Yet still, notwithstanding, the rogue we might spare
If he kept back his old ugly phiz from the Fair."
We had by this time stopped at the end of Drury Lane to take up a passenger, who now appeared, emerging from that very dirty avenue, with an exceedingly small roll of MS. under his arm. The new-comer's eye was evidently in a fine frenzy rolling, and it was at once suspected from one end of the vehicle to the other, that he had just been writing a German Opera for Drury-lane Theatre. "Gentlemen," said he, the instant he had taken his seat, "you're all mistaken. Through that miserable cranny I have been picking a path to the theatre for the sole purpose of taking off my hat to the statue of Shakspeare, over the portico, in celebration of the event which renders its presence there no longer a libel and a mockery. You guess what I allude to. Mr. Macready has become the lessee of Drury; and the noble task which he assigned to himself in the management of Covent Garden, he purposes here to complete. The whole public will rejoice in the renewal of his experiment, which should be hailed in golden verse. I wish I could write sonnets like Milton or Wordsworth. Here are two, such as they are, addressed to the regenerator of the stage."
TO WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY,
On his becoming the lessee of Old Drury.
I.
Macready, master of the Art supreme.
That shows to dazzled and else guideless eyes
(As doth Astronomy the starry skies)