readers to go to see Ivanhoe at Covent Garden: but for ourselves, we would rather see the Hebrew a second time at Drury Lane, though every time we go there it costs us three and sixpence more than at the other house-a serious sum!* Notwithstanding this repeated and heavy defalcation from our revenue, which really hurts our vanity not less than our interest, we must do the manager the justice to say, that we never laughed more heartily than we did at his Sir Charles Racket the other night. "Unkindness may do much," but it is not a little matter that will hinder us from laughing as long and as loud as any body, "to the very top of our lungs," at so rich a treat as Three Weeks after Marriage. Mr. Elliston never shines to more advantage than in light, genteel farce, after Mr. Kean's tragedy. "Do you think I'll sleep with a woman that doesn't know what's trumps?" It was irresistible. It might have been encored with few dissentient voices, and with no greater violation of established custom than the distributing three different performers, Mr. Connor, Mr. Yates, and Mrs. Davenport, in the pit and boxes, to hold a dialogue with a person on the stage, in the introductory interlude of The Manager in Distress, at Covent Garden. We, however, do not object to this novelty, if nobody else does, and if it is not repeated ;

* Mr. Elliston had suspended the Free List.-Ed.

and it certainly did not put us in an ill humour for seeing Mr. Jones's Too Late for Dinner. Mr. Jones is much such an author as he is an actorwild, but agreeable, going all lengths without making much progress, determined to please, and succeeding by dint of noise, bustle, whim, and nonsense. There is neither much plot nor much point in the new farce; but it tells, and keeps the house laughing by a sort of absurd extravagance and good humour. Besides, Mr. Jones plays in it himself, and exerts himself with his wonted alacrity; so do Mr. Liston, Mr. Emery, Mrs. Davenport, and Miss Foote. The author has, indeed, cut out a cockney character for Liston (who is the Magnus Apollo of farce writers), as good as our old friend Lubin Log; and the scene in which he comes in stuffing buns, and talking at the same time, till he nearly chokes himself in the double operation, is one that would do for Hogarth to paint, if he were alive; or, as he is not, for Mr. Wilkie. Emery is a country bumpkin, who is learning French, to fit himself for travel into foreign parts; and his Yorkshire dialect and foreign jargon, jumbled together, have a very odd effect. But Mr. Emery's acting, we are sorry to say, is not a subject for criticism it is always just what it ought to be; and it is impossible to praise it sufficiently, because there is never any opportunity for finding fault with

it. To criticise him, would be like criticising the countryman, who carried the pig under his cloak. He is always the very character he undertakes to represent; we mean, in his favourite and general cast of acting.

MR. ELLISTON'S ASSUMPTIONS; MR. MATHEWS AT HOME; CRITICS AND ACTORS.*

We don't know where to begin this article-whether with Mr. Mathews and his Country Cousins; or with Harlequin versus Shakspeare; or Cinderella and the Little Glass Slipper; or the story of Goody Two-Shoes and the Fate of Calas, at the Summer Theatre of Sadler's Wells ;- -or with Mr. Booth's Lear, which we have seen with great pleasure; or with Mr. Kean's, which is a greater pleasure to come (so we anticipate), and which we see is put off to the last moment, lest, we suppose, as the play-bills announce, "the immortal Shakspeare should meet with opponents." And why should the immortal Shakspeare meet with opponents in this case? Nobody can tell. But to prevent so terrible and unlookedfor a catastrophe, and to protect the property of the theatre at so alarming a crisis from cries of "fire," the Manager has thought it his duty "to suspend the Free List during the representation, the public press excepted." As we have not the mortification

* 1820.

of the exclusion, nor the benefit of the exception, we care little about the matter, but as a curiosity in theatrical diplomacy. The anxiety of the manager about the double trust committed to him, the property of a great theatre and the fame of a great poet, is exemplary; and the precautions he uses for their preservation no less admirable and efficacious: -so that if the tragedy of King Lear should pass muster for a night or two, without suffering the greatest indignities, it will be owing to the suspension of the Free List: if Mr. Kean should ride triumphant in a sea of passion, the king of sorrows, and drown his audience in a flood of tears, it will be owing to the suspension of the Free List: if the heart-rending tragedy of the immortal bard, as it was originally written, does not meet with the same untoward fate as the speaking pantomime of the late Mr. Garrick deceased, "altered by a professional gentleman of great abilities," it will be owing to the suspension of the Free List. In a word, if the glory of the "great heir of fame" does not totter to its base at the representation of his noblest work, nor the property of the theatre tumble about our ears the very first night, we shall have to thank Mr. Elliston's timely care in the suspension of the Free List! Strange that an old poet's memory should be as mortal as a new manager's wits!" This bold