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There, while his dropping blood
Slower and slower fell,
The soldier in that solitude
Thought of his Gabrielle;

And how her heart would bear
His doom's untimely shock,
And of his home, a dwelling fair
In fertile Languedoc ;

And vineyards that in peace
Smiled sweet on vale and hill;
And how but for Ambition's chace
He had been with them still.
He fain to her will say,

In this his closing scene,
When other dreams dissolve away,
His love's has steadfast been.

He sees no comrade near,
Save in life's agony;

No friend the pious wish to bear
Of him who soon must die.

Fast cools the vital heat;

He can but raise his hand,

And trace with his red sword his fate
Upon Aboukir's sand;
Bequeath the love he bears,
That but with life has left,
His vineyards and a ring he wears,
To her who is bereft;

And that even to the last,

When vagrant Hope has fled,
His love a faithful friend clings fast,
And cheers his gory bed.

And he will write of more,

But his stiff fingers fail :

One throb-another-all is o'er!-
Both name and love a tale!

REYNOLDS'S MEMOIRS."

We can conceive few things more pleasant to a man somewhat advanced in the shady part of his life's road, than to sit down and review, calmly and dispassionately, the circumstances of a busy and eventful career. Scene after scene is brought in succession to the mind's eye, with more or less vigour according to the degree of imagination possessed by the individual. Although laid up in ordinary, the veteran loves to recount past dangers-to fight his battles o'er again-to look from his easy chair, through the haze of distance, upon scenes of turbulent emotion, whether painful or pleasurable-to glance retrospectively, from his silvered hair or shrunken limb, at the full-blooded activity, the sinewy exertions of his ripe manhood. And if this kind of retrospect be agreeable to the party himself, it administers, when made public, to a very general and craving appetite. Life has been not inaptly compared to a game of chess, the successful decision of which is the fruit of unceasing caution and unwearied diligence; and we catch eagerly at an exposition of the

* Life and Times of Frederic Reynolds, written by Himself, 2 vols. 8vo.

manner in which our neighbour has played his game, more particularly if his skill should have attracted observation. Indeed, we strongly suspect that the occurrences of any individual's existence, if faithfully set down, would not fail to present some circumstances of interest, something calculated to benefit us in the way of experience, or to fascinate us by the excitement of sympathy, "To point a moral, or adorn a tale."

The style of the work before us is exceedingly gay and buoyant, leading one from page to page, without the least feeling of tedium. The first chapter is headed Infancy, the second Schooldays and Boyhood; and upon this era, the author seems to dwell with peculiar gratification, although by no means inclining to the common notion of the paramount felicity of that period of birchen rule. His childish tricks and exploits are related with uncommon unction, and manifest him to have been, in the unvarying phrase of his maternal aunt, a monstrous funny boy." One of his brothers, it appears, was afflicted with a passion for writing verses, which mania at length exploded in a regularly printed volume, bearing the astounding title of the "Indian Scalp!" With reference to this young litterateur and his production, a little scene is introduced, the most prominent actor in which is no less a person than Dr. Johnson. This anecdote is so amusing in itself, and, at the same time, so characteristic of the great author alluded to, that we make no apology for laying it before the reader as we proceed.

Pope says of Dryden, “ Virgilium tantum vidi ;" so I may say of Dr. Johnson. One morning, shortly after our return, he called on my father concerning some law business, and was ushered into the drawing-room, where I and my three brothers, eager to see, and still more eager to say we had seen, the leviathan of literature, soon followed. All were, or affected to appear, struck with awe, except my brother Jack; who having just published his "Indian Scalp," was most anxious to elicit the Doctor's opinion. Accordingly, he seated himself close to him, and began: "Any news in the literary world, Sir ?"

"Sir!" cried the Doctor.

"Anything new, Doctor, I say, in the literary world?" continued the unhesitating poet.

"Young man, talk to me of Ranelagh and Vauxhall; of what you may understand; but not a word on literature."

