Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 011.djvu/567

 called upon, by any text I know of, to play the zany in your situation, while you pervert or overstrain the duties of it.

Your austere resolve to banish from the stage, as far as it can be done by chastening the modern drama, all disloyalty, immorality, and wickedness, I admire; you know my principles, though my election is not yet as decided as your own, and you will credit this assertion; yet, I say, have a care of nonsense, even for your place sake.

The last day I saw you, you may recollect I parted in great anxiety to begin my journey to the country that evening; yet I believe I mentioned I should hazard a flying visit to W. H. late as it was. I did so; and found poor H. in a tolerable three-pair apartment, with Mrs. H. and the two Misses and little Master H. I knocked at his door, and hailed him, in good spirits, but was chilled at the gloom of his welcome. Mrs. H. too met me in a mysterious manner, and even the elder girl looked dull, and sighed as she curtsied. The same strange depression continued around me. I rallied our old acquaintance, complimented his wife, chucked Miss H. under the chin, and took the little boy on my knee; all to no purpose. I mentioned I had just seen you, and that you looked fresh-faced and lumbering as ever; and then they stared at each other, and turned pale; and, in fact, after a warm preface from H. the murder came out at last; another "trick" of yours, George, in your "brief authority:", our poor friend H. stept to a drawer, and placed before me a drama that had been accepted at a Theatre Royal, but that you had prohibited; with two others, also approved by the manager, but that you had so bravely cut up and cut down, he had scarce any hopes left about them. By the first, that is, by your sweeping prohibition of it, the poor fellow lost an almost certain two hundred and fifty; Mrs. H. a long-ambitioned and long-promised addition to her summer finery! and the Misses and Master H. I know not what.

All very fair, however, if on fair grounds; but as a common friend between you and H. I must conscientiously reject the if. He has let me have the MSS. home to the country with me; I have attentively perused the drama that you altogether prohibited, and attentively weighed the official cuts you have made in the two others, and laugh at you I must, my dear George: you are either hoaxing us, or you in reality approach that archbishop's state, before glanced at, and indeed require my friendly interference. If you do not jest, you dribble—dote; that's certain.

First and foremost, in the name Of the consistency of things, how could you, in such a wholesale way, condemn that piece with the queer name?—you know little of logic; but on what grounds of reasoning competent to any journeyman carpenter who reads the Mechanic's Magazine?—Let me remind you of the facts, in two words. A drama comes before you, called after a petty disturber of his Majesty's peace, and having him for its hero, but of which the tendency and catastrophe are to read a lesson to all who have been led astray by that doughty hero; and in this view, the brigand himself absolutely renounces and expresses contrition for his evil courses, and commands his followers to go home and become peaceable subjects. This you never denied. You did not call the tendency of the piece disloyal; but it brought forward (only to reprobate them) local disturbances; it brought for-