he carries off the best of them at last (Mrs. Mardyn),1 who not being able to seduce him from her rivals by any other means, resorts to a disguise, and vanquishes him in love by disarming him in a duel. The scene in which Atall, who had made love to Clarinda as Colonel Standfast, is introduced to her by her cousin (who is also in love with him) as Mr. Freeman, and while he is disowning his personal identity, is surprised by the arrival of Lady Sadlife, to whom he had been making the same irresistible overtures, is one of the best coups d'œil of the theatre we have seen for a long time. Harley acts this character laughably, but not very judiciously. He bustles through it with the liveliness of a footman, not with the manners of a gentleman. He never changes his character with his dress, but still he is a pleasant fellow in himself, and is so happy in the applause he receives that we are sorry to find any fault with him. Mrs. Alsop's Lady Dainty was a much better, but a much less agreeable piece of acting. The affected sensibility, the pretended disorders, the ridiculous admiration of novelty, and the languid caprices of this character, were given by the actress with an overpowering truth of effect. The mixture of folly, affectation, pride, insensibility, and spleen which constitute the character of the fine lady, as it existed in the days of Cibber, and is delineated in this comedy, is hardly to be tolerated in itself, with every advantage of grace, youth, beauty, dress, and fashion. But Mrs. Alsop gave only the inherent vice and ridiculous folly of the character, without any external accomplishments to conceal or adorn it. She has always the same painful "frontlet" on; the same uneasy expression of face and person. Her affected distortions seemed to arise from real pain; nor was her delight in mischief and absurdity counteracted by any palliating circumstances of elegance or beauty. A character of this description ought only to appeal to the understanding, and not to offend the senses. We do not know how to soften this 1 Mrs. Mardyn was Clarinda; and Mrs. Davison, Lady Sadlife.

censure; but we will add, that Mrs. Alsop, in all her characters, shows sense, humour, and spirit.

Dowton and Miss Kelly, as Sir Solomon Sadlife, and Wishwell, are two for a pair. We do not wish to see a better actor or actress. The effect which both these performers produce, is the best and strongest that can be, because they never try to produce an effect. Their style of acting is the reverse of grimace or caricature. They never overcharge or force any thing, and their humour is so much the more irresistible in its appeal, as it seems to come from them in spite of themselves. Instead of wanting to show their talents to the audience, they seem hardly conscious of them themselves. All their excellence is natural, unaffected, involuntary. When the sense of absurdity is so strong that it cannot be contained any longer, it bursts out; and the expression of their feelings commands our sympathy, because they do not appear to court it. Their nature is downright, sturdy, sterling, good old English nature, that is, the sort of nature that we like best. In the present play, it is hard to determine which is the best-Miss Kelly's sulky suppressed abigail airs as Wishwell, her adroit irony and contemptuous expression of pity for Sir Solomon's credulity, or Dowton's deliberate manner of digesting his disgraces, chewing the cud of his misfortunes, and pocketing up his branching horns, in the latter character. Wishwell's tingling fingers, uplifted eyes, pouting mouth, bridling chin, and Sir Solomon's bronzed face, curling lips, blank looks, nods, winks, and shrugs, told their own story and kept their own secret (to themselves), as well as heart could wish. We have a stronger relish for this kind of dry pungent humour, than we have for the taste of olives.

The Inn-keeper's Daughter' is a melo-drame founded on Mr. Southey's ballad of Mary, the Maid of the Inn. The ballad is better than the melo-drame. The interest of the

1 By George Soane; produced on Easter Monday, April 7.

story is less in the latter, and the machinery is complicated, and moves slow.

Robinson Crusoe,' the new melo-drame at Covent-Garden, is not the old favourite with the public. It has not the striking incident of the notched post, nor of the print of a human footstep in the sand; but there is a poodle dog in it, and innumerable savages, English and Caribbee.

DON JUAN.

King's Theatre, April 20, 1817.

