audience, and they heard it uttered for the first time in a croak, fainter than a crow's in a consumption, it would pass unnoticed, or appear vapid to the million.

If I raise a critical clatter about my ears by this assertion, which some may twist into a profanation of Shakspeare, I leave it to Horace, who can fight battles better than I, to defend me.

"Si dicentis erunt fortunis absona dicta,

Romani tollent pedites equitesque cachinnum."

That Mr. Kemble did not misconceive the part, is certain; for he told me some time before the play was acted, that he feared the exertions requisite in Sir Edward Mortimer would strain his lungs more than Octavian in the Mountaineers.

That he can strain his lungs to good purpose in Octavian, is well known; and after this, his own intimation, how will he escape the charge of wilful and direct delinquency, when, with such a concep. tion of the part, and with health recovered, he came forward in the true spirit of Bottom, and " aggravated his voice so, that he roared you as gently as any sucking dove?"*

He insulted the town, and injured his employer and the author, sufficiently in the first instance: in the second, he added to the insult and injury an hundred fold; and as often as he mangled the character (three or four times, I am uncertain which,

* Mr. Kemble informed me previous to the second representation of the play, that he felt himself capable of exertion.

after the first night's performance), he heaped aggravation upon aggravation.

The most miserable mummer that ever disgraced the walls of a theatre, could not have been a stronger drawback than Mr. Kemble. He was not only dull in himself, but the cause of dullness in others. Like the baleful Upas of Java, his pestiferous influence infected all around him. When two actors come forward to keep up the shuttle-cock of scenic fiction, if one plays slovenly, the other cannot maintain his game. Poor Bannister, junior, would he speak out (but I have never pressed him, and never shall press him to say a word upon the subject), could bear ample testimony to the truth of this remark. He suffered like a man under the cruelty of Mezentinus. All alive himself, he was tied to a corpse, which he was fated to drag about with him scene after scene, which weighed him down, and depressed his vigour. Miss Farren, too, who might animate any thing but a soul of lead, and a face of iron, experienced the same fate.

I could proceed, and argue, and reason, and dis cuss, and tire the reader, as I have tired myself (it is now, my good friend, one o'clock in the morning), to prove further, that Mr. Kemble was unsound in my cause, and that he ruined my play :-But I will desist here. I think I have prosed enough to manifest that my arguments are not unfounded.

They who are experienced in dramatics will, I trust, see that I have made a fair extenuation of

for chests, and you have been content:-but I trust you will find that my Iron Chest will hold together, that it is tolerably sound, and fit for all the purposes for which it was intended.

....Then how came it to fall to pieces, after four days' wear?-I will explain that:-but alas! alas! my heart doth yearn, when I think on the task which circumstance has thrust upon me.

Now, by the spirit of peace, I swear! were I not still doomed to explore the rugged windings of the drama, I would wrap myself in mute philosophy, and repose calmly under the dark shade of my grievance, rather than endure the pain and trouble of this explanation. I cannot, however, cry "Let the world slide:" I must pursue my journey; and be active to clear away the obstacles that impede my progress.

I am too callous, now, to be annoyed by those innumerable gnats and insects, who daily dart their impotent stings on the literary traveller; and too knowing to dismount, and waste my time in whipping grasshoppers: but here is a scowling, sullen, black Bull, right athwart my road; a monster of magnitude, of the Baotian breed, perplexing me in my wanderings through the entangled labyrinth of Drury! he stands sulkily before me, with sides seemingly impenetrable to any lash, and tougher than the Dun Cow of Warwick !-His front out-fronting the brazen bull of Perillus !-He has bellowed, gentlemen! yea, he hath bellowed a dismal sound!

A hollow, unvaried tone, heaved from his very midriff, and striking the listener with torpor ! Would I could pass the animal quietly, for my own sake!—and, for his, by Jupiter! I repeat it, I would not willingly harm the Bull.-I delight not in baiting him. I would jog as gently by him as by the ass that grazes on the common: but he has obstinately blocked up my way he has already tossed and gored me severely-I must make an effort, or he batters me down, and leaves me to bite the dust.

The weapon I must use is not of that brilliant and keen quality, which, in a skilful hand, neatly cuts up the subject, to the delight and admiration of the by-standers: It is a homely cudgel of narrative, a blunt batoon of matter of fact; affording little display of art in the wielder, and so heavy in its nature, that it can merely claim the merit of being appropriate to the opponent at whom it is levelled.

Pray, stand clear! for I shall handle this club vilely; and if any one come in my way, he may chance to get a rap which I did not intend to bestow upon him. Good venal and venomous gentlemen, who dabble in ink for pay or from pique, and who have dubb'd yourselves Criticks, keep your distance now! Run home to your garrets!-Fools! ye are but Ephemera at best; and will die soon enough, the paltry course of your insignificant natures, without thrusting your ears (if there be any left you)

in

into the heat of this perilous action.-Avaunt! Well, well, stay if ye are bent upon it, and be pert and busy your folly to me is of no moment.*

I hasten now to my narrative.

I agreed to write the following play at the instance of the chief proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre, who unconditionally agreed to pay me a certain sum for my labour and this certain sum being much larger than any, I believe, hitherto offered on similar occasions, created no small jealousy among the Parnassian Sans Culottes; several of whom have of late been vapidly industrious to level, to the muddy surface of their own Castalian ditch, so aristocraticodramatick a bargain. The play, as fast as written (piecemeal), was put into rehearsal: But let it here be noted, gentle reader! that a rehearsal in Drury Lane (I mean as far as relates to this Iron Chest) is lucus â non lucendo. They yclep it a rehearsal, I conjecture, because they do NOT rehearse. I call the loved shade of Garrick to witness; nay, I call the less loved presence of the then acting Manager to avow, that there never was one fair rehearsal of the play. Never one rehearsal, wherein one, or two, or more of the performers very essential to the piece, were not absent: and all the rehearsals which

Ye who impartially and conscientiously sit in diurnal judgment upon modern dramatists, apply not this to yourselves. It aims only at the malevolent, the mean, and the ignorant, who are the disgrace of your order.