bull-dog, requires rather a lengthened note, for the edification of the
rising generation. The “horns, rattles, drums,” with which he is
accompanied, are no inventions of the poet. The new Covent Garden
Theatre opened on the 18th Sept., 1809, when a cry of “Old Prices”
(afterwards diminished to O. P.) burst out from every part of the house.
This continued and increased in violence till the 23rd, when rattles,
drums, whistles, and cat-calls having completely drowned the voices of
the actors, Mr. Kemble, the stage-manager, came forward and said that a
committee of gentlemen had undertaken to examine the finances of the
concern, and that until they were prepared with their report the theatre
would continue closed. “Name them!” was shouted from all sides. The
names were declared, viz., Sir Charles Price, the Solicitor-General, the
Recorder of London, the Governor of the Bank, and Mr. Angerstein. “All
shareholders!” bawled a wag from the gallery. In a few days the theatre
re-opened: the public paid no attention to the report of the referees,
and the tumult was renewed for several weeks with even increased
violence. The proprietors now sent in hired bruisers, to _mill_ the
refractory into subjection. This irritated most of their former friends,
and, amongst the root, the annotator, who accordingly wrote the song of
“Heigh-ho, says Kemble,” which was caught up by the ballad-singers, and
sung under Mr. Kemble’s house-windows in Great Russell-street. A dinner
was given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, to celebrate the
victory obtained by W. Clifford in his action against Brandon the
box-keeper, for assaulting him for wearing the letters O. P. in his hat.
At this dinner Mr. Kemble attended, and matters were compromised by
allowing the advanced price (seven shillings) to the boxes. The writer
remembers a former riot of a similar sort at the same theatre (in the
year 1792), when the price to the boxes was raised from five shillings to
six. That tumult, however, only lasted three nights.
{32} “From the knobb’d bludgeon to the taper switch.” This image is not
the creation of the poets: it sprang from reality. The Authors happened
to be at the Royal Circus when “God save the King” was called for,
accompanied by a cry of “Stand up!” and “Hats off!” An inebriated naval
lieutenant, perceiving a gentleman in an adjoining box slow to obey the
call, struck his hat off with his stick, exclaiming, “Take off your hat,
sir!” The other thus assaulted proved to be, unluckily for the
lieutenant, Lord Camelford, the celebrated bruiser and duellist. A
set-to in the lobby was the consequence, where his lordship quickly
proved victorious. “The devil is not so black as he is painted,” said
one of the Authors to the other; “let us call upon Lord Camelford, and
tell him that we were witnesses of his being first assaulted.” The visit
was paid on the ensuing morning at Lord Camelford’s lodgings, in
Bond-street. Over the fire place in the drawing-room were ornaments
strongly expressive of the pugnacity of the peer. A long thick bludgeon
lay horizontally supported by two brass hooks. Above this was placed
parallel one of lesser dimensions, until a pyramid of weapons gradually
arose, tapering to a horsewhip:
“Thus all below was strength, and all above was grace.”
Lord Camelford received his visitants with great civility, and thanked
them warmly for the call; adding, that their evidence would be material,
it being his intention to indict the lieutenant for an assault. “All I
can say in return is this,” exclaimed the peer with great cordiality, “if
ever I see you engaged in a row, upon my soul I’ll stand by you.” The
Authors expressed themselves thankful for so potent an ally, and
departed. In about a fortnight afterwards [March 7, 1804] Lord Camelford
was shot in a duel with Mr. Best.
{34} Veeshnoo. The late Mr. Whitbread.
{36} Levy. An insolvent Israelite who [18th January, 1810] threw
himself from the top of the Monument a short time before. An inhabitant
of Monument-yard informed the writer that he happened to be standing at
his door talking to a neighbour, and looking up at the top of the pillar,
exclaimed, “Why, here’s the flag coming down.” “Flag!” answered the
other, “it’s a man.” The words were hardly uttered when the suicide fell
within ten feet of the speakers.
{38a} “‘Drury’s Dirge,’ by Laura Matilda, is not of the first quality.
The verses, to be sure, are very smooth, and very nonsensical—as was
intended; but they are not so good as Swift’s celebrated Song by a Person
of Quality; and are so exactly in the same measure, and on the same plan,
that it is impossible to avoid making the comparison.”—JEFFREY,
_Edinburgh Review_.
