Has life so little store of real woes, That here ye wend to taste fict.i.tious grief?

Or is it that from truth such anguish flows, Ye court the lying drama for relief?

Long shall ye find the pang, the respite brief: Or if one tolerable page appears In folly's volume, 'tis the actor's leaf, Who dries his own by drawing others' tears, And, raising present mirth, makes glad his future years.

IV.

Albeit, how like Young Betty {21} doth he flee!

Light as the mote that daunceth in the beam, He liveth only in man's present e'e; His life a flash, his memory a dream, Oblivious down he drops in Lethe's stream.

Yet what are they, the learned and the great?

Awhile of longer wonderment the theme!

Who shall presume to prophesy THEIR date, Where nought is certain, save the uncertainty of fate?

V.

This goodly pile, upheaved by Wyatt's toil, Perchance than Holland's edifice {22} more fleet, Again red Lemnos' artisan may spoil: The fire-alarm and midnight drum may beat, And all bestrewed ysmoking at your feet!

Start ye? perchance Death's angel may be sent Ere from the flaming temple ye retreat: And ye who met, on revel idlesse bent, May find, in pleasure's fane, your grave and monument.

VI.

Your debts mount high--ye plunge in deeper waste; The tradesman duns--no warning voice ye hear; The plaintiff sues--to public shows ye haste; The bailiff threats--ye feel no idle fear.

Who can arrest your prodigal career?

Who can keep down the levity of youth?

What sound can startle age's stubborn ear?

Who can redeem from wretchedness and ruth Men true to falsehood's voice, false to the voice of truth?

VII.

To thee, blest saint! who doffed thy skin to make The Smithfield rabble leap from theirs with joy, We dedicate the pile--arise! awake! - Knock down the Muses, wit and sense destroy Clear our new stage from reason's dull alloy, Charm hobbling age, and tickle capering youth With cleaver, marrow-bone, and Tunbridge toy!

While, vibrating in unbelieving tooth, {23} Harps tw.a.n.g in Drury's walls, and make her boards a booth.

VIII.

For what is Hamlet, but a hare in March?

And what is Brutus, but a croaking owl?

And what is Rolla? Cupid steeped in starch, Orlando's helmet in Augustin's cowl.

Shakespeare, how true thine adage "fair is foul!"

To him whose soul is with fruition fraught, The song of Braham is an Irish howl, Thinking is but an idle waste of thought, And nought is everything, and everything is nought.

IX.

Sons of Parna.s.sus! whom I view above, Not laurel-crown'd, but clad in rusty black; Not spurring Pegasus through Tempe's grove, But pacing Grub-street on a jaded hack; What reams of foolscap, while your brains ye rack, Ye mar to make again! for sure, ere long, Condemn'd to tread the bard's time-sanction'd track, Ye all shall join the bailiff-haunted throng, And reproduce, in rags, the rags ye blot in song.

X.

So fares the follower in the Muses' train; He toils to starve, and only lives in death; We slight him, till our patronage is vain, Then round his skeleton a garland wreathe, And o'er his bones an empty requiem breathe - Oh! with what tragic horror would he start (Could he be conjured from the grave beneath) To find the stage again a Thespian cart, And elephants and colts down trampling Shakespeare's art!

XI.

Hence, pedant Nature! with thy Grecian rules!

Centaurs (not fabulous) those rules efface; Back, sister Muses, to your native schools; Here booted grooms usurp Apollo's place, Hoofs shame the boards that Garrick used to grace, The play of limbs succeeds the play of wit, Man yields the drama to the Hou'yn'm race, His prompter spurs, his licenser the bit, The stage a stable-yard, a jockey-club the pit.

XII.

Is it for these ye rear this proud abode?

Is it for these your superst.i.tion seeks To build a temple worthy of a G.o.d, To laud a monkey, or to worship leeks?

Then be the stage, to recompense your freaks, A motley chaos, jumbling age and ranks, Where Punch, the lignum-vitae Roscius, squeaks, And Wisdom weeps, and Folly plays his pranks, And moody Madness laughs and hugs the chain he clanks.

HAMPSHIRE FARMER'S ADDRESS--BY W. C. {99}

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE MANAGING COMMITTEE OF DRURY-LANE PLAYHOUSE.

SIR,

To the gewgaw fetters of RHYME (invented by the monks to enslave the people) I have a rooted objection. I have therefore written an address for your Theatre in plain, homespun, yeoman's prose; in the doing whereof I hope I am swayed by nothing but an INDEPENDENT wish to open the eyes of this gulled people, to prevent a repet.i.tion of the dramatic BAMBOOZLING they have hitherto laboured under. If you like what I have done, and mean to make use of it, I don't want any such ARISTOCRATIC reward as a piece of plate with two griffins sprawling upon it, or a DOG and a JACKa.s.s fighting for a ha'p'worth of GILT GINGERBREAD, or any such Bartholomew-fair nonsense. All I ask is that the door-keepers of your play-house may take all the SETS OF MY REGISTER {24} now on hand, and FORCE every body who enters your doors to buy one, giving afterwards a debtor and creditor account of what they have received, POST-PAID, and in due course remitting me the money and unsold Registers, CARRIAGE-PAID.

I am, &c.

W. C.

IN THE CHARACTER OF A HAMPSHIRE FARMER.

- "Rabida qui concitus ira Implevit pariter ternis latratibus auras, Et sparsit virides spumis albentibus agrot."--OVID.

MOST THINKING PEOPLE,

When persons address an audience from the stage, it is usual, either in words or gesture, to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, your servant."

