650 
William Tell, and Gracchus, have been all 
reconstructions, not copies, for they have 
not soared to the originality of a copy ; they 
have been re-raisings of the fallen material, 
in the fallen shape, and on the spot where 
it had fallen. We must reprobate this 
practice, because, were it to go on to the 
world’s end, it would add nothing to our 
mental wealth—it would be but Voltaire’s 
conception realized, of filling one bottle by 
emptying another ; the literary feast would 
be a perpetual réchauffé, growing more 
flavourless at every new warming. And the 
vexation at this indolence or inauspicious 
activity, is the more perplexing, when the 
writer is capable of something better. We 
have no doubt that Mr. Knowles could 
invent something of bolder pattern than the 
plot of any tragedy that he has patched, 
since the first era of his taking the needle 
in hand; and speak in his own person, 
sentiments more natural, worthy of his 
understanding, and suitable to the principles 
of a British subject, than the best raving 
that flourishes in the mouths of the best of 
his heroes, Swiss, Roman, or Bethnal 
Green. He has more poetry in him, too, 
than he could find in the whole turgid and 
trite vocabulary of the last age of the 
drama; and we earnestly entreat him, as he 
values his reputation, and hopes to efface the 
memory of his mendicant, to apply his mind 
to the straight-forward course of inventing 
for himself, and seeking, in his own feelings, 
the only source of dramatic power which can 
last beyond the crash of the orchestra, or the 
daubings of the scene painter. 
Drury Lane has made a valuable addition 
to its popularity, in Miss Phillips, the new 
tragedian. It is so long since an actress 
‘of any tragic promise has appeared, that 
this young person has been welcomed with 
lavish panegyric. She undoubtedly deserves 
a considerable degree of public favour. Her 
appearance is advantageous. Her height, 
countenance, figure and movement, are 
suitable to the stage. Her voice has the 
_rare and valuable quality of combined soft- 
ness and clearness, and her judgment evi- 
dently leads her to avoid outraging nature, 
the common fault of tragic débutantes. She 
resembles Miss O’Neil more than any of 
that actress’s crowd of imitators, and her 
performance of Miss O’Neil’s principal 
characters, has exhibited the mental likeness 
no less than the personal. 
To Mrs. Haller, on the stage, or off the 
stage, we have all along objected. The whole 
conception of the character is repulsive and 
unnatural, the passion extravagant, and the 
action improbable. But Sheridan’s skill in 
spurious sentiment—that language which was 
familiar to him through life, and which was 
at once his talent and his disgrace, the 
» source of his popularity and his ruin—has 
introduced eloquence and feeling into the 
lips, that in actual society must have been 
stained by grossness or imposture. The 
_ offence of the guilty wife and mother, is 
Monthly Theatrical ‘Report. 
. sion, there are other remarks which the case 
[Dec. 
covered by the sorrow, the trials, and the 
surviving affection of the penitent; and the 
stage wife becomes a model of virtue, where 
society would have stamped her! with the 
lowest degradation of a corrupt heart—and’ 
the stage husband flourishes as a model of - 
delicacy, when the true state of the case) 
would have branded him as the mark for 
perpetual scorn. i 
But Miss O’Neil’s tears, and Miss Phil« 
lips’s, in due succession, subdue the audi- 
ence ; and Mrs. Haller triumphs in renewed - 
saintship, and the honours of society. 
Braham, the Atlas, or Colossus of opera, 
alternately, as he bears it on his shoulders, 
or sees it creeping at his feet, has displayed 
his powers, in the old and favourite perfor- 
mances of “ Guy Mannering,”’ and the 
“ Lord of the Manor.’’ A new opera, from 
the French, in two Acts, is in preparation, 
of which he is to play the hero, and will, we 
may fairly predict, be the supreme stay. 
French translations are the order of the 
day. Some of the critics are indignant at 
this system of smuggling. But on the true 
principles of political economy, it is folly to 
manufacture the commodity that we can 
buy at less expense. The French farces 
are ready for our use. Why exhaust our 
faculties in producing a home fabric, that 
would, probably, be not half as well re- 
ceived in the market ? Another grand con- 
sideration is, also, before us; that, proba- 
bly, not two, out of the two hundred who 
supply this demand, would be capable of 
any other traffic. On the whole, the only 
parties aggrieved are the French scribblers 
themselves, who see their little ingenious 
inventions nightly maltreated on the English 
stage ; and, in the spirit of Sheridan’s jest, 
“ disfigured, by our adaptors, like stolen 
children, to make them pass for their own.” 
As the matter stands, a Parisian melo- 
dramatist is no longer in a condition to 
ascertain the quantity of hissing that is des- | 
tined for his laurels. Once he bore the — 
agonies of but one sibilant spot in. his 
own noisy and theatre-hunting capital. 
Now he is hissed through the twelve mil-_ 
lions of Great Britain, and the seven mil- — 
lions of ITveland, simultaneously. He is 
hissed through America, with its twenty 
millions, from the bitterness of Hudson’s 
Bay criticism, down to the fat and foggy 
insolence of the Floridas. New South 
Wales, with its incipient empires, is next 
the place of his penalties ; and he is fortu- 
nate if he has not the additional and deeper 
excruciation of an amateur performance by 
the officers, civil and military, of a hill post 
in Hindostan, or a stockade in Birmah. 
At Covent Garden, a very melancholy, 
and very formidable train of circumstances 
has put the drama to flight fora while. The 
late combustion of the gas and oil, from the 
reservoirs, is too well known for our enter- 
ing into the detail. But pained as the pub- 
lic must be, by any loss of life on the occa- 
