Mariana. What could I do?

is waiting for him in the Divinity path, alone, and Cot, garden, vineyard, rivulet, and wood,

is terrified. At last he comes; and she sighs outLake, sky, and mountain, went along with him!

Speak! let me hear thy voice,
Could I remain behind? My father found

Tell me the joyful news !
My heart was not at home; he loved his child,
And asked me, one day, whither we should go ?

and thus he answersI said, “To Mantua.' I followed him

Ay, I am come To Mantua! to breathe the air he breathed,

In all my solemn pomp, Darkness and Fear, To walk upon the ground he walked upon,

And the great Tempest in his midnight car, To look upon the things he looked upon,

The sword of lightning girt across his thigh, To look, perchance, on him! perchance to hear him, And the whole demon brood of night, blind Fog To touch him! never to be known to him,

And withering Blight, all these are my retainers ; Till he was told I lived and died his love.

How? not one smile for all this bravery?
What think you of my minstrels, the hoarse winds,

Thunder, and tuneful Discord ? Hark, they play.
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES.

Well piped, methinks ; somewhat too rough, perhaps. The Bride's Tragedy, by Thomas LoVELL BEDDOES, Else I might well be scared. But leave this mirth,

Floribel. I know you practise on my silliness, published in 1822, is intended for the closet rather

Or I must weep.. than the theatre. It possesses many passages of pure and sparkling verse. The following,' says a For our carousal ; but we loiter here,

Hesperus. 'Twill serve to fill the goblets writer in the Edinburgh Review, ‘will show the way The bride-maids are without; well-picked, thou'lt say, in which Mr Beddoes manages a subject that poets Wan ghosts of wo-begone, self-slaughtered damsels have almost reduced to commonplace. We thought in their best winding-sheets ; start not ; I bid them all similes for the violet had been used up; but he

wipe gives us a new one, and one that is very delightful.' Their gory bosoms ; they'll look wondrous comely; Hesperus and Floribel (the young wedded lovers) Our link-boy, Will-o'-the-Wisp, is waiting too are in a garden; and the husband speaks :

To light us to our grave. Hesperus. See, here's a bower

After some further speech, she asks him what he Of eglantine with honeysuckles woven,

means, and he replies Where not a spark of prying light creeps in, So closely do the sweets enfold each other.

What mean I! Death and murder, 'Tis twilight's home; come in, my gentle love,

Darkness and misery. To thy prayers and shrift, And talk to me. So ! I've a rival here;

Earth gives thee back. Thy God hath sent me for thee; What's this that sleeps so sweetly on your neck ! Repent and die. Ploribel. Jealous so soon, my Hesperus ? Look She returns gentle answers to him; but in the end then,

he kills her, and afterwards mourns thus over her It is a bunch of flowers I pulled for you :

body : Here's the blue violet, like Pandora's eye, When first it darkened with immortal life.

Dead art thou, Floribel ; fair, painted earth, Hesperus. Sweet as thy lips. Fie on those taper Between those ruby lips: no; they have quaffed

And no warm breath shall ever more disport fingers, Have they been brushing the long grass aside,

Life to the dregs, and found death at the bottom, To drag the daisy from its hiding-place,

The sugar of the draught. All cold and still; Where it shuns light, the Danaë of flowers,

Her very tresses stiffen in the air. With gold up-hoarded on its virgin lap?

Look, what a face! had our first mother worn Floribel . And here's a treasure that I found by His heart, all malice, would have turned to love;

But half such beauty when the serpent came, chance, A lily of the valley; low it lay

No hand but this, which I do think was once

Cain, the arch murderer's, could have acted it.
Over a mossy mound, withered and weeping,
As on a fairy's grave.

