labors to attribute the burning of the theatre to that 'arch apostate, Boney,' and to lug in, by ear and horn,' some compliment to the reigning powers. The editor has well illustrated, in his successful counterpart of a loyal address, the truth of Goldsmith's remark, that 'there is not in nature a more dismal figure, than a man who sits down to premeditated flattery. Every line he writes, tacitly reproaches the meanness of his occupation; till at last his stupidity becomes more stupid, and his dullness more diminutive.' The laureate begins thus:

'Hail, glorious edifice, stupendous work!

God bless the Regent and the Duke of York!
Ye Muses! by whose aid I cry down Fox,
Grant me in Drury-Lane a private box!'

After some exciting particulars' in the political history of 'Gallia's stern despot,' to whose charge are laid all the sins in the calendar, Mr. Fitzgerald proceeds:

'Who burnt (confound his soul !) the houses twain
Of Covent-Garden and of Drury-Lane?
Who, while the British squadron lay off Cork,
(God bless the Regent and the Duke of York!)
With a foul earthquake ravaged the Caraccas,
And raised the price of dry goods and tobaccos ?
Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise?
Who fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies?
Why he, who, forging for this isle a yoke,
Reminds me of a line I lately spoke,
'The tree of freedom is the British oak!'
Bless every man possessed of aught to give;
Long may Long Tilney Wellesley Long Pole live;
God bless the army, bless their coats of scarlet,
God bless the navy, bless the Princess Charlotte,
God bless the Guards, though worsted Callia scoff,
God bless their pig-tails, though they're now cut off;
And oh, in Downing-street should Old Nick revel,
England's prime minister, then bless the Devil!""

BYRON'S contribution bears the caption CUI BONO?'

and all

who have read 'Childe Harold,' will not need to be told, how com pletely the writer has embodied the train of thought and style of a portion of that renowned poem. We annex several stanzas:

1.

'SATED with home, of wife, of children tired,
The restless soul is driven abroad to roam;
Sated abroad, all seen, yet nought admired,
The restless soul is driven to ramble home;
Sated with both, beneath new Drury's dome
The fiend Ennui awhile consents to pine,
There growls, and curses, like a deadly Gnome,
Scorning to view fantastic Columbine,

Viewing with scorn and hate the nonsense of the Nine.

II.

'Ye reckless dupes, who hither wend your way,

To gaze on puppets in a painted dome,

Pursuing pastimes glittering to betray,

Like falling stars in life's eternal gloom,

What seek ye here? Joy's evanescent bloom?

Woe's me! the brightest wreaths she ever gave

Are but as flowers that decorate a tomb:

Man's heart, the mournful urn o'er which they wave,

Is sacred to despair, its pedestal the grave.

III.

'Has life so little store of real woes,

That here ye wend to taste fictitious grief?
Or is it that from truth such anguish flows,
Ye court the lying drama for relief?
Long shall ye find the pang, the respite brief,
Or if one tolerable page appears

In folly's volume, 't is the actor's leaf,

Who dries his own by drawing others' tears,

And raising present mirth, makes glad his future years.

IV.

Albeit how like young Betty doth he flee!
Light as the mote that daunceth in the beam,
He liveth only in man's present e'e,
His life a flash, his memory a dream,
Oblivious down he drops in Lethe's stream;
Yet what are they, the learned and the great?
A while of longer wonderment the theme!
Who shall presume to prophesy their date,
Where nought is certain, save th' uncertainty of fate?

V.

"This goodly pile, upheav'd by Wyatt's toil,
Perchance than Holland's edifice more fleet,
Again red Lemnos' artizan may spoil;

The fire alarm, and midnight drum may beat,
And all be strew'd ysmoking at your feet.

Start ye? Perchance Death's angel may be sent,

Ere from the flaming temple ye retreat,

And ye who met on revel idlesse bent,

May find in pleasure's fane your grave and monument.

VI.

'Your debts mount high-ye plunge in deeper waste, The tradesman calls- no warning voice ye hear;

The plaintiff sues to public shews ye haste;

The bailiff threats - ye feel no idle fear;

Who can arrest your prodigal career?

Who can keep down the levity of youth?

What sound can startle age's stubborn ear?

Who can redeem from wretchedness and ruth

Men true to falsehood's voice, false to the voice of truth?'

VIII.

'For what is Hamlet, but a hare in March?
And what is Brutus, but a croaking owl?
And what is Rolla? Cupid steep'd in starch,
Orlando's helmet in Augustine's cowl:

Shakspeare, how true thine adage, 'fair is foul;'
To him whose soul is with fruition fraught,
The song of Braham is an Irish howl,
Thinking is but an idle waste of thought,

And nought is every thing, and every thing is nought.

