wear the willow on his account, but looks as smiling, as good-humoured, as buxom, as in the natural and professional life-time of Mr. Tokely, and drinks her bowl of cream as Cowslip, and expresses her liking of a roast duck with the same resignation of flesh and spirit as ever.

Mr. Liston, in Pigeons and Crows, plays the part of Sir Peter Pigwiggin, knight, alderman, and pinmaker. What a name, what a person, and what a representative! We never saw Mr. Liston's countenance in better preservation; that is, it seems tumbling all in pieces with indescribable emotions, and a thousand odd twitches and unaccountable absurdities

oozing out at every pore. His jaws seem to ache with laughter: his eyes look out of his head with wonder his face is unctuous all over and bathed with jests; the tip of his nose is tickled with conceit of himself, and his teeth chatter in his head in the eager insinuation of a plot: his forehead speaks, and his wig (not every particular hair, but the whole bewildered bushy mass) "stands on end as life were in it." In the scene with his dulcinea (Miss Leigh) his approaches are the height of self-complacent, cockney courtship; his rhymes on his own projected marriage,

What a thing!
Bless the King!

would make any man (who is not so already) loyal; and his laughing in the glass when he is told by mistake that Miss's mamma is eighteen, and his convulsive distortions as he recovers from his first surprise, and the choking effects of it, out-Hogarth Hogarth!

Let those laugh now who never laughed before,

And those who still have laugh'd, now laugh the more.

The scene where he is told he is poisoned, and his interview with the drunken apothecary (Mr. Williams), though excellent in themselves, were not so good: for Liston does not play so well to any one else as he does to himself. The rest of the characters were well supported. Jones, as the younger Pigwiggin, alias Captain Neville, the lover of Liston's fair inamorata, "does a little bit of fidgets" very well. He is sprightly, voluble, knowing, and pleasant; and is the life of a small theatre, only that he is now and then a little too obstreperous; but he keeps up the interest of his part, and that is every thing. The audience delight to hear his " View Halloa" before he comes on the stage (which is a sure sign of their opinion), and expect to be amused for the next ten minutes. If an actor can excite hope, and not disappoint it, what can he do more? Mr. Russell as the little French showman, Mr. Farley as Mr. Wadd,

and Mr. Connor as a blundering Irish servant, all sustained their parts with great éclat and so did the ladies. The scene where Jones deceives two of his creditors, Russell and Farley, by appointing each to pay the other, had a very laughable effect; but the stratagem is borrowed from Congreve, who, indeed, was not the very worst source to borrow from.

MR. ELLISTON'S GASCONADES-THE VAM

PYRE-PATENT THEATRES.*

THE following is a play-bill of Drury Lane theatre, for which we paid two-pence on the spot, to verify the fact as some well-disposed persons, to prevent mistakes, purchase libellous or blasphemous publications from their necessitous or desperate vendors.

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.-Agreeably to the former advertisement, this theatre is now open for the last performances of Mr. Kean, before his positive departure for America. This evening, Saturday, August 19, 1820, his Majesty's servants will perform Shakespear's tragedy of Othello. Duke of Venice, Mr. Thompson; Brabantio, Mr. Powell; Gratiano, Mr. Carr; Lodovico, Mr. Vining; Montano, Mr. Jeffries; Othello, Mr. Kean-(his last appearance in that character); Cassio, Mr. Bromley (his first appearance in that character); Roderigo, Mr. 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 patentees 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

1820.

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 public 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." This sorry manager,