Part 14 (1/2)
{43} The Authors, as in gallantry bound, wish this lady to continue anonymous.
{44} 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 a.s.sumed 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. {44a}
{44a} 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.
{45} 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.”
{46} The old name for London:
For poets you can never want 'em Spread through Augusta Trin.o.bantum--SWIFT.
Thomson in his ”Seasons” calls it ”huge Augusta.”
{47} 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.”
{48} A narrow pa.s.sage immediately adjoining Drury Lane Theatre, and so called from the vineyard attached to Covent or Convent Garden.
{49} 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.
{50} Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!
Were the last words of Marmion.
{51} Whitbread's shears. An economical experiment of that gentleman. The present portico, towards Brydges-street, was afterwards erected under the lessees.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sages 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.
{53} 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.
{54} 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,” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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.
{55} ”'The Beautiful Incendiary,' by the Honourable W. Spencer, is also an imitation of great merit. The flashy, fas.h.i.+onable, artificial style of this writer, with his confident and extravagant compliments, can scarcely be said to be parodied in such lines.”-- JEFFREY, Edinburgh Review.
{56} 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 fas.h.i.+onable, trashy author.'” The sand and ”filings of gla.s.s,”
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 pa.s.s.”
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.
{56} 10th of October, 1812, the day of opening.