tually put an end to the clamour and discontent, which the withholding of a sound and constitutional reform has generated, and thereby add to the stability of the existing institutions of the country; and that, even as far as they have gone, they have been eminently successful; for the demand for universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and annual parliaments, has been silenced since their plan of Reform has been promulgated." (Speech of Earl Grey.)

COMMENT.

If a traveller, whose ultimate destination was Edinburgh, were to take advantage of the York mail, and go by it thus far on his journey, would it necessarily follow, when he arrived at York, he would stop there, and not think of pushing on for Edinburgh? Or should we be justified in concluding that because he consented to accept a seat in the York mail (the Edinburgh coach not being ready to start) he had given up all idea of proceeding to the latter place? Methinks the traveller himself might reason somewhat differently. He might say, "I may as well take advantage of the conveyance that offers: it will not, indeed, carry me to my journey's end, but it will take me a great way towards it; and when I am thus far on my road, I shall find it easy enough to manage the rest," I really cannot see how it proves that men have renounced " ulterior objects," because they quietly grasp at intermediate ones. A creditor who accepts an instalment of thirteen and fourpence in the pound, does not, as a matter of course, relinquish his claim to the remaining six shillings and eight-pence.

TEXT.

"The nature of our secondary punishments incited to crime rather than otherwise, for, generally speaking, the condition of men was improved upon conviction and imprisonment. (The honourable member referred to the evidence taken before a committee of the house, in proof of the fact that imprisoned convicts were better off than our agricultural labourers.) The hulks and the penal colonies ought to be made places of punishment instead of being, as was now the case, pleasurable asylums." (Speech of Colonel Davies, upon moving for a "select committee to inquire into the best mode of giving efficiency to secondary punishments.”)

"His honourable friend complained of the state of the prisons, and observed that the culprits who were confined in them were much better off than the agricultural labourers. Now it was true that the legislature might have made the gaols too comfortable, but what was the reason? Why this was the necessary consequence of the horrible situation in which the prisons formerly were. His honourable friend said that of late years the prisoners lived too well. Here again, what was to be done? He did not know how this was to be remedied, when they gave the prisoners an assurance that they should be maintained without injury to their health." (Speech of Mr. G. Lamb, in reply to Colonel Davies.)

COMMENT.

Some ten or fifteen years ago, there was a spurious sensibility very much in fashion, which discharged its maudlin streams upon rogues and ruffians. Prisons were visited by humane committees, whose hair stood on end when they saw that dungeons had no down beds, that stone floors had no Turkey carpets, that grated windows were not so cheerful as French ones, that spare diet pulled down plump cheeks, and that men and women, in confinement for crimes, did not enjoy the comforts and luxuries of men and women who were at liberty because they had committed no crimes. It was shocking to think that poor unfortunate wretches, who had done nothing but pick a pocket, plunder a house at midnight, or killed those who objected to having their pockets picked and their houses plundered, should be subjected to all the inconveniences of imprisonment, and the mercy of gaolers and turnkeys. Hapless beings! Surely it was enough that they were to be hanged, whipped, or transported, for their indiscretions;-till they were hanged, whipped, or transported, let them be made comfortable, and gratefully sensible of the improvement of their condition, by exchanging the hardships of precarious penury for the solid enjoyments of preparatory incarceration. At the head of these humane persons was Mr. Grey Bennet, who, up to the moment of going abroad himself, was indefatigable in his efforts to mitigate the sufferings of

those who were sent abroad by the government. And what has been the natural consequence of all this mountebank humanity? Why, that places of punishment for guilt, or what should be such, have become "pleasurable asylums:" that criminals, whom society hunts from its walks, are better off, in consequence of their crimes, than an agricultural labourer who toils from sun-rise to sun-set to procure, by honest industry, sustenance for his wife and children. Nor is this all. The abatement of the wholesome and just severities of penal discipline, has operated, indirectly, in multiplying offenders, who covet, instead of dreading, the good warm clothing and well-fed indolence of a prison life. It appears, by returns made to parliament, that the number of commitments in England and Wales, for various offences, in the year 1812, was 3912; while, in 1827, they amounted to 12,564. Now, after making all fair allowance for the progressive increase of population, during the interval, for the disbanding of a large part of our army and navy, and for periods of manufacturing and agricultural distress, I am decidedly of opinion that a large portion of the excess is to be ascribed to the diminution of the check upon crimes, occasioned by the amelioration of their punishment.

TEXT.

"Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap,—

The one, in fear to lose what they enjoy,

The other to enjoy by rage and war."-Shakspeare.

COMMENT.

England, in 1831-under a Whig government-and waiting for the Reform Bill to pass.

THE LIVES OF THE PLAYERS.*

BY JOHN GALT."

We know no class of persons of whom (with few exceptions) the individual histories can be less profitable or entertaining than players. They are so entirely identified with the present, so emphatically a part of the day that is passing over us, so much the creatures of the moment in which they give delight, that to read of what they were, when they have ceased to be, is about as insipid an affair as to read of a fine summer's morning in the reign of Queen Anne. The lives of the Lords Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, for the last two hundred years, would be almost as attractive a piece of biography as the lives of the players for that period.

Mr. Galt, indeed, is of a different opinion. With much modesty he assures us, in his preface, that these two volumes "will probably be among the most amusing books in the language." Q. E. D. He further informs us, his object has been to "produce a parlour book." We are afraid it will turn out he has produced a book for the exclusive benefit of those bibliopolists who tempt with bargains by the way side.

It is fit, however, before we speak of the work, that Mr. Galt should have the full benefit of his own account of what he has done.

In the first place then, he declares, he has disappointed "those liquorish epicures who care not for the woodcock without the trail;" meaning, by this somewhat coarse image, that he has seriously avoided all ribaldry; a merit of which he seems unnecessarily proud.

In the next place he tells us he has "disregarded dates and minute circumstances, save a few epochal events;" that "his pencil has been withheld from warts, scars, and freckles," but that the "nobler features have been painted with industrious care."

Lastly," he has studied less to echo the judgment of others, than to be firm and impartial in his own."

Having thus stated, in his own words, the scope and intention of these two volumes, it is with regret we find ourselves compelled to state, in our own words,

* 2 vols. 1831. Colburn and Bentley.

that they are as perfect a sample of the worst kind of mere book-making as we have seen for some time. This we say at the outset. But we desire our readers, in common candour, not to believe us till the end; nor then, unless they are completely satisfied with the evidence we shall lay before them. We ask no confidence in our opinion that is not produced by the facts from which we deduce it.

Mr. Galt calls his work" The Lives of the Players." We open the volumes, and look in vain for the names of Mossop, Barry, J. Palmer, Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Abington, Miss Pope, Edwin, Dodd, Havard (the author of Charles I., a tragedy), Penkethman (the Liston of his day), Eastcourt (to whose death Sir Richard Steele dedicated an entire Spectator, No. 468), Mrs. Yates, Bensley, the first Mrs. Pope, Suett, &c. &c. &c. Mr. Galt will not say that these (and fifty others which might easily be named), are of too humble a reputation; too obscure, in the annals of the stage; when he has preserved all he could find of such personages as a Mrs. Charlotte Chark, a Mr. Samuel Sandford, a Mr. Lacy Ryan, &e. Besides, as he professes to have written "The Lives of the Players," it would puzzle him to show upon what principle the persons we have enumerated are omitted. He tells us, to be sure, that more volumes will be "added hereafter," should the success of these justify their appearance; so we may surmise, that in what is to come, the deficiencies of what has arrived will be supplied.

But can Mr. Galt inform us why, in these two volumes, the lives of those who were players are left out, to make room for those who were never players? Is the reader prepared to learn that among "The Lives of the Players" he will find the Life of Savage the poet; of Mrs. Centlivre-the dramatist; of Farquhar—the dramatist; of Arthur Murphy-the translator of Tacitus; and of Thomas Holcroft-the novelist and play-writer-because, at some period of their career, they had attempted the stage and failed? In other words, because they were not actors, but had talents of another kind, and renounced a calling for which they were disqualified, to pursue one in which they became eminent. Therefore Mr. Galt introduces them into his Lives of the Players! Upon this principle he should have given us the life of Shakspeare, and of the late President of the Royal Academy, Sir Thomas Lawrence; and upon this principle, too, every actor or actress who has written bad poetry or prose, in the shape of sonnet, song, or essay, ought to have his or her life registered among the authors of Great Britain. If this be not book-making of the worst kind, we know not what is. Men are assigned to the class in which they have acquired distinction: not to that in which they were unknown. An admirable Lord Chancellor may have been, at the outset of his career, a very bad portrait painter. Would you, therefore, expect to find his life in a biographical dictionary of artists?

We certainly stared, when we cast our eyes over the contents, to see Murphy, and Farquhar, and Savage, transformed into players:

Their lives, we knew, were neither strange nor rare,
But wonder'd how the devil they got there!

