scription so true, so minutely faithful, and so full of intellectual sympathy, that we can only suppose it to have been drawn by Mr. Tomlins from his own experience. "The martyrdom which a writer of the higher drama has to endure, is greater than in any other mental endeavour, not even excepting the historical painter. To compose a five-act play that shall produce its just effect, is a labour which none can comprehend who have not attempted it. To produce an homogeneous work from a variety of minute incidents and events to construct a plot that shall be interesting, but not intricate- to develop cha❤ racter with profundity and simplicity to clothe the strongest throes of the passions in the immortal language and figures of the imagination to create with such art that it shall be received for nature is not the result of an idle outpouring of a rhapsodical brain, but the united effort of the highest faculties of man. It is not given to the grandest genius to produce such a work with ease, not even to Shakspeare. It is conceived at first rudely and dimly, and but by glimpses gradually unfolds itself to the artist. Fitfully do its noblest parts present themselves, frequently fading ere the lower faculty can fix them in words. New powers present themselves as he proceeds in his work; and the perturbed and glowing imagination bodies forth' a variety of forms, which the nice instinct of genius has to shade into keeping with the noble whole. That which is the effect of frequent efforts and various inspirations, has to be fused into one entire and perfect chrysolite,' so that it may come on the auditor and spectator as the continuous emanation of one conception. Having poured forth the stores of collected observation; having given, by his instinctive genius, substance and imperishable existence to the rhapsodical visions of his imaginative faculty; having wound up his whole mental being to the strongest and most potent exercise of its combined faculties; having instructed himself in the lower art of what will affect those he addresses, he completes his play the result of a severe exercise of his highest faculties, and the produce of a mental labour great as the mind of man can undergo. In all this he has been sustained by the strong flow of his energies; and if they have ever flagged, he has renewed them by an ardour kindled at the imperishable fame of his immortal predecessors. The only reward he can know is acted success the knowledge of his might to move the minds of his fellow-men - the consciousness of a noble aim, and a solid reliance on his abiding fame." But now that the "mighty line" is done, and the last echoes of its music have filled and satisfied his soul, the miseries of the dramatist begin. He presents his play is received with smiles, and bows, and evasive compliments has he a character for Miss? or Mr. -? From day to day he lingers on in hope, baffled, but still flattered and deceived; then come new and unexpected impediments the season is advancing the season closes nothing is accomplished his play is probably mislaid: at last, after a year or two, he grows impatient, insists upon an answer, and is fortunate if he gets it at a cost of suffering and self-sacrifice, which cannot be conceived except by those who have undergone this insulting ordeal. Nor is this all. In some instances, plays have been pilfered by the reader or the favourite dramatist of the theatre, and their authors have been condemned to endure the additional wrong of seeing the subject they had laboured upon actually produced upon the stage at the very moment when their own MS., from which it had been filched, was returned upon their hands with a cold and polite negative. The modes of disappointing and rejecting dramatic writers are various, but all managers appear to agree upon one point, encouraging them to write again, merely to get rid of them at the moment, without entertaining the most remote intention of receiving their next production with greater favour than their last. This insincerity, which has the effect of deluding the author into further experiments, while in reality it diminishes his chance of success by giving him a sort of claim on the management that makes him to be shunned for ever after, is the darkest injury and the most refined cruelty of all. Sometimes the manager urges the author of a tragedy to try another with more or less of such and such a kind of passion or character in it! — and sometimes he suggests that he thinks his forte is comedy, which he wishes him to try, as that line at least is open! and not unfrequently he hints that, his hands being full of five-act pieces, he would seriously advise him to try a farce! - but, under whatever shape it comes, he puts him off with a suggestion to prosecute his labours. Amongst other wrongs and insults to dramatists (and Mr. Macready erred particularly in this), is the continual encouragement to any one whose play is noticed, or application answered, to write another; thus inducing an injurious and useless expenditure of mind and consumption of time, it being well-known that the arrangements of the theatre preclude the possibility of their being accepted when completed. It has been said, indeed, by an eminent literary man of the day, that if Mr. Macready's