1827.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



647 



ing to betray his employers. He has per- 

 suaded the surgeon's daughter to follow him 

 to India, and he bargains with Tippoo for 

 the government of Bangalore, on putting 

 the beautiful girl into his possession. Hart- 

 ley discovers the intrigue, and, by command 

 of Hyder, Middlemas is finally crushed un- 

 der the paw of an elephant. The young lady 

 never recovers the shock of her lover's 

 treachery Hartley dies in the pursuance of 

 his vocation and she returns to her native 



country, and plays the Lady Bountiful, with 

 the means which Hyder had conferred upon 

 her. 



Worthy as much of these volumes is o 

 the distinguished writer surely, surely 

 names and prejudices apart it is mere ex- 

 travagance to place him at so immense an 

 interval from all competitors, as many of 

 our cotemporaries do half a dozen might 

 be mentioned as treading close upon his 

 heels. 



MONTHLY THEATRICAL REPORT. 



THERE are rumours of fierce attacks on 

 the Minor theatres. We put no great faith 

 in these rumours, inasmuch as they have re- 

 gularly made a part of the menaces of every 

 season, during the last half-dozen years, 

 and they have always sunk without effect of 

 any kind. But what could be more absurd, 

 than that they should produce any effect ? 

 Why should the dramatic shillings of any 

 man be eompellable into the pockets of the 

 two great Winter theatres ? or, why should 

 not every man be allowed to use his money, 

 his time, and himself just as he may please, 

 Avithin the natural limits of avoiding injury 

 to others ? We altogether doubt that the 

 Minor theatres do any injury to the Major. 

 Their effect upon the population of the 

 suburbs, in which they chiefly exist, is pro- 

 bably to produce a theatric turn, which even- 

 tually directs itself into the treasury of the 

 great theatres. These Minors are, in fact, 

 outposts, from which regular communica- 

 tions are maintained with the two principal 

 fortresses of the drama : they are colonies, 

 which are always looking back to the mo- 

 ther country ; they are ventures on foreign 

 speculation, which regularly come back, in 

 one shape or other, to the same market of 

 Bow-street and Brydges-street. Let the 

 Leviathans shew anything worth shewing, 

 and they will have all the gazers crowding 

 from north, south, east, and west, to see 

 their gambols. Let them be stupid, and the 

 dwellers on the Surrey side, the remote in- 

 habitants of the Minories, and the demi- 

 civilized of Tottenham-court-road, will stay 

 within their native regions, and leave the 

 Leviathans to gambol in solitude. 



We doubt the common imputation, that 

 theatres necessarily increase the vices of a 

 metropolis. Unfortunately, that increase 

 depends on matters very little within the 

 control of human regulation. We must first 

 extinguish the misery that leads to vice, the 

 wretched vicissitudes of fortune, in a com- 

 mercial country ; we must restrict the num- 

 ber of counting-houses and their clerks, the 

 large establishments of trade in its lower 

 branches, the conflux of the young into the 

 great place of wealth, the crowd of sailors, 

 the intercourse with foreigners. Without 

 the slightest idea of palliating popular vice, 



it must be obvious that its superflux, in this 

 immense city, arises from circumstances in- 

 terwoven with the general state of society ; 

 incapable of being put down completely by 

 any magisterial effort; and as little to be ex- 

 cited by the theatre, as it is to be extin- 

 guished by the police-office. 



But the Minor theatres are undoubtedly 

 productive of one evil a degraded taste in 

 the drama. Their privileges extend to little 

 more than a permission to produce the most 

 humble imitations of plays. The general re- 

 sult is, the race of " Tom and Jerry," the 

 miserable melo-drames compiled from the 

 Newgate Calendar, the preposterous foole- 

 ries of the lowest city life, and the low pic- 

 ture of the vulgar profligacies of the lower 

 gaming-houses. We thus have taste humi- 

 liated and morals offended at the same time; 

 manners share the degradation ; and the 

 broad impurity, dull humour, and disgusting 

 vocabulary of the grossest offenders that 

 lurk about the skirts of life in the metro- 

 polis, are made familiar to those who went 

 to the theatre decent, and ought to come 

 away unstained. 



We dislike the idea of control upon any- 

 thing connected with literature ; and the 

 manner in which the present licenser has 

 exercised his office contrasts so ludicrously 

 with his own publications, and the notorious 

 facts of his life, that nothing but disgust can 

 be felt on the mention of his newly-acquired 

 zeal. But if a licenser be necessary for any 

 of our dramatic exhibitions, it is not for the 

 two great theatres, but for the little ones. 

 Nothing, for instance, could be more ab- 

 surd than to see the whole rage of official 

 morality cutting and slashing away at Mr. 

 Shee's tragedy, the moment when " Tom 

 and Jerry" was teaching every apprentice, 

 from Westminster to Whitechapel, the whole 

 art and mystery of blackguardism, at six- 

 pence a head. House-breaking and high- 

 way-robbery have had their representations 

 on some of these theatres ; and though the 

 general purport of the representation is to 

 shew the ruin that follows such a career, 

 still the subjects are unfitted for public dis- 

 play, and may as often excite as repel. 

 There should unquestionably be an authority 

 somewhere, to repress those degrading ex- 



