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 ’emSpread through Augusta Trinobantum—Swift.
For poets you can never want ’emSpread 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.”
“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, inThe 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 theCastle 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.”
“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, itsDon Juan:—
“For flesh is grass, which Time mows down to hay.”
“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 calledMonkLewis, 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. HisMonkandCastle Spectreelevated 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,MonkLewis 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 hisMonk, as having
“A graceless form and dwarfish stature”
“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 heightWhere Patent Shot they sell.]
Meux’s new brewhouse shows the light,Rowland Hill’s Chapel, and the heightWhere 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 calledHarlequin 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 inHorace in London:—
“And Winsor lights, with flame of gas.Home, to King’s Place, his mother.”
“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 thebottom 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 rhetoricianscatachresis. 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. TheMorning 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 ajet d’eaulike 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.”
“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 mobWith 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.”
“Hard is the task who edits—thankless job!—A Sunday journal for the factious mobWith 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 billWhich was not drawn with true mercantile skill,So, to amend it, I was told to goAnd seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co.”
“Something bad happen’d wrong about a billWhich was not drawn with true mercantile skill,So, to amend it, I was told to goAnd 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 ofThe Stranger, ofGeorge 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 ofLucretius, 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?”
“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 juveniledilettanteperformer.
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-bornLucretius.” [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 callmonologuesandunalogues; 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.