answers to authors had all been throwr in a heap together, they would equally apply to any one, no matter how directed, and that they each would contain this inducement to write. This thoughtless conduct arises from the arrogance of success, and an utter contempt and disregard for the literature of the drama except as a medium for theatrical display. It is one of the worst results of that system which gives the successful actor thousands a-year, whilst the author cannot get hundreds. The actor also is by no means without the prejudices of his nation, and he cannot help feeling, and, generally, grossly displaying, his estimate of the difference of pecuniary circumstances between the dramatist of the suburbs and himself of a fashionable square. He has also generally so far advanced in classical literature, as to be able to construe 'irritabile genus, a phrase which he takes literally and applies superciliously to authors, who are to be alone controlled, as he thinks, by the coarsest flattery, or the most tremendous bar.' crow "Such being the state of circumstances (and innumerable proofs can, and, if necessary, shall be given, to show the case, instead of being exaggerated, is not half stated), it is apparent that the better kind of drama is being sacrificed to the evil results of monopoly. The large theatres, aiming at every thing, cannot afford to encourage it; and if they could, there is not sufficient space to give dramatists of the better kind a fair opportunity. The worser and coarser kind only have a chance, and the fate of those who attempt more is such as has been here depicted.” That this system in all its parts must be abolished, we assume to be one of the inevitable functions of this enlightened age. The patents upon which the exclusive right is supposed to be held, are in fact waste paper. They have been violated over and over again, and are at this moment violated to an extent of which the public generally are not at all aware, and, which is still more to the purpose, violated by act of parliament. The patents do not, as is generally supposed, confer the right of acting any particular kind of drama, but the exclusive right of acting" all entertainments of the stage whatsoever." The effect of the patents if they be of any effect at all is to circumscribe, not the performance of the legitimate drama, but the number of theatres. If these patents were really carried out, there would be but two theatres in London, whereas there are sixteen. Now the fact that the fourteen extra theatres are licensed according to act of parliament, extinguishes for ever, by law, the principle, and the only principle, recognised in the patents, rendering them as completely null and void as if the same law had formally abolished them. The statute under which these minor theatres were established, prohibits them from acting the regular drama; and it is only under that statute, that legal proceedings can be taken against any of them for producing five-act plays. The patents have never yet been pleaded in court, and never can be; and no legal process whatever can be founded upon them. The rights they conferred are actually at an end; and the lord chamberlain is empowered, by the same act of parliament which enables the magistrates in other districts to grant licenses for theatres, to license or unlicense as many theatres as he may think proper within the city and liberties of Westminster. The lord chamberlain, therefore, might to-morrow authorise the performance of the legitimate drama in a dozen different places within the reach of the imaginary privileges of Drury Lane and Covent Garden; and what then would be the value of the patents? or rather, what is now the value of them with this authority in existence? But even were no such authority vested anywhere, it might be asked, where did Charles II. obtain the extraordinary and unconstitutional prerogative of tying up the hands of posterity? When was the power conferred upon the sovereign of this country of issuing a document with the sign manual, that should coerce remote generations, and survive unimpaired and unquestioned the revolutions of time, and the wrecks of institutions? Is majesty invested with a grand and blinding superstition, by which it is enabled to fetish an act of favour, and render it sacred to all eternity? The doctrine is monstrous and ridiculous, and luckily we are spared the trouble of exposing its absurdity by the salutary acts of parliament which have frittered the "merry monarch's" patents into ribands. The right conferred by Charles II. "has been contravened," observes Mr. Tomlins, "by every subsequent sovereign, and, finally, totally abrogated by a succession of acts of parliament; in fact, the patentees have no right as patentees, and they know it." What then remains to be done for the complete liberation of the drama? — simply to petition the legislature for the repeal of that part of the law which prohibits the minor theatres from acting the best plays, and thus throwing open the stage to the free exercise of its healthy influence upon the morals of the community, instead of forcing it to subsist by the lowest species of vulgar and immoral performances. As to the question of "compensation," which is always mooted on such occasions by