MOZART's celebrated opera of Don Juan2 has been brought forward at this theatre with every attraction, and with all the success which could be anticipated. The house was crowded to excess on Saturday week (the day of its being first brought out): on Tuesday it was but thinly attended. Why was this? Was it because the first representation did not answer the expectation of the public? No; but because Saturday is the fashionable day for going to the Opera, and Tuesday is not. On Saturday, therefore, the English are a musical public; and on Tuesday they are not a musical public: on Saturday they are all rapture and enthusiasm; and on Tuesday they are all coldness and indifference-impose a periodical penance on themselves for the plenary indulgence of their last week's ecstasies, and have their ears hermetically sealed to the charms of modulated sounds. Yet the writer of the preface to the translation of Don Juan assures us, that "the people of this country who frequent the Opera, are inferior to those of no other nation in their taste

1

Robinson Crusoe; or, The Bold Buccaneers, by Isaac Pocock; produced April 7.

2 Mozart's Il Don Giovanni was produced for the first time on the London stage, April 12.

for fine music." That may be so. But still we doubt, if Don Juan, "the matchless work of its immortalized author," had been presented to the English public for the first time on Saturday week, without those wonderful helps to public taste and discernment, the name and reputation of the composer, whether it would have met with any better success than it did in Prague in 1787, or at Paris some years after,' and whether we might not have had to observe of its representation at the King's Theatre, as Garat, the singer, did of its representation at the Académie de Musique; "Don Juan a paru incognito à l'Opéra!" The only convincing proof that the public, either in this country or on the Continent, are become more alive to "the refined and intellectual music" of Don Giovanni than they were thirty years ago, is—that the author is dead.

2

What inclines us the more to believe that the admiration of Mozart's music in this instance is more a thing of rote than the consequence of any general feeling on the subject, is, that we hear of nothing but the sublimity and Shakespearian character of Don Juan. Now we confess that, with the single exception of the Ghost scene, we not only do not feel any such general character of grand or stronglycontrasted expression pervading the composition, but we do not see any opportunity for it. Except the few words put into the mouth of the great Commander (Don Pedro) either as the horseman ghost, or the spectre-guest of Don Juan, which break upon the ear with a sort of awful murmur, like the sound of the last trumpet ringing in the hollow chambers of the dead, but which yet are so managed, that "airs from heaven" seem mingled with "blasts from hell," the rest of the opera is scarcely any thing but gaiety, tenderness, and sweetness, from the first line to the last. To be sure, the part of the great Commander is a striking and lofty catastrophe to the piece; he does in some sort assume a voice 2 Pierre Jean Garat (1764-1823). 3 Hamlet, I, iv, 41.

1 In 1805.

3

of stern authority, which puts an end to the mirth, the dancing, the love and feasting, and drowns the sounds of the pipe, the lute, and the guitar, in a burst of rattling thunder; but even this thunder falls and is caught among its own echoes, that soften while they redouble the sound, and by its distant and varied accompaniment, soothes as much as it startles the ear. This short episode, which is included in four or five sentences printed in capital letters, is the only part of the opera which aims at the tragic: this part is not of a pure or unmixed species, but is very properly harmonized with the rest of the composition, by middle and reflected tones; and all the other scenes are of one uniform, but exquisite character, a profusion of delicate airs and graces. Except, then, where the author reluctantly gives place to the Ghost-statue, or rather compromises matters with him, this opera is Mozart all over; it is no more like Shakespeare, than Claude Lorraine is like Rubens or Michael Angelo. It is idle to make the comparison. The personal character of the composer's mind, a light, airy, voluptuous spirit, is infused into every line of it; the intoxication of pleasure, the sunshine of hope, the dancing of the animal spirits, the bustle of action, the sinkings of tenderness and pity, are there, but nothing else. It is a kind of scented music; the ear imbibes an aromatic flavour from the sounds. It is like the breath of flowers; the sighing of balmy winds; or Zephyr with Flora' playing; or the liquid notes of the nightingale wafted to the bosom of the bending rose. To show at once our taste or the want of it, the song of. La ci darem gives us, we confess, both in itself, and from the manner in which it is sung by Madame Fodor, more pleasure than all the rest of the opera put together. We could listen to this air for ever-with certain intervals: the first notes give a throb of expectation to the heart, the last linger on the sense. We encore it greedily, with a sort of

1

An allusion to the Covent Garden ballet, Aurora, or the Flight of Zephyr. See p. 290 ante.