The management opened their theatre with an opera-bouffe entitled “Vert Vert,” translated from the French by Henry Herman, who afterwards made a reputation for himself as the author of “The Silver King.” The attack made on the opera by _Vanity Fair_ was fierce, scathing, unsparing. The writer was especially nasty about the ladies of the chorus, whom he said could neither act, sing, nor dance, but who, he supposed, were exhibited before the public because “there are some rich young men about town, and several old ones, who devote their time and energies to the discovery and encouragement of dramatic talent in good-looking young women.” That was the gravamen of the charge—that and an allusion to a dance called the “Riperelle.” Serjeant Ballantine was for the plaintiff, and Mr. John Day (afterwards Mr. Justice Day) was for the defendant. The interest of the occasion centred greatly in the cross-examination of Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, subsequently the representative of King’s Lynn, and the beloved “Tommy” of the House of Commons. Ballantine, of course, could see nothing wrong in anything theatrical, and contrived by maladroit questions to let “Tommy” get in some answers which Day dare not have elicited in chief. In particular he made the mistake of cross-examining him about the “Riperelle.” “It is the cancan in its essential part,” explained Bowles. Ballantine, rushing on his fate, pressed the witness. “Tell us,” he thundered, “in what the indecency of the dance consists.” Stroking his blonde cavalry moustache, and smiling pleasantly, Bowles replied, with great distinctiveness and amid a dead silence: “The ‘Riperelle’ is an illustration by gesture of the act of —” But the conclusion of the sentence is scarcely of a kind to be repeated here. It won the case. The jury found for the defendant without leaving the box. Mr. Fairlie soon after his theatrical experiences resumed his proper name of Philips, read for the Bar, was called, and in 1890 I happened to be with him in settling a case of newspaper libel in which he was engaged for the plaintiff. Mr. F. C. Philips has furthermore made a reputation for himself as a writer of excellent fiction. His “As in a Looking-Glass” has gone through many editions, and is to this day, I understand, “asked for” at Mudie’s. That sort of criticism, however, is no longer in vogue, which for some reasons, I think, is rather a pity. And one of them is that theatre-goers have ceased to accept dramatic criticisms as being in any way a guide to the theatre. Bad plays are so frequently treated with respectful notices, and the public reading the criticisms have been so frequently deceived, that this department of a newspaper’s literary contents has become negligible. The most frank and most business-like method would be to drop all pretence at criticism, and simply “report” each new play. It will come to that.