conscientious legislators, we honestly confess we cannot discover how a claim of that nature could be supported by evidence of a kind fit to go before a jury. Mr. Tomlins disposes of it with a summary generosity, which every body will approve of except the patentees. "The very utmost that the most scrupulous regard for vested interests could demand, would be some slight immunity to the patentees. And to this there can be no claim, for they have, as the foregoing facts will prove, no exclusive rights; and if any among them have been deluded into the idea that they have, they should, like all other indiscreet persons, bear the result of their own imprudence. If the legislature were to listen to any thing of the kind, they must think themselves very graciously dealt with if the privilege of performing the regular drama in Westminster was left to them, the regions beyond that being declared perfectly free to perform any kind of entertainment. This would be giving them the full benefit of their obsolete patents, and be doing a tardy justice to the public, though even this limitation would be any thing but creditable to sound and enlightened legislation. "As in all cases of compensation some damage is supposed, it becomes necessary to examine how this plea could be established by the patentees. The first inquiry would naturally be, whether any one of the lessees gave a single hundred pounds a year more for either of the large theatres in consequence of this alleged exclusive privilege of performing the regular drama? Did Mr. Bunn, who never performed it? Did Mr. Elliston, who openly declared there was no such privilege, and who subsequently defied his old landlords by playing the regular drama in their despite at the Surrey Theatre? Did Mr. Osbaldiston, who took a minor company to Covent Garden? or Mr. Hammond, who has done the same to Drury Lane? It may be said that Mr. Macready did; but he is the strongest instance of all to the contrary, for he made the risk and hazard of playing the regular drama a strong plea for paying less than any one else. Mr. Harris, the principal proprietor of Covent Gar den Theatre, deposed in the Court of Chancery, that this theatre did not gain a shilling by the regular drama from 1809 to 1821, but was supported by the Christmas pantomimes and those kind of performances. If such was the case during a period when so many excellent actors graced its boards, what must it not have lost by the regular drama from that period to the present? Mr. Bunn's balance-sheet speaks volumes; as would Captain Polhill's private accounts, and those of other capitalists. "It is evident that the renters and proprietors get nothing by the vaunted patents, and therefore cannot assert they would lose any thing by their formal abolishment. It seems, indeed, very probable that the two houses would let more profitably, if they were unencumbered by the patents, either for gladiatorial exhibitions, musical and public meetings, or some very extensive scientific or religious purposes. It was understood at one time, that parties were in treaty with the proprietors with this view; and to this, sooner or later, must they come. The raising a claim, therefore, to clog the legislature in its honest enactments is preposterous, and cannot be maintained either on the plea of a recognised right or of a real injury." Where no injury can be proved, the law recognises no claim for compensation. As to the faith of the royal word, and the faith of the patent, all that need be said is, that they are not binding upon the legislature of the nineteenth century. The interests of the public and we do not know any subject upon which the social interests of the public are more deeply involved are of higher importance than such shallow casuistry about the honour of a profligate king, who would not have hesitated to make a gift of the drama to one of his mistresses, had such a boon been asked of him, Mr. Tomlins' suggestion is, under all circumstances, more liberal than the patentees are entitled to; but we, at least, should not object to it. Let them have the exclusive right to Westminster, provided that the legitimate drama be released every where else. We are quite sure when that shall have been effected we speak very candidly the freedom of Westminster must speedily follow as an unavoidable corollary. "O, Inez ! dearest-only loved one! first, "Sole thing, this bosom in its fondness nurs'd! "Couldst thou but hear me thus my love avow, "How wouldst thou look affection on me now! "Oh! couldst thou feel how pants my soul for thine, "Ev'n death would waken to a love like mine! "That dies not-sleeps not-ev'n though hope be fled"A wasting flame that burns but for the dead! "But thou art cold-thou hear'st, thou seest me not: "Life, love, and memory all are now forgot! "Yet thou inspir'st me, slandered and betrayed, "To make this last atonement to thy shade. "Relentless murderers! see, where from the tomb "Dead Inez comes to call ye to your doom! "Your limbs shall writhe around the stake, and feel "The rack of agony, the crushing wheel: "Vultures shall feed upon your bones, and tear "And think not that your pangs shall close with death: "Fiends like yourselves shall watch your parting breath, "Where gnaws the never-dying worm the heart; |