
And Barbican, moth-eaten fort,
And Covent Garden kennels sport
A bright ensanguined drain;
Meux’s new brewhouse shows the light,
Rowland Hill’s Chapel, and the height
Where Patent Shot they sell;
The Tennis Court, so fair and tall,
Partakes the ray, with Surgeons’ Hall,
The Ticket-Porters’ House of Call,
Old Bedlam, close by London Wall, {45}
Wright’s shrimp and oyster shop withal,
And Richardson’s Hotel.
Nor these alone, but far and wide,
Across red Thames’s gleaming tide,
To distant fields the blaze was borne,
And daisy white and hoary thorn
In borrow’d lustre seem’d to sham
The rose or red sweet Wil-li-am.
To those who on the hills around
Beheld the flames from Drury’s mound,
As from a lofty altar rise,
It seem’d that nations did conspire
To offer to the god of fire
Some vast, stupendous sacrifice!
The summon’d firemen woke at call,
And hied them to their stations all:
Starting from short and broken snooze,
Each sought his pond’rous hobnail’d shoes,
But first his worsted hosen plied,
Plush breeches next, in crimson dyed,
His nether bulk embraced;
Then jacket thick, of red or blue,
Whose massy shoulder gave to view
The badge of each respective crew,
In tin or copper traced.
The engines thunder’d through the street,
Fire-hook, pipe, bucket, all complete,
And torches glared, and clattering feet
Along the pavement paced.
And one, the leader of the band,
From Charing Cross along the Strand,
Like stag by beagles hunted hard,
Ran till he stopp’d at Vin’gar Yard. {46a}
The burning badge his shoulder bore,
The belt and oil-skin hat he wore,
The cane he had, his men to bang,
Show’d foreman of the British gang—
His name was Higginbottom. Now
’Tis meet that I should tell you how
The others came in view:
The Hand-in-Hand the race begun, {46b}
Then came the Phoenix and the Sun,
Th’ Exchange, where old insurers run,
The Eagle, where the new;
With these came Rumford, Bumford, Cole,
Robins from Hockley in the Hole,
Lawson and Dawson, cheek by jowl,
Crump from St. Giles’s Pound:
Whitford and Mitford join’d the train,
Huggins and Muggins from Chick Lane,
And Clutterbuck, who got a sprain
Before the plug was found.
Hobson and Jobson did not sleep,
But ah! no trophy could they reap,
For both were in the Donjon Keep
Of Bridewell’s gloomy mound!

E’en Higginbottom now was posed,
For sadder scene was ne’er disclosed
Without, within, in hideous show,
Devouring flames resistless glow,
And blazing rafters downward go,
And never halloo “Heads below!”
Nor notice give at all.
The firemen terrified are slow
To bid the pumping torrent flow,
For fear the roof should fall.
Back, Robins, back! Crump, stand aloof!
Whitford, keep near the walls!
Huggins, regard your own behoof,
For, lo! the blazing rocking roof
Down, down in thunder falls!
An awful pause succeeds the stroke,
And o’er the ruins volumed smoke,
Rolling around its pitchy shroud,
Conceal’d them from th’ astonish’d crowd.
At length the mist awhile was clear’d,
When lo! amid the wreck uprear’d,
Gradual a moving head appear’d,
And Eagle firemen knew
’Twas Joseph Muggins, name revered,
The foreman of their crew.
Loud shouted all in signs of woe,
“A Muggins! to the rescue, ho!”
And pour’d the hissing tide:
Meanwhile the Muggins fought amain,
And strove and struggled all in vain,
For, rallying but to fall again,
He totter’d, sunk, and died!

Did none attempt, before he fell,
To succour one they loved so well?
Yes, Higginbottom did aspire
(His fireman’s soul was all on fire)
His brother chief to save;
But ah! his reckless generous ire
Served but to abate his grave!
’Mid blazing beams and scalding streams.
Through fire and smoke he dauntless broke,
Where Muggins broke before:
But sulphry stench and boiling drench
Destroying sight o’erwhelm’d him quite,
He sunk to rise no more.
Still o’er his head, while fate he braved,
His whizzing water-pipe he waved;
“Whitford and Mitford, ply your pumps,
You, Clutterbuck, come stir your stumps,
Why are you in such doleful dumps?
A fireman, and afraid of bumps!—
What are they fear’d on? fools! ’od rot ’em!”
Were the last words of Higginbottom. {48}

THE REVIVAL.

Peace to his soul! new prospects bloom,
And toil rebuilds what fires consume!
Eat we and drink we, be our ditty,
“Joy to the managing committee!”
Eat we and drink we, join to rum
Roast beef and pudding of the plum!
Forth from thy nook, John Horner, come,
With bread of ginger brown thy thumb,
For this is Drury’s gay day:
Roll, roll thy hoop, and twirl thy tops,
And buy, to glad thy smiling chops,
Crisp parliament with lollypops,
And fingers of the Lady.

Didst mark, how toil’d the busy train,
From morn to eve, till Drury Lane
Leap’d like a roebuck from the plain?
Ropes rose and sunk, and rose again,
And nimble workmen trod;
To realise bold Wyatt’s plan
Rush’d many a howling Irishman;
Loud clatter’d many a porter-can,
And many a ragamuffin clan
With trowel and with hod.

Drury revives! her rounded pate
Is blue, is heavenly blue with slate;
She “wings the midway air” elate,
As magpie, crow, or chough;
White paint her modish visage smears,
Yellow and pointed are her ears,
No pendent portico appears
Dangling beneath, for Whitbread’s shears {49}
Have cut the bauble off.

Yes, she exalts her stately head;
And, but that solid bulk outspread
Opposed you on your onward tread,
And posts and pillars warranted
That all was true that Wyatt said,
You might have deemed her walls so thick
Were not composed of stone or brick,
But all a phantom, all a trick,
Of brain disturb’d and fancy sick,
So high she soars, so vast, so quick!

