He then came forward to take his leave of the Stage, in a Farewell Address, in which he expressed his thanks for the long and flattering patronage he had received from the public. We do not wonder that his feelings were overpowered on this occasion: our own (we confess it) were nearly so too. We remember him in the first heyday of our youthful spirits, in The Prize-which he played so delightfully with that fine old croaker Suett, and Madame Storace -in the farce of My Grandmother, in The Son-in-Law, in Autolycus, and in Scrub, in which our satisfaction was at its height. At that time, King,1 and Parsons, and Dodd, and Quick, and Edwin, were in the full vigour of their reputation, who are now all gone! We still feel the vivid delight with which we used to see their names in the play-bills, as we went along to the theatre. Bannister was almost the last of these that remained; and we parted with him as we should with one of our oldest and best friends. The most pleasant feature in the profession of a player, and which is peculiar to it, is, that we not only admire the talents of those who adorn it, but we contract a personal intimacy with them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors. We greet them on the stage; we like to meet them in the streets; they always recall to us pleasant associations; and we feel our gratitude excited,

December 16, 1793; he played Bowkit (in The Son in Law), January I, 1796; Autolycus (in The Winter's Tale), March 25, 1802; and Scrub (in The Beaux' Stratagem), January 7, 1789.

1 Thomas King (1730-1805) made his début at Drury Lane in 1748 and retired in 1802.

William Parsons (1736-95) made his début at Drury Lane in 1762. He was called the "Comic Roscius."

James William Dodd (1741-96) made his début at Drury Lane in 1765.

John Quick (1748-1831) made his début at Covent Garden in 1767 and retired in 1798.

John Edwin, the younger (1768-1805), made his début at Covent Garden in 1788.

without the uneasiness of a sense of obligation. The very gaiety and popularity, however, which surrounds the life of a favourite performer, makes the retiring from it a very serious business. It glances a mortifying reflection on the shortness of human life, and the vanity of human pleasures. Something reminds us, that "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

"1

COMUS.

2

[Covent Garden] June 11, 1815.

COMUS has been got up at Covent-Garden Theatre with great splendour, and has had as much success as was to be expected. The genius of Milton was essentially undramatic: he saw all objects from his own point of view, and with certain exclusive preferences. Shakespeare, on the contrary, had no personal character, and no moral principle, except that of good-nature. He took no part in the scene he describes, but gave fair play to all his characters, and left virtue and vice, folly and wisdom, right and wrong, to fight it out between themselves, just as they do on their Fold prize-fighting stage "—the world. He is only the vehicle for the sentiments of his characters. Milton's characters are only a vehicle for his own. Comus is a didactic poem, or a dialogue in verse, on the advantages or disadvantages of virtue and vice. It is merely a discussion of general topics, but with a beauty of language and richness of illustration, that in the perusal leave no feeling of the want of any more

1 Hazlitt quotes this last paragraph in his article "On Actors and Acting," in The Round Table, No. 38, p. 222. The whole of the article was reprinted, with very slight verbal alterations, in The European Magazine for June. Bannister's farewell address was given.

2 Milton's Comus. A Masque, etc., was expanded into two acts, and produced at Covent Garden, April 28.

powerful interest. On the stage, the poetry of course lost above half of its effect: but this was compensated to the audience by every advantage of scenery and decoration. By the help of dance and song, of "mask and antique pageantry,' ," this most delightful poem went off as well as any common pantomime. Mr. Conway topped the part of Comus with his usual felicity, and seemed almost as if the genius of a maypole had inspired a human form. He certainly gives a totally new idea of the character. We allow him to be "a marvellous proper man," but we see nothing of the magician, or the son of Bacchus and Circe in him. He is said to make a very handsome Comus: so he would make a very handsome Caliban; and the common sense of the transformation would be the same. Miss Stephens played the First Nymph very prettily and insipidly; and Miss Matthews played the Second Nymph with appropriate significance of nods and smiles. Mrs. Faucit, as the Lady, rehearsed the speeches in praise of virtue very well, and acted the scene of the Enchanted Chair admirably. She seemed changed into a statue of alabaster. Miss Foote made a very elegant Younger Brother. It is only justice to add, that Mr. Duruset gave the songs of the Spirit with equal taste and effect; and in particular, sung the final invocation to Sabrina in a full and powerful tone of voice, which we have seldom heard surpassed.