And I must hide these sweets, not in my bosom;

In the foul earth. She shudders at my grasp : Hesperus. Of all the

posy Give me the rose, though there's a tale of blood

Just so she laid her head across my bosom Soiling its name. In elfin annals old

When first-oh villain! which way lies the grave? Tis writ, how Zephyr, envious of his love (The love he bare to Summer, who since then

MISS MITFORD-SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWERHas, weeping, visited the world), once found The baby Perfume cradled in a violet;

Miss MITFORD, so well known for her fine prose ('Twas said the beauteous bantling was the child tales and sketches, has written three tragediesOf & gay bee, that in his wantonness

Julian, Rienzi, and The Vespers of Palermo. They Toyed with a pea-bud in a lady's garland) ;

were all brought on the stage, but . Rienzi' only met The felon winds, confederate with him,

with decided success. An equal number of dramas Bound the sweet slumberer with golden chains, has been produced by another novelist, Sir EDWARD Pulled from the wreathed laburnum, and together LYTTON BULWER: these are entitled, The Lady of Deep cast him in the bosom of a rose,

Lyons, La Valliere, and Richelieu. The first of And fed the fettered wretch with dew and air.

these pieces is the best, and it seldom fails of draw.

ing tears when well represented. It is a picturesque And there is an expression in the same scene (where and romantic play, with passages of fine poetry the author is speaking of sleepers’ fancies, &c.)

and genuine feeling. “La Valliere' is founded on While that winged song, the restless nightingale

the court and times of Louis XIV., but it wants proTurns her sad heart to music

minence of character and dramatic art. "Richelieu'

is a drama of greater energy and power, but is also which is perfectly beautiful.

loosely constructed. Thomas Noon TALFOURD, serThe reader may now take a passage from the geant-at-law, an eloquent English barrister, has scene where Hesperus murders the girl Floribel. She written two classic plays, Ion, and The Athenian

THOMAS NOON TALFOURD.

Captive, remarkable for a gentle beauty, refinement, That troubled the deep quiet of thy soul and pathos. He has also produced a domestic In that pure fountain which reflected heaven, drama, The Massacre of Glencoe, but it is much for a brief taste of rapture. inferior to his other productions. 'Ion' was acted Clem. Dost thou yet with great success, and published in 1835. It seems Esteem it rapture, then? My foolish heart, an embodiment of the simplicity and grandeur of Be still ! Yet wherefore should a crown divide us ! the Greek drama, and its plot is founded on the old 0, my dear Ion ! let me call thee so Grecian notion of destiny, apart from all moral This once at least—it could not in my thoughts agencies. The oracle of Delphi had announced that Increase the distance that there was between us the vengeance which the misrule of the race of When, rich in spirit, thou to strangers' eyes Argos had brought on the people, in the form of a Seemed a poor foundling. pestilence, could only be disarmed by the extirpation Ion. It must separate us ! of the guilty race, and Ion, the hero of the play, at Think it no harmless bauble; but a curse length offers himself a sacrifice. The character of Will freeze the current in the veins of youth, Ion—the discovery of his birth, as son of the king—And from familiar touch of genial hand, his love and patriotism, are drawn with great power From household pleasures, from sweet daily tasks, and effect. The style of Mr Talfourd is chaste and From airy thought, free wanderer of the heavens, clear, yet full of imagery. Take, for example, the For ever banish me! delineation of the character of Ion :

Clem. Thou dost accuse

Thy state too harshly ; it may give some room,
Ion, our sometime darling, whom we prized Some little room, amidst its radiant cares,
As a stray gift, by bounteous Heaven dismissed

For love and joy to breathe in.
From some bright sphere which sorrow may not cloud Ion. Not for me ;
To make the happy happier! Is he sent

My pomp must be most lonesome, far removed
To grapple with the miseries of this time,

From that sweet fellowship of humankind Whose nature such ethereal aspect wears

The slave rejoices in : my solemn robes As it would perish at the touch of wrong!