X. JOHNSON’S GHOST. {52}

[_Ghost of Dr._ JOHNSON _rises from trap-door P. S._, _and Ghost of_ BOSWELL _from trap-door O. P._ _The latter bows respectfully to the House_, _and obsequiously to the Doctor’s Ghost_, _and retires_.]

DOCTOR’S GHOST _loquitur_.

THAT which was organised by the moral ability of one has been executed by the physical efforts of many, and DRURY LANE THEATRE is now complete. Of that part behind the curtain, which has not yet been destined to glow beneath the brush of the varnisher, or vibrate to the hammer of the carpenter, little is thought by the public, and little need be said by the committee. Truth, however, is not to be sacrificed for the accommodation of either; and he who should pronounce that our edifice has received its final embellishment would be disseminating falsehood without incurring favour, and risking the disgrace of detection without participating the advantage of success.

Professions lavishly effused and parsimoniously verified are alike inconsistent with the precepts of innate rectitude and the practice of external policy: let it not then be conjectured that because we are unassuming, we are imbecile; that forbearance is any indication of despondency, or humility of demerit. He that is the most assured of success will make the fewest appeals to favour, and where nothing is claimed that is undue, nothing that is due will be withheld. A swelling opening is too often succeeded by an insignificant conclusion. Parturient mountains have now produced muscipular abortions; and the auditor who compares incipient grandeur with final vulgarity is reminded of the pious hawkers of Constantinople, who solemnly perambulate her streets, exclaiming, “In the name of the Prophet—figs!”

Of many who think themselves wise, and of some who are thought wise by others, the exertions are directed to the revival of mouldering and obscure dramas; to endeavours to exalt that which is now rare only because it was always worthless, and whose deterioration, while it condemned it to living obscurity, by a strange obliquity of moral perception constitutes its title to posthumous renown. To embody the flying colours of folly, to arrest evanescence, to give to bubbles the globular consistency as well as form, to exhibit on the stage the piebald denizen of the stable, and the half-reasoning parent of combs, to display the brisk locomotion of Columbine, or the tortuous attitudinizing of Punch;—these are the occupations of others, whose ambition, limited to the applause of unintellectual fatuity, is too innocuous for the application of satire, and too humble for the incitement of jealousy.

Our refectory will be found to contain every species of fruit, from the cooling nectarine and luscious peach to the puny pippin and the noxious nut. There Indolence may repose, and Inebriety revel; and the spruce apprentice, rushing in at second account, may there chatter with impunity; debarred, by a barrier of brick and mortar, from marring that scenic interest in others, which nature and education have disqualified him from comprehending himself.

Permanent stage-doors we have none. That which is permanent cannot be removed, for, if removed, it soon ceases to be permanent. What stationary absurdity can vie with that ligneous barricado, which, decorated with frappant and tintinnabulant appendages, now serves as the entrance of the lowly cottage, and now as the exit of a lady’s bed-chamber; at one time insinuating plastic Harlequin into a butcher’s shop, and, at another, yawning, as a flood-gate, to precipitate the Cyprians of St. Giles’s into the embraces of Macheath? To elude this glaring absurdity, to give to each respective mansion the door which the carpenter would doubtless have given, we vary our portal with the varying scene, passing from deal to mahogany, and from mahogany to oak, as the opposite claims of cottage, palace, or castle may appear to require.

Amid the general hum of gratulation which flatters us in front, it is fit that some regard should be paid to the murmurs of despondence that assail us in the rear. They, as I have elsewhere expressed it, “who live to please,” should not have their own pleasures entirely overlooked. The children of Thespis are general in their censures of the architect, its having placed the locality of exit at such a distance from the oily irradiators which now dazzle the eyes of him who addresses you. I am, cries the Queen of Terrors, robbed of my fair proportions. When the king-killing Thane hints to the breathless auditory the murders he means to perpetrate, in the castle of Macduff, “ere his purpose cool;” so vast is the interval he has to travel before he can escape from the stage, that his purpose has even time to freeze. Your condition, cries the Muse of Smiles, is hard, but it is cygnet’s down in comparison with mine. The peerless peer of capers and congees {54a} has laid it down as a rule, that the best good thing uttered by the morning visitor should conduct him rapidly to the doorway, last impressions vying in durability with first. But when, on this boarded elongation, it falls to my lot to say a good thing, to ejaculate “keep moving,” or to chant “_hic hoc horum genitivo_,” many are the moments that must elapse ere I can hide myself from public vision in the recesses of O. P. or P. S.

To objections like these, captiously urged and querulously maintained, it is time that equity should conclusively reply. Deviation from scenic propriety has only to vituperate itself for the consequences it generates. Let the actor consider the line of exit as that line beyond which he should not soar in quest of spurious applause: let him reflect, that in proportion as he advances to the lamps, he recedes from nature; that the truncheon of Hotspur acquires no additional charm from encountering the cheek of beauty in the stage-box; and that the bravura of Mandane may produce effect, although the throat of her who warbles it should not overhang the orchestra. The Jove of the modern critical Olympus, Lord Mayor of the theatric sky, {54b} has, _ex cathedrâ_, asserted that a natural actor looks upon the audience part of the theatre as the third side of the chamber he inhabits. Surely, of the third wall thus fancifully erected, our actors should, by ridicule or reason, be withheld from knocking their heads against the stucco.

Time forcibly reminds me that all things which have a limit must be brought to a conclusion. Let me, ere that conclusion arrives, recall to your recollection, that the pillars which rise on either side of me, blooming in virid antiquity, like two massy evergreens, had yet slumbered in their native quarry but for the ardent exertions of the individual who called them into life: to his never-slumbering talents you are indebted for whatever pleasure this haunt of the Muses is calculated to afford. If, in defiance of chaotic malevolence, the destroyer of the temple of Diana yet survives in the name of Erostratus, surely we may confidently predict that the rebuilder of the temple of Apollo will stand recorded to distant posterity in that of—SAMUEL WHITBREAD.

XI. THE BEAUTIFUL INCENDIARY. {56a}

BY THE HON. W. S.

[THE HONOURABLE WILLIAM ROBERT SPENCER.]