These kind of allegorical compositions are necessarily unfit for actual representation. Every thing on the stage takes a literal, palpable shape, and is embodied to the sight. So much is done by the senses, that the imagination is not prepared to eke out any deficiency that may occur. We resign ourselves, as it were, to the illusion of the scene: we take it for granted, that whatever happens within that "magic circle" is real; and whatever happens without it, is nothing. The eye of the mind cannot penetrate through

1 L'Allegro, 1. 128.

the glare of lights which surround it, to the pure empyrean of thought and fancy; and the whole world of imagination fades into a dim and refined abstraction, compared with that part of it, which is brought out dressed, painted, moving, and breathing, a speaking pantomime before us. Whatever is seen or done, is sure to tell: what is heard only, unless it relates to what is seen or done, has little or no effect. All the fine writing in the world, therefore, which does not find its immediate interpretation in the objects or situations before us, is at best but elegant impertinence. We will just take two passages out of Comus, to show how little the beauty of the poetry adds to the interest on the stage: the first is from the speech of the Spirit as Thyrsis:

"This evening late, by then the chewing flocks
Had ta'en their supper on the savoury herb
Of knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in fold,
I sat me down to watch upon a bank
With ivy canopied, and interwove
With flaunting honeysuckle, and began,
Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy,
To meditate my rural minstrelsy,
Till Fancy had her fill; but ere a close,
The wonted roar was up amidst the woods,
And filled the air with barbarous dissonance:
At which I ceased, and listen'd them a while,
Till an unusual stop of sudden silence
Gave respite to the drowsy-flighted steeds
That draw the litter of close-curtain❜d Sleep:
At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound
Rose like a steam of rich distill'd perfumes,
And stole upon the air, that even Silence

Was took ere she was 'ware, and wished she might

Deny her nature, and be never more

Still to be so displaced." 1

This passage was recited by Mr. Duruset; and the other, which we proposed to quote, equally became the mouth of Mr. Conway:

1 Comus, 540-60.

"Two such I saw, what time the labour'd ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swinkt hedger at his supper sat;
I saw them under a green mantling vine
That crawls along the side of yon small hill,
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots:
Their port was more than human as they stood:
I took it for a fairy vision

Of some gay creatures of the element,

That in the colours of the rainbow live

And play in th' plighted clouds. I was awe-struck,
And as I pass'd, I worshipp'd."1

To those of our readers who may not be acquainted with Comus, these exquisite passages will be quite new, though they may have lately heard them on the stage.

There was an evident want of adaptation to theatrical representation in the last scene, where Comus persists in offering the Lady the cup, which she as obstinately rejects, without any visible reason. In the poetical allegory, it is the poisoned cup of pleasure: on the stage, it is a goblet filled with wine, which it seems strange she should refuse, as the person who presents it to her has certainly no appearance of any dealings with the devil.

Milton's Comus is not equal to Lycidas, nor to Samson Agonistes. It wants interest and passion, which both the others have. Lycidas is a fine effusion of classical sentiment in a youthful scholar: his Samson Agonistes is almost a canonization of all the high moral and religious prejudices of his maturer years. We have no less respect for the memory of Milton as a patriot than as a poet. Whether he was a true patriot, we shall not inquire: he was at least a consistent one. He did not retract his Defence of the People of England; he did not say that his sonnets to Vane or

1 Comus, 291-302.

2 Milton's Defence of the People of England was published in Latin in 1650-1; the English translation-attributed to J. Washington-was not issued until 1692, eighteen years after Milton's death.