Shall wrap me as a panoply of ice, By no internal contest is he trained

And the attendants who may throng around me For such hard duty; no emotions rude

Shall want the flatteries which may basely warm Hath his clear spirit vanquished—Love, the germ The sceptral thing they circle. Dark and cold Of his mild nature, hath spread graces forth,

Stretches the path which, when I wear the crown, Expanding with its progress, as the store

I needs must enter : the great gods forbid Of rainbow colour which the seed conceals

That thou shouldst follow in it! Sheds out its tints from its dim treasury,

Clem. O unkind! To flush and circle in the flower. No tear

And shall we never see each other? Hath filled his eye save that of thoughtful joy

Ion. [After a pause.] Yes ! When, in the evening stillness, lovely things

I have asked that dreadful question of the hills Pressed on his soul too busily; his voice,

That look eternal ; of the flowing streams If, in the earnestness of childish sports,

That lucid flow for ever ; of the stars, Raised to the tone of anger, checked its force, Amid whose fields of azure my raised spirit As if it feared to break its being's law,

Hath trod in glory : all were dumb; but now, And faltered into music; when the forms

While I thus gaze upon thy living face,
Of guilty passion have been made to live

I feel the love that kindles through its beauty
In pictured speech, and others have waxed loud Can never wholly perish : we shall meet
In righteous indignation, he hath heard

Again, Clemanthe!
With sceptic smile, or from some slender vein

Clem. Bless thee for that name; Of goodness, which surrounding gloom concealed, Pray, call me so again ; thy words sound strangely, Struck sunlight o'er it: so his life hath flowed Yet they breathe kindness, and I'll drink them in, From its mysterious urn a sacred stream,

Though they destroy me. Shall we meet indeed! In whose calm depth the beautiful and pure

Think not I would intrude upon thy cares, Alone are mirrored ; which, though shapes of ill Thy councils, or thy pomps ; to sit at distance, May hover round its surface, glides in light,

To weave, with the nice labour which preserves And takes no shadow from them.

The rebel pulses even, from gay threads

Faint records of thy deeds, and sometimes catch [Extracts from ' Ion.']

The falling music of a gracious word, (Ion being declared the rightful heir of the throne, is waited Comfort enough : do not deny me this ;

Or the stray sunshine of a smile, will be upon by Clemanthe, daughter of the high priest of the ternple, Or if stern fate compel thee to deny, wherein Ion had been reared in obscurity.]

Kill me at once ! Ion. What wouldst thou with me, lady?

Ion. No ; thou must lire, my fair one :
Clemanthe. Is it so?

There are a thousand joyous things in life,
Nothing, my lord, save to implore thy pardon, Which pass unheeded in a life of joy
That the departing gleams of a bright dream, As thine hath been, till breezy sorrow comes
From which I scarce had wakened, made me bold To ruffle it; and daily duties paid
To crave a word with thee ; but all are fled-

Hardly at first, at length will bring repose
Ion. 'Twas indeed a goodly dream;

To the sad mind that studies to perform them. But thou art right to think it was no more;

Thou dost not mark me. And study to forget it.

Clem. O, I do! I do! Clem. To forget it !

Ion. If for thy brother's and thy father's sake Indeed, my lord, I will not wish to lose

Thou art content to live, the healer Time What, being past, is all my future hath,

Will reconcile thee to the lovely things All I shall live for ; do not grudge me this,

Of this delightful world-and if another, The brief space I shall need it.

A happier—no, I cannot bid thee love Ion. Speak not, fair one,

Another - I did think I could have said it, In tone so mournful, for it makes me feel

But 'tis in rain. Too sensibly the hapless wretch I am,

Clem. Thou art my own, then, still ?

322

a

Ion. I am thine own! thus let me clasp thee; nearer; In our own honest hearts and chainless hands
O joy too thrilling and too short !

Will be our safeguard; while we do not use
Enter AGENOR.

Our power towards others, so that we should blush
Agenor. My lord,

To teach our children ; while the simple love The sacrificial rites await thy presence.

Of justice and their country shall be born lon. I come. One more embrace—the last, the last Hard 'midst the gladness of heroic sports,

With dawning reason; while their sinews grow In this world! Now, farewell!

[Exit.

We shall not need, to guard our walls in peace,
Clem. The last embrace!
Then he has cast me off! no—'tis not so ;

One selfish passion, or one venal sword.

