t regard a first-night's audience as
a candid and judicious friend attending, in behalf of the public, at
his last rehearsal. If he can dispense with flattery, he is sure at
least of sincerity, and even though the annotation be rude, he may
rely upon the justness of the comment." This is calm and complacent
enough, but he proceeds with some warmth: "As for the little puny
critics who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and
scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected
with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of
increasing their consequence, there will always be found a petulance
and illiberality in their remarks, which should place them as far
beneath the notice of a gentleman, as their original dulness had sunk
them from the level of the most unsuccessful author." This reads like
a sentence from "The School for Scandal."

In truth, hissing is very hard to endure. Lamb treated the misfortune
of "Mr. H." as lightly as he could, yet it is plain he took his
failure much to heart. In his letter signed Semel-Damnatus, upon
"Hissing at the Theatres," he is alternately merry and sad over his
defeat as a dramatist. "Is it not a pity," he asks, "that the sweet
human voice which was given man to speak with, to sing with, to
whisper tones of love in, to express compliance, to convey a favour,
or to grant a suit--that voice, which in a Siddons or a Braham rouses
us, in a siren Catalani charms and captivates us--that the musical
expressive human voice should be converted into a rival of the noises
of silly geese and irrational venomous snakes? I never shall forget
the sounds on my night!" He urges that the venial mistake of the poor
author, "who thought to please in the act of filling his pockets, for
the sum of his demerits amounts to no more than that," is too severely
punished; and he adds, "the provocations to which a dramatic genius is
exposed from the public are so much the more vexatious as they are
removed from any possibility of retaliation, the hope of which
sweetens most other injuries; for the public never writes itself." He
concludes with an account, written in an Addisonian vein, of a club to
which he had the honour to belong. "There are fourteen of us, who are
all authors that have been once in our lives what is called 'damned.'
We meet on the anniversaries of our respective nights, and make
ourselves merry at the expense of the public.... To keep up the memory