We all smiled aside; but the author was omnipotent in Jack's mind, and, scarcely ruffled, he returned to the charge.

"Have you heard of a new poem, Sir?"-(No answer.) "A new poem, Sir ?A new poem, Sir, called" (with rising confusion)" called the Indian Scalp,'rather I believe," (confusion increasing,) "I believe it is tolerably-well spoken of. You don't know who wrote it, Doctor?"

"No, but I do,” cried I, eagerly seizing the opportunity of making myself conspicuous in my turn; "don't I, Jack?--Indeed, Sir, he awakened me so many nights, and taught me so many verses, that, if you like, I can repeat you almost the whole poem, Sir, with the same rapidity and facility with which he wrote it."

"Facilis descensus Averni," muttered the Doctor, and then added, in an authoritative tone, "ring the bell, one of you, ring the bell," and the servant was ordered to summon my father, on whose appearance the Doctor formally arose,

and said

"When next I call here, Sir, show me where there is civilization-not into your menagerie."

There is indeed, in the course of these lively volumes, a very strong muster of anecdotes, equally piquant and laughable, and interspersed with others, the interest of which is of a graver nature. The latter, it must be confessed, however great may be our willingness to admit the existence of romance in real life, look rather theatrically cooked up, in one or two instances, and demand a most amiable proportion of credulity. This, nevertheless, although open to some objection on the score of weakening our faith in other parts of the narrative, certainly is very far from lessening the excitement produced by the book and there is such an evident spirit of truthtelling-we inay say of

scrupulous truth telling-generally running throughout, that a trifling peccadillo or two of this kind, if it really exist, which we are not prepared to assert, may readily be forgiven.

One of the most curious parts of Mr. Reynolds's book is the perfect openness which he has displayed with respect to pecuniary matters. The public have always a prodigious degree of curiosity on these sort of subjects, which cannot, at all times, be accounted for. It would seem obvious enough that a man should have an itching to know the depth of another's purse, with whom he is in any way identified or concerned. To be aware how far our neighbour's or our friend's means may be entitled to our compassion or envy, is also, no doubt, rationally and legitimately desirable. But it is quite clear that the propensity is not any way bounded by considerations such as these, or indeed by any considerations at all. Witness the extreme avidity with which the reported salaries of actors and other prominent persons are discussed, even when the public must, in the first place, be quite uninterested, virtually speaking, in the matter; and, in the next, equally unable to get at the truth of it. The author before us has availed himself of this universal principle of Paul Pry-ism, and has administered to it in the fullest, and, apparently, in the frankest manner. He communicates the relative profits of each of his literary labours, and thus furnishes a kind of ledger account, which we have no doubt will be referred to with anxious eyes by many a young votary of the dramatic Muse.

Mr. Reynolds's life has not been without its vicissitudes, and those occasionally of a trying nature. Yet it must be pronounced, generally speaking, a fortunate, and, we should think, a cheerful one. If his plays are now, with one or two exceptions, forgotten, yet they caused a great laugh at the time, lined the author's pocket, and were honoured by the approval of Majesty. The late King, by the by, was a far greater frequenter and patron of the theatre than his royal successor; and this circumstance must have been a prodigious source of encouragement at once to playwright, manager, and performer. Neither should we omit to observe, that Mr. Reynolds's philosophy, so far at least as we may be warranted in extracting it from his book, is of the hopeful and enjoying cast, and has not permitted him to quarrel with Fortune, because she has not gifted his works with immortality, as well as the labour which produced them with increase. He, in fact, jokes very complacently in noticing his failures, and particularly in speaking of his two first productions-tragedies entitled Werter and Eloisa. His first and best comedy

was the Dramatist.