I would not grieve thee; but thy valiant troop-
Some mournful secret of his fate divides us ;

For I esteem them valiant-must no more
I'll struggle to bear that, and snatch a comfort

With luxury which suits a desperate camp
From seeing him uplifted. I will look

Infect us. See that they embark, Agenor,
Upon him in his throne ; Minerva's shrine

Ere night.
Will shelter me from vulgar gaze ; I'll hasten
And feast my sad eyes with his greatness there. [Exit.

Crythes. My Lord

Ion. No more my word hath passed.
[Ion is installed in his royal dignity, attended by the high Medon, there is no office I can add
priest, the senators, &c. The people receive him with shouts.] To those thou hast grown old in; thou wilt guard

Ion. I thank you for your greetings-shout no more, The shrine of Phæbus, and within thy home-
But in deep silence raise your hearts to heaven, Thy too delightful home-befriend the stranger
That it may strengthen one so young and frail As thou didst me; there sometimes waste a thought
As I am for the business of this hour,

On thy spoiled inmate.
Must I sit here !

Medon. Think of thee, my lord ?
Medon. My son ! my son !

Long shall we triumph in thy glorious reign.
What ails thee? When thou shouldst reflect the joy Ion. Prithee no more. Argives ! I have a boon
Of Argos, the strange paleness of the grave

To crave of you. Whene'er I shall rejoin
Marbles thy face.

In death the father from whose heart in life
Ion. Am I indeed so pale ?

Stern fate divided me, think gently of him !
It is a solemn office I assume,

Think that beneath his panoply of pride
Which well may make me falter; yet sustained

Were fair affections crushed by bitter wrongs
By thee, and by the gods I serve, I take it.

Which fretted him to madness; what he did,

[Sits on the throne. Alas! ye know; could you know what he suffered, Stand forth, Agenor.

Ye would not curse his name. Yet never more
Agenor. I await thy will.

Let the great interests of the state depend
Ion. To thee I look as to the wisest friend

Upon the thousand chances that may sway
of this afflicted people ; thou must leave

A piece of human frailty; swear to me
Awhile the quiet which thy life has earned

That ye will seek hereafter in yourselves
To rule our councils ; fill the seats of justice

The means of sovereignty: our country's space,
With good men, not so absolute in goodness

So happy in its smallness, so compact, As to forget what human frailty is ;

Needs not the magic of a single name
And order my sad country.

Which wider regions may require to draw
A genor. Pardon me

Their interest into one; but, circled thus,
Ion. Nay, I will promise 'tis my last request;

Like a blest family, by simple laws
Grant me thy help till this distracted state

May tenderly be governed-all degrees, Rise tranquil from her griefs—'twill not be long, Not placed in dexterous balance, not combined If the great gods smile on us now. Remember, By bonds of parchment, or by iron clasps, Meanwhile, thou hast all power my word can give,

But blended into one-a single form
Whether I live or die.

Of nymph-like loveliness, which finest chords
A genor. Die! Ere that hour,

Of sympathy pervading, shall endow
May even the old man's epitaph be moss-grown! With vital beauty; tint with roseate bloom

Ion. Death is not jealous of the mild decay In times of happy peace, and bid to flash
That gently wins thee bis ; exulting, youth

With one brave impulse, if ambitious bands Provokes the ghastly monarch's sudden stride, Of foreign power should threaten. Swear to me And makes his horrid fingers quick to clasp

That ye will do this! His prey benumbed at noontide. Let me see

Medon. Wherefore ask this now ! The captain of the guard.

Thou shalt live long; the paleness of thy face, Crythes. I kneel to crave

Which late seemed death-like, is grown radiant now, Humbly the favour which thy sire bestowed

And thine eyes kindle with the prophecy
On one who loved him well.

