to the random swagger of occasional expressions, to the bravado style of many of his sentiments. But, coupling these great faults with his still greater poetical merits, what a fine, what an interesting subject did he offer for perspicacious, honourable criticism! But he was beset by a very dog-kennel; and he must be more than human if he has not had his erroneous tendencies hardened in him in consequence.

What strike us as the principal faults of his poetry, impeding his popularity, we would venture thus to specify.

1. His frequent obscurity and confusion of language. As an instance of the latter, we may mention, that he attaches the epithet of "leadeneyed," to despair, considered as a quality or sentiment. Were it a personification of despair, the compound would be as finely applied, as, under the actual circumstances, it is erroneously so. There are many, many passages too, in his last volume, as well as in his earlier ones, from which we are not able, after taking some pains 'to understand them, to derive any distinct notion or meaning whatever.

2. He is too fond of running out glimmerings of thoughts, and indicating distant shadowy fancies: he shows, also, a fondness for dwelling

on features which are not naturally the most important or prominent. His imagination coquets with, and mocks the reader in this respect; and plain earnest minds turn away from such tricks with disgust. The greatest poets have always chiefly availed themselves of the plainest and most palpable materials.

3. He affects, in bad taste, a quaint strangeness of phrase; as some folks affect an odd manner of arranging their neckcloths, &c. This "shows a most pitiful ambition." We wish Mr. Keats would not talk of cutting mercy with a sharp knife to the bone; we cannot contemplate the skeleton of mercy. Nor can we familiarize ourselves pleasantly with the dainties made to still an infant's cries:-the latter is indeed a very round about way of expression, and not very complimentary either, we think. Young ladies, who know, of course, little or nothing of the economy of the nursery, will be apt, we imagine, to pout at this periphrasis, which puts their charms on a level with baby-corals!

But we are by this time tired of criticism; as we hope our readers are:-let us then all turn together to the book itself. We have said here what we have deemed it our duty to say we shall there find what it will be our delight to enjoy.

Russell; Iago, Junius Brutus Booth ; Leonardo, Mr. Hudson; Julio, Mr. Raymond; Manco, Mr. Moreton; Paulo, Mr. Read; Giovanni, Mr. Starmer; Luca, Mr. Randall; Desdemona, Mrs. W. West; Emilia, Mrs. Egerton.-This

theatre overflows every night. The paten

tees cannot condescend to enter into a competition of scurrility, which is only fitted for minor theatres-what their powers really are, will be, without any public appeal, legally decided in November next, and any gasconade can only be supposed to be caused by cunning or poverty.—After which, the farce of Modern Antiques, &c.

A more impudent puff, and heartless piece of bravado than this, we do

not remember to have witnessed. This theatre does not overflow every night. As to the competition of scurrility, which the manager declines, it is he who has commenced it. The

minor theatres, that is, one of them, -to wit, the Lyceum,-put forth a very proper and well-grounded remonstrance against this portentous opening of the winter theatre in the middle of the dog-days, to scorch up the dry, meagre, hasty harvest of the summer ones:-at which our mighty manager sets up his back, like the great cat, Rodilardus; scornfully rejects their appeal to the public; says he will pounce upon them in November with the law in his hands; and that, in the mean time, all they can do to interest the public in their favour by a plain statement of facts, "can only be supposed to be caused by cunning or poverty." This is pretty well for a manager who has been so thanked as Mr. Elliston! His own committee may laud him for bullying other theatres, but the pub lic will have a feeling for his weaker rivals, though the angry comedian "should threaten to swallow them up quick," and vaunt of his action of battery against them, without any public appeal," when wind and rain beat dark November down." This sorry manager, "dressed" (to use the words of the immortal bard, whom he so modestly and liberally patronises) "dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven," -not as make the angels weep,"-but his own candle-snuffers laugh, and his own scene-shifters blush. He ought to be ashamed of himself. Why, what a beggarly account of wretched actors, what an exposure of the nakedness of the land, have we in this very play-bill, which is issued forth with such a mixture of pomp and imbecility! Mr. Kean's name, indeed, stands pre-eminent in lordly capitals, in defiance of Mr. Dowton's resentment,--and Junius Brutus Booth, in his way, scorns to be Mistered! But all the rest are, we suppose-Mr. Elliston's friends. They are happy in the favour of the manager, and in the total ignorance of the town! Mr. Kean, we grant, is in himself a host; a sturdy column supporting the tottering, tragic dome of Drury-lane! What will it be when this main, this sole striking pillar is taken away" You take my house, when you do take the prop that holds my house" when the patentees shall have nothing to look to for sal

