religious charlatan but his own professions, is carried off by long formal speeches and dull pompous casuistry. We find our patience tired out, and our understanding perplexed, as if we were sitting by in a court of law. If there is nothing of nature, at least there is enough of art, in the French play. But in the Hypocrite (we mean the principal character itself) there is neither the one nor the other. Tartuffe is a plausible, fair-spoken, long-winded knave, who if he does not convince, confounds his auditors. [Any one, for instance, who is an admirer of the political oratory of Lord Castlereagh, might be supposed to be taken in by the Tartuffe. We have really paid the talents of his Lordship a compliment which we did not intend, but we will not retract it.]

In the Hypocrite of Bickerstaffe, the insidious, fawning, sophistical, accomplished French Abbé is modernized into a low-lived, canting, impudent Methodist preacher; and this was the character which Mr. Dowton represented, we must say, too well. Dr. Cantwell is a sturdy beggar, and nothing more: he is not an impostor, but a bully. There is not in any thing that he says or does, in his looks, words, or actions, the least reason that Sir John Lambert should admit him into his house and friendship, suffer him to make love to his wife and daughter, disinherit his son in his favour, and refuse to listen to any insinuation or proof offered against the virtue and piety of his treacherous inmate. In the manners and institutions of the old French régime, there was something to account for the blind ascendency acquired by the good priest over his benefactor, who might have submitted to be cuckolded, robbed, cheated, and insulted, as a tacit proof of his religion and loyalty. The inquisitorial power exercised by the Church was then so great, that a man who refused to be priest-ridden, might very soon be suspected of designs against the state. This is at least the

1 The exposé contained in the Tartuffe certainly did a great deal to shake the power of priestcraft and hypocrisy in France. The wits and philosophers of the two last centuries laboured hard to destroy "Popery

best account we can give of the tameness of Orgon. But in this country, nothing of the kind could happen. A fellow like Dr. Cantwell could only have got admittance into the kitchen of Sir John Lambert-or to the ear of old Lady Lambert. The animal magnetism of such spiritual guides, is with us directed against the weaker nerves of our female devotees.

We discovered nothing in Mr. Dowton's manner of giving the part to redeem its original improbability, or gloss over its obvious deformity. His locks are combed down smooth over his shoulders; but he does not sufficiently "sleek o'er his rugged looks." His tones, except where he assumes the whining twang of the conventicle, are harsh and abrupt. He sometimes exposes his true character prematurely and unnecessarily, as where he is sent to Charlotte with a message from her father. He is a very vulgar, coarse, substantial hypocrite. His hypocrisy appears to us of that kind which arises from ignorance and grossness, without any thing of refinement or ability, which yet the character requires. The cringing, subtle, accomplished master-villain, the man of talent and of the world, was wanting. It is, in a word, just that sort of hypocrisy which might supply a lazy adventurer in the place of work, which he might live and get fat upon, but which would not enable him to conduct plots and conspiracies in high life. We do not say that the fault is in Mr. Dowton. The author has attempted to amalgamate two contradictory characters, by engrafting our vulgar Methodist on the courtly French impostor; and the error could not perhaps be remedied in the performance. The only scene which struck us as in Mr. Dowton's best manand Slavery." The wits and philosophers of the present age are labouring as hard to restore them. We wonder the Editor of The Times does not set his "royal and Christian" face against the Tartuffe, as an abominable and sacrilegious performance, and commission Blucher to "destroy the statue or statues of Molière, if such there be !"-NOTE in The Examiner,

1 Macbeth, III, ii, 27.

ner, as truly masterly, was that in which he listens with such profound indifference and unmoved gravity to the harangue of Mawworm.' Mr. Dowton's general excellence is in hearty ebullitions of generous and natural feeling, or in a certain swelling pride and vain-glorious exaggerated ostentation, as in Major Sturgeon, and not in constrained and artificial characters.

