1831.] Mrs. Jordan and her Biographer. 53 



der? The crime is one clearly of lese majeste, and we must so far 

 denounce it as worthy of the severest penalties of Parnassus. But this 

 anecdote trade does more than torment the easy part of mankind. It 

 maddens the ambitious. The whole tribe of those living nuisances, the 

 wits by profession, the " enliveners," the " embellishers/' the laborious 

 students of the art of shining, the inveterate getters-by-heart of acci- 

 dental good things, the whole prepared-impromptu, dull-brilliant, and 

 pains-taking idle race, who flourish through literary dinners, and are 

 announced as the lamps and lustres of conversaziones, are absolutely 

 encouraged in their pernicious practices by the belief that somebody or 

 other may yet embalm them in a biography ; that even at the moment 

 of delivering his most obsolete absurdity, some man of the tf ever- 

 pointed pencil and asses' skin" may be gleaning their words ; that their 

 " Life and Sayings" may be already half way through the press, and 

 that they may live in three octavo volumes with all their bons-mots in full 

 verdure round them at the first blush of the " publishing season." 



But the present work lays claims to public curiosity on peculiar 

 grounds, and we are sorry to be compelled to say, that it furnishes one of 

 the most repulsive examples of the worst taste in those matters that even 

 the avidity of the modern press has ever displayed. Mr. Boaden is a 

 man of literary character, of long experience in literary history, and 

 abundant in striking anecdote relative to that part of life to which 

 a general interest is attached the drama. But he has here chosen 

 a topic to which no interest can belong except that of a degrading desire 

 for prying into the habits of high life : the subject of his Memoir is an 

 unhappy woman, whose name had long since sunk into oblivion ; and 

 the object of his book is still more humiliating ; the universal voice has 

 pronounced that such a work could not have been produced at such a 

 period but for one purpose ; the very advertisement that accounted for 

 the delay of its appearance, more than hinted that it was retarded by 

 the expectation of its being bought up. The author's preface speaks 

 the same language, and Captain Swing himself could not commence his 

 career with a more direct threat than the whole tissue of this writer's 

 explanation of his motives. We have in his preface that constant 

 allusion to Mrs. Jordan's private life, which was meant to startle other 

 ears than those of the people. What do the public care about the private 

 life of any actress ? Or who can be fairly interested in the tedious 

 details of difficulties and incumbrances, or the darker story of excesses 

 and follies which ought never to have existed, or existing, ought never 

 to have seen the light ? But, throwing aside all consideration of the 

 unhappy woman who forms the subject of these volumes, how is it 

 possible that the writer should not have felt the respect due to the 

 possessor of the throne ? We are as far, as British freedom can be, from 

 either flattering or disguising the crimes of men in high authority. But 

 this writer should have known, that when the errors are no more, it is 

 idle and offensive to bring them again before the world ; that the reserve 

 due to every man in private life is at least due to the throne ; and that, 

 in all cases of this volunteer scandal, the writer lays himself under the 

 direct imputation of being actuated by either malignant or mercenary 

 motives. 



But a publication of this kind is disrespectful, not merely to those 

 whom we are bound to honour, but cruel to those for whom we are 

 bound to have the common sympathy due to individuals conducting 

 themselves without offence in society. The surviving family of Mrs. 

 Jordan ought to have been secured from the publication of details in 