{38b} The Authors, as in gallantry bound, wish this lady to continue
anonymous.
{42} 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 assumed 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.
* * * * *
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.
{43a} 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.”
{43b} The old name for London:
For poets you can never want ’em
Spread through Augusta Trinobantum—SWIFT.
Thomson in his “Seasons” calls it “huge Augusta.”
{45} 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.”
{46a} A narrow passage immediately adjoining Drury Lane Theatre, and so
called from the vineyard attached to Covent or Convent Garden.
{46b} 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.
{48} Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!
Were the last words of Marmion.
{49} 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
passages 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_.
{54a} 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.
{54b} 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,” ejaculated 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.
{56a} “‘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_.
{56b} 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 glass,” 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 pass.”
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.
{57} 10th of October, 1812, the day of opening.
{59} 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.
{60} See Byron, _afterwards_, its _Don Juan_:—
“For flesh is grass, 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.”
{61} “‘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 passage 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.
{65} “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_.
{66} “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.]
{67} “Oh, Mr. Whitbread!” Sir William Grant, then Master of the Rolls,
repeated this passage aloud at a Lord Mayor’s dinner, to the no small
astonishment of the writer, who happened to sit within ear-shot.
{68} “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.
{69} “‘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_.
{71} 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.
{74} “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 assumed the parts of
senators at a short notice. “Members of parliament!” was their important
ejaculation 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.
Home, to King’s Place, his mother.”
{77} “Ticket-nights.” This phrase is probably unintelligible to the
untheatrical portion of the community, which may now be said to be all
the world except the actors. Ticket-nights are those whereon the
inferior actors club for a benefit: each distributes as many tickets of
admission as he is able among his friends. A motley assemblage is the
consequence; and as each actor is encouraged by his own set, who are not
in general play-going people, the applause comes (as Chesterfield says of
Pope’s attempts at wit) “generally unseasonably, and too often
unsuccessfully.”
{79} Originally:—“Back to the _bottom leaping with a bound_,” altered
1833.
{81} “This journal was, at the period in question, rather remarkable for
the use of the figure called by the rhetoricians _catachresis_. The Bard
of Avon may be quoted in justification of its adoption, when he writes of
taking arms against a sea, and seeking a bubble in the mouth of a cannon.
The _Morning Post_, in the year 1812, congratulated its readers upon
having stripped off Cobbett’s mask and discovered his cloven foot;
adding, that it was high time to give the hydra-head of Faction a rap on
the knuckles!”
{85} The Rev. George Crabbe.—The writer’s first interview with this
poet, who may be designated Pope in worsted stockings, took place at
William Spencer’s villa at Petersham, close to what that gentleman called
his gold-fish pond, though it was scarcely three feet in diameter,
throwing up a _jet d’eau_ like a thread. The venerable bard, seizing
both the hands of his satirist exclaimed with a good-humoured laugh, “Ah!
my old enemy, how do you do?” In the course of conversation, he
expressed great astonishment at his popularity in London; adding, “In my
own village they think nothing of me.” The subject happening to be the
inroads of time upon beauty, the writer quoted the following lines:—
“Six years had pass’d, and forty ere the six,
When Time began to play his usual tricks:
My locks, once comely in a virgin’s sight,
Locks of pure brown, now felt th’ encroaching white;
Gradual each day I liked my horses less,
My dinner more—I learnt to play at chess.”
“That’s very good!” cried the bard;—“whose to it?” “Your own.” “Indeed!
hah! well, I had quite forgotten it.” Was this affectation, or was it
not? In sooth, he seemed to push simplicity to puerility. This
imitation contained in manuscript the following lines, after describing
certain Sunday newspaper critics who were supposed to be present at a new
play, and who were rather heated in their politics:—
“Hard is the task who edits—thankless job!—
A Sunday journal for the factious mob
With bitter paragraph and caustic jest,
He gives to turbulence the day of rest;
Condemn’d, this week, rash rancour to instil,
Or thrown aside, the next, for one who will:
Alike undone or if he praise or rail
(For this affects his safety, that his sale),
He sinks at last, in luckless limbo set,
If loud for libel, and if dumb for debt.”
They were, however, never printed; being, on reflection, considered too
serious for the occasion.
It is not a little extraordinary that Crabbe, who could write with such
rigour, should descend to such lines as the following:—
“Something bad happen’d wrong about a bill
Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill,
So, to amend it, I was told to go
And seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co.”
