median in any book, warrant, or acquittance; hits the town between wind and water, between farce and tragedy; touches the string of a mock heroic sentiment with due pathos and vivacity; and makes the best strolling gentleman, or needy poet, on the stage. His Rover is excellent: so is his Duke in the Honeymoon; and in Matrimony he is best of all.-Dowton is a genuine and excellent comedian; and, in speaking of his Major Sturgeon, we cannot pass over, in disdainful silence, Russell's Jerry Sneak, and Mrs. Harlowe's Miss Molly Jollop. Oxberry is an actor of a strong rather than of a pleasant comic vein (his Mawworm is particularly emphatical). Harley pleases others, for he seems pleased himself; and little Knight, in the simplicity and good nature of the country lad, is inimitable.

57

MINOR THEATRES-STROLLING

PLAYERS.*

THIS is a subject on which we shall treat with satisfaction to ourselves, and, we hope, to the edification of the reader. Indeed, we are not a little vain of the article we propose to write on this occasion; and we feel the pen in our hands flutter its feathers with more than usual specific levity, at the thought of the idle, careless career before it. No Theatre-Royal oppresses the imagination, and entombs it in a mausoleum of massy pride; no manager's pompous pretensions choke up the lively current of our blood; no long-announced performance, big with expectation, comes to nothing, and yet compels us gravely to record its failure, and compose its epitaph. We have here "ample scope and verge enough;" we pick and choose as we will, light where we please, and stay no longer than we have a mind-saying "this I like, that I loath, as one picks pears :". hover over the Surrey theatre; or snatch a grace be

* 1820.

We

yond the reach of art from the Miss Dennett's at the Adelphi; or take a peep (like the Devil upon Two Sticks) at Mr. Booth at the Coburg-and one peep is sufficient:-Or stretch our legs and strain our fancies (as a pure voluntary exercise of dramatic faith and charity) as far as Mr. Rae and the East London, where Mrs. Gould (late Miss Burrell) makes fine work with Don Giovanni and the Furies! are not, in this case, to be "constrained by mastery." -Escaped from under the more immediate inspection of the Lord Chamberlain's eye, fastidious objections, formal method, regular details, strict moral censure, cannot be expected at our hands: our "speculative and officed instruments may be well laid aside for a time. At sight of the purlieus of taste, and suburbs of the drama, criticism "clappeth his wings, and straightway he is gone!" In short, we feel it as our bounden duty to strike a truce with gravity, and give full play to fancy; and, in entering on this part of our subject, to let our thoughts wander over it, and sport and trifle with it at pleasure, like the butterfly of whom Spenser largely and loftily sings in his Muiopotmos :

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There he arriving, round about doth fly
From bed to bed, from one to other border,
And takes survey, with curious busy eye,
Of every flower and herb there set in order;

Now this, now that he tasteth tenderly,

Yet none of them he rudely doth disorder,
Nor with his feet their silken leaves deface,
But pastures on the pleasures of each place.

What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy Delight with Liberty,

And to be lord of all the works of Nature,
To reign in th' air from earth to highest sky;
To feed on flowers, and weeds of glorious feature,
To take whatever thing doth please the eye?
Who rests not pleased with such happiness,
Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness!

If we could but once realise this idea of a butterfly critic, extracting sweets from flowers, and turning gall to honey, we might well hope to soar above the Grub-street race, and confound, by the novelty of our appearance, and the gaiety of our flight, the idle conjectures of ignorant or malicious pretenders in entomology!

Besides, having once got out of the vortex of prejudice and fashion that surrounds our large Winter Theatres, what is there to hinder us (or what shall) from dropping down from the verge of the metropolis into the haunts of the provincial drama ;-from taking coach to Bath or Brighton, or visiting the Land'sEnd, or giving an account of Botany-bay theatricals, or the establishment of a new theatre at Venezuela? One reason that makes the Minor Theatres interesting

is, that they are the connecting link that lets us down, by an easy transition, from the highest pomp and proudest display of the Thespian art, to its first rudiments and helpless infancy. With conscious happy retrospect, they lead the eye back, along the vista of the imagination, to the village barn, or travelling booth, or old-fashioned town-hall, or more genteel assembly-room, in which Momus first unmasked to us his fairy revels, and introduced us, for the first time in our lives, to that strange anomaly in existence, that fanciful reality, that gay waking dream, a company of strolling players! Sit still, draw close together, hold in your breath-not a word, not a whisper-the laugh is ready to start away, "like greyhound on the slip," the big tear of wonder and expectation is ready to steal down "the full eyes and fair cheeks of childhood," almost before the time. Only another moment, and amidst blazing tapers, and the dancing sounds of music, and light throbbing hearts, and eager looks, the curtain rises, and the picture of the world appears before us in all its glory and in all its freshness. Life throws its gaudy shadow across the stage; Hope shakes his many-coloured wings, "embalmed with odours;" Joy claps his hands, and laughs in a hundred happy faces. Oh, childish fancy, what a mighty empire is thine! what endless creations thou buildest out of