The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 552, June 16, 1832Various
History
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 552, June 16, 1832
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
"And what are we to say of other representations? What a sensation (at
any other period how much greater would it have been!) Mr. Sheridan
Knowles' Hunchback has made: why Mr. Sheridan Knowles made his hero a
Hunchback I cannot imagine. The play is an admirable play; and what is
as strange a part of the affair as any, is the acting of the author. To
say it is finished, or fine, would be to talk nonsense; but it is plain,
straightforward, common-scene acting, which very much surprised us, more
especially from an author, still more from an Irish author; and more
still from an author, who in private life is a perfect enthusiast, and a
fine phrenzied-eye orator. Fanny Kemble never appeared to greater
advantage in public--in private, her charming conduct with regard to her
brother, the young soldier, speaks volumes for her. They say she is
going to marry a son of Keppell Craven's, Lord Craven's uncle. They met
first, I believe, at the acting of Lord Leveson Gower's play of Hernani,
at Bridgewater House, when Mr. Craven reaped much histrionic fame as an
amateur. Of one thing we are quite sure, Miss Kemble will act well
wherever she may be placed in the world.
"One of the best conundrums I have heard for a long time, is attributed
to that excellent and agreeable fellow, Yates, who is amongst those who
do credit to the stage. Whether it is his own, or not, is a question to
rest upon his veracity. It is this--'When does an alderman look like a
ghost?' Answer. 'When he's a _gobbling_.' This is surely a _jeu
d'esprit_. By the way, Rogers begins to whistle now; not in fear, or
harmony, or for amusement, but I am afraid from the effects produced by
advanced age. I regret this--he is an excellent person, and a
gentlemanly poet; and I never shall forget the patience with which he
bore a most unintentional misquotation, made from his works, and in his
presence, by a man of the name of Barton, who wanted to compliment him,
by recollecting his verses. The story that he quoted was Rogers' pretty
song of
"Dear is my little native vale,
The ring-dove builds and warbles there,
Close by my cot she tells her tale,
To every passing villager."
"Mr. Barton--who he was I never found out--having eulogized this little
effusion with a superhuman ecstacy, repeated it right to a line--but not
to a word. He gave it us thus--
"Dear is my little native vale,
The ring-dove builds and warbles there,
Close by my cot she _shows_ her _tail_
To every passing villager."
"Not a muscle moved in Mr. Rogers' pale and placid countenance, you
would hardly have thought he lived; but turning to Luttrell, whose mouth
twisted and whose eye rolled at the fun of the mistake, he simply
whispered, 'Non _tali_ auxilio, &c.' Barton survived it, and is still
alive and merry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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