of theatrical seasons. worthy man.

He is a master in his art, and a most

Michael Angelo Rooker, an artist of very great talent. died on the 3d of March this year, in Dean street. In small figure, for book embellishment, he equalled De Loutherbourg: and some of his scenery for old Colman was quite upon a par with what that great artist had left in Garrick's theatre. When a child, I remember looking over him in the front of the house, while with a rapid pencil he freely, but adequately, sketched the procession of the Jubilee, as the characters passed.

On the 12th of March, Mrs. Jordan resumed her performances for the season with the Country Girl. It seemed to be understood at Drury, that she now entirely laid down the dagger of the serious muse. Universality is a proud hope to indulge, but in practice mischievous. If in the train of either muse, an actress suffers by comparison, the failure in the one operates as an abatement of the excellence in the other; and persons who would not be thought malignant, are among the foremost to exclaim-" Aye, but did you see THALIA in tragedy the other night? THERE was a business!”

Mr. Cooke, at Covent Garden, on the 8th of April added Sir Giles Overreach to his list of parts. He played it as he did Richard, and there he was strictly right in every thing he did. In the convulsive agony, however, he was only noisy; his face refused to supply what breath failed to utter. Still, the exultation, and the horror, alike, were perfect only in Henderson.

The stage is condemned to perpetual imitation. A ghost is followed by a long train of spectres. Even defects of nature take their turn to interest, and the deaf and the dumb and the blind are selected for amusement. The success of Deaf and Dumb at Pari,s probably conducted Morton to the Blind Girl. He therefore, not entirely, casts away a surgeon on the coast of Peru, who, by his humanity, first saves a lovely blind girl from violation, and ultimately by his skill restores her to sight. The reader will naturally expect the nuptial couch to be the reward of so successful an experiment. This was an opera with some character, equivoque, pleasantry, song, dance, procession and picturesque dresseswell acted and greatly admired. It was first performed on the 12th of April.

Mr. Kemble next produced a tragedy by Mr. Sotheby, the accomplished translator of Oberon. He struggled with the tedious horrors of Count Julian, through five acts, the detail of which I omit, because the play proved completely unsuccessful.

To Adelmorn, the outlaw, he was not quite so complaisant ; that hero was bestowed upon Charles Kemble. Monk Lewis promised here to surpass the effect even of the Castle Spectre. His ghost appeared three times on the first performance, but once was afterwards found more than sufficient. The dialogue was rather mean, and was often received with laughter by the audience. It occupied a few nights in the month of May.

On the 11th of this month Mr. Cooke took the first of those strange liberties with the public, that afterwards became insulting and insufferable. He came on in Richard, and could not be heard; and, upon being desired to speak out, had the audacity to exhibit signs of contempt and menace to a part of the audience; and in an abrupt manner walked off the stage at nearly the end of the fourth act. Upon his coming on again, and showing some signs of contrition, he was permitted to finish the part. On the 17th and 18th of June the winter theatres closed.

CHAP. XV.

Season of 1801-2.-The great rivals.-Cooke disappoints the public.-Mrs. Billington at both theatres.-Henry Siddons. -Escapes.--Cooke's audit.-Mrs. Billington's illness.-Reynolds.--Folly as it Flies.--Browne. Mrs. Litchfield.Kemble's Zanga.-His Request.-Braham in the Manly Robe.-Henry the Fifth.-A riot quelled by the military.R. Palmer's Falstaff-Alfonso.-Urania.-The Cabinet.The Dillettanti.-Mr. Kemble announces the Duke of Bedford's death.-The Winter's Tale.-Cooke's Sir PertinaxStrawberry Hill comedy.--Mr. King's retirement.-Honours paid to him.-Close of the season.--Mr. Kemble quits Drury Lane.--Theatrical property.—Some clamour against him and his family.-Novelties at Colman's.

THE summer theatre, during the season of 1801, lost the valuable aid of Charles Kemble, who had determined to indulge himself in a tour through Germany. Miss Decamp, too, declined the same summer engagement, and their retreat made room for Henry Johnstone and his wife. Mr. Colman this summer was so amply frequented to his stock pieces, that he needed but little novelty, and the little he had was of no value. There was a two-act farce, called the Gypsey Prince, which was rendered bearable by some very pretty music by Kelly; and a thing called the Corsair, or the Italian Nuptials. The vigour of H. Johnstone and Farley, with a program a yard long, and new scenes by the dozen, rendered it somewhat intelligible to the spectators, and I am afraid, in the long list of annual horrors of this kind, that the Corsair must have been often pirated.

