sense is soon cloyed with the smell of the sweetest flowers, and we throw them from us as if they had been weeds. The sounds of music are like perfumes, exhaling to the sky;' too sweet to last; that must be borne to us on the passing breeze, not pressed and held close to the sense; the warbling of heavenly voices in the air, not the ordinary language of men. If music is (as it is said to be) the language of angels, poetry is the most perfect language men can use : for poetry is music also, and has as much of the soft and voluptuous in its nature, as the hard and unyielding materials of our composition will bear. Music is colour without form; a soul without a body; a mistress whose face is veiled; an invisible goddess. The Oratorios at Covent-Garden are in general much better than those at Drury-Lane: this year they have had Braham, Miss Stephens, Madam Marconi, and, if that were any great addition, Madame Mainville Fodor. Of this last lady it may be said, that she has her exits and her entrances,' and that is nearly all you know of her. She was encored in one song, 'Ah pardonna,' to her evident chagrin. Her airs of one kind scarcely make amends for her airs of another. Her voice is clear and forcible, and has a kind of deep internal volume, which seems to be artificially suppressed. Her hard, firm style of execution (something like the dragging of the painter's pencil) gives a greater relief to the occasional sweetness and power of tone which she displays. Her taste in singing is severe and fastidious; and this is, we suppose, the reason that a connoisseur of great eminence compared it to Titian's colouring. Madam Marconi, on the contrary, has a broad and full manner; sings with all her might, and pours out her whole soul and voice. There is something masculine, and we might say, rather vulgar, in her tones, if her native Italian or broken English did not prevent such a suggestion almost before it rises in the mind. Miss Stephens sang with more than her usual spirit, and was much applauded, particularly in The mower wets his scythe,' &c.; but we do not think her forte is in concertmusic. Mr. Braham's certainly is; and his power is thrown away on the ballad airs which he sings in general on the stage. The sweetness of his voice becomes languishing and effeminate, unless where it is sustained by its depth and power. But on these occasions there is a rich mellifluous tone in his cadences, which is like that of bees swarming; his chest is dilated; he heaves the loud torrent of sound, like a load, from his heart; his voice rises in thunder, and his whole frame is inspired with the god! He sung Luther's Hymn very finely, with the exception of one quavering falsetto. This appears to our ignorant fancies at once the simplest and sublimest of compositions. The whole expresses merely the alternations of respiration, the heaving or drawing in of the breath, with the rising or sinking of hope or fear. It is music to which the dead might awake! On the last night of the Covent-Garden Oratorio, the beginning of Haydn's Creation was played. It is the accompaniment to the words, And God said let there be light,' &c. The adaptation of sound to express certain ideas, is most ingenious and admirable. The rising of the sun is described by a crashing and startling movement of sounds in all directions, like the effulgence of its rays sparkling through the sky; and the moon is made to rise to a slow and subdued symphony, like sound muffled, or like the moon emerging from a veil of mist, according to that description in Milton, 'Till the moon Rising in clouded majesty, at length The stars also are represented twinkling in the blue abyss, by intervals of sweet sounds just audible. The art, however, by which this is done, is perhaps too little natural to please. Mons. Drouet's performance on the flute was masterly, as far as we could judge. The execution of his variations on 'God save the King,' astonished and delighted the connoisseurs. Those on Hope told a flattering tale,' were also exquisite. We are, however, deep-versed in the sentiment of this last air; and we lost it in the light and fantastic movements of Mons. Drouet's execution. He belongs, we apprehend, to that class of musicians, whose ears are at their fingers' ends; but he is perhaps at the head. We profess, however, to be very ignorant in these matters, and speak under correction. The Examiner. RICHARD III. April 21, 1816. The Managers of Covent-Garden Theatre have treated the public with two new Richards this season, Mr. Edwards, and Mr. Cobham. The first, his own good sense and modesty induced to withdraw, after the disapprobation of the public had been expressed on his first trial. Mr. Cobham, who is not made of penetrable stuff,' intends, we understand, to face the public out in the character. This is an experiment which will never answer. We shall take good care, however, not to be present at the fray. We do not blame Mr. Cobham for the mortification and disappointment which we have received, but the Managers. Self-knowledge is a rare acquisition; but criticism upon others is a very easy task; and the Managers need merely have perceived as much of the matter as was obvious to every common spectator from the first moment of this actor's coming on, to know that it was quite impossible he should get through the part with ordinary decency. The only scene that was tolerable was the meeting with Lady Anne. But for his Richard (Heaven save the mark)—it was a vile one-unhousell'd, unanointed, unaneal'd, with all his imperfections on his head.' Not that this actor is without the physical requisites to play Richard: he raved, whined, grinned, stared, stamped, and rolled his eyes with incredible velocity, and all in the right place according to his cue, but in so extravagant and disjointed a manner, and with such a total want of common sense, decorum, or conception of the character, as to be perfectly ridiculous. We suspect that he has a wrong theory of his art. He has taken a lesson from Mr. Kean, whom he caricatures, and seems to suppose that to be familiar or violent is natural, and that to be natural is the perfection of acting. And so it is, if properly understood. But to play Richard naturally, is to play it as Richard would play it, not as Mr. Cobham would play it; he comes there to shew us not himself, but the tyrant and the king-not what