[Mr. Spencer died at Paris in October, 1834, aged 65.]

* * * * *

Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas.—VIRGIL.

* * * * *

_Scene draws_, _and discovers a Lady asleep on a couch_.

_Enter_ PHILANDER.

PHILANDER.

I.

SOBRIETY, cease to be sober, {56b}
Cease, Labour, to dig and to delve;
All hail to this tenth of October,
One thousand eight hundred and twelve! {57}
Ha! whom do my peepers remark?
’Tis Hebe with Jupiter’s jug;
O no, ’tis the pride of the Park,
Fair Lady Elizabeth Mugg.

II.

Why, beautiful nymph, do you close
The curtain that fringes your eye?
Why veil in the clouds of repose
The sun that should brighten our sky?
Perhaps jealous Venus has oiled
Your hair with some opiate drug,
Not choosing her charms should be foiled
By Lady Elizabeth Mugg.

III.

But ah! why awaken the blaze
Those bright burning-glasses contain,
Whose lens with concentrated rays
Proved fatal to old Drury Lane?
’Twas all accidental, they cry,—
Away with the flimsy humbug!
’Twas fired by a flash from the eye
Of Lady Elizabeth Mugg.

IV.

Thy glance can in us raise a flame,
Then why should old Drury be free?
Our doom and its doom are the same,
Both subject to beauty’s decree.
No candles the workmen consumed
When deep in the ruins they dug;
Thy flash still their progress illumed,
Sweet Lady Elizabeth Mugg.

V.

Thy face a rich fire-place displays:
The mantel-piece marble—thy brows;
Thine eyes are the bright beaming blaze;
Thy bib, which no trespass allows,
The fender’s tall barrier marks;
Thy tippet’s the fire-quelling rug,
Which serves to extinguish the sparks
Of Lady Elizabeth Mugg.

VI.

The Countess a lily appears,
Whose tresses the pearl-drops emboss;
The Marchioness, blooming in years,
A rose-bud enveloped in moss;
But thou art the sweet passion-flower,
For who would not slavery hug,
To pass but one exquisite hour
In the arms of Elizabeth Mugg?

VII.

When at Court, or some Dowager’s rout,
Her diamond aigrette meets our view,
She looks like a glow-worm dressed out,
Or tulips bespangled with dew.
Her two lips denied to man’s suit
Are shared with her favourite Pug;
What lord would not change with the brute,
To live with Elizabeth Mugg?

VIII.

Could the stage be a large vis-à-vis,
Reserved for the polished and great,
Where each happy lover might see
The nymph he adores tête-à-tête;
No longer I’d gaze on the ground,
And the load of despondency lug,
For I’d book myself all the year round
To ride with the sweet Lady Mugg.

IX.

Yes, she in herself is a host,
And if she were here all alone,
Our house might nocturnally boast
A bumper of fashion and ton.
Again should it burst in a blaze,
In vain would they ply Congreve’s plug, {59}
For nought could extinguish the rays
From the glance of divine Lady Mugg.

X.

O could I as Harlequin frisk,
And thou be my Columbine fair,
My wand should with one magic whisk
Transport us to Hanover Square:
St. George’s should lend us its shrine,
The parson his shoulders might shrug,
But a licence should force him to join
My hand in the hand of my Mugg.

XI.

Court-plaster the weapons should tip,
By Cupid shot down from above,
Which, cut into spots for thy lip,
Should still barb the arrows of love.
The God who from others flies quick,
With us should be slow as a slug;
As close as a leech he should stick
To me and Elizabeth Mugg.

XII.

For Time would, with us, ’stead of sand,
Put filings of steel in his glass,
To dry up the blots of his hand,
And spangle life’s page as they pass.
Since all flesh is grass ere ’tis hay, {60}
O may I in clover live snug,
And when old Time mows me away,
Be stacked with defunct Lady Mugg!

XII. FIRE AND ALE.

BY M. G. L. {61}

[MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS.]

[Mr. Lewis died 14th May, 1818, in his 43rd year.]

* * * * *

Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum.—VIRGIL.

MY palate is parched with Pierian thirst,
Away to Parnassus I’m beckoned;
List, warriors and dames, while my lay is rehearsed,
I sing of the singe of Miss Drury the first,
And the birth of Miss Drury the second.

The Fire King, one day, rather amorous felt;
He mounted his hot copper filly;
His breeches and boots were of tin, and the belt
Was made of cast iron, for fear it should melt
With the heat of the copper colt’s belly.

Sure never was skin half so scalding as his!
When an infant ’twas equally horrid;
For the water, when he was baptized, gave a fizz,
And bubbled and simmer’d and started off, whizz!
As soon as it sprinkled his forehead.

O! then there was glitter and fire in each eye,
For two living coals were the symbols;
His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry,
It rattled against them, as though you should try
To play the piano in thimbles.

From his nostrils a lava sulphureous flows,
Which scorches wherever it lingers;
A snivelling fellow he’s call’d by his foes,
For he can’t raise his paw up to blow his red nose
For fear it should blister his fingers.

His wig is of flames curling over his head,
Well powder’d with white smoking ashes;
He drinks gunpowder tea, melted sugar of lead,
Cream of tartar, and dines on hot spice gingerbread,
Which black from the oven he gnashes.

Each fire-nymph his kiss from her countenance shields,
’Twould soon set her cheekbone a frying;
He spit in the Tenter-Ground near Spital-fields,
And the hole that it burnt, and the chalk that it yields
Make a capital lime-kiln for drying.

When he open’d his mouth, out there issued a blast,
(Nota bene, I do not mean swearing,)
But the noise that it made, and the heat that it cast,
I’ve heard it from those who have seen it, surpass’d
A shot manufactory flaring.

He blazed, and he blazed, as be gallop’d to snatch
His bride, little dreaming of danger;
His whip was a torch, and his spur was a match,
And over the horse’s left eye was a patch,
To keep it from burning the manger.