IX.

'Sons of Parnassus! whom I view above,

Not laurel-crown'd, but clad in rusty black,
Not spurring Pegasus through Tempe's grove,
But pacing Grub-street on a jaded hack,

What reams of foolscap, while your brains ye rack,
Ye mar to make again! for sure, ere long,

Condemn'd to tread the bard's time-sanction'd track,
Ye all shall join the bailiff-haunted throng,

And reproduce in rags the rags ye blot in song.

X.

'So fares the follower in the Muses' train,
He toils to starve, and only lives in death;
We slight him till our patronage is vain,
Then round his skeleton a garland wreathe,
And o'er his bones an empty requiem breathe;
Oh! with what tragic horror would he start,
(Could he be conjur'd from the grave beneath,)
To find the stage again a Thespian cart,

And elephants and colts down trample Shakspeare's art.'

CORBETT transmits his address to the secretary, under cover of a characteristic letter, in which he does not hesitate to give the manager a 'lick with the rough side of his tongue.' The reader will note his interrogatory manner, and how he replies, rejoins, confutes, and still confutes, as in the political articles which made his 'Register' so famous among the English yeomanry. The letter runs thus:

'SIR: To the gewgaw fetters of rhyme, (invented by the monks to enslave the people,) I have a rooted objection. I have therefore written an address for your theatre in plain, homespun, yeoman's prose; in the doing whereof, I hope I am swayed by nothing but an independent wish to open the eyes of this gulled people, to prevent a repetition of the dramatic bamboozling they have hitherto labored under. If you like what I have done, and mean to make use of it, I don't want any such aristocratic reward as a piece of plate with two griffins sprawling upon it, or a dog and a jackass fighting for a ha'p'orth of gilt gingerbread, or any such Bartholomew Fair nonsense. All I ask is, that the door-keepers of your play-house may take all the sets of my Register, now on hand, and force every body who enters your doors to buy one, giving afterward a debtor and creditor account of what they have received, post-paid, and in due course remitting me the money and unsold Registers, carriage-paid. 'I am, etc.,

W. c.'

The address is to be spoken in the character of a Hampshire Farmer, and bears the following motto, from Ovid:

-'Rabida qui concitus irâ

Implevit pariter ternis latratibus auras

Et sparsit virides spumis albentibus agros.'

'MOST THINKING PEOPLE: When persons address an audience from the stage, it is usual, either in words or gesture, to say, Ladies and Gentlemen, your servant.' If I were base enough, mean enough, paltry enough, and brute beast enough, to follow that fashion, I should tell two lies in a breath. In the first place, you are not Ladies and Gentlemen, but I hope something better, that is to say, honest men and women; and in the next place, if you were ever so much ladies, and ever so much gentlemen, 1 am not, nor ever will be, your humble servant. You see me here, most thinking people, by mere chance. I have not been within the doors of a play-house before for these ten years, nor till that abominable custom of taking money at the doors is discontinued, will I ever sanction a theatre with my presence. The stage door is the only gate of freedom in the whole edifice, and

through that I made my way from Bagshaw's in Brydges-street, to accost you. Look about you. Are you not all comfortable? Nay, never slink, mun; speak out, if you are dissatisfied, and tell me so before I leave town. You are now, (thanks to Mr. Whitbread,) got into a large, comfortable house. Not into a gimcrack palace; not into a Solomon's Temple; not into a frost-work of Brobdignag filagree; but into a plain, honest, homely, industrious, wholesome, brown, brick play-house. You have been struggling for independence and elbow-room these three years; and who gave it you? Who helped you out of Lilliput? Who routed you from a rat-hole, five inches by four, to perch you in a palace? Again and again I answer, Mr. Whitbread. You might have sweltered in that place with the Greek name till Doomsday, and neither Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Canning, no, nor the Marquis Wellesley, would have turned a trowel to help you out! Remember that. Never forget that. Read it to your children, and to your children's children! And now, most thinking people, cast your eyes over my head to what the builder, (I beg his pardon, the architect,) calls the proscenium. No motto, no slang, no popish Latin, to keep the people in the dark. No Veluti in Speculum. Nothing in the dead languages, properly so called, for they ought to die, ay, and be damned to boot! The Covent Garden

Manager tried that, and a pretty business he made of it! When a man says Veluti in Speculum, he is called a man of letters. Very well; and is not a man who cries O. P. a man of letters too? You ran your O. P. against his Veluti in Speculum, and pray which beat? I prophesied that, though I never told any body.