he would do, but what another would do in such circumstances. Before he can do this he must become that other, and cease to be himself. Dignity is natural to certain stations, and grandeur of expression to certain feelings. In art, nature cannot exist without the highest art; it is a pure effort of the imagination, which throws the mind out of itself into the supposed situation of others, and enables it to feel and act there as if it were at home. The real Richard and the real Mr. Cobham are quite different things. But we are glad to have done with this subject, and proceed to a more grateful one, which is to notice the Sir Pertinax Mac Sycophant of a Gentleman whose name has not yet been announced.1 We have no hesitation in pronouncing him an acquisition to this Theatre. To compare him with Cooke in this character would be idle; for it was Cooke's very best character, and Cooke was one of the very best actors we have had on the stage. But he played the character throughout without a single failure, and with great judgment, great spirit, and great effect. In the scenes with Egerton, where he gives a loose to his natural feelings, he expressed all the turbulence and 1 A Mr. Bibby, from the United States. irritation of his mind without losing sight of his habitual character or external demeanour. He has a great deal of that assumed decorum and imposing stateliness of manner, which, since the days of Jack Palmer, has been a desideratum on the stage. In short, we have had no one who looked at home in a full dress coat and breeches. Besides the more obvious requisites for the stage, the bye-play of the new actor is often excellent: his eye points what he is going to say; he has a very significant smile, and a very alarming shrug with his shoulders. The only objection that we have to make is to the too frequent repetition of a certain motion with the hands which may easily be avoided. During a part of the representation there was some opposition most absurdly manifested: partly from its being Easter week, partly from persons who did not understand Scotch, and still more, we apprehend, from those who did. Sir Pertinax has always been an obnoxious up-hill character, and hazardous to a debutant. We see no reason for this on a London stage. The Irish say, that we laugh at them on the stage: why then should we not laugh at the Scotch? The answer is that we laugh at the Irish, to be sure, but we do not make them odious. The Examiner. ROMEO AND JULIET. April 28, 1816, Romeo and Juliet was played at Drury-Lane to introduce a new candidate for public favour, Miss Grimani, as Juliet, and to show off a very old one, Mr. Rae as Romeo. This lady has one qualification for playing the part of Juliet which is, that she is very pretty; but we are afraid that's all. Her voice in common speaking is thin and lisping, and when she raises it, it becomes harsh and unmanageable, as if she had learned to speak of We cannot however pretend to say how far her timidity might interfere with the display of her powers. Mr. Rae cannot plead the same excuse of modesty for the faults of his acting. Between the tragi-comedy of his voice and the drollery of his action, we were exceedingly amused. His manner of saying, 'How silver sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,' was more like the midnight bell that with his iron tongue and brazen mouth sounds one unto the drowsy race of night; and his hurried mode of getting over the description of the Apothecary, was as if a person should be hired to repeat this speech after ten miles hard riding on a high trotting horse. When this gentle tassel' is lured back in the garden by his Juliet's voice, he returns at full speed, like a harlequin going to take a flying leap through a trap-door. This was, we suppose, to give us an allegorical idea of his being borne on the wings of love, but we could discover neither his wings nor his love. The rest of the play was very indifferently got up, except the Nurse by Mrs. Sparks. After the play, we had Garrick's Ode on Shakespear, and a procession of Shakespear's characters in dumb-show. Mr. Pope recited the Ode, and personated the Genius of Shakespear as the Wool-sack personates the Prince Regent. Vesuvius in an eruption, was not more violent than his utterance, not Pelion with all his pine-trees in a storm of wind more impetuous than his action: and yet Drury-Lane still stands.' We have here used the words of Gray, in describing a University Orator at a Cambridge Installation. The result, as given by the poet, was more agreeable than in the present instance. "I was ready to sink for him, and scarce dared look about me, when I was sure it was all over: but soon I found I might have spared my confusion: all people joined to applaud him. Every thing was quite right, and I dare swear not three people here but think him a model of oratory: for all the Duke's little court came with a resolution to be pleased: and when the tone was once given, the University, who ever wait for the judgment of their betters, struck into it with an admirable harmony; for the rest of the performances, they were just what they usually are. Every one, while it lasted, was very gay and very busy in the morning, and very owlish and very tipsy at night: I make no exceptions from the Chancellor to Blue-coat.' Mr. Pope did not get off so well as the Cambridge Orator, for Garrick's Ode was sung, but broke off in the middle' by the shouts and laughter of the audience, less well-bred than the grave assembly above described: nor was any one in the situation of the Chancellor or Blue-coat. We are free to confess, that we think the recitation of an Ode requires the assistance of good eating and drinking to carry it off; and this is perhaps the reason that there is such good eating and drinking at our Universities, where the reciting of Odes and other formal productions is common. After the Ode, the Mulberry Tree was sung by Mr. Pyne and Mr. Smith, not in the garden, but in the street, before the house where Shakespear was born. This violation of the unity of place confounded the sentiment, nor was the uncertainty cleared up by a rabble of attendants, (more unintelligible than the Chorus of the ancients), who resembled neither waiters with tavern bills in their hands, nor musicians with their scores. The singing being over, the procession of Characters commenced, |