If I were base enough, mean enough, paltry enough, and BRUTE BEAST enough, to follow that fashion, I should tell two lies in a breath.

In the first place, you are NOT Ladies and Gentlemen, but I hope something better, that is to say, honest men and women; and in the next place, if you were ever so much ladies, and ever so much gentlemen, I am not, NOR EVER WILL BE, your humble servant. You see me here, MOST THINKING PEOPLE, by mere chance. I have not been within the doors of a play-house before for these ten years; nor, till that abominable custom of taking money at the doors is discontinued, will I ever sanction a theatre with my presence. The stage-door is the only gate of FREEDOM in the whole edifice, and through that I made my way from Bagshaw's {25} in Brydges Street, to accost you. Look about you. Are you not all comfortable? Nay, never slink, mun; speak out, if you are dissatisfied, and tell me so before I leave town. You are now (thanks to MR. WHITBREAD) got into a large, comfortable house. Not into a GIMCRACK-PALACE; not into a SOLOMON'S TEMPLE; not into a frost-work of Brobdignag filigree; but into a plain, honest, homely, industrious, wholesome, BROWN BRICK PLAYHOUSE. You have been struggling for independence and elbow-room these three years; and who gave it you? Who helped you out of Lilliput? Who routed you from a rat-hole five inches by four, to perch you in a palace? Again and again I answer, MR. WHITBREAD. You might have sweltered in that place with the Greek name {26} till doomsday, and neither LORD CASTLEREAGH, MR. CANNING, no, nor the MARQUESS WELLESLEY, would have turned a trowel to help you out!

Remember that. Never forget that. Read it to your children, and to your children's children! And now, MOST THINKING PEOPLE, cast your eyes over my head to what the builder (I beg his pardon, the architect) calls the proscenium. No motto, no slang, no popish Latin, to keep the people in the dark. No veluti in speculum.

Nothing in the dead languages, properly so called, for they ought to die, ay and be d.a.m.nED to boot! The Covent Garden manager tried that, and a pretty business he made of it! When a man says veluti in speculum, he is called a man of letters. Very well, and is not a man who cries O. P. a man of letters too? You ran your O. P. against his veluti in speculum, and pray which beat? I prophesied that, though I never told any body. I take it for granted, that every intelligent man, woman, and child, to whom I address myself, has stood severally and respectively in Little Russell Street, and cast their, his, her, and its eyes on the outside of this building before they paid their money to view the inside. Look at the brick-work, ENGLISH AUDIENCE!

Look at the brick-work! All plain and smooth like a quakers'

meeting. None of your Egyptian pyramids, to entomb subscribers'

capitals. No overgrown colonnades of stone, {27} like an alderman's gouty legs in white cotton stockings, fit only to use as rammers for paving Tottenham Court Road. This house is neither after the model of a temple in Athens, no, nor a TEMPLE in MOORFIELDS, but it is built to act English plays in: and, provided you have good scenery, dresses, and decorations, I daresay you wouldn't break your hearts if the outside were as plain as the pikestaff I used to carry when I was a sergeant. Apropos, as the French valets say, who cut their masters' throats {28}--apropos, a word about dresses. You must, many of you, have seen what I have read a description of, Kemble and Mrs.

Siddons in Macbeth, with more gold and silver plastered on their doublets than would have kept an honest family in butchers' meat and flannel from year's end to year's end! I am informed, (now mind, I do not vouch for the fact), but I am informed that all such extravagant idleness is to be done away with here. Lady Macbeth is to have a plain quilted petticoat, a cotton gown, and a MOB CAP (as the court parasites call it;--it will be well for them if, one of these days, they don't wear a mob cap--I mean a WHITE CAP, with a MOB to look at them); and Macbeth is to appear in an honest yeoman's drab coat, and a pair of black calamanco breeches. Not SALAmanca; no, nor TALAVERA neither, my most n.o.ble Marquess; but plain, honest, black calamanco stuff breeches. This is right; this is as it should be.

MOST THINKING PEOPLE, I have heard you much abused. There is not a compound in the language but is strung fifty in a rope, like onions, by the Morning Post, and hurled in your teeth. You are called the mob; and when they have made you out to be the mob, you are called the Sc.u.m of the people, and the DREGS of the people. I should like to know how you can be both. Take a basin of broth--not CHEAP SOUP, MR. WILBERFORCE--not soup for the poor, at a penny a quart, as your mixture of horses' legs, brick-dust, and old shoes, was denominated-- but plain, wholesome, patriotic beef or mutton broth; take this, examine it, and you will find--mind, I don't vouch for the fact, but I am told--you will find the dregs at the bottom, and the sc.u.m at the top. I will endeavour to explain this to you: England is a large EARTHENWARE PIPKIN; John Bull is the BEEF thrown into it; taxes are the HOT WATER he boils in; rotten boroughs are the FUEL that blazes under this same pipkin; parliament is the LADLE that stirs the hodge- podge, and sometimes -. But, hold! I don't wish to pay MR. NEWMAN {29} a second visit. I leave you better off than you have been this many a day: you have a good house over your head; you have beat the French in Spain; the harvest has turned out well; the comet keeps its distance; {30} and red slippers are hawked about in Constantinople for next to nothing; and for all this, AGAIN AND AGAIN I tell you, you are indebted to MR. WHITBREAD!!!

THE LIVING l.u.s.tRES--BY T. M. {31} {99}

"Jam te juvaverit Viros relinquere, Doctaeque conjugis Sinu quiescere."

SIR T. MORE.