Surely “Emanuel Jennings,” compared with the above, rises to sublimity.
[“‘The Theatre,’ by the Rev. G. Crabbe, we rather think, is the best
piece in the collection. It is an exquisite and most masterly imitation,
not only of the peculiar style, but of the taste, temper, and manner of
description of that most original author; and can hardly be said to be in
any respect a caricature of that style or manner—except in the excessive
profusion of puns and verbal jingles—which, though undoubtedly to be
ranked among his characteristics, are never so thick sown in his original
works as in this admirable imitation. It does not aim, of course, at any
shadow of his pathos or moral sublimity, but seems to us to be a
singularly faithful copy of his passages of mere description,”—JEFFREY,
_Edinburgh Review_.]
{88} You were more feeling than I was, when you read the excellent
parodies of the young men who wrote the “Rejected Addresses.” There is a
little ill-nature—and I take the liberty of adding, undeserved
ill-nature—in their prefatory address; but in their versification they
have done me admirably. They are extraordinary men; but it is easier to
imitate style than to furnish matter.—CRABBE (_Works_, 1 vol. Ed., p.
81).
{91} A street and parish in Lime Street Ward, London—chiefly inhabited
by Jews.
{93} “We come next to three ludicrous parodies—of the story of _The
Stranger_, of _George Barnwell_, and of the dagger-scene in Macbeth,
under the signature of Momus Medlar. They are as good, we think, as that
sort of thing can be, and remind us of the happier efforts of Colman,
whose less successful fooleries are professedly copied in the last piece
in the volume.”—JEFFREY, _Edinburgh Renew_.
{96} A translation from Kotzebue by Thompson, and first acted at Drury
Lane, 24th March, 1798. Mrs. Siddons was famous in the part of Mrs.
Haller.
{98} See Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. iii.; and
Lillo’s tragedy, “The London Merchant; or, the History of George
Barnwell.” 8vo. 1731.
{102} Theodore Hook, at that time a very young man, and the companion of
the annotator in many wild frolics. The cleverness of his subsequent
prose compositions has cast his early stage songs into oblivion. This
parody was, in the second edition, transferred from Colman to Hook.
{103a} Then Director of the Opera House.
{103b} At that time the chief dancer at this establishment.
{103c} Vauxhall Bridge then, like the Thames Tunnel at present [1833],
stood suspended in the middle of that river.
{72} Dr. Busby gave living recitations of his translation of
_Lucretius_, with tea and bread-and-butter. He sent in a real Address to
the Drury Lane committee, which was really rejected. The present
imitation professes to be recited by the translator’s son. The poet
here, again, was a prophet. A few evenings after the opening of the
Theatre Dr. Busby sat with his son in one of the stage-boxes. The latter
to the astonishment of the audience, at the end of the play, stepped from
the box upon the stage, with his father’s real rejected address in his
hand, and began to recite it as follows:—
“When energising objects men pursue,
What are the prodigies they cannot do?”
Raymond, the stage-manager, accompanied by a constable, at this moment
walked upon the stage, and handed away the juvenile _dilettante_
performer.
The Doctor’s classical translation was thus noticed in one of the
newspapers of the day, in the column of births:—“Yesterday, at his house
in Queen Anne-street, Dr. Busby of a still-born _Lucretius_.” [Bushy’s
Monologue was parodied by Lord Byron: see Byron’s works, p. 553.]
“In one single point the parodist has failed—there is a certain Dr.
Busby, whose supposed address is a translation called ‘Architectural
Atoms, intended to be recited by the translator’s son.’ Unluckily,
however, for the wag who had prepared this fun, the genuine serious
absurdity of Dr. Busby and his son has cast all his humour into the
shade. The Doctor from the boxes, and the son from the stage, have
actually endeavoured, it seems, to recite addresses, which they call
_monologues_ and _unalogues_; and which, for extravagant folly, tumid
meanness, and vulgar affectation, set all the powers of parody at utter
defiance.”—_Quarterly Review_.
“Of ‘Architectural Atoms,’ translated by Dr. Busby, we can say very
little more than that they appear to us to be far more capable of
combining into good poetry than the few lines we were able to read of the
learned Doctor’s genuine address in the newspapers. They might pass,
indeed, for a very tolerable imitation of Darwin.”—JEFFREY, _Edinburgh
Review_.