The soldier would draw out of sight, and the prince would make a sort of apologetic remark in a voice a little higher than that which had given offence. These are reminiscences chronicled in the memoirs, diaries, and fugitive articles of old opera-goers. Mr. Planché must have been among those ancient lovers of music and of song, and that he should record his experiences is a thing to be grateful for, especially as he writes of the battle and joys of life while he is still in harness and the wreathed bowl is in his hand. In 1818, he began with burlesque--‘Amoroso, King of Little Britain,’ written for amateurs, and taken by Harley, unknown to the author, to Drury Lane. In 1872, after fifty-four years of work, Mr. Planché executed the better portion of ‘Babil and Bijou,’ which, compared with ‘Amoroso,’ is as the _Great Eastern_ steamer to a walnut-shell. We heartily welcome all chroniclers of an art that lives only in the artist, and never survives him in tradition. Our own collection begins with Downes, and Mr. Planché’s emerald-green volumes will find room there. Scores of biographies are ‘squeezing’ room for him. Fred Reynolds’s portrait seems to say, ‘Let Planché come next to me.’ As we look at those dramatic historians we are struck with their usefulness as well as their power of entertaining. For example, a paragraph in one of the most ancient of dramatic chronicles--the ‘Roscius Anglicanus,’ by old Downes, the prompter--is of infinite use to the reputation of Shakespeare. Dryden, who produced _his_ version of ‘The Tempest’ to show how Shakespeare _ought_ to have written it, maintained that after the Restoration our national poet was not much cared for by the people, and that for a long time two plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were acted for one of Shakespeare. In Downes’s record the prompter registers the revival of ‘Hamlet;’ and, without any reference to Dryden, or knowledge, indeed, of his depreciation of Shakespeare, he states that the tragedy in question brought more money to the house and more reputation to the players than any piece by any other author during a great number of years.