Of glorious years.
Ion. I cannot mark thee,

Ion. The gods approve me then!
That wakest the memory of my father's weakness, Yet I will use the function of a king,
But I will not forget that thou hast shared

And claim obedience. Swear, that if I die, The light enjoyments of a noble spirit,

And leave no issue, ye will seek the power
And learned the need of luxury. grant

To govern in the free-born people's choice,
For thee and thy brave comrades ample share And in the prudence of the wise.
Of such rich treasure as my stores contain,

Medon and others. We swear it!
To grace thy passage to some distant land,

Ion. Hear and record the oath, immortal powers ! Where, if an honest cause engage thy sword,

Now give me leave a moment to approach May glorious issues wait it. In our realm

That altar unattended.

(He goes to the altar, We shall not need it longer.

Gracious gods !
Crythes. Dost intend

In whose mild service my glad youth was spent,
To banish the firm troops before whose valour Look on me now; and if there is a power,
Barbarian millions shrink appalled, and leave As at this solemn time I feel there is,
Our city naked to the first assault

Beyond ye, that hath breathed through all your shapes Of reckless foes!

The spirit of the beautiful that lives
Ion, No, Crythes; in ourselves,

In earth and heaven; to ye I offer up

This conscious being, full of life and love,

Baillie's plays. The following Christian sentiment For my dear country's welfare. Let this blow is finely expressed :End all her sorrows!

[Stabs himself. Joy is a weak and giddy thing that laughs CLEMANTHE rushes forward.

Itself to weariness or sleep, and wakes

To the same barren laughter; 'tis a child
Clem. Hold!
Let me support him—stand away–indeed

Perpetually, and all its past and future

Lie in the compass of an infant's day. I have best right, although ye know it not,

Crushed from our sorrow all that's great in man To cleave to him in death. Ion. This is a joy

Has ever sprung. In the bold pagan world

Men deified the beautiful, the glad,
I did not hope for this is sweet indeed.
Bend thine eyes on me!

The strong, the boastful, and it came to nought;

We have raised Pain and Sorrow into heaven, Clem. And for this it was

And in our temples, on our altars, Grief
Thou wouldst have weaned me from thee !

Stands symbol of our faith, and it shall last
Couldst thou think
I would be so divorced ?

As long as man is mortal and unhappy.

The gay at heart may wander to the skies, Ion. Thou art right, Clemanthe

And harps may there be found them, and the branch It was a shallow and an idle thought;

Of palm be put into their hands; on earth 'Tis past; no show of coldness frets us now;

We know them not; no votarist of our faith, No vain disguise, my girl. Yet thou wilt think

Till he has dropped his tears into the stream,
On that which, when I feigned, I truly spoke-

Tastes of its sweetness.
Wilt thou not, sweet one ?
Clem. I will treasure all.

We shall now turn to the comic muse of the

drama, which, in the earlier years of this period, Enter IRUS.

produced some works of genuine humour and inteIrus. I bring you glorious tidings

rest. Ha! no joy

GEORGE COLMAN.
Can enter here.
Ion. Yes—is it as I hope ?

The most able and successful comic dramatist of Irus. The pestilence abates.

his day was GEORGE COLMAN, the younger, * who Ion. [Springs to his feet.] Do ye not hear! was born on the 21st of October 1762. The son of Why shout ye not ? ye are strong—think not of me; Hearken! the curse my ancestry had spread O'er Argos is dispelled! My own Clemanthe ! Let this console thee-Argos lives againThe offering is accepted-all is well!

[Dies.

HENRY TAYLOR-J. BROWNING-LEIGH HUNT

WILLIAM SMITH. Two dramatic poems have been produced by HENRY TAYLOR, Esq., which, though not popular, evince high genius and careful preparation. The first, Philip van Artevelde, was published in 1834, and the scene is laid in Flanders, at the close of the fourteenth century. The second, Edwin the Fair (1843), relates to early English history. Though somewhat too measured and reflective for the stage, the plays of Mr Taylor contain excellent scenes and dialogues. "The blended dignity of thought, and a sedate moral habit, invests Mr Taylor's poetry with a stateliness in which the drama is generally deficient, and makes his writings illustrate, in some degree, a new form of the art-such a form, indeed, as we might expect the written drama naturally to assume if it were to revive in the nineteenth century, and maintain itself as a branch of literature apart from the stage.' '* Strafford, a tragedy by J.

