Once a year, a printed “copy of verses” reminds every newspaper reader that the hand that bore it is open to a small boon. “The Newsman’s Address to his Customers, 1826,” deploringly adverts to the general distress, patriotically predicts better times, and seasonably intimates, that in the height of annual festivities he, too, has a heart capable of joy.
——————— “although the muse complains
And sings of woes in melancholy strains,
Yet Hope, at last, strikes up her trembling wires,
And bids Despair forsake your glowing fires.
While, as in olden time, Heaven’s gifts you share,
And Englishmen enjoy their Christmas fare;
While at the social board friend joins with friend,
And smiles and jokes and salutations blend;
Your Newsman wishes to be social too,
And would enjoy the opening year with you:
Grant him your annual gift, he will not fail
To drink your health once more with Christmas ale:
Long may you live to share your Christmas cheer,
And he still wish you many a happy year!”
The losses and crosses to which newsmen are subject, and the minutiæ of their laborious life, would form an instructive volume. As a class of able men of business, their importance is established by excellent regulations, adapted to their interests and well-being; and their numerous society includes many individuals of high intelligence, integrity, and opulence.
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The Drama.
License for enacting a Play.
To the Editor.
Sir,—As many of your readers may not have had an opportunity of knowing the form and manner in which dramatic representations were permitted, by the Master of the Revels, upon the restoration of the Stuarts, I submit a transcript of a licence in my possession. It refers to a drama, called “Noah’s Flood,” apparently not recorded in any dramatic history. It is true, Isaac Reed, in the “Biographia Dramatica,” 1782, vol. ii. p. 255, cites “Noah’s Flood, or the Destruction of the World, an opera, 1679, 4to.,” and ascribes it to “Edward Ecclestone,” but it is questionable whether this was the “play” for which the license below was obtained, as Reed, or perhaps George Steevens, the commentator, who assisted the former considerably in the compilation of that work, as it appeared in 1782, expressly entitles it “an opera.”
Reed states his inability to furnish any particulars of Ecclestone, and his continuator, Mr. Stephen Jones, has not added a single word. Ecclestone was a comedian, though I cannot immediately cite my authority. His opera of “Noah’s Flood,” which is excessively scarce, is said, by Reed, to be “of the same nature with Dryden’s ‘State of Innocence,’ but falls infinitely short of the merit of that poem.” This may be readily believed; for we are informed that the unhappy bookseller, to prevent the whole impression rotting on his shelves, again obtruded it for public patronage, with a new title, “The Cataclasm, or General Deluge of the World,” 1684, 4to.; and again as “The Deluge, or Destruction of the World,” 1691, 4to., with the addition of sculptures. These attempts probably exhausted the stock on hand, as, some years afterwards, it was reprinted in 12mo., with the title of “Noah’s Flood, or the History of the General Deluge,” 1714. Many plays were reprinted by Meares, Feales, and others, at the commencement of the last century, as stock-plays; and Reed’s assertion, that this was an imposition, is correct, so far as it came forth as a new production, the preface stating that the author was unknown.