And who is the housemaid he means to enthral
In his cinder-producing alliance?
Tis Drury-Lane Playhouse, so wide and so tall,
Who, like other combustible ladies, must fall,
If she cannot set sparks at defiance.

On his warming-pan kneepan he clattering roll’d,
And the housemaid his hand would have taken,
But his hand, like his passion, was too hot to hold,
And she soon let it go, but her new ring of gold
All melted, like butter or bacon!

Oh! then she look’d sour, and indeed well she might,
For Vinegar Yard was before her;
But, spite of her shrieks, the ignipotent knight,
Enrobing the maid in a flame of gas light,
To the skies in a sky-rocket bore her.

Look! look! ’tis the Ale King, so stately and starch,
Whose votaries scorn to be sober;
He pops from his vat, like a cedar or larch;
Brown-stout is his doublet, he hops in his march,
And froths at the mouth in October.

His spear is a spigot, his shield is a bung;
He taps where the housemaid no more is,
When lo! at his magical bidding, upsprung
A second Miss Drury, tall, tidy, and young,
And sported _in loco sororis_.

Back, lurid in air, for a second regale,
The Cinder King, hot with desire,
To Brydges Street hied; but the Monarch of Ale,
With uplifted spigot and faucet, and pail,
Thus chided the Monarch of Fire:

“Vile tyrant, beware of the ferment I brew;
I rule the roast here, dash the wig o’ me!
If, spite of your marriage with Old Drury, you
Come here with your tinderbox, courting the New
I’ll have you indicted for bigamy!”

XIII. PLAYHOUSE MUSINGS.

BY S. T. C. {65}

[SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.]

[Mr. Coleridge died 25th July, 1814, in his 62nd year.]

* * * * *

Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris; neque si male cesserat, usquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene.

HOR.

MY pensive Public, wherefore look you sad?
I had a grandmother, she kept a donkey
To carry to the mart her crockery ware,
And when that donkey look’d me in the face,
His face was sad! and you are sad, my Public!

Joy should be yours: this tenth day of October
Again assembles us in Drury Lane.
Long wept my eye to see the timber planks
That hid our ruins; many a day I cried,
Ah me! I fear they never will rebuild it!
Till on one eve, one joyful Monday eve,
As along Charles Street I prepared to walk,
Just at the corner, by the pastrycook’s,
I heard a trowel tick against a brick.
I look’d me up, and straight a parapet
Uprose at least seven inches o’er the planks.
Joy to thee, Drury! to myself I said:
He of Blackfriars’ Road, {66} who hymned thy downfall
In loud Hosannahs, and who prophesied
That flames, like those from prostrate Solyma,
Would scorch the hand that ventured to rebuild thee,
Has proved a lying prophet. From that hour,
As leisure offer’d, close to Mr. Spring’s
Box-office door, I’ve stood and eyed the builders.
They had a plan to render less their labours;
Workmen in olden times would mount a ladder
With hodded heads, but these stretch’d forth a pole
From the wall’s pinnacle, they plac’d a pulley
Athwart the pole, a rope athwart the pulley;
To this a basket dangled; mortar and bricks
Thus freighted, swung securely to the top,
And in the empty basket workmen twain
Precipitate, unhurt, accosted earth.

Oh! ’twas a goodly sound, to hear the people
Who watch’d the work, express their various thoughts!
While some believed it never would be finish’d,
Some, on the contrary, believed it would.

I’ve heard our front that faces Drury Lane
Much criticised; they say ’tis vulgar brick-work,
A mimic manufactory of floor-cloth.
One of the morning papers wish’d that front
Cemented like the front in Brydges Street;
As it now looks, they call it Wyatt’s Mermaid,
A handsome woman with a fish’s tail.

White is the steeple of St. Bride’s in Fleet Street;
The Albion (as its name denotes) is white;
Morgan and Saunders’ shop for chairs and tables
Gleams like a snow-ball in the setting sun;
White is Whitehall. But not St. Bride’s in Fleet Street,
The spotless Albion, Morgan, no, nor Saunders,
Nor white Whitehall, is white as Drury’s face.

Oh, Mr. Whitbread! {67} fie upon you, sir!
I think you should have built a colonnade;
When tender Beauty, looking for her coach,
Protrudes her gloveless hand, perceives the shower
And draws the tippet closer round her throat,
Perchance her coach stands half a dozen off,
And, ere she mounts the step, the oozing mud
Soaks through her pale kid slipper. On the morrow
She coughs at breakfast, and her gruff papa
Cries, “There you go! this comes of playhouses!”
To build no portico is penny wise:
Heaven grant it prove not in the end pound foolish!

Hail to thee, Drury! Queen of Theatres!
What is the Regency in Tottenham Street,
The Royal Amphitheatre of Arts,
Astley’s, Olympic, or the Sans Pareil,
Compared with thee? Yet when I view thee push’d
Back from the narrow street that christened thee,
I know not why they call thee Drury Lane.

Amid the freaks that modern fashion sanctions,
It grieves me much to see live animals
Brought on the stage. Grimaldi has his rabbit,
Laurent his cat, and Bradbury his pig;
Fie on such tricks! Johnson, the machinist
Of former Drury, imitated life
Quite to the life. The Elephant its Blue Beard,
Stuff’d by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis,
As spruce as he who roar’d in Padmanaba. {68}
Nought born on earth should die. On hackney stands
I reverence the coachman who cries “Gee,”
And spares the lash. When I behold a spider
Prey on a fly, a magpie on a worm,
Or view a butcher with horn-handled knife
Slaughter a tender lamb as dead as mutton,
Indeed, indeed, I’m very, very sick!

[Exit hastily.

XIV. DRURY-LANE HUSTINGS.

A New Halfpenny Ballad.

BY A PIC-NIC POET. {69}

* * * * *

This is the very age of promise: To promise is most courtly and
fashionable. Performance is a kind of will or testament, which
argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it.—TIMON OF
ATHENS.

[_To be sung by_ MR. JOHNSON _in the character of_ LOONEY M’TWOLTER.]

I.

