In the Pangs of Conscience, as in the Maid of Palisseau, there is a robbery, a trial of persons innocently suspected of it, and a discovery of the real perpetrators, just at the critical moment, by the intervention of two of the feathered creation. Just as sentence has been pronounced on the supposed criminals (Terry and Blanchard) by the Judge, (Barrymore, who really performed this character admirably) two Ravens fly in upon the stage, the same who had hovered over the scene of the murder and robbery in the adjacent forest, and by their silent but dreadful appeal to the conscience of Jacques du Noir (Emery), who is not like his cousin Bruno du Noir (poor Farley) a hardened, but a conscientious villain, reveal the mystery of the whole transaction, by which the guilty are punished, and the innocent miraculously escape.—There was some fine and powerful acting by Emery in the part of the repentant assassin. Bruno in vain endeavours to appease and quiet him, but he still roars out lustily to give vent both to the pangs of his conscience and the ‘grief of a wound’ which he has got in the encounter from an old rusty fowling-piece of Fawcett’s, whom they plunder and kill. The greatest part of this romantic fiction is tedious, and the whole of it improbable, but from the goodness of the acting, and some strokes of interest in the situations, it went off with applause. Of the Pannel, we have only room to add that we think Beatrice, who is the subordinate heroine of the piece, the best specimen of Mrs. Alsop’s acting. We saw it from a remote part of the house, and her voice and manner at this distance sometimes reminded us of her mother’s.
JOHN GILPIN
| The Examiner.] | [May 4, 1817. |
Drury-Lane.
When Mr. Dowton advertised for his benefit that he was to appear in the after-piece as John Gilpin, and to ride for that night only, we immediately felt tempted to go as the self-appointed executors and residuary legatees of the original author of the story, who concludes his account with these two lines—
‘And when he next does ride abroad,
May we be there to see.’
So we took upon us to fulfil Cowper’s wish, and went to see, not John Gilpin, nor, as we are credibly informed, even Mr. Dowton, but something very laughable, and still more absurd, which had however a certain charm about it, from the very name of the hero of the piece. We have an interest in John Gilpin; aye, almost as great an interest as we have in ourselves; for we remember him almost as long. We remember the prints of him and his travels hung round a little parlour where we used to visit when we were children—just about the time of the beginning of the French Revolution. While the old ladies were playing at whist, and the young ones at forfeits, we crept about the sides of the room and tracked John Gilpin from his counter to his horse, from his own door to the turnpike, and far beyond the turnpike gate and the bell at Edmonton, with loss of wig and hat, but with an increasing impetus and reputation, the farther he went from home.
‘The turnpike men their gates wide open threw,
He carries weight, he rides a race,