MATTHEWS' EVIDENCE.

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given"—(no, no, my dear Charles, that would be a most unfair restriction, while spurious entertainments were allowed in the Great Theatres),—“ then I agree that the Drama might be improved, and in course of years we might expect to have elèves, who would fully replace the good actors we have now." Tickler. What says Matthews?

North. To my utter astonishment and dismay, that permission to perform the legitimate drama at other theatres besides the two patent ones and the Haymarket, "would, in the course of a very short time, brutalise the drama."

Tickler. I am dumfoundered.

charge?

How feel you at that dis

North. As if a bullet had gone through my head. Tickler. In at one ear and out at the other, without touching the brain.

North. Nevertheless, I would fain try a fall with this Charles; but I feel fatigued with my tussle with the other strong man, so must retire from the ring; though it forces me to eat my heart to see the castor of such a customer flung up without my pitching in after it my vernon.

Tickler. I take.

North. The Drama, I fear, is in a bad way, Tim, in London; and if so, it cannot be very flourishing in the provinces. Mr Matthews acknowledges that fashion is fatal to it. "I meet young gentlemen now," says he, "who formerly used to think it almost a crime not to go to the theatre; but they now ask, ' whereabouts is Covent Garden Theatre?' although the same people would faint away if they thought they had not been to the Italian Opera. If they are asked whether they have seen Kean or not lately, they will say, 'Kean? Kean? No. Where does he act? I have not been there these three years.' Formerly, it was the fashion to go to the theatre; but now a lady cannot show her face at table next day, and say she has been at the theatre. If they are asked whether they have been at Covent Garden or Drury Lane, they say, 'Oh, dear, no! I never go there—it is too low!'"

Tickler. Taglioni, I am told, is a seducing Sylph-Heberlé a dangerous Dryad. They dance you into a delirium. North. And the German opera is divine.

Tickler. Those morning, forenoon, afternoon, evening, and midnight concerts, private and public, are sadly against play

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OLD GEORGE COLMAN.

going. To say nothing of déjeunés prolonged from meridian to twilight, and dinners of countless courses

North. Gaming-tables in drawing-rooms, parlours, boudoirs, bed-rooms.

Tickler. O Lord! not in bed-rooms

North. Yes, even so.

too beautiful or too ugly

Tickler. Ugsome.

There is nothing too good or too bad,

North. That Fashion and Folly will not fix on with a mad desire, till all at once the passion sickens and dies, and “off to some other game they both together fly!"

Tickler. Matthews is right here-if wrong there.

North. "I remember the time," saith the green and glorious veteran (he has been nearly forty years on the stage), “when it was no shame to go to see the legitimate drama; but it is now." But, asks one of the Select, "do you not think that may be the result of the acting not being sufficiently good ?" "I want to know when the actors have not been sufficiently good FOR THEM?"

Tickler. Spoken like a man.

North. It was the fashion," he adds, "to go and see Miss O'Neil for a season; and Mr Kean for a season; if they were real and sincere admirers of those actors, they would have followed them; but we found that theatres, at which they acted, dropt down from £600 to £200."

Tickler. There are lamentably few sincere admirers of anything admirable in this world.

North. You know old George Colman ?

Tickler. No.

North. You have read his Broad Grins?

Tickler. No. Eye and nose shrunk from the dunghill in disgust.

North. He holds under the Lord Chamberlain the Office of Examiner of all theatrical entertainments.

Tickler. That is sufficient of itself to damn the drama. North. He was sworn, he gravely tells us, in February 1824, "to take care that nothing should be introduced into plays which is profane or indecent, or morally or politically improper for the stage."

Tickler. I see no use, in his case, of such an oath. I presume were he to suffer anything of the sort to defile a play—

COLMAN ON ANGELS.

375

profanity or indecency I mean he would be dismissed, and lose his salary; and that fear, being of this world, would be likely to be as operative on the hoary-headed perpetrator of the filth of Broad Grins, as the reverence of any oath regarding merely the life to come. "Twas a needless profanation of the Prayer-book or Bible.

North. The dotard has become intolerantly decent in his old age; so pious, that he shudders at the word "angel” in a play! "The Committee have heard of your cutting out of a play the epithet 'angel' as applied to a woman ?"

Tickler. Nay-that must be calumny on Colman.

North. No. George, as Mawworm, cantingly, and yet, I doubt not, leeringly replies, "Yes, because it is a woman, I grant, but it is a celestial woman. It is an allusion to the scriptural angels, which are celestial bodies. Every man who has read his Bible understands what they are; or if he has not, I will refer him to Milton."