Mr. Jack, your address, says the Prompter to me,
So I gave him my card—No, that a’nt it, says he;
’Tis your public address. Oh! says I, never fear,
If address you are bother’d for, only look here.

[_Puts on hat affectedly_.
Tol de rol lol, &c.

II.

With Drurys for sartin we’ll never have done,
We’ve built up another, and yet there’s but one;
The old one was best, yet I’d say, if I durst,
The new one is better—the last is the first.

Tol de rol, &c.

III.

These pillars are call’d by a Frenchified word,
A something that’s jumbled of antique and verd;
The boxes may show us some verdant antiques,
Some old harridans who beplaster their cheeks.

Tol de rol, &c.

IV.

Only look how high Tragedy, Comedy, stick,
Lest their rivals, the horses, should give them a kick!
If you will not descend when our authors beseech ye,
You’ll stop there for life, for I’m sure they can’t reach ye.

Tol de rol, &c.

V.

Each one shilling god within reach of a nod is,
And plain are the charms of each gallery goddess—
You, Brandy-fac’d Moll, don’t be looking askew,
When I talk’d of a goddess I didn’t mean you.

Tol de rol, &c.

VI.

Our stage is so prettily fashion’d for viewing,
The whole house can see what the whole house is doing:
’Tis just like the Hustings, we kick up a bother;
But saying is one thing, and doing’s another.

Tol de rol, &c.

VII.

We’ve many new houses, and some of them rum ones,
But the newest of all is the new House of Commons;
’Tis a rickety sort of a bantling, I’m told,
It will die of old age when it’s seven years old.

Tol de rol, &c.

VIII.

As I don’t know on whom the election will fall,
I move in return for returning them all;
But for fear Mr. Speaker my meaning should miss,
The house that I wish ’em to sit in is this.

Tol de rol, &c.

IX.

Let us cheer our great Commoner, but for whose aid
We all should have gone with short commons to bed;
And since he has saved all the fat from the fire,
I move that the house be call’d Whitbread’s Entire. {71}

Tol de rol, &c.

XV. ARCHITECTURAL ATOMS.

TRANSLATED BY DR. B. {72}

[DR. THOMAS BUSBY, MUS. DOC.]

* * * * *

Lege, Dick, Lege!—JOSEPH ANDREWS.

* * * * *

_To be recited by the Translator’s Son_.

AWAY, fond dupes! who, smit with sacred lore,
Mosaic dreams in Genesis explore,
Doat with Copernicus, or darkling stray
With Newton, Ptolemy, or Tycho Brahe!
To you I sing not, for I sing of truth,
Primeval systems, and creation’s youth;
Such as of old, with magic wisdom fraught,
Inspired LUCRETIUS to the Latians taught.

I sing how casual bricks, in airy climb,
Encounter’d casual cow-hair, casual lime;
How rafters, borne through wondering clouds elate,
Kiss’d in their slope blue elemental slate,
Clasp’d solid beams in chance-directed fury,
And gave to birth our renovated Drury.

Thee, son of Jove! whose sceptre was confess’d,
Where fair Æolia springs from Tethys’ breast;
Thence on Olympus, ’mid celestials placed,
GOD OF THE WINDS, and Ether’s boundless waste—
Thee I invoke! Oh _puff_ my bold design,
Prompt the bright thought, and swell th’ harmonious line
Uphold my pinions, and my verse inspire
With Winsor’s {74} patent gas, or wind of fire,
In whose pure blaze thy embryo form enroll’d,
The dark enlightens, and enchafes the cold.

But, while I court thy gifts, be mine to shun
The deprecated prize Ulysses won;
Who, sailing homeward from thy breezy shore,
The prison’d winds in skins of parchment bore.
Speeds the fleet bark till o’er the billowy green
The azure heights of Ithaca are seen;
But while with favouring gales her way she wins,
His curious comrades ope the mystic skins;
When, lo! the rescued winds, with boisterous sweep,
Roar to the clouds and lash the rocking deep;
Heaves the smote vessel in the howling blast,
Splits the stretch’d sail, and cracks the tottering mast.
Launch’d on a plank, the buoyant hero rides
Where ebon Afric stems the sable tides,
While his duck’d comrades o’er the ocean fly,
And sleep not in the whole skins they untie.

So, when to raise the wind some lawyer tries,
Mysterious skins of parchment meet our eyes;
On speeds the smiling suit—“Pleas of our Lord
The King” shine sable on the wide record;
Nods the prunella’d bar, attorneys smile,
And syren jurors flatter to beguile;
Till stript—nonsuited—he is doom’d to toss
In legal shipwreck and redeemless loss!
Lucky if, like Ulysses, he can keep
His head above the waters of the deep.

Æolian monarch! Emperor of Puffs!
We modern sailors dread not thy rebuffs;
See to thy golden shore promiscuous come
Quacks for the lame, the blind, the deaf, the dumb;
Fools are their bankers—a prolific line,
And every mortal malady’s a mine.
Each sly Sangrado, with his poisonous pill,
Flies to the printer’s devil with his bill,
Whose Midas touch can gild his ass’s ears,
And load a knave with folly’s rich arrears.
And lo! a second miracle is thine,
For sloe-juice water stands transformed to wine.
Where Day and Martin’s patent blacking roll’d,
Burst from the vase Pactolian streams of gold;
Laugh the sly wizards, glorying in their stealth,
Quit the black art, and loll in lazy wealth.
See Britain’s Algerines, the lottery fry,
Win annual tribute by the annual lie!
Aided by thee—but whither do I stray?—
Court, city, borough, own thy sovereign sway;
An age of puffs an age of gold succeeds,
And windy bubbles are the spawn it breeds.

If such thy power, O hear the Muse’s prayer!
Swell thy loud lungs and wave thy wings of air;
Spread, viewless giant, all thy arms of mist
Like windmill-sails to bring the poet grist;
As erst thy roaring son, with eddying gale,
Whirl’d Orithyia from her native vale—
So, while Lucretian wonders I rehearse,
Augusta’s sons shall patronise my verse.