2

3

Mawworm, which is a purely local and national caricature, was admirably personated by Oxberry. Mrs. Sparks's 3 old Lady Lambert, is, we think, one of the finest exhibitions of character on the stage. The attention which she pays to Dr. Cantwell, her expression of face and her fixed uplifted hands, were a picture which Hogarth might have copied. The effects of the spirit in reviving the withered ardour of youth, and giving a second birth to forgotten raptures, were never better exemplified. Mrs. Orger played young Lady Lambert as well as the equivocal nature of the part would admit; and Miss Kelly was as lively and interesting as usual in Charlotte. Of Mr. Wallack we cannot speak so favourably as some of our cotemporaries. This gentleman "has honours thrust upon him" which he does not deserve, and which, we should think, he does not wish. He has been declared, by the first authority, to stand at the head of his profession in the line of genteel comedy. It is usual, indeed, to congratulate us on the accession of Mr. Wallack at the expense of Mr. Decamp, but it is escaping from Scylla to Charybdis. We are glad to have parted with Mr. Decamp, and should not be inconsolable for the loss of Mr. Wallack.

1 The Hypocrite, II, i.

4

2 In Foote's Mayor of Garratt; see pp. 223-4 post.

3

Mrs. Hugh Sparks (née Mills) made her first appearance at Drury Lane in 1797.

1 James Wallack (1794-1864) made his first appearance at Drury Lane, October 10, 1812, and was manager of the theatre from 1825 to 1832. This was his first performance of Col. Lambert. Mr. Powell was the representative of Sir John Lambert.

The best thing we remember in Mr. Coleridge's tragedy of Remorse, and which gave the greatest satisfaction to the audience, was that part in which Decamp was precipitated into a deep pit,' from which, by the elaborate description which the poet had given of it, it was plainly impossible he should ever rise again. If Mr. Wallack is puffed off and stuck at the top of his profession at this unmerciful rate, it would almost induce us to wish Mr. Coleridge to write another tragedy, to dispose of him in the same way as his predecessor.

MR. EDWARDS'S RICHARD III.

2

[Covent Garden] October 1, 1815. A MR. EDWARDS, who has occasionally played at private theatricals, appeared at Covent-Garden Theatre in the character of Richard the Third. It was one of those painful failures, for which we are so often indebted to the managers. How . these profound judges, who exercise "sole sway and sovereignty" over this department of the public amusements, who have it in their power to admit or reject without appeal, whose whole lives have been occupied in this one subject, and whose interest (to say nothing of their reputation) must prompt them to use their very best judgment in deciding on the pretensions of the candidates for public favour, should yet be so completely ignorant of their profession, as to seem not to know the difference between the best and the worst, and frequently to bring forward in the most arduous characters, persons whom the meanest critic in the pit immediately perceives to be totally disqualified for the part they have

1 Remorse, IV, i. Decamp played Isidore at the production of this tragedy, January 23, 1813.

2 Mr. I. L. Edwards, September 25, 1815.

undertaken-is a problem which there would be some difficulty in solving. It might suggest to us also, a passing suspicion that the same discreet arbiters of taste suppress real excellence in the same manner as they obtrude incapacity on the notice of the public, if genius were not a thing so much rarer than the want of it.

If Mr. Edwards had shown an extreme ignorance of the author, but had possessed the peculiar theatrical requisites of person, voice, and manner, we should not have been surprised at the managers having been deceived by imposing appearances. But Mr. Edwards failed, less from a misapprehension of his part, than from an entire defect of power to execute it. If every word had been uttered with perfect propriety (which however was very far from being the case) his gestures and manner would have made it ridiculous. Of personal defects of this kind, a man cannot be a judge himself; and his friends will not tell him. The managers of a play-house are the only persons who 'can screen any individual, possessed with an unfortunate theatrical mania, from exposing himself to public mortification and disgrace for the want of those professional qualifications of which they are supposed to be infallible judges.

At the same theatre, a lady of the name of Hughes1 has been brought out in Mandane, in the favourite Opera of Artaxerxes—we should hope, not in the place of Miss Stephens. We do not say this for the sake of any invidious comparison, but for our own sakes, and for the sake of the public. Miss Hughes is, we believe, a very accomplished singer, with a fine and flexible voice, with considerable knowledge and execution. But where is the sweetness, the simplicity, the melting soul of music? There was a voluptuous delicacy, a naïveté in Miss Stephens's singing, which we have never heard before nor since, and of which we should

1 Miss Hughes "from Dublin" made her début at Covent Garden on September 22.