George Colman. BROWNING, was brought out in 1837, and acted with the author of the Jealous Wife and Clandestine success. It is the work of a young poet, but is well Marriage, Colman had a hereditary attachment to conceived and arranged for effect, while its relation the drama. He was educated at Westminster school, to a deeply interesting and stirring period of British and afterwards entered of Christ's Church college, history gives it a peculiar attraction to an English Oxford; but his idleness and dissipation at the uniaudience. MR LEIGH Hunt, in 1840, came before versity led his father to withdraw him from Oxford, the public as a dramatic writer. His work was a and banish him to Aberdeen. Here he was distinmixture of romance and comedy, entitled, A Legend guished for his eccentric dress and folly, but he also of Florence : it was acted at Covent Garden theatre applied himself to his classical and other studies with some success, but is too sketchy in its materials, and too extravagant in plot, to be a popular

* Colman added 'the younger' to his name after the conacting play. Athelwold, a tragedy by WILLIAM demnation of his play, The Iron Chest

. Lest my father's SMITH (1842), is a drama also for the closet; it memory,' he says, may be injured by mistakes, and in the wants variety and scenic effect for the stage, and author of the Jealous Wife, should be supposed guilty of The

confusion of after-time the translator of Terence, and the in style and sentiment is not unlike one of Miss Iron Chest, I shall, were I to reach the patriarchal longevity

6

At Aberdeen he published a poem on Charles James take of the falsetto of German pathos. But the Fox, entitled The Man of the People, and wrote a piece is both humorous and affecting; and we readily musical farce, The Female Dramatist, which his father excuse its obvious imperfections in consideration brought out at the Haymarket theatre, but it was of its exciting our laughter and our tears.' The condemned. A second dramatic attempt, entitled whimsical character of Ollapod in the ‘Poor GentleTwo to One, brought out in 1784, enjoyed consider- man’ is one of Colman's most original and laughable able success. This seems to have fixed his literary conceptions ; Pangloss, in the 'Heir at Law,' is also taste and inclinations; for though his father intended an excellent satirical portrait of a pedant (proud of him for the bar, and entered him of Lincoln's Inn, being an LL.D., and, moreover, an A. double S.); the drama engrossed his attention. In 1784 he and his Irishmen, Yorkshiremen, and country rustics contracted a thoughtless marriage with a Miss (all admirably performed at the time), are highly Catherine Morris, with whom he eloped to Gretna entertaining, though overcharged portraits. A tenGreen, and next year brought out a second musical dency to farce is indeed the besetting sin of Colman's comedy, Turk and no Turk. His father becoming comedies; and in his more serious plays, there is a incapacitated from attacks of paralysis, the younger curious mixture of prose and verse, high-toned senColman undertook the management of the theatre timent and low humour. Their effect on the stage in Haymarket, and was thus fairly united to the is, however, irresistible. We have quoted Joanna stage and the drama. Various pieces proceeded Baillie's description of Jane de Montfort as a porfrom his pen : Inkle and Yarico, a musical opera, trait of Mrs Siddons; and Colman's Octavian in brought out with success in 1787 ; Ways and Means, The Mountaineers' is an equally faithful likeness a comedy, 1788; The Battle of Hexham, 1789; The of John Kemble : Surrender of Calais, 1791 ; The Mountaineers, 1793; The Iron Chest (founded on Godwin's novel of Caleb

Lovely as day he was—but envious clouds

Have dimmed his lustre. He is as a rock Williams), 1796; The Heir at Law, 1797; Blue Beard (a mere piece of scenic display and music), 1798;

Opposed to the rude sea that beats against it; The Review, or the Wags of Windsor, an excellent

Worn by the waves, yet still o'ertopping them farce, 1798; The Poor Gentleman, a comedy, 1802 ;

In sullen majesty. Rugged now his lookLove Laughs at Locksmiths, a farce, 1803; Gay De