I sing of ATOMS, whose creative brain,
With eddying impulse, built new Drury Lane;
Not to the labours of subservient man,
To no young Wyatt appertains the plan—
We mortals stalk, like horses in a mill,
Impassive media of atomic will;
Ye stare! then Truth’s broad talisman discern—
’Tis demonstration speaks—attend, and learn!

From floating elements in chaos hurl’d,
Self-form’d of atoms, sprang the infant world:
No great _First Cause_ inspired the happy plot,
But all was matter—and no matter what.
Atoms, attracted by some law occult,
Settling in spheres, the globe was the result;
Pure child of _Chance_, which still directs the ball,
As rotatory atoms rise or fall.
In ether launch’d, the peopled bubble floats,
A mass of particles and confluent motes,
So nicely poised, that if one atom flings
Its weight away, aloft the planet springs,
And wings its course through realms of boundless space.
Outstripping comets in eccentric race
Add but one atom more, it sinks outright
Down to the realms of Tartarus and night.
What waters melt or scorching fires consume,
In different forms their being re-assume:
Hence can no change arise, except in name,
For weight and substance ever are the same.

Thus with the flames that from old Drury rise
Its elements primeval sought the skies;
There pendulous to wait the happy hour
When new attractions should restore their power:
So, in this procreant theatre elate,
Echoes unborn their future life await;
Here embryo sounds in ether lie conceal’d,
Like words in northern atmosphere congeal’d.
Here many a foetus laugh and half encore
Clings to the roof, or creeps along the floor;
By puffs concipient some in ether flit,
And soar in bravos from the thundering pit;
Some forth on ticket-nights {77} from tradesmen break,
To mar the actor they design to make;
While some this mortal life abortive miss,
Crush’d by a groan, or strangled by a hiss.
So, when “Dog’s-meat” re-echoes through the streets,
Rush sympathetic dogs from their retreats,
Beam with bright blaze their supplicating eyes,
Sink their hind-legs, ascend their joyful cries;
Each, wild with hope, and maddening to prevail,
Points the pleased ear, and wags the expectant tail.

Ye fallen bricks! in Drury’s fire calcined,
Since doom’d to slumber, couch’d upon the wind,
Sweet was the hour, when, tempted by your freaks,
Congenial trowels smooth’d your yellow cheeks.
Float dulcet serenades upon the ear,
Bends every atom from its ruddy sphere,
Twinkles each eye, and, peeping from its veil,
Marks in the adverse crowd its destined male.
The oblong beauties clap their hands of grit,
And brick-dust titterings on the breezes flit;
Then down they rush in amatory race,
Their dusty bridegrooms eager to embrace.
Some choose old lovers, some decide for new,
But each, when fix’d, is to her station true.
Thus various bricks are made, as tastes invite—
The red, the grey, the dingy, or the white.

Perhaps some half-baked rover, frank and free,
To alien beauty bends the lawless knee,
But of unhallow’d fascinations sick,
Soon quite his Cyprian for his married brick;
The Dido atom calls and scolds in vain,
No crisp Æneas soothes the widow’s pain.

So in Cheapside, what time Aurora peeps,
A mingled noise of dustmen, milk, and sweeps
Falls on the housemaid’s ear: amazed she stands,
Then opes the door with cinder-sabled hands,
And “Matches” calls. The dustman, bubbled flat,
Thinks ’tis for him and doffs his fan-tail’d hat;
The milkman, whom her second cries assail,
With sudden sink unyokes the clinking pail;
Now louder grown, by turns she screams and weeps—
Alas! her screaming only brings the sweeps.
Sweeps but put out—she wants to raise a flame,
And calls for matches, but ’tis still the same.
Atoms and housemaids! mark the moral true—
If once ye go astray, no _match_ for you!

As atoms in one mass united mix,
So bricks attraction feel for kindred bricks;
Some in the cellar view, perchance, on high,
Fair chimney chums on beds of mortar lie;
Enamour’d of the sympathetic clod,
Leaps the red bridegroom to the labourer’s hod:
And up the ladder bears the workman, taught
To think he bears the bricks—mistaken thought!
A proof behold! if near the top they find
The nymphs or broken-corner’d or unkind,
Back to the base, “resulting with a bound,” {79}
They bear their bleeding carriers to the ground!

So legends tell along the lofty hill
Paced the twin heroes, gallant Jack and Jill;
On trudged the Gemini to reach the rail
That shields the well’s top from the expectant pail,
When, ah! Jack falls; and, rolling in the rear,
Jill feels the attraction of his kindred sphere;
Head over heels begins his toppling track,
Throws sympathetic somersets with Jack,
And at the mountain’s base bobs plump against him, whack!

Ye living atoms, who unconscious sit,
Jumbled by chance in gallery, box, and pit,
For you no Peter opes the fabled door,
No churlish Charon plies the shadowy oar;
Breathe but a space, and Boreas’ casual sweep
Shall bear your scatter’d corses o’er the deep,
To gorge the greedy elements, and mix
With water, marl, and clay, and stones, and sticks;
While, charged with fancied souls, sticks, stones, and clay
Shall take your seats, and hiss or clap the play.

O happy age! when convert Christians read
No sacred writings but the Pagan creed—
O happy age! when, spurning Newton’s dreams,
Our poets’ sons recite Lucretian themes,
Abjure the idle systems of their youth,
And turn again to atoms and to truth;—
O happier still! when England’s dauntless dames,
Awed by no chaste alarms, no latent shames,
The bard’s fourth book unblushingly peruse,
And learn the rampant lessons of the stews!

All hail, Lucretius! renovated sage!
Unfold the modest mystics of thy page;
Return no more to thy sepulchral shelf,
But live, kind bard—that I may live myself!

XVI. THEATRICAL ALARM-BELL.

BY THE EDITOR OF THE M. P. {81}

[MORNING POST.]

