[ 62 ] [JAN. 



THEATRICAL MATTERS. 



KEAN, who seems determined to make his retirements and his returns 

 equally conspicuous, contrived to triply signalize his reappearance at 

 Drury-lane, by a negotiation, a newspaper correspondence, and a law-suit. 

 The Atlantic manager is an acute personage, and seems to know the 

 world on both sides of that sea, which Grattan in one of his flights eulo- 

 gized as the power of nature seconding the power of mind ; " a column 

 of water of three thousand miles" seconding the energies of the Irish 

 volunteers " pace tanti viri," the figure sounds a little absurd. But 

 Grattan had a meaning in his madness, and his countrymen understood 

 him prodigiously well in those days of American rebellion. 



(So far, par parenthese.} The manager knew his man; sent Home- 

 Secretary Cooper to open an arrangement with the great leader, for his ac- 

 cession to the Drury-lane ministry; laid before his tardy conviction reasons 

 of such weight, that no lover of his country could refuse them ; proved 

 at once that the state was lost without him, and that he was lost without 

 the state ; turned his tardy conviction into glowing acceptance, brought 

 him up to the door of the Brydges'-street Cabinet, and saw him sworn 

 into office, even in the very boots which he had put on " to follow the 

 poor body" of the Covent Garden opposition. For this most impor- 

 tant service, the Home Secretary has since been honoured with the 

 amplest confidence of the Atlantic premier has been promoted to the 

 Foreign department, and now sustains the weight of the negotiations, 

 tot et tanta negoiia solus, with all powers proposing the alliance of Pari- 

 sian dancing-dogs and dancing women, marvellous monkeys, Diavolo 

 Antonios, dromedaries with three humps, and translators of German 

 melodrames. But, " to digress from this digression," as Lord Byron 

 says ; Kean's manliness, as it was termed by his admirers ; his " dis- 

 loyalty" as it was termed by his haters; and his perfect knowledge of 

 managers and man, as it was termed by those who did not care if he was 

 gone, with all his fortune left to pay the national debt ; produced in the 

 first instance a letter from Mr. Bartley, the very pleasant actor and 

 respectable Stage Director of Covent Garden. Kean wisely left this 

 shot to take its parabolic course whither it would ; a second and a third 

 followed. Kean felt himself dunned by this " d mnable iteration," and 

 answered them no more than a dun ought to be answered. The letters 

 were cleverly written, pathetic on the score of Kean's character, for 

 which the letter- writer professed a peculiar love, and powerful in their 

 appeals to that portion of the human sensibilities by which a man 

 shrinks from 10,OOOZ. damages, though incurred in the most captivating 

 of causes. 



But Kean had by this time kissed hands ; he was installed in the 

 glories of office; he had tasted of the good things, and had touched the 

 first quarter's salary. Aristides or Phocion, the vigorous virtue of a 

 Regulus, or the sublime purity of a Chatham, could not have done more 

 .nor less than what he did ; he snapped his fingers at the menace, flung 

 the correspondence into the flames, and in the spirit of indignant honour, 

 desired his name to be placarded for Richard next day at dawn. 



Hostilities now commenced by a brisk attempt at an action by Covent 

 Garden. The boldness of managers, probably from their habits of deal- 

 ing with daggers or actresses, is of the most daring nature. The name 



