I now sported the sullens in dignified retirement—but it would not do: murder will out, and so will manuscripts. I resolved to make one more effort. But were I to bring to your recollection all the mortifying repulses I endured, I should quite destroy that patience of which you stand so much in need, to listen to the debates at the next meeting of your common council. At one time, naked from the waist upwards, you were waging war with Belcher, the Hittite: at another, you had taken an invisible girl into keeping: your cash was drained by lotteries, missionaries, and mountebanks of all sorts and sizes: boys, even the deaf, the dumb, and the blind, quitted their asylum in St. George’s Fields, for a more lucrative one on the boards of your theatres. Your comic operas were, like Muzio Clementi’s carts, mere vehicles for music, and vehicles withal of such a clumsy fabric, that poor Euterpe, when she took her nightly airings, reminded the spectator of Punch’s wife in a wheelbarrow; every expense was incurred, and every scribbler taken into pay, except poor Shakspeare and his poorer commentator.
One morning, about eleven o’clock, as I was indulging myself in a solitary ramble over Blackfriars-bridge, I espied your well-known barouche, which I followed, and observed to stop at the Elephant and Castle! Heighday! said I, this is a metamorphosis indeed! John Bull has returned to nature at last. He prefers “the sanded floor that grits beneath the tread,” to a Persian carpet, and a pot of porter to the “wines of France and milk of Burgundy.” I’ll go and smoke a pipe with him! here again I was in error, your carriage having passed the public-house, and stopped at a methodist meeting adjoining. It seems your worship had, with religious abhorrence, passed by the Elephant and Castle, but borrowing in part the imagery of that sign, had converted your half-reasoning self into a clumsy Christian pedler, with a bundle of contraband goods at your back. One Joanna, it seems, was the priestess of this temple, and your worship had commenced so strong a flirtation with the Lambeth sybil, that all the world looked upon wedlock as inevitable. As I stood in the porch, I overheard your amatory sighs and groans which sounded in my ears like Boreas wooing Vulcan through a cranny in a chimney-corner. On approaching your pew, how was I struck with the change in your physiognomy! Your face heretofore as red and round as the full moon, had, by the joint influence of that planet and the aforesaid Joanna, extended itself to a length, which Momus forbid mine should ever attain, unless when reflected from a table-spoon, at the Piazza coffee-house!
It was now confidently reported, that the days of Jeremy Collier had returned: that the theatres were to be shut up, his majesty’s servants to receive their arrears of scarlet cloth, for regimentals to serve him in the capacity of foot-soldiers: that the slayers of Syntax, who had stuffed their mouths with melo-drames, and other pernicious compounds, were to turn hewers of wood, and that your worship would license no pantomimes, except those exhibited in the Blackfriars and Tottenham-court roads.
This intelligence rather pleased than alarmed me. I believed it only to a certain extent, conceiving the fact to be, that my respected patron was sick of silk banners and Peruvian suns, exhausting more gold than they engendered, and that a ray of true taste was hereafter to dawn upon the dramatic horizon. “The theatre,” exclaimed I, “is the school of morality; and morality and religion are inseparable.” Without stopping to prove my syllogism, I seized my commentary, and with a head and a great-coat pocket full of my immortal labours, called once more in Portland-place. You received me with civility, desired me to take a seat, and treated me with a cup of chocolate, declining to take any yourself, on account of a nausea at your stomach, which I ascribed to a certain sentimental pill you had lately swallowed, rolled up in the shape of a comedy, and for which I undertook to prescribe. You requested me with eagerness to do so, and I drew my manuscript from my pocket, thinking the golden moment at hand. I conjured you to consider, that in dramatic entertainments the love of show was like the love of money, and increased by indulgences, beyond the power of a manager to gratify: I proved by mathematical demonstration, that small theatres wanted nothing but good dialogue to support them: I entreated you to send your gorgeous trumpery to rag-fair, and to diminish your overgrown Drury, which no man could now think of entering unaccompanied by a telescope and an ear-trumpet. All the persuasions of a Tully, all the energy of a Waithman, were enlisted into my harangue; which finished by exhorting your worship to step back half a century in your dramatic career, to a period when theatrical property was somewhat more than a mouthful of moonshine;—when Shakspeare was, indeed as he should be, and when nothing was talked of in this great metropolis, save the great Goliath of Stratford, on the banks of the Avon, and little David, of the Adelphic terrace, on the banks of the Thames.
This eloquent harangue was no sooner concluded, than your worship burst into a horse-laugh, and stamping your foot on the floor, the room was instantly filled with as motley a group as ever giggled decorum out of countenance at a masquerade: among whom I recognized a zany, with a blue perriwig, bestriding a large goose, and brandishing a golden egg, whilst your worship was clapping your hands in all the raptures of applause. “Perdition seize this fellow,” cried your worship, pointing to me, “his tongue chatters like a cherry-clapper, and lies like the prospectus of a new magazine! All you, my pimps, parasites, and pensioners—my leading mistresses and led captain—my mummers and melo-dramatists, who conspire to drill holes in the breeches-pockets of John Bull, that his coin may not corrode for want of circulation; if ever this fellow enters my house again, with his deer-stealing Stratford vagabond under his arm, tie them both up in a hopsack, and throw them into the Thames!
Such treatment, sir, I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. When I expected the golden apple,—to be then pelted with a golden egg, was too much for human endurance; I, therefore, took my leave with the following address: “May your worship’s stage be glutted with monsters, running upon all fours, with your own taste! May wit and humour wing their flight to another region, and the mighty void be supplied by maukish sentiment, horse-collar grins, wood-demons, and other show-cattle of the Smithfield muses! May you be visited by a locust tribe of scribblers, who shall conspire to torment that groaning martyr, the Press, with ducal lampoons, drowsy epics, and zig-zag heroics! With Hope the upholsterer, and Bryon the idler, with Joe Miller in quarto, Genius in thin duodecimo, Leadenhall romances, and Puritan biography: and should your worship ever find yourself deviating from the path of virtue, may Hannah Glasse preserve your temperance, Hannah More your soberness, and Anacreon Moore your chastity!”
One word more, sir, and I take my leave. It was the opinion of Ophelia’s grave digger, that your worship was to the full as mad as the hare-brained lover of that young lady. This circumstance gives that royal youth a title to your first regards: my annotations on Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, shall accordingly be submitted to your consideration at our next monthly meeting,
I am, &c.,
Theobaldus Secundus.