It will not be suspected that I view this commemoration with the feeling which led the poet Cowper to regard it as profane--the audience did not listen to "Messiah's eulogy for Handel's sake."* The result of the meeting was CHARITY, by which the most sacred spot cannot be sullied. Had there been any thing involving the interests of religion, the KING himself would have been the first man to point it out. Let it be remembered, too, that the very genius of the building seemed to have dictated the selection of the music; and that the sensations of the audience were of the purest and sublimest kind of which our natures are susceptible.

To return to decided theatricals. Mrs. Siddons closed her second season on the 13th of May, with the performance of Belvidera. She had been a little more prudent in her exertions the present season, having only acted fifty-three times. As I did the first season, I shall on this, record the number of repetitions of each character, To show how a first impression keeps its ground, Isabella equalled in attraction the Gamester, though there she had the aid of Mr. Kemble.

The Covent Garden manager had very earnestly tried his strength in tragedy against the other theatre; but it was impracticable. The fashion followed in the train of Mrs. Siddons, with a perseverance that robbed it of its most appropriate epithet, fickleness. Mr. Harris, therefore, suffered the courtiers to bear away the honours of the tournament," and allowed Mrs. Abington, the muse of comedy, to close his sea

Sake, a word which Junius defines by the Latin CAUSA. The cause of the 'meeting was to enjoy divine harmonies in their highest perfection ;their effects must have been HOLY,

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son on the 2d of June, with a few lines written by herself, and which in course therefore avoided every allusion to the sister muse. They are unaffected, and to the purpose, and the reader will excuse my wish to preserve even the temporary effusions of the great comic actress.

"The play concluded, and this season o'er,

When we shall view these friendly rows no more,

In my own character let me appear,

To pay my warmest, humblest, homage here.
Yet how shall words, those shadowy signs, reveal
The real obligations which I feel?

Here they are fix'd, and hence they ne'er shall part,
'While memory holds her seat' within my heart!
This for myself. Our friends and chief behind,
Who bear your favors with a grateful mind,
Have likewise bade me, as their proxy, own
Your kind indulgence to their efforts shown:
Efforts, which, warm'd by such a fostering choice,
Again shall doubly court the public voice:

Till when, with duteous thanks, take our adieu!
'Tis meant to ALL, to you, and you, and you.*
Hoping to find you here, in the same places,

With the same health, good spirits, and kind faces."

And even this from the gayest and most elegant of women, had an effect beyond the usual measure of such achievements, and shut up the theatre in the happiest mode imaginable.

At the close of the season, it may be proper to notice a very remarkable event which occurred during its progress. On the 20th of February, 1784, in the court of King's Bench, Lord Mansfield decided in the action Macklin versus Colman, damages laid at 1000. His lordship, having accepted the reference, gave to the plaintiff 5001. each party paying their own costs.

The origin and progress of this affair are highly important in a theatrical view, as they tend to ascertain the legal rights of that critical personage called the town. On the 18th of November, 1775, certain tailors conceiving that Macbeth, as performed by Mr. Macklin, was rather a tragedy for warm weather, resolved that he should not be permitted to act the part: they therefore assembled from all the resorts of these "kings of shreds and patches," the Sun, and the Dog, and the Magpie, and the Phoenix, and denounced their vengeance against the veteran, in accents so fierce, that, though Macbeth had been changed to Shylock, nothing but his discharge from the theatre would induce them to spare the chan

deliers and the benches. The elder Colman was himself compelled to make his first appearance on a public stage, and considering these wretches as his masters, yielded to their pleasure, and pronounced the gratifying words, "he is discharged."

Mr. Macklin first legally established against the leaders of these "forcible feebles" a charge of conspiracy; and Lord Mansfield in the kindest manner pressed his opinion that the compensation to be made by the parties to Mr. Macklin should be left to the master. Macklin himself, however, proposed a very moderate reimbursement for his losses, from which debt of justice, one of the conspirators, by name only William AUGUSTUS Miles, did himself the honour to abscond. In fact, Macklin had so narrowed his own satisfaction, that he found himself absolutely out of pocket in respect of his costs on the information.

For two seasons the managers had persisted in their acquiescence, and he had therefore a right to the salary and the benefits, which so weak a conduct on their part had deprived him of. But here there was a slight difficulty, and that was, to establish whether Macklin was engaged at the theatre or not? A bill of discovery was therefore filed in Chancery; and this dramatic piece, upon the Horatian precept, Nonum prematur in annum, had been before the great theatrical manager, the Lord Chancellor of England, for nearly nine years. This to a man, at that time certainly NINETY, was a grievance, which he was advised to terminate. The late Lord Kenyon was the barrister, who on the 6th of June 1781, gave it as his opinion, that the equity cause should be abandoned, and that he should try his fortune at law. This sound advice was ultimately attended with the success al-ready stated. As soon as Macklin obtained the award, he made his opponent, the manager, a present of it. He interpreted rather like Portia than Shylock.

"This bond doth give me here no jot of BLOOD."

But the highly momentous parts of these proceedings are the two clear and satisfactory positions laid down by Lord Mansfield; one as to the rights of the audience, the other as to those of the actor. For the first, he thus expresses himself. Every man that is at the play house, has a right to express his approbation or disapprobation INSTANTANEOUSLY, according as he likes either the acting or piece. There is a right due to the theatre-an unalterable right-they MUST HAVE THAT."

For the second, thus he secures the actor or author.--" It is not necessary to prove a parole, or written agreement, in order to make a conspiracy: if persons concur in acts to do the same thing, upon any bad or improper principles, it is conspiracy."

But the application of these dicta cannot be further extended, until a late period of these memoirs.

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CHAPTER VIII.

Mr. Kemble's acting.-Its peculiar character.--The great and beautiful in art.-Vulgar nature.-Macbeth-Academic style.-Melody.-Familiar touches in diction.Sir Joshua Reynolds quoted in support of the Author's opinions.-Colman's Season, 1784.-Two to One.--Mrs. Inchbald.--Holcroft's Noble Peasant.--Hayley's Lord Russel.--Miss Kemble.--George Steevens.-Anecdote of Palmer in this play.-Mr. Steevens's furious prejudice against Mrs. Siddons.-Hayley's want of delicacy and inconsistency exposed.--Rhyming Comedies.-Peeping Tom.George Alexander Stevens.--Mr. Kemble in the recess goes to Liverpool and Manchester.--Mrs. Siddons at Edinburgh.--Dublin.-Cork.-Her illness.-Systematic attacks upon her.--Younger and Mrs. Mattocks.-Their triumph in Lear over Henderson and Mrs. Siddons.Travesty of the Beggar's Opera.

HAVING Conducted Mr. Kemble to the close of his first season in town, it may be proper to consider now the peculiar style of his acting-by which I mean, in course, the idea he had formed to himself of the art, and the power with which it was to be executed. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his seventh discourse upon painting, has the following most beautiful passage; by which we see the opinion of Mr. Burke verified as to that great artist: "To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher." To have altered the arrangement of it would have better suited my immediate object, but I would not take even a slight liberty with the composition of so great a writer.

"Perhaps no apology ought to be received for offences committed against the vehicle (whether it be the organ of seeing, or of hearing), by which our pleasures are conveyed to the mind. We must take care that the eye be not perplexed and distracted by a confusion of equal parts, or equal lights, or offended by an unharmonious mixture of colours, as we should guard against offending the ear by unharmonious sounds. We may venture to be more confident of the truth of this observation, since we find that Shakspeare, on a parallel occasion, has made Hamlet recommend to the players a precept