* * * * * We have received, in the course of the last week, several long, and to say the truth, dull letters, from unknown hands, reflecting, in very severe terms, on Mr. Higgins, for having, as it is affirmed, attempted to pass upon the world, as a faithful sample of the productions of the German Theatre, a performance no way resembling any of those pieces, which have of late excited, and which bid fair to engross the admiration of the British public. As we cannot but consider ourselves as the guardians of Mr. Higgins's literary reputation, in respect to every work of his which is conveyed to the world through the medium of our paper (though, what we think of the danger of his principles, we have already sufficiently explained for ourselves, and have, we trust, succeeded in putting our readers upon their guard against them)--we hold ourselves bound not only to justify the fidelity of the imitation, but (contrary to our original intention) to give a further specimen of it in our present number, in order to bring the question more fairly to issue between our author and his calumniators. In the first place, we are to observe that Mr. Higgins professes to have taken his notion of German plays wholly from the translations which have appeared in our language. If _they_ are totally dissimilar from the originals, Mr. H. may undoubtedly have been led into error; but the fault is in the translators, not in him. That he does not differ widely from the models which he proposed to himself, we have it in our power to prove satisfactorily; and might have done so in our last number, by subjoining to each particular passage of his play, the scene in some one or other of the German plays, which he had in view when he wrote it. These parallel passages were faithfully pointed out to us by Mr. H. with that candour which marks his character; and if they were suppressed by us (as in truth they were), on our heads be the blame, whatever it may be. Little, indeed, did we think of the imputation which the omission would bring upon Mr. H., as, in fact, our principal reason for it was the apprehension that, from the extreme closeness of the imitation in most instances, he would lose in praise for invention more than he would gain in credit for fidelity. The meeting between Matilda and Cecilia, for example, in the first act of the "Rovers," and their sudden intimacy, has been censured as unnatural. Be it so. It is taken _almost word for word_ from "Stella," a German (or professedly a German) piece now much in vogue; from which also the catastrophe of Mr. Higgins's play is in part borrowed, so far as relates to the agreement to which the ladies come, as the reader will see by-and-by, to share Casimere between them.