In England, the era of comedy was fast verging to its close, and the dramatist was gradually relaxing his grasp of the theatrical sceptre, to resign it to the musician, the mechanist, and the scene-painter, when this play made its appearance, and set the fashion of a new school, which, if it wanted the authorial merits of the older pieces, at least possessed to a great extent the power of pleasing the audience to which it addressed itself. At the period in question, the passions had been exhausted, and all the prominent situations which their ordinary workings exhibit, had been appropriated and made familiar on the stage. The distinctive character of casts and profes sions was worn out and obliterated, and a country justice, or a fox-hunter, differed so little from a town-bred gentleman, that, without caricature, they could no longer be discriminated in representation. But, worst of all, an epoch of universal education and refinement had commenced, which, while it opened other stores of amusement to wean the public from the theatre, had given a tone and polish to social intercourse, which authors might in vain strive to exceed, so that unless the dialogue of the stage became a mere firework of points and conceits, fatiguing while it excites, it inevitably remained below, or at best but on a level with ordinary good conversation, for wit and brilliancy. "We say better things ourselves every day," was a remark made at the representation of one of our witty comedies; and if this is in some degree an exaggeration of the fact, it is because a dread of the imputation of

pertness, and the quiescent tone of the upper circles too often stand between the thought and the utterance of a jest or a reflection.

Luckily for Reynolds he arrived at a time exactly suited to his intellectual character.

“Thank fortune, it was my fate to write comedies, during a period, when the town was replete with original characters of every description, whose peculiarities were so obviously humorous, and dramatic, that I may here justly employ the usual remark of a late celebrated statesman; who, whenever he heard, or read, a witticism more than commonly effective, obseryed,

"Very good, very good, indeed! but it was so palpable, it could not have been missed!"

Had I written during the present day, I must have starved; for the comic satirist has now (unless he resort to foreign aid from Vaudevilles, &c.) only one character to commence, and conclude his stock with,—the dull cold artificial Exquisite. Thus, the critic should not wholly ascribe the deterioration in dramatic productions to the dearth of dramatic genius, but partly to the dearth of dramatic character.

On the other hand, had he written one generation sooner talents of a higher order, a greater intensity of thought, a purer and more sustained style would have been required. The fashionable writer of five-act comedies of 1790, would scarcely have been tolerated in 1750, as a "farceur" for the second or third-rate theatres. The adaptation, however, of natural powers to external circumstances is genius; and the author of the "Dramatist," in striking out a new route to success, and hitting public taste and feeling "in the bull's eye," did that service to his countrymen, which more powerful, but less original writers, had failed to effect. It is a curious circumstance to observe, that the epoch to which we allude, as transitory as it was humorous, passed away even in the life-time of him who first painted it on the stage; that Reynolds lived to abandon broad comedy for melo-drama, to give his Vapids and Lord Scratch's for Virgins of the Sun and Free Knights; aud what may appear more violent in contrast, that the author even of the School for Scandal, led by his managerial interests, discontinued an excellence no longer in harmony with the age, and stooped his mighty genius to the composition of Pizarro.

This merit of adaptation to circumstances, which belongs to the better specimens of Reynolds's Dramatic Muse, pervades likewise his Memoir, and its general character, indeed, very closely resembles that of his comedies; possessing the same faults, and abounding in the same attractions. Light, playful and amusing, replete with anecdotes, it belongs especially to the present day, in which the public, exhausted by the serious business of a revolutionary age, and languid from the excitement of every species of literary excellence, is disposed to enjoy nothing which provokes feeling, or requires reflection. Memoirs," "Recollections," and "Reminiscences, 19 are the mania of the hour. Kelly's lively narrative has set the reader agog for the good stories of the heroes, real and theatrical, of the extraordinary generation which is now fast closing around us. Reynolds therefore has shown his old tact in taking advantage of the contingency, and in availing himself of a stock-in-trade which has become excessively popular.

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It is the peculiar advantage of theatrical talent that it brings the possessor into contact with whatever is most distinguished in contemporary society; and the circumstance of Reynolds's father having been an ally of John Wilkes, introduced the son to an acquaintance with many of the political chiefs of that turbulent, but spirit-stirring epoch. Accordingly, the book is thickly strewn with names, whose very enunciation begets an interest. That these anecdotes are not always such as will satisfy the highest order of readers may readily be anticipated of this the author is himself aware; and the apology which he has made on a particular occasion, may serve as his running excuse for the whole memoir.

