"A Vindication of
the Licenser from the malicious and scandalous aspersions of Mr.
Brooke." Modern readers may well be excused for knowing little of the
dramatist whose "Gustavus Vasa" had no great deal to recommend it,
perhaps, beyond the fact of its performance having been prohibited.
Yet some few years since, it may be noted, the late Charles Kingsley
made endeavours, more strenuous than successful, to obtain applause
for Brooke's novel, "The Fool of Quality;" but although a new and
handsome edition of this work was published, it was received with some
apathy by the romance-reading public.

The author of "The Seasons" hardly seems a writer likely to give
offence designedly to a Chamberlain. But Thomson was a sort of Poet
Laureate to Frederick, Prince of Wales, then carrying on fierce
opposition to the court of his father, and the play of "Edward and
Eleonora"--a dramatic setting of the old legend of Queen Eleanor
sucking the poison from her husband's arm--certainly contained
passages applicable to the differences existing between the king and
his heir-apparent. In the first scene, one of the characters demands--

Has not the royal heir a juster claim
To share his father's inmost heart and counsels,
Than aliens to his interest, those who make
A property, a market of his honour?

And King Edward apostrophises his dead sire--

O my deluded father! little joy
Hadst thou in life, led from thy real good
And genuine glory, from thy people's love,
The noblest aim of kings, by smiling traitors!

In 1775, however, the play was produced at Covent Garden. George III.
was king, and the allusions to the squabbles of his father and
grandfather were not, perhaps, supposed to be any longer of the
remotest concern or significance to anybody.

At this time and long afterwards, the Licenser regarded it as his
chief duty to protect the court against all possibility of attack from
the stage. With the morality of plays he did not meddle much; but he
still clung to the old superstition that the British drama had only a
right to exist as the pastime of royalty; plays and players were still
to be subservient to the pleasure of the sovereign. The British
public, who, after all, really supported the stage, he declined to
consider in the matter; conceding, however, that they were at liberty
to be amused at the theatre, provided they could achieve that end in
strict accordance with the prescription of the