* * * * *

“Bounce, Jupiter, bounce!”—O’HARA.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

As it is now the universally-admitted, and indeed pretty-generally-suspected, aim of Mr. Whitbread and the infamous, bloodthirsty, and, in fact, illiberal faction to which he belongs, to burn to the ground this free and happy Protestant city, and establish himself in St. James’s Palace, his fellow committeemen have thought it their duty to watch the principles of a theatre built under his auspices. The information they have received from an undoubted authority—particularly from an old fruit-woman who has turned king’s evidence, and whose name, for obvious reasons, we forbear to mention, though we have had it some weeks in our possession—has induced them to introduce various reforms—not such reforms as the vile faction clamour for, meaning thereby revolution, but such reforms as are necessary to preserve the glorious constitution of the only free, happy, and prosperous country now left upon the face of the earth. From the valuable and authentic source above alluded to, we have learnt that a sanguinary plot has been formed by some United Irishmen, combined with a gang of Luddites, and a special committee sent over by the Pope at the instigation of the beastly Corsican fiend, for destroying all the loyal part of the audience on the anniversary of that deeply-to-be-abhorred-and-highly-to-be-blamed stratagem, the Gunpowder Plot, which falls this year on Thursday the fifth of November. The whole is under the direction of a delegated committee of O. P.’s whose treasonable exploits at Covent Garden you all recollect, and all of whom would have been hung from the chandeliers at that time, but for the mistaken lenity of Government. At a given signal, a well-known O. P. was to cry out from the gallery, “Nosey! Music!” whereupon all the O. P.’s were to produce from their inside pockets a long pair of shears, edged with felt, to prevent their making any noise, manufactured expressly by a wretch at Birmingham, one of Mr. Brougham’s evidences, and now in custody. With these they were to cut off the heads of all the loyal N. P.’s in the house, without distinction of sex or age. At the signal, similarly given, of “Throw him over!” which it now appears always alluded to the overthrow of our never-sufficiently-enough-to-be-deeply-and-universally-to-be-venerated constitution, all the heads of the N. P.’s were to be thrown at the fiddlers, to prevent their appearing in evidence, or perhaps as a false and illiberal insinuation that they have no heads of their own. All that we know of the further designs of these incendiaries is, that they are by-a-great-deal-too-much-too-horrible-to-be-mentioned.

The Manager has acted with his usual promptitude on this trying occasion. He has contracted for 300 tons of gun powder, which are at this moment placed in a small barrel under the pit; and a descendant of Guy Faux, assisted by Col. Congreve, has undertaken to blow up the house, when necessary, in so novel and ingenious a manner, that every O. P. shall be annihilated, while not a whisker of the N. P.’s shall be singed. This strikingly displays the advantages of loyalty and attachment to government. Several other hints have been taken from the theatrical regulations of the not-a-bit-the-less-on-that-account-to-be-universally-execrated monster Bonaparte. A park of artillery, provided with chain-shot, is to be stationed on the stage, and play upon the audience, in case of any indication of misplaced applause or popular discontent (which accounts for the large space between the curtain and the lamps); and the public will participate our satisfaction in learning that the indecorous custom of standing up with the hat on is to be abolished, as the Bow-street officers are provided with daggers, and have orders to stab all such persons to the heart, and send their bodies to Surgeons’ Hall. Gentlemen who cough are only to be slightly wounded. Fruit-women bawling “Bill of the Play!” are to be forthwith shot, for which purpose soldiers will be stationed in the slips, and ball-cartridge is to be served out with the lemonade. If any of the spectators happen to sneeze or spit, they are to be transported for life; and any person who is so tall as to prevent another seeing, is to be dragged out and sent on board the tender, or, by an instrument to be taken out of the pocket of Procrustes, to be forthwith cut shorter, either at the head or foot, according as his own convenience may dictate.

Thus, ladies and gentlemen, have the committee, through my medium, set forth the not-in-a-hurry-to-be-paralleled plan they have adopted for preserving order and decorum within the walls of their magnificent edifice. Nor have they, while attentive to their own concerns, by any means overlooked those of the cities of London and Westminster. Finding on enumeration that they have, with a with-two-hands-and-one-tongue-to be-applauded liberality, contracted for more gunpowder than they want, they have parted with the surplus to the mattock-carrying and hustings-hammering high-bailiff of Westminster, who has, with his own shovel, dug a large hole in the front of the parish-church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, that, upon the least symptom of ill-breeding in the mob at the general election, the whole of the market may be blown into the air. This, ladies and gentlemen, may at first make provisions _rise_, but we pledge the credit of our theatre that they will soon _fall_ again, and people be supplied, as usual, with vegetables, in the in-general-strewed-with-cabbage-stalks-but-on-Saturday-night-lighted-up- with-lamps market of Covent Garden.

I should expatiate more largely on the other advantages of the glorious constitution of these by-the-whole-of-Europe-envied realms, but I am called away to take an account of the ladies and other artificial flowers at a fashionable rout, of which a full and particular account will hereafter appear. For the present, my fashionable intelligence is scanty, on account of the opening of Drury Lane; and the ladies and gentlemen who honour me will not be surprised to find nothing under my usual head!!

XVII. THE THEATRE.

BY THE REV. G. C. {85}

[THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE.]

[Mr. Crabbe died 3rd February, 1832, in his 78th year.]

* * * * *

“Nil intentatum nostri liquêre poetæ,
Nec minimum meruêre decus, veetigia Græca
Ausi deserere, et celebrare domestica facta.”

HOR.

A PREFACE OF APOLOGIES.

IF the following poem should be fortunate enough to be selected for the opening address, a few words of explanation may be deemed necessary, on my part, to avert invidious misrepresentation. The animadversion I have thought it right to make on the noise created by tuning the orchestra will, I hope, give no lasting remorse to any of the gentlemen employed in the band. It is to be desired that they would keep their instruments ready tuned, and strike off at once. This would be an accommodation to many well-meaning persons who frequent the theatre, who, not being blest with the ear of St. Cecilia, mistake the tuning for the overture, and think the latter concluded before it is begun.