Tickler. Well, I did not know till now that there is a man in England who denies that a human woman—a female woman, as the sailors say-is an angel. Is the old sinner

North. We are all old sinners.

Tickler. True. Is the old sinner serious when he insinuates that a human female is not a celestial creature?

"celestial

North. He seems so-stupidly and doggedly serious. Tickler. Does the aged docken deny that she is a body?"

North. He does.

Tickler. Fie on the old Eunuch!

North. He utters a falsehood when he says that every man who has read his Bible understands what the scriptural angels are no man understands what they are; they are a mystery. But note the impudence of the hypocrite. "If he has not, I will refer him to Milton." That is, "if he has not read his Bible;" and this language is used sarcastically to the Member of the Select Committee who was courteously interrogating the Broad-Grinner.

Tickler. I trust not courteously.

North. His impudence is only less than his ignorance, in referring his questioner to Milton, in proof of the scriptural angels being celestial women. That gentleman mildly remarks, "Milton's angels are not Ladies." Instead of blushing,

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COLMAN CASTIGATED.

he brazens it out, and replies, "No- but some scriptural angels are Ladies-I believe"-showing that he is as ignorant of his Bible as of Milton. Then how his profanity breaks out pettishly in the word "Ladies!" That word was quite right in the mouth of his questioner, for he was a gentleman and a Christian, and in his mind the ideas of angels and ladies have always been united as the beings themselves are in nature. But with his awful and reverential feelings with regard to all "scriptural angels," it was shocking in the author of Broad Grins to call them in the same breath "Ladies" —in his mouth an equivocal term—even when provoked to do so by the exposure of his shameful ignorance of the Book on which he had sworn. Ladies! He must have been thinking

of the Saloons.

Tickler. You are too severe, Kit.

North. Not a whit. He also says insolently, and, with his religious belief, impiously, "I do not recollect that I struck out an angel or two, but most probably I have at some time or other." This affectation of a profound religious spirit in such a man, and on such an occasion, is at first ludicrous, and then loathsome and I have thought it worthy of castigation, my good Timothy, for it is a nauseous habit of hypocrisy nowadays to pretend to discern evil in the use of the most harmless and amiable expressions which a fine spirit of humanity may not only have justified, but consecrated; and of them all, not one is there more delightful in the dreams it awakens of brightness, beauty, goodness, innocence, and bliss, than "angel," when applied, as it is, by the whole Christian male population of the earth, to all the unpolluted daughters of Eve.

Tickler. Why, Kit, you have given me an absolute sermonbut your doctrine, though sweet, is, I fear, scarcely sound. You are not orthodox.

North. I am orthodox. But let me give grinning Geordie another punch. He says, "An angel is, I grant, a woman, but it is a celestial woman." Now, here again he shows that he has not read his Bible. "Some scriptural angels,” he also admits, "are ladies." They are not only women, but ladies. Now, he mistakes the matter most entirely; they may be said, in the Bible, to be females, but certainly not women. In short, women are angels, but angels are not

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377

women. A woman, though human, being universally admitted all over the world, with the single exception of George Colman, to be an angel, is, in rerum naturâ, by participation, celestial too; but an angel, though celestial, being universally admitted all over the world, with the exception of George Colman, to be no woman, is not, in rerum naturâ, by participation human; so that woman has the superiority over angelonly the one dwells on earth, and the other in heaven.

Tickler. What must George the Grinner think of the famous debate among the doctors of the dark ages on the theological question, "How many angels could dance on the point of a needle ?"

North. He would faint like a young lady suspected of having been at Covent Garden Theatre.

Tickler. In what play is it said, or is it said in any play, that a person "played the fiddle like an angel?"

North. I forget-but it is very wicked. "Supposing," asks the committee-man, "you were to leave the word 'angel' in a play or farce, will you state your opinion as to the effect it would have on the public mind?" Colman-"It is impossible for me to say what effect it would have! I am not able to enter into the breasts of everybody who might be in gallery, pit, or boxes."

Tickler. Poor devil!

North. Mr Moncrieff, in his examination, says, "Mr Colman has been rather particular-very capricious-he would not let one mention the word 'thighs' in the Bashful Man—he said those were indecent."

Tickler.

"Drawn from the thighs of mighty cherubim."

Milton. Are "those indecent?"

North.

"His cuisses on his thighs."

Shakespeare. Are "those indecent?"

Tickler. Are hips indecent?

North. No-nor haws.1

Tickler. The man's mind, we shall hope, is rather diseased than depraved.

North. The Queens of Spain, you know, have no legs. 'Tis 1 Hips and haws-the berries on rose and thorn bushes.