There are some men who, as Johnson said of Goldsmith, adorn whatever they touch. Mr. Galt is certainly not one of them. On the contrary, he contrives to infuse dulness and insipidity into materials which were sparkling and attractive before he touched them. Let any one who has read Cibber's Apology (which Mr. Galt has unmercifully pillaged without saying a word about it), George Anne Bellamy's Memoirs, Davies and Murphy's Life of Garrick, and Ireland's Life of Henderson (to say nothing of the separate Lives of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons), only take the trouble, as we have done, to wade through the Lives of Cibber, Bellamy, Garrick, Henderson, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons, in these two volumes, and they will marvel how Mr. Galt could contrive to be so peerlessly dull and commonplace with such instruments to work with.

The fact is (for the evidence stares upon us in every page), Mr. Galt has a notion that his own way of telling things is infinitely superior to the way of every other person; and this notion impels him, on all occasions, to indulge in what he no doubt considers the felicities of his own way. One of these felicities, and the most prominent, we think, upon the whole, is a superlative confidence in his own

superiority, which betrays him incessantly into the most ridiculous dogmatism. "I think," "I am of opinion," "I am sure," "I am certain," " I say,” and “ I declare," are his substitutes for evidence which he is unable to adduce in support of what he thinks, declares, says, is certain, and sure of.

A rich specimen of this pompous idolatry of self is exhibited in the short "Introduction" of four pages, where our author's magnificent ego demolishes, at a blow, the elaborate research of Edmund Malone's History of the Stage, touching the use of scenery in the time of Shakspeare. "It has been propagated by Malone, who was evidently not versed in the antiquity of the performed drama (!!) and by Dr. Drake, in his ponderous Shakspeare and his Times, who has not investigated the subject with the same commendable zeal that he has done topics of inferior importance." No man who had but an inch of reputation to hazard, as one who was himself acquainted with the "antiquity of the performed drama," would have been so silly as to write the above sentence respecting Malone, who spent a long life and applied a mind of extraordinary patience and sagacity, to every circumstance connected with the early state of theatrical representation in this country. Mr. Galt's competency to do so is about upon a par with what it would be had he taken it into his head to say, "It has been propagated by the Duke of Wellington, who is evidently not versed in military affairs, that the maintenance of the Belgian fortresses is essential to the safety of the Netherlands."

This ridiculous piece of arrogance (we mean the "Introduction"), concludes with the following paragraph:

These slight notices I have deemed it expedient to introduce here, because, while I am very willing to admit that the English theatre is under great obligations to Sir W. Davenant, I yet think that he was, by his French importations, the original corrupter of the old English stage, and that all we owe to the tasteful corrections of the late John Philip Kemble have been only endeavours to restore the primitive style.

Perhaps Mr. Galt's extensive knowledge will enable him to inform us at what period, antecedent to the time of John Kemble, Macbeth was played in a Highland costume, Cato and Coriolanus in the Roman costume, Venice Preserved in the Venetian costume, &c.

Another instance of this foolish assumption of superiority occurs in the Life of Savage. What does the reader imagine Mr. Galt has discovered? Neither more nor less than that Savage was not the illegitimate child of the Countess of Macclesfield, by the Earl of Rivers-that he himself knew he was not-that the Countess of Macclesfield knew he was not-but that he succeeded in making that weak credulous person, Dr. Samuel Johnson, think he was-and that Dr. Johnson, writing the Life of Savage at a time when evidence of the fraud, if fraud there were, could have been easily obtained, succeeded in making the world think he was, in one of the most eloquent pieces of biography ever produced!

It would be derogatory to the fame of the great man we have named, and trifling miserably with the common sense of our readers, to attempt to refute Mr. Galt's "mare's nest," by any comparison of his absurd assumptions (for he does not pretend to bring forward a shred of evidence in the shape of new facts, or "epochal events," as he calls them), with Dr. Johnson's statements. But in the way of amusement, we will cull a few illustrations of the manner in which he handles his discovery. The Life opens thus:

This vagabond was so poor a player, that had not his life been superbly written by Dr. Johnson, it should not have received a place in this work; (an excellent reason, by the by, for hashing it up;) but the singular merits of that celebrated piece of biography, and the no less remarkable misrepresentations, as I conceive, by which it is deformed, induce me to attempt a version that shall not be so liable to objections on the score of probability.