—“One fiddle will
Give, half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still,”

was originally written “one hautboy will;” but, having providentially been informed, when this poem was on the point of being sent off, that there is but one hautboy in the band, I averted the storm of popular and manageria indignation from the head of its blower: as it now stands, “one fiddle” among many, the faulty individual will, I hope, escape detection. The story of the flying play-bill is calculated to expose a practice much too common, of pinning play-bills to the cushions insecurely, and frequently, I fear, not pinning them at all, if these lines save one play-bill only front the fate I have recorded, I shall not deem my labour ill employed. The concluding episode of Patrick Jennings glances at the boorish fashion of wearing the hat in the one-shilling gallery. Had Jennings thrust his between his feet at the commencement of the play, he might have leaned forward with impunity, and the catastrophe I relate would not have occurred. The line of handkerchiefs formed to enable him to recover his loss, is purposely so crossed in texture and materials as to mislead the reader in respect to the real owner of any one of them: for, in the statistical view of life and manners which I occasionally present, my clerical profession has taught me how extremely improper it would be, by any allusion, however slight, to give any uneasiness, however trivial, to any individual, however foolish or wicked.

G. C. {88}

THE THEATRE

Interior of a Theatre described.—Pit gradually fills.—The Check-taker.—Pit full.—The Orchestra tuned.—One fiddle rather dilatory.—Is reproved—and repents.—Evolutions of a Playbill.—Its final Settlement on the Spikes.—The Gods taken to task—and why.—Motley Group of Play-goers.—Holywell Street, St. Pancras.—Emanuel Jennings binds his Son apprentice—not in London—and why.—Episode of the Hat.

’Tis sweet to view, from half-past five to six,
Our long wax-candles, with short cotton wicks,
Touch’d by the lamplighter’s Promethean art,
Start into light, and make the lighter start;
To see red Phoebus through the gallery-pane
Tinge with his beam the beams of Drury Lane;
While gradual parties fill our widen’d pit,
And gape, and gaze, and wonder, ere they sit.

At first, while vacant seats give choice and ease,
Distant or near, they settle where they please;
But when the multitude contracts the span,
And seats are rare, they settle where they can.

Now the full benches to late-comers doom
No room for standing, miscall’d _standing-room_.

Hark! the check-taker moody silence breaks,
And bawling “Pit full!” gives the check he takes;
Yet onward still the gathering numbers cram,
Contending crowders shout rise frequent damn,
And all is bustle, squeeze, row, jabbering, and jam.

See to their desks Apollo’s sons repair—
Swift rides the rosin o’er the horse’s hair
In unison their various tones to tune,
Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon;
In soft vibration sighs the whispering lute,
Tang goes the harpsichord, too-too the flute,
Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp,
Winds the French horn, and twangs the tingling harp;
Till, like great Jove, the leader, figuring in,
Attunes to order the chaotic din.
Now all seems hush’d—but no, one fiddle will
Give, half-ashamed, a tiny flourish still.
Foil’d in his crash, the leader of the clan
Reproves with frowns the dilatory man:
Then on his candlestick thrice taps his bow,
Nods a new signal, and away they go.

Perchance, while pit and gallery cry “Hats off!”
And awed Consumption checks his chided cough,
Some giggling daughter of the Queen of Love
Drops, reft of pin, her play-bill from above;
Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap,
Soars, ducks, and dives in air the printed scrap;
But, wiser far than he, combustion fears,
And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers;
Till, sinking gradual, with repeated twirl,
It settles, curling, on a fiddler’s curl,
Who from his powder’d pate the intruder strikes,
And, for mere malice, sticks it on the spikes.

Say, why these Babel strains from Babel tongues?
Who’s that calls “Silence!” with such leathern lungs?
He who, in quest of quiet, “Silence!” hoots,
Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes.

What various swains our motley walls contain!—
Fashion from Moorfields, honour from Chick Lane;
Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort,
Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court;
From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain,
Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane;
The lottery-cormorant, the auction-shark,
The full-price master, and the half-price clerk;
Boys who long linger at the gallery-door,
With pence twice five—they want but twopence more,
Till some Samaritan the twopence spares,
And sends them jumping up the gallery-stairs.

Critics we boast who ne’er their malice balk,
But talk their minds—we wish they’d mind their talk;
Big-worded bullies, who by quarrels live—
Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give;
Jews from St. Mary Axe, {91} for jobs so wary,
That for old clothes they’d even axe St. Mary;
And bucks with pockets empty as their pate,
Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait;
Who oft, when we our house lock up, carouse
With tippling tipstaves in a lock-up house.

Yet here, as elsewhere, Chance can joy bestow,
Where scowling Fortune seem’d to threaten woe.

John Richard William Alexander Dwyer
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire;
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,
Emanuel Jennings polish’d Stubbs’s shoes.
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter—a safe employ;
In Holywell Street, St. Pancras, he was bred
(At number twenty-seven, it is said),
Facing the pump, and near the Granby’s Head:
He would have bound him to some shop in town,
But with a premium he could not come down.
Pat was the urchin’s name—a red-hair’d youth,
Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth.

Silence, ye gods! to keep your tongues in awe,
The Muse shall tell an accident she saw.

Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat,
But, leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat
Down from the gallery the beaver flew,
And spurn’d the one to settle in the two.
How shall he act? Pay at the gallery-door
Two shillings for what cost, when new, but four?
Or till half-price, to save his shilling, wait,
And gain his hat again at half-past eight?
Now, while his fears anticipate a thief,
John Mullens whispers, “ Take my handkerchief.”
“Thank you,” cries Pat; “but one won’t make a line.”
“Take mine,” cried Wilson; and cried Stokes, “Take mine.”
A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties,
Where Spitalfields with real India vies.
Like Iris’ bow down darts the painted clue,
Starr’d, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue,
Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new.
George Green below, with palpitating hand,
Loops the last ’kerchief to the beaver’s band—
Uproars the prize! The youth, with joy unfeign’d,
Regain’d the felt, and felt what he regain’d;
While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat
Made a low bow, and touch’d the ransom’d hat.