I take it for granted, that every intelligent man, woman, and child, to whom I address myself, has stood severally and respectively in Little Russel-street, and cast their, his, her, and its eyes on the outside of this building, before they paid their money to view the inside. Look at the brick work, English Audience! Look at the brick work! All plain and smooth like a quakers' meeting. None of your Egyptian pyramids, to entomb subscribers' capitals. No overgrown colonnades of stone, like an alderman's gouty legs, in white cotton stockings, fit only to use as rammers for paving Tottenham Court Road. This house is neither after the model of a temple in Athens, no, nor a temple in Moorfields, but it is built to act English plays in, and provided you have good scenery, dresses, and decorations, I dare say you would n't break your hearts if the outside were as plain as the pike-staff I used to carry when I was a sergeant. Apropos, as the French valets say, who cut their masters' throats; apropos, a word about dresses. You must, many of you, have seen what I have read a description of, Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth, with more gold and silver plaistered on their doublets, than would have kept an honest family in butchers' meat and flannel from year's end to year's end! I am informed, now mind, I do not vouch for the fact, but I am informed, that all such extravagant idleness is to be done away with here. Lady Macbeth is to have a plain quilted petticoat, a cotton gown, and a mob cap, (as the court parasites call it; it will be well for them if, one of these days, they don't wear a mob cap-I mean a white cap, with a mob to look at them ;) and Macbeth is to appear in an honest yeoman's drab coat, and a pair of

black calamanco breeches. Not Sal-amanca ; no, nor Talavera neither, my most Noble Marquis, but plain, honest, black calamanco, stuff breeches. This is right; this is as it should be. Most thinking people, I have heard you much abused. There is not a compound in the language but is strung fifty in a rope, like onions, by the Morning Post, and hurled in your teeth. You are called the mob, and when they have made you out to be the mob, you are called the scum of the people, and the dregs of the people. I should like to know how you can be both. Take a basin of broth - not cheap soup, Mr. Wilberforce, not soup for the poor at a penny a quart, as your mixture of horse's legs, brick dust, and old shoes was denominated, but plain, wholesome, patriotic beef or mutton broth; take this, examine it, and you will find-mind, I do n't vouch for the fact, but I am told you will find, the dregs at the bottom, and the scum at the top. I will endeavor to explain this to you: England is a large earthen-ware pipkin. John Bull is the beef thrown into it. Taxes are the hot water he boils in. Rotten boroughs are the fuel that blazes under this same pipkin. Parliament is the ladle that stirs the hodge-podge, and but hold, I don't wish to pay Mr. Newman a second visit. I leave you better off than you have been this many a day. You have a good house over your head; you have beat the French in Spain; the harvest has turned out well; the comet keeps its distance; and red slippers are hawked about in Constantinople for next to nothing; and for all this, again and again I tell you, you are indebted to Mr. Whitebread ! ! !'

sometimes.

SIR WALTER SCOTT was surely never so closely imitated, in prose or verse, as in the Tale of Drury.' It was directed to be spoken by Mr. KEMBLE, in a suit of the Black Prince's armor, borrowed from the Tower. Is there a single reader of Marmion,' who can resist the admirable wit and spirit of this broad burlesque ?

'SURVEY this shield all bossy bright;

These cuisses twain behold;
Look on my form in armor dight
Of steel inlaid with gold.
My knees are stiff in iron buckles,

Suff spikes of steel protect my knuckles;
These once belong'd to sable prince,
Who never did in battle wince;
With valor tart as pungent quince,

He slew the vaunting Gaul:
Rest there awhile, my bearded lance,
While from green curtain I advance
To yon foot-lights, no trivial dance,
And tell the town what sad mischance
Did Drury Lane befal.

The Night.

On fair Augusta's towers and trees
Flitted the silent midnight breeze,
Curling the foliage as it past,
Which from the moon-tipp'd plumage cast
A spangled light, like dancing spray,
Then reassumed its still array:
When as night's lamp unclouded hung,
And down its full effulgence flung,
It shed such soft and balmy power,
That cot and castle, hall and bower,

And spire and dome, and turret height,
Appear'd to slumber in the light.
From Henry's chapel, Rufus' hall,
To Savoy, Temple, and St. Paul,
From Knightsbridge, Pancras, Camden
Town,

To Redriff, Shadwell, Horselydown,
No voice was heard, no eye unclosed,
But all in deepest sleep reposed:
They might have thought, who gazed
around,

Amid a silence so profound,

It made the senses thrill,
That't was no place inhabited,
But some vast city of the dead,
All was so hushed and still.
The Burning.
As chaos which, by heavenly doom,
Had slept in everlasting gloom,
Started with terror and surprise,
When light first flashed upon her eyes:
So London's sons in night-cap woke,

In bed-gown woke her dames;
For shouts were heard 'mid fire and smoke,
And twice ten hundred voices spoke,

'The Playhouse is in flames!'