66

vation but the puffing of the Great Lessee, and his genius for law, which we grant may rival the Widow Black-acre's-and when the cries of Othello, of Macbeth, of Richard, and Sir Giles, in the last agonies of their despair, shall be lost, through all the long winter months, " over a vast and unhearing ocean?" Mr. Elliston, instead of taking so much pains to announce his own approaching dissolution, had better let Mr. Kean pass in silence, and take his positive departure for America without the pasting of placards, and the dust and clatter of a law-suit in Westminster Hall. It is not becoming in him, W. R. Elliston, Esq. comedian, formerly proprietor of the Surrey and the Olympic, and author of a pamphlet on the unwarrantable encroachments of the Theatres-royal, now to insult over the plea of selfdefence and self-preservation, set up by his brethren of the minor playhouses, as the resource of "poverty and cunning!"-" It is not friendly, it is not gentlemanly. The profes

sion, as well as Mr. Arnold, may blame him for it:" but the patentees will no doubt thank him at their next quarterly meeting.

our over

Mr. Kean's Othello the other night did not quite answer wrought expectations. He played it with variations; and therefore, necessarily worse. There is but one perfect way of playing Othello, and that was the way in which he used to play it. To see him in this character at his best, may be reckoned among the consolations of the human mind. It is to feel our hearts bleed by sympathy with another; it is to vent a world of sighs for another's sorrows; to have the loaded bosom "cleansed of that perilous stuff that weighs upon the soul," by witnessing the struggles and the mortal strokes that "flesh is heir to." We often seek this deliverance from private woes through the actor's obstetric art; and it is hard when he disappoints us, either from indifference or wilfulness. Mr. Kean did not repeat his admired farewell apostrophe to Content, with that fine "organ-stop" that he used,-as if his inmost vows and wishes were ascending to the canopy of Heaven, and their sounding echo were heard upon the earth like distant thunder,-but in a que

rulous, whining, sobbing tone, which we do not think right. Othello's spirit does not sink under, but supports itself on the retrospect of the past; and we should hear the lofty murmurs of his departing hopes, his ambition and his glory, borne onward majestically" to the passing wind." He pronounced the "not a jot, not a jot," as an hysteric exclamation, not with the sudden stillness of fixed despair. As we have seen him do this part before, his lips uttered the words, but they produced and were caused by no corresponding emotion in his breast. They were breath just playing on the surface of his mind, but that did not penetrate to the soul. His manner of saying to Cassio, "But never more be officer of mine," was in a tone truly terrific, magnificent, prophetic; and the only alteration we remarked as an im

provement. We have adverted to this subject here, because we think Mr. Kean cannot wisely outdo himself. He is always sufficiently original, sufficiently in extremes, and when he attempts to vary from himself and go still farther, we think he has no alternative but to run into extravagance. It is true it may be said of him, that he is

Never so sure our passion to create,
As when he treads the brink of all we hate

but still one step over the precipice is destruction. We also fear that the critical soil of America is slippery ground. Jonathan is inclined to the safe side of things, even in matters of taste and fancy. They are a little formal and common-place in those parts. They do not like liberties in morals, nor excuse poetical licences. They do not tolerate the privileges of birth, or readily sanction those of genius. A very little excess above the water-mark of mediocrity is with them quite enough. Mr. Kean will do well not to offend by extraordinary efforts, or dazzling eccentricities. He should be the Washington of actors, the modern Fabius. If he had been educated in the fourth form of St. Paul's school, like some other toptragedians that we know, we should say to him in classic terms, in medio tutissimus ibis. "Remember that they hiss the Beggar's Opera in America. If they do not spare Captain Macheath, do you think they will

--

spare you? Play off no pranks in the United States. Do not think to redeem great vices by great virtues. They are inexorable to the one, and insensible to the other. Reserve all works of superogation till you come back; and have safely run the gauntlet of New York, of Philadelphia, of Baltimore, and Boston. Think how Mr. Young would act,-and act with a little more meaning, and a little less pomp than he would--who, we are assured on credible authority, is that model of indifference that the New World would worship and bow down before." We have made bold to offer this advice, because we wish well to Mr. Kean; and because we' wish to think as well as possible of a republican public. We watch both him and them, "with the rooted malice of a friend."-We have thus paid, our respects to Old Drury in holidaytime; and thought we had already taken leave of the New English Opera-House for the season. But. there were Two WORDS to that bargain. The farce with this title is a very lively little thing, worth going to see; and the new Dramatic Romance (or whatever it is called) of the VAMPYRE is, upon the whole, the most splendid spectacle we have ever seen. It is taken from a French piece, founded on the celebrated story so long bandied about between Lord Byron, Mr. Shelley, and Dr. Polidori, which last turned out to be the true author. As a mere fiction, and as a fiction attributed to Lord Byron, whose genius is chartered for the land of horrors, the original story passed well enough: but on the stage. it is a little shocking to the feelings, and incongruous to the sense, to see a spirit in human shape,—in the shape of a real Earl, and, what is more, of a Scotch Earl-going about seeking whom it may marry and then devour, to lengthen out its own abhorred and anomalous being. Allowing for the preternatural atrocity of the fable, the situations were well imagined and supported: the acting of Mr. T. P. Cooke, (from the Surry Theatre) was spirited and imposing, and certainly Mrs. W. H. Chatterley, as the daughter of his friend the Baron, (Mr. Bartley,) and his destined bride, bid fair to be a very delectable victim. She is however saved in a surprizing manner, after a rapid succession of