On the 12th of September, the Drury Lane company commenced the season of 1801-2 with the performance of Richard the Third, and No Song no Supper; and it was intended that the rival tragedians should decide their difference in Bosworth Field, and a mighty difference, to be sure, existed between them. But on the 14th, Covent Garden Theatre was found wanting in its champion, and some most flighty extravagances from the over-heated zeal of Murray drove him from the contest with the pit orators. Lewis then advanced, and offered the discontented their money back. Seven o'clock, however,

having by this time arrived, and the majority remaining immovable, the whole audience took Lovers' Vows with Selima and Azor instead of their money; and having by this acquired some taste for the drunken insolence of Cooke, they now waited for all the tribe of apologetic letters, certificates from physicians, true as to the illness, but in course concealing the cause of it, and the prodigy's own excuse, if he could be kept in his senses to make one. In the summer his marriage with Miss Daniels, fortunately for the lady, had been annulled by Sir William Scott.

We were now advancing rapidly to that extravagance in the terms demanded by great singers, which nothing short of madness would think of complying with. The instance which I am about to offer, is one as to a lady, for whom I have expressed always the warmest admiration. Mrs. Billington had formed an engagement to sing alternately at the two theatres, from October to the April following, for which the proprietors were to secure to her (benefits included) 20007. from each treasury. She sang on the 3d and 8th of October, and (in her case I may say) acted Mandane in Arne's noble opera Artaxerxes, with powers little short of wonderful. Mrs. Billington's figure here was, as it should be, majestic; there was that visibly about her, that rendered the interest credible. We are grown tired, or ought to be by this time, of receiving every slip of a girl, with neither manners nor motion above a ballad-singer, warbling, however prettily, the sublimities of Arne. We should feel the ridiculous still more strongly, if they were to endeavour to miss the higher parts in tragedy.

On the 8th of October, Mr. Henry Siddons, the elder son of the great actress, made his first appearance in London. He very unluckily chose for his debût the character of a German lawyer in a very moral insipidity, called Integrity. It lasted only a second night, and no author was named for the failure. It might be the actor's own. The appearance of this gentleman denoted very clearly the stock he came from-but he walked the stage ungracefully, and though his features were expressive, the expression was not captivating; and the judgment that regulated his delivery, could do little in the modulation of a hoarse and heavy quality of voice. He was ardent and sensible, feeling and correct-but the most that prepossession even could do, was to breathe a wish that he might not have deceived himself in his choice of a profession. On the 12th, he showed more of his powers in the great trial part of Hamlet. Defective modulation of the organ was principally to be noted, and the character was neither "the

glass of fashion, nor the mould of form." Siddons never was ethereal; he was a studious, ingenious, and careful man, greatly respected, but as an actor only respectable.

A very pleasing afterpiece, called the Escapes, or the Water Carrier, claims a line of notice, because it had some really charming music, selected from Cherubini, and composed by Attwood, and also that it was extremely serviceable to Covent Garden.

ence.

At that theatre, on the 19th of October, Mr. Cooke came to his audit for the disappointment which he had occasioned on the first night of the present season. He entered before the curtain in the dress of Richard, and addressed the audi"He acknowledged that he had no permission to stay in the country so long as he did; that it was certainly in his power to have appeared at the proper time before them he expressed his deep regret for their disappointment, and would now do his best in their service if they were so indulgent as to permit him.”

In all these cases the present result is clear; a people, who come to be amused, will not go away without their entertainment. He who can gratify, will always be pardoned; but the case of his absolution confirms him in his trespass; at last he grows too indecent to be born, too insecure to be trusted; and, in an odd sort of struggle between his vice and his necessity, is sometimes docile, and at others refractory; followed, in spite of his errors, on account of genius which they seem to enlarge; till intemperance finally destroys the frame, and he is regretted, by a strange inconsistency, often beyond the steady, the unblamable servant of the public.

The disappointments suffered from the gentler sexes in theatres are at all events of a gentle character-slight caprice, not often; real indisposition; and, in the greatest talents indeed, an affection for home on certain evenings of the week, commonly known by the name of box fever.

Poor Mrs. Billington, on the 21st of October, acted Mandane again at Drury Lane, and through two acts exerted herself, so that no illness was felt to fetter her powers at all, and she sang with her utmost brilliancy. At the end of the second act, she had suddenly dropped down, and a succession of most alarming fits rendered it impossible for her to go on with the character. Mr. Kemble himself explained her situation to the public, and they allowed the farce to begin, instead of any mutilated attempt at the third act of the opera.

The real cause was, that, the day before, she had sent for Mr. Heaviside, the surgeon, to inspect her arm, which was much inflamed, and gave her very acute pain. Mr. Heavi