1826.) c 
209 
MONTHLY THEATRICAL REVIEW. 
— 
Tue chief transaction in these matters 
“ately has been the letting of Drury-Lane. 
The story has been told se often, and with 
such laborious explicitness, in this season of 
heat, vacancy and.inaction, that there is 
iittle now to add, than that the pompous 
promises of Mr. Elliston, the pompous 
confidence annually boasted of by King 
Calcroft and his privy counseilors, Robins 
and fhe rest, and the pompous offer of Mr. 
Bish, were all equally smoke. We recom- 
mend the whole establishment, parties and 
all, to the special supervision of little 
Michael Angelo Taylor, the inveterate foe 
of smoke nuisances in general. The truth, 
so far as we can detect it, under the accu- 
mulation of blunders and bewilderings per- 
petrated by the individuals on all sides con- 
eerned, seems to be, that a more ridiculous, 
feeble, and foolish management could not 
have been yearly puffed to the wondering 
world by a more headlong committee. As 
the matter stands now, all parties are 
equally in a state of expostre; and a 
Yankee comes to put his shoulder, as the 
HereuJes of the day, under the weight 
which has crushed the manager and his 
eoadjutors. What Mr. Price will or can 
do with this labouring concern is yet in 
the bosom of the future, where it is not 
worth our while to jook for it. But as 
his trade has been hitherto the exportation 
of English actors, he may_possibly try the 
- effect of a change, and indulge us with 
Yankee Roscii—Kembles fresh from the 
Alleghanies, and Siddonses that know more 
ef the tomahawk than the theatre. How- 
ever, we are on the whole glad that this 
establishment has fallen into the hands 
ofa new man, and from a new country, and 
oth the newer the better. The old routine 
would not do; Elliston was utterly gone 
years ago. The Surrey Theatre set the 
seal upon him as an actor, and thenceforth 
his only chance of success was undeyiating 
end total attention to his duties as manager. 
‘But there the old ambition of acting came 
strong and fatally upon him ; another old 
passion disabled him still more effeetually ; 
loss came upon loss, foolery upon foolery, 
debt upon debt, and blunder upon blunder, 
even his buoyancy sank, and he went 
divect to the bottom. 
~ Elliston is one among the many instances 
of the signal struggle which a man may 
exert against himself in life; the perverse 
determination to thwart good fortune, and 
the no less extraordinary perseverance with 
which good fortune sometimes throws itself 
peer away of men, nevertheless born to 
ne. He began the world with ad- 
; from connexion, with enough of 
ere property to have sustained him 
should. haye attained rank in a pro- 
, with a gentleman’ 's education, and 
th faeulties more than enough for ge- 
MLM. New Series.—Vow. I. No. 8. 
neral professional competence, ~ Nature, 
too, had been liberal to his exterior, and 
given him a vivid countenance, a good 
figure, and remarkable animation. Launch- 
ed in Bond Street, he might have been 
king of the dandies; at table he might 
have disputed the supremacy of any Brum- 
mel of the day; and in public life his vi- 
gour, intelligence, and general acquire- 
ments (for with all his giddiness, Elliston 
has had some scholarship, and has acquired 
some curious ard manly knowledge), would 
have thrown the whole feeble generation of 
“ Blue waistcoats ’’ and baby witticism to 
an immeasurable distance. He had much 
of that natural fluency of speech which 
with the multitude goes for oratory, and 
which in the House of Commons (the six 
hundred and fifty-eight worst orators that 
ever assembled under one roof) las made 
the reputation of three-fourths of our pub- 
lic meteors.; miserable charlatans after all, 
yet, by this simple and vulgar flippancy, 
exalted into the power and patronage of 
the most powerful and patronizxg realm of 
the globe. But, with all these advantages, 
Elliston, maddened by the hope of ap- 
plause from those to whom _ sixpence 
would give the unquestionable right of 
hooting him off the stage and out of the 
world, plunged into the chances of the 
drama. He was singularly successful, even 
in the shade of those theatrical promon- 
tories, Kemble, Siddons, and Lewis—a 
race whose like we shall not see again. 
His liveliness, versatility, and quickness of 
conception, made him highly popular. What 
he wanted in quality, he made up in quan- 
tity. The man who can do all things may 
be pardoned for doing all in an inferior de- 
gree. Elliston’s variety was essential to 
the stage. Here was the effect of his 
good fortune, where hundreds of his equals 
have perished. His whole subsequent life 
bas been a succession of the same striking 
efforts of fortune to save him ; he has been 
conscious of this, and has said that he had 
“ his star.”” But if chance has struggled 
for him, he has struggled on the contrary 
side. The most extraordinary and pal- 
pable imprudencies have been healed from 
time to time, by circumstances that came 
“like a summer cloud,’’ to move the spe- 
cial wonder of every body who contem- 
plated his curious and tessellated career. 
He has risen for a time, and prosperity 
seemed to lie level before him. In the 
very sight of it, some new caprice, eccen- 
tricity or absurdity, has broke up the 
ground under his feet, and has left him not 
a spot to stand on. His last act of im- 
prudence, at length, exhausted all lucky 
casualty, and he has been flung out of his 
last hope of independence, By his lease 
he had covenanted to expend six thousand 
pounds upon the improvement of the 
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