bid fair to pursue the same track with success, but I shall not name them, because they have before them a long career of glory, in which their rank is as yet uncertain.

In alluding to the comedies of contemporary writers, I must not omit mentioning a piece which affords a triumphant answer to the reproach addressed by English critics to French dramatists, namely, that they want boldness and originality. The Pinto of M. Lemercier may be numbered among the remarkable productions of the age. It is as good as one of Scott's novels.

LETTER XXXVI,

TO M. RENÉ PERIN.

BEFORE I proceed to notice a few tragedies, which seem to encourage the hope that dramatic art may again be revived in England, I must give you some account of the secondary theatres, or, as they are called, the summer theatres of London. When Covent Garden and Drury Lane close for the season, two new theatrical companies are formed, one for the Haymarket, and the other for the English Opera House. The Haymarket company perform melo-drama, farce, and comedy, when they can. This season, however, they possess a rare combination of talent: they have

Charles Kemble, Liston, Terry, who, in some of his characters, rivals Farren; Oxherry, a very original actor, Mrs. Chatterley, an excellent representative of pert Abigails, and several other performers of distinguished merit. Madame Vestris, a very pleasing singer, whom I have already heard at Drury Lane, is also engaged at the Haymarket Theatre, to which she is an important acquisition. She does not, indeed, console the British dilettanti for the absence of Miss Stephens, the nightingale of Covent Garden, who imparts Italian grace to the cacophony of English song. Miss Stephens's voice was formed for the language of Metastasio, and the music of Mozart and Rossini. Her rival is a Mrs. Salmon, who sings only at concerts. I can conscientiously bestow the highest praise on these two sirens, though I have heard Mainville-Fodor and Pasta.

Madame Vestris was not a particular favourite with the public until she appeared in male attire. She has an extraordinary predilection for personating libertines. At Drury Lane, she has performed Don Juan with great applause, and at the Haymarket she selected, for her first appearance, the part of Captain Macheath, in the Beggars' Opera. Few pieces have been more popular than this singular production of John Gay, one of the most distinguished wits of Queen Anne's reign. If we may give credit to Swift, who, however, admired anything in the shape of satire and sarcasm, the Beggars' Opera is even more moral than witty. But this Newgate pastoral, with its highwayman hero, has, by more fastidious critics,

been pronounced to be a lesson of roguery, and an encouragement to vice; and its pernicious tendency has even been denounced from the pulpit. Gay doubtless intended, in the first instance, merely to parody the Italian Opera, which was then beginning to be much admired in London. But the poet had spent half his life in hunting after a place; disappointment had soured his temper, and he gave full vent to his spleen by satirizing human nature in his Beggars' Opera. His sarcasms are put into the mouths of felons and prostitutes; but their cynism is tempered by perfect truth to nature in the dialogue, and elegant versification in the songs. The character of Captain Macheath has a touch of the romantic; but he is, nevertheless, too unpoetic a hero to be represented by a female, who must necessarily be disgusting if she be strictly natural, and must entirely pervert the part if she attempt to refine it. Madame Vestris has chosen the latter course, and she makes Macheath merely an insipid gallant; but she sings charmingly, and the public applaud her.

Colman has brought out, at the Haymarket Theatre, his last melo-drama, the Law of Java. The hero, Paraiba, is a lover, condemned by a jealous tyrant to go and collect the poison of the Upas tree. This is equivalent to a sentence of death; but an old man fortunately gives Paraiba such excellent directions for the execution of his mission, that he is enabled to return uninjured. His mistress is about to be pierced to death by

arrows, but she is preserved from this tragical fate by a law which the king of Java is obliged to observe as implicitly as if he were a constitutional sovereign. I must needs confess that I was much less amused with this spectacle, than with Goldsmith's lively comedy of She Stoops to Conquer. I saw it finely acted. Terry was Old Hardcastle, and Charles Kemble admirably represented the bashful Young Marlow. The somewhat rustic air of Mrs. Chatterley gave additional grace to her personation of Miss Hardcastle, and Liston, though perhaps too old for complete illusion in the part of Tony, yet, by the exquisite drollery of his performance, maintained among the gods that continued laughter, which, as Homer informs us, even the graver deities of Olympus were often unable to repress.

The managers of the Haymarket theatre can boast of very little originality in the pieces which they bring forward for the amusement of the public; and honest John Bull, when he bestows his approbation on entertainments which are announced as new, never suspects that he is encouraging contraband literature. The pleasing sketches of manners, for which we are indebted to M. Scribe and company, the pictures of vulgar life which are dashed off in an hour by the successors of Vadé, together with the more elegant and not less comic scenes of our Vaudevilles, supply a fertile source of materials to the dramatic authors of the Haymarket, and often to those of Covent Garden and Drury Lane.

But the name of the original French author never appears, either in the play-bill, or on the title-page of the piece, when published. Plagiarisms are committed with no greater ceremony on the productions of those writers who have furnished our principal theatres with some of their most attractive entertainments. M. Andrieux' charming comedy of the Etourdis has proved a valuable prize to one of the English playwrights. A Mr. Kenneth has converted Un Jour à Versailles into A Day at Richmond, and a Mr. Jones has produced a clumsy imitation of the Voyage à Dieppe.

At the English Opera House, I recognized a vast number of these importations disguised by new names; but if I visited this last-mentioned theatre more frequently than the Haymarket, my countrymen must not suppose that it was from national predilections. Miss Clara Fisher, Miss Kelly, and Emery, were the attractions of the English Opera.

LETTER XXXVII.

TO M. G. JAL.

WHAT the English term an opera is nothing but a melo-drama, interspersed with songs. All Sir