1829.] The Theatres. 397 
portunity,: and ingenious to make the best of the means which his 
admirable company supplies. His comic strength is complete; he 
has an excellent operatic force ; and now he wants only the authorship 
that is to employ those means. Jones, the most intelligent, ani- 
mated, and accurate, of performers of the lighter comedy. Farren, match- 
less in the close portraiture of age; and Liston, unequalled in 
rich eccentricity and natural humour, would, of themselves, give an 
unrivalled claim to a theatre. Novelty alone is now wanting. <A 
new Comedy. Some happy and spirited sketch of the manners of the 
hour, undegraded by the gross allusions which make the vulgar laugh, 
but disgust good taste and delicacy together; the seizure of those 
characters which, belonging to the great museum of human oddity, in 
every age, are capable of such keen, yet inoffensive reference to the pro- 
minent “absurdities of the passing day ; a dialogue which should less glitter 
with laborious jests, than attract and amuse by graceful pleasantry, would 
make the beau idéal of modern comedy. And one such work would 
instantly raise the character of the whole dramatic system of England. 
Covent GarpEN, under Fawcett’s management, has exerted itself 
with great diligence, and very considerable success. ‘Mr. Diamond’s 
«< Nymph of the Grotto,” which was by no means a bad production on 
the whole, though fragments of it were like lead dropt into water, 
having died a natural death, the “Maid of Judah” followed; an 
Opera on the story of Ivanhoe; which all the critics instantly declared 
to have been the first adaptation of that able story to the stage, with all 
the playbills staring them in the face, with no less than half-a-dozen 
previous adaptations of this same Ivanhoe, in all kinds of shapes, from 
high tragedy down to low farce. It was said to have been even per- 
formed at Sadler’s Wells by the ponies last season, to the great delight 
of the audience, and the great popularity of the actors. The “real water” 
played a principal part in the catastrophe ; and the hymn, in which 
the coroner and his jury brought in their poetic verdict of “ Found 
Drowned,” soliciting sympathetic drops, from eyes accustomed to 
drops of another kind, and extracting thunders of applause from hands 
to which the law of Meum and Tuum was not supposed to have been 
the most sacred. 
But the Opera contains some fine and popular music by Rossini, a 
composer whose personal impudence, while he was here, injured, as it 
ought, his popularity ; but who is, after all, the most showy of living 
musicians. 
_ The story of the original is so dramatic, that the difficulty would be, 
to spoil it; and Miss Paton’s singing, and even her acting, in the fair 
Jewess, are enough to carry a heavier performance through the season. 
The whole is a good melodrame. 
Mr. Wood is not a very vivid warrior, though, we must allow, that 
Scott's Ivanhoe is a drivelling and well-behaved gentleman enough ; as, 
by some curious fatality, is the case with all the intended heroes of the 
author. The true hero being some bold ruffian, who starts up, in spite 
of all Scott’s efforts to strangle him, overtops and tramples the gentleman 
of the piece, scatters his well-plaited frills and fineries' to the winds of 
scorn, wipes his memory out of the world, and sends him to the limbo 
of vanity, to give his gentle countenance to his companions in misfor- 
tune, the young Waverleys, Harry Mertons, the Frank Osbaldistons, 
&c., forever. The “ Maid of Judah” is the arrangement of Mr. Lacy ; 