To those, therefore, to whom the ensuing sportive anecdotes may appear frivolous, it should be recalled, that whilst grave, sentimental writing is a simple, com

mon-place effort, there is so much difficulty and danger in trying to be comic, so much fear of proving foolish in the endeavour to be facetious, that more than common indulgence should be granted; for, if the world be full of misery, he, who for a moment can excite a laugh (let him be BIOGRAPHER OF BUFFOON,) ought not to be considered the despicable member of society, which the dull junto of crying classical philosophers would depict him.

Be the character of the writer, however, what it may be, he who treats of Garrick, Barry, Clive and Shuter, and Wilkes, Horne Tooke, and Johnson, Kemble, Siddons, Sheridan, Chatham, Pitt, Erskine, Garrow, Franklin, Murphy, Macklin, Inchbald, Colman, Topham, Burke, Elwes, George III. off a Curran, &c. &c. &c. cannot but entertain, and when humour happens_to be the characteristic of the narrator, the gaiety of the narrative may pass considerable degree of levity in the materials of which it is constituted. In reviewing a book of this description, the difficulty lies in the choice of extracts, and on the present occasion we must e'en at it, "like French falconers,' We proceed with an anecdote without much either of order or selection. of Pitt in his boyhood, singularly indicative of the tone of mind which gave such efficacy to his oratory; and which, if it did not "cow the better part of man" in his opponents, maintained his own party in unresisting obedience to his authority.

"

The next day we went to Southbarrow, and my father having law business to transact at Hayes, he allowed me to ride with him, purposely to see the great Lord Chatham, who was then there. His Lordship, I remember, was very kind to me, and on quitting the room with my father, desired his son William Pitt, then a boy about four years older than I was, to remain with, and amuse me, during their

absence.

Somehow, I did not feel quite bold on being left alone with this young gentleman. For a time, he never spoke, and I never spoke, till at last, slyly glancing at him, to learn who was to commence the conversation, and observing mischief gathering in the corner of his eye, I retired to the window; "but gained nothing by my motion." He silently approached, and sharply tapping me on the shoulder, cried jeeringly, as he pointed to my feet, "So, my little hero, do you usually walk in spurs ?".

"Walk?" I replied; "I rode here on my own poney."

"Your own poney!" he repeated with affected astonishment; "Your own poney?-upon my word!-and pray, what colour may he be ?-probably blue, pink, or pompadour ?"

At this moment, the present Lord Chatham entering the room, the tormentor exclaimed, "I give you joy, brother, for you are now standing in the presence of no less a personage than the proprietor of the pompadour poney!”

His brother frowned at him, and I was bursting with rage and vexation, when he coolly turned towards me, and said, "Your life is too valuable to be sported with. I hope you ride in armour ?"

"Be quiet, William,-don't trifle so," cried his brother,

"I am serious, John," he replied; and if for the benefit of the present race, he will do his utmost to preserve his life, I will take care it shall not be lost to poste. rity, for as my father intends writing a history of the late and present reigns, mark my words, my little proprietor, I will find a niche for you and your pompadour poney in the History of England."

1 could no longer restrain my spleen, and fairly stamped with passion to his great amusement. At this moment, the door opening, my facetious tormenter instantly cantered to the opposite side of the room, after the manner of a broken down poney, and then placing his finger on his lips, as if to forbid all tale-telling, disappeared at the other entrance.

In course, every feeling of rage was smothered in the presence of the great Lord Chatham, and my father having taken his leave, mounted his horse, and trotted through the Park; I following on my poney, and delighting in my escape. But as I reached the gates, I was crossed in my path "by the fiend again"-but, agreeably crossed, for he shook me by the hand with much good-humour, playfully asked my pardon, and then added, patting my poney, “He should at all times be happy to find both of us accommodation at Hayes, instead of a niche in the History of England."

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