314 Notes (fthe Month on [Skpt. 



if to make the world merry with his miisfortunes be the last aggravation 

 of ill-luck, short of hanging, he is beyond the power of patriotism to 

 console. 



Laporte has made his last speech, and is now, we suppose, flying off 

 to Paris, with £30,000. — the profits of his penurious system. Thank 

 Heaven, the Opera is at length wrested from his hands! Anything 

 more vilely, pitifully, and miserably mismanaged than this establish- 

 ment has been during his career, we cannot conceive — rich as we are in 

 records of theatrical and musical abuses. One grand good, then, has 

 been effected in getting Laporte out ; but that, luckily, is not all ; for 

 the directorship of the King's Theatre has at last fallen into the hands of 

 a gentleman likely to make it what it is wanted to be — precisely the 

 opposite of all that it has been of late. ]\Ir. Monck Mason, the new 

 lessee, is a gentleman — a word that has a very un-manager-like look — a 

 person of bii'th and education, possessing many advantages, arising from 

 a frequent intercourse with continental cities, a becoming ardour to 

 improve the national taste, zeal, talent, and liberality. All this is much, 

 and we hope much from it. 



It is odd enough that the history of the Beggar's Opera should be still 

 in dispute. There is something like an acknowledgment that its first 

 conception was Swift's, for we have it recorded of him that, in his spirit 

 of burlesque, he " observed one day, to Gay, what a pretty sort of a 

 thing a Newgate pastoral would make." Gait, in his pleasant book, the 

 " Lives of the Players," says of the songs : — 



" It is not generally known that the first song, " The modes of the Court," 

 was written by Lord Chesterfield, — " Virgins are like the fair flower in its lustre," 

 by Sir Charles Ilanbuiy Williams, — " When you censure the age," by Swift, — 

 and " Gamesters and lawyers are jugglers alike," by Mr. Fortescue, Master of the 

 Rolls." 



We may add, that the song of " If laws are made for every degree," 

 was either written or revised and sharpened by Pope. The work, in 

 general, was altogether superior to Gay, as is obvious from " Polly, an 

 Opera," its second part, which is feeble in the extreme. The chief part 

 of the early dialogue, the Mrs. Peachum and Filch scene, with the sar- 

 casms of the two thieftakers, probably, belonged to Swift — the arrange- 

 ment was Gay's. He went to Scotland at the time, and gave six weeks 

 to it in a tenth floor, in one of the ivynds. 



We wonder at the abortiveness of every system for governing Ireland! 

 yet we never wonder at the abortiveness of every government of Ire- 

 land. — They scarcely average more than the life of a Lord Mayor. — 

 Since the commencement of English rule in Ireland, from 1172 to 1831, 

 just 659 years, we have had no less than 396 governors, exclusive of 

 those who held the reins from 1677 to 1711- To these add, chief secre- 

 taries, &c., and during the same period, be it observed, England has 

 been ruled by thirty sovereigns and one lord protector. This gives an 

 average of one year, seven months, and nineteen days for each vice-regal 

 reign. But the chief secretaries are the pi-incipal feature of this curi- 

 ously shifting government, for there have been, generally, three secreta- 

 ries for one lord lieutenant ; the secretary being the actual governor, and 