Nor, we presume, on the score of its "singular merits" or "superb writing." "Notwithstanding that Dr. Johnson probably received his information from Savage himself, I (John Galt) cannot discern," &c. p. 94.-"The utmost degree of culpability which I (the said John Galt) am able to discover in the conduct of the mother, even upon Dr. Johnson's own statement, amounts only," &c. p. 95.(By the by, no one will suspect Mr. Galt, we guess, of being able to discover and

discern the things which Dr. Johnson did.)—" He (Earl Rivers) had frequently inquired for his son, says Dr. Johnson, but on what authority is not stated," p. 97. (Where is Mr. Galt's authority for impugning what Johnson asserts?) "I would rather believe that Dr. Johnson was in error, than that nature went so far wrong," p. 97.-"I think the fact of the case is," so and so, p. 98. Without more particularly adverting to the improbability altogether of kidnapping the boy for Virginia, I (the aforesaid John Galt) would only remark on the plain nonsense of Dr. Johnson's observations," p. 99. (Astonishing Mr. Galt!)"This part of the story I (John Galt as aforesaid) have no hesitation in at once rejecting," p. 100.-" This looks so like caricature that I suspect it has received some embellishment from the veracious pen of Savage himself," p. 112.— "I have been the more particular in making this extract, because it is a fair specimen of the inflation which pervades the work," p. 115. What! the "superbly written"-the "celebrated piece" of biography, pervaded by inflation! We cannot help again exclaiming, astonishing Mr. Galt! Nay, wonderful Mr. Galt! to have discovered not only that Savage was no son of Lady Macclesfield, but that Dr. Johnson's "superbly written" life of him is an inflated piece of writing!

Now, we merely beg of any reader who is familiar with the history of Savagewho has read Johnson's Life of his unhappy friend-who has any knowledge of the effect produced by that work when it first appeared-and of the opinions that have been pronounced upon it by, certainly, persons of very different character from Mr. Galt-to imagine its authenticity destroyed, by these egos, and its splendid excellences blighted, by this long-eared criticism!

How well qualified Mr. Galt is, by the strength and sagacity of his own mind, to talk of the "plain nonsense" of Johnson, or exalt his acumen over that of the great moralist, let the following (among other samples of anility scattered through these volumes) testify.

At p. 12 he quotes, with the most innocent acquiescence in its truth, an account of Betterton's Hamlet, in which it is said, that upon the appearance of the Ghost, in the third act, "his countenance, which was naturally ruddy and sanguine, turned instantly as pale as his neckcloth !!" We will not go so far as Dr. Johnson was wont to do, and say "Punch has no feelings;" but we must be in our dotage when we believe that any actor can command the colour from his cheeks, (especially if they are well rouged) by the mere " cunning of the scene." Real and excessive emotion can alone work such a denotement of its presence; not the imitation.

In the same spirit of childish credulity he gravely informs us that when Wilkes performed Lycippus in the Maid's Tragedy, to Betterton's Melantius, he was so awed by the dignity of Betterton's manner, he "could hardly muster courage enough to make the proper replies" (vol. i. p. 49), and that Wilkes was perfect in his parts to "such exactitude, that in forty years he rarely changed or misplaced an article in one of them."—(p. 56.) With regard to the latter miracle, we confess ourselves extremely curious to know by what process it was discovered.

Again: Mr. Galt quotes Cibber's character of Betterton's Hamlet as "an estimate of his style of performing it in the prime of life." We are rather interested in giving as much latitude to this said phrase, the "prime of life," as may be; but we are afraid we cannot, in decency, carry it so far as Mr. Galt seems inclined to do. Betterton was born in 1635: Cibber in 1671. Allowing him, therefore, to have been only twenty when he formed his estimate, (which is as young as can be conceded, if we are to attach any weight to his judgment,) Betterton was within four years of sixty; rather a dubious" prime," we suspect. But Mr. Galt prepares us for slips like these, when he tells us of his "disregard of dates and minute circumstances." And yet, it might be imagined from other passages in the work, that his industry to ascertain dates and minute circumstances had been most exemplary. For example:-"Kynaston left the stage before 1706, but the exact period is not recorded in any of my authorities." (vol. i. p. 29.) It is very strange," quoth Mr. Solomon in the Stranger, "but not a word of this is mentioned by any of my foreign correspondents!" Again: "It is commonly supposed that this great actor (Quin) and able wit, was a native of Ireland; but my inquiries have ascertained he was born in King Street, Covent Garden.” (Ib. p.