For out, alas! calamity has blurred ceivers, a farce, 1804 ; John Bull, a comedy, 1805 ;

The fairest pile of manly comeliness Who Wants a Guinea ? 1805; We Fly by Night, a

That ever reared its lofty head to heaven! farce, 1806 ; The Africans, a play, 1808 ; X. Y: Z.,

'Tis not of late that I have heard his voice; a farce, 1810; The Law of Java, a musical drama,

But if it be not changed--I think it cannot

There is a melody in every tone 1822, &c. No modern dramatist has added so many

Would charm the towering eagle in her flight, stock-pieces to the theatre as Colman, or imparted

And tame a hungry lion. so much genuine mirth and humour to all playgoers. His society was also much courted; he was a favourite with George IV., and, in conjunction with

[Scene from the 'Heir at Law.'] Sheridan, was wont to set the royal table in a roar. (Daniel Dowlas, an old Gosport shopkeeper, from the supposed His gaiety, however, was not always allied to pru- loss of the son of Lord Duberly, succeeds to the peerage and an dence, and theatrical property is a very precarious estate worth £15,000 per annum. He engages Dr Pangloss possession. As a manager, Colman got entangled a poor pedant just created by the Society of Arts, Artium in lawsuits, and was forced to reside in the King's Societatis Socius—as tutor to his son, with a salary of £300 Bench. The king stept forward to relieve him, by

2-year.] appointing him to the situation of licenser and exa

A Room in the Blue Boar Inn. miner of plays, an office worth from £300 to £400

Enter DR PANGLoss and WAITER. a-year. In this situation Colman incurred the

Pang. Let the chariot turn about. Dr Pangloss in enmity of several dramatic authors by the rigour

a lord's chariot ! * Curru portatur eodem.'—Juvenal with which he scrutinised their productions. His

-Hem! Waiter! own plays are far from being strictly correct or

Waiter. Sir. moral, but not an oath or double entendre was suffered

Pang. Have you any gentleman here who arrived to escape his expurgatorial pen as licenser, and he

this morning ? was peculiarly keen-scented in detecting all political

Waiter. There's one in the house now, sir. allusions. Besides his numerous plays, Colman wrote some poetical travesties and pieces of levity,

Pang. Is he juvenile!

Waiter. No, sir; he's Derbyshire. published under the title of My Nightgown and Pang. He! he he! Of what appearance is the Slippers (1797), which were afterwards republished

gentleman ? (1802) with additions, and named Broad Grins; also

Waiter. Why, plaguy poor, sir. Poetical Vagaries, Vagaries Vindicated, and Eccen

Pang. 'I hold him rich, al had he not a sherte.' tricities for Edinburgh. In these, delicacy and de- -Chaucer - Hem! Denominated the Honourable

are often sacrificed to broad mirth and Mr Dowlas? humour. The last work of the lively author was

Waiter. Honourable! He left his name plain Dowmemoirs of his own early life and times, entitled las at the bar, sir. Random Records, and published in 1830. He died Pang. Plain Dowlas, did he? that will do. “For in London on the 26th October 1836. The comedies all the rest is leather of Colman abound in witty and ludicrous delinea- Waiter. Leather, sir! tions of character, interspersed with bursts of ten- Pang. 'And prunello.'-Pope-Hem! Tell Mr derness and feeling, somewhat in the style of Sterne, Dowlas a gentleman requests the honour of an interwhom, indeed, he has closely copied in his “Poor view. Gentleman.' Sir Walter Scott has praised his 'John Waiter. This is his room, sir. He is but just stept Bull' as by far the best effort of our late comic drama. into our parcel warehouse—he'll be with you directly. The scenes of broad humour are executed in the

[Exit. best possible taste; and the whimsical, yet native Pang. Never before did honour and affluence let characters, reflect the manners of real life. The fall such a shower on the head of Doctor Pangloss ! sentimental parts, although one of them includes a Fortune, I thank thee ! Propitious goddess, I am finely wrought-up scene of paternal distress, par- grateful! I, thy favoured child, who commenced his

corum