lly studied the force of the company, and written the
parts for the respective performers. I was somewhat dissatisfied at
first with one particular character, lord Norland. I thought it hardly
possible such a being could have been drawn from nature. A further view
of mankind, has convinced me that I was in error. I annex the dramatis
personae, and leave the reader to judge whether a higher dramatic feast
can probably be found at Covent Garden or Drury Lane.

Lord Norland, Mr. Whitlock,
Capt. Irwin, Mr. Fennel,
Sir Robert Ramble, Mr. Chalmers,
Mr. Placid, Mr. Moreton,
Harmony, Mr. Bates,
Solus, Mr. Morris,
Edward, Mrs. Marshal.
Lady Erwin, Mrs. Whitlock,
Mrs. Placid, Mrs. Shaw,
Miss Woburn, Mrs. Morris,
Miss Spinster, Mrs. Bates.

It may be heresy and schism to institute the most distant comparison
between any modern writer and Shakspeare. But if so, I cannot help being
a heretic and schismatic, for I believe that the scene between lord
Norland, lady Irwin, and Edward, in which the latter abandons his
grandfather, and flies into the arms of his mother, then newly
discovered to him, is actually equal, for pathos and interest, to any
scene ever represented in the English or any other language. Mrs.
Inchbald, it is said, intended this drama for a tragedy, and made
captain Irwin suffer death: but by the advice of her friends converted
it into a comedy.

_Prostitution of the Theatre._

Those who do not look beyond the mere surface of things, are prone to
censure managers with great severity, when Theatres, which ought to be
held sacred for exhibiting the grandest effusions of the human mind, are
prostituted to puppet-shows, rope dancing, pantomimes and exhibitions of
elephants, &c. Whatever of censure is due to this preposterous
perversion, attaches elsewhere. It falls on those who frequent theatres.
Dr. Johnson, in a prologue which he wrote for Garrick, places this idea
in the strongest point of light.

"Ah! let not censure term our fate our choice:
The stage but echoes back the public voice.
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give:
For _those who live to please, must please to live_."

And therefore if Romeo and Juliet, the Clandestine Marriage, the West
Indian, the Gamester, Every one has his fault, and other dramatic works
of this order, fail to afford