dishonoured our annals;-England had not seen her monarch a pensioner to France, and her nobles and statesmen at home divided into the most desperate factions, which sought vengeance on each other by mutual false accusation and general perjury. Yet considering how much of interest mingled even in that degrading contest, considering how much talent was engaged on both sides, what a treasure would a record of its minute events have been if drawn up by "such a faithful character as Griffith!" ARTICLE XI. LIFE OF KEMBLE-KELLY'S REMINISCENCES. [From the Quarterly Review, for April, 1826:-1. MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE, ESQ., including a History of the Stage from the time of Garrick to the present period. By JAMES BOADEN, ESQ. Two vols. London. 1825. 2. REMINISCENCES OF MICHAEL KELLY, of the King's Theatre, and Theatre Royal Drury Lane, including a Period of nearly half a Century; with Original Anecdotes of many distinguished Personages, Political, Literary, and Musical. London. 1826. 2 vols.] THERE are severe moralists who have judged the amusements of the stage inimical to virtue— there are many who conceive its exhibitions to be inconsistent with religious principle: to those this article can give no interest unless perhaps a painful one, and we must even say with old Dan Chaucer, "Turn o'er the leaf and chuse another tale; For you shall find enough both great and small, And eke morality and holiness." Where the scruples of such dissidents from public opinion are real, we owe them all possible respect; when they are assumed for a disguise in the sight of man, they will not deceive the eye which judgeth both Publican and Pharisee. For ourselves we will readily allow, that the theatre may be too much frequented, and attention to more serious concerns drowned amidst its fascinations. We also frankly confess that we may be better employed than in witnessing the best and most moral.play that ever was acted; but the same may be justly said of every action in our lives, except those of devotion towards God and benevolence towards man. And yet, as six days have been permitted us to think our own thoughts and work our own works, much that is strictly and exclusively secular is rendered indispensable by our wants, and much made venial and sometimes praiseworthy by our tastes and the conformation of our intellect. If there be one pleasure, exclusive of the objects of actual sensual indulgence, which is more general than another among the human race, it is the relish for personification, which at last is methodized into the dramatic art. The love of the chase may perhaps be as natural to the masculine sex, but when the taste of the females is taken into consideration, the weight of numbers leans to the love of mimic representation in an overwhelming ratio. The very first amusement of children is to get up a scene, to represent to the best of their skill papa and mamma, the coachman and his horses; and even He, formidable with the birchen sceptre, is mimicked in the exercise-ground by the urchins of whom he is the terror in the school-room. We do not know if the witty gentleman, to whom we are indebted for a history of monkeys, ever thought of tracing the connexion betwixt us and our cousin the orangoutang in our mutual love of imitation. : At a more advanced period of life we have mimicry of tone and dialect, and masques, and disguises then little scenes are preconcerted, which at first prescribe only the business of a plot, leaving the actors to fill up the language extempore from their mother wit: then some one of more fancy is employed to write the dialogue-a stage with scenery is added, and the drama has reached its complete form. The same taste, which induced us when children to become kings and heroes ourselves on an infantine scale, renders us, when somewhat matured in intellect, passionate admirers of the art in its more refined state. There are few things which those gifted with any degree of imagination recollect with a sense of more anxious and mysterious delight than the first dramatic representation which they have witnessed. Iffland has somewhere de scribed it, and it is painted in stronger colours by the immortal Goëthe in Wilhelm Meister-yet we cannot refrain from touching on the subject. The unusual form of the house, filled with such groups of crowded spectators, themselves forming an extraordinary spectacle to the eye which has never witnessed it before, yet all intent upon that wide and mystic curtain whose dusky undulations permit us now and then to discern the momentary glitter of some gaudy form or the spangles of some sandaled foot which trips lightly within; then the light, brilliant as that of day!-then the music, which, in itself a treat sufficient in every other situation, our inexperience mistakes for the very play we came to witness-then the slow rise of the shadowy curtain, disclosing, as if by actual magic, a new land, with woods and mountains and lakes, lighted, it seems to us, by another sun, and inhabited by a race of beings different from ourselves, whose language is poetry, whose dress, demeanour, and sentiments seem something supernatural, and whose whole actions and discourse are calculated not for the ordinary tone of everyday life, but to excite the stronger and more powerful faculties-to melt with sorrow overpower with terror- astonishi with the marvellous-or convulse with irresistible laughter-all these wonders stamp indelible impressions on the memory. Those mixed feelings also, which perplex us between a sense that the scene is but a plaything, and an interest which ever and anon surprises us into a transient belief that that which so strongly affects us cannot be fictitious -those mixed and puzzling feelings, also, are exciting in the highest degree. Then there are the bursts of applause, like distant thunder, and the permission afforded to clap our little hands and add our own scream of delight to a sound so commanding. All this and much—much more is fresh in our memory, although when we felt these sensations we looked on the stage which Garrick had not yet left. It is now a long while since yet we have not passed many hours of such unmixed delight, and we still remember the sinking lights, the dispersing crowd, with the vain longings, which we felt, that the music would again sound, the magic curtain once more arise, and the enchanting dream recommence; and the astonishment with which we looked upon the apathy of the elder part of our company, who, having the means, did not spend every evening in the theatre. When habit has blunted these earliest sensations of pleasure, the theatre continues to be the favourite resort of the youth, and though he recognises no longer the enchanted palace of his childhood, he enjoys the more sober pleasure of becoming acquainted with the higher energies of human passion, the recondite intricacies and complications of human temper and disposition, by seeing them illustrated in the most vivid manner by those whose profession it is to give actual life, form, and substance to the creations of genius. Much may be learned in a well-conducted theatre essential to the profession of the bar, and, with reverence be it spoken, even of the pulpit; and it is well known that Napoleon |