interesting events, to the great joy of the spectator. The scenery of this piece is its greatest charm, and it is inimitable. We have seen sparkling and overpowering effects of this kind before; but to the splendour of a transparency were here added all the harmony and mellowness of the finest painting. We do not speak of the vision at the beginning, or of that at the end of the piece,-though these were admirably managed,—so much of the representation of the effects of moonlight on the water and on the person of the dying knight. The hue of the sea-green waves, floating in the pale beam under an arch-way of grey weather-beaten rocks, and with the light of a torch glaring over the milder radiance, was in as fine keeping and strict truth as Claude or Rembrandt, and would satisfy, we think, the most fastidious artist's eye. It lulled the sense of sight as the fancied sound of the dashing waters soothed the imagination. In the scene where the moonlight fell on the dying form of Ruthven (the Vampire) it was like a fairy glory, forming a palace of emerald light: the body seemed to drink its balmy essence, and to revive in it without a miracle. The line,

See how the moon sleeps with Endymion, came into the mind from the beauty and gorgeousness of the picture, notwithstanding the repugnance of every circumstance and feeling. This Melodrame succeeds very well; and it succeeds in spite of Mr. Kean's last nights, and without Miss Kelly!

At the Hay-market there has been a new Comedy, called "the Diamond Ring, or Exchange no Robbery." It is said to be by Mr. Theodore Hook. We should not wonder. The morality, and the sentiment are very flat, and very offensive; we mean, all the half platonic, half serious love-scenes between Sir Lennox Leinster, (Mr. Conner,) and Lady Cranberry (Mrs. Mardyn). This actress,-young, handsome, and full of spirit as she is, and as the character she represents is supposed to be,-and married to an old husband, who is always grumbling, and complaining,-does not appear fitted to be engaged in half an amour; nor as if she would excuse Sir Lennox for being" figurative," figurative," in that way. Her conduct is at least

equivocal, and without any ostensible motive but a gross one, which yet she does not acknowledge to herself. A Milan commission would inevitably have ruined her, even though Sir Lennox had been a less likely man than a well looking, impudent, Irish Baronet. His personal pretensions are certainly formidable to her jealous spouse, (Mr. Terry, an Adonis of sixty)-though it is hard to find out the charms in his conversation that recommend him so powerfully to the friendship of the lady. He has one joke, one flower of rhetoric, interspersed through all his discourse, witty or amorous-the cant-phrase, "You'll excuse my being figurative." His metaphorical turn would not however have been excused, but for the matter-of-fact notions and accomplishments of Mr. Liston-who plays a bona fide pot boy in the comic group, the supposed son of old Cranberry, but the real and proper offspring of old Swipes, the landlord of the Pig and Gridiron. This hopeful young gentleman has been palmed upon his pretended father, (to the no small mortification and dismay of both ties) instead of the intrepid Lieutenant Littleworth (Mr. Barnard) the true heir to the Cranberry estate and honours. Liston, as young Swipes, has nothing genteel about him; not even the wish to be so. His inclinations are low. Thus he likes to drink with the butler; makes a young blackamore whom he calls, 66 drop," drunk with claret; and is in love with Miss Polly Watts, who has red hair, a red face, and red elbows. He has vowed to elope with her before that day week, and make her Mrs. C. and would no doubt have been as good as his word if the secret of his birth had not been discovered by his mother-in-law, in revenge for a matrimonial squabble; and the whole ends, as a three-act piece should do-abruptly but agreeably. Mr. Liston's acting in such a character as we have described, it is needless to add, was infinitely droll, and Terry was a father worthy (pro tempore) of such a son.

par

snow

The Manager of the English Opera House on Monday, 21st ult. brought out an occasional farce against the Manager of Drury-Lane, called Patent Seasons; deprecating the encroachments of the winter theatres, and pre