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the imagination; any ruin on the face of Art.' At present we hope better things from the known tastes and talents of the gentleman who is understood to have undertaken the management of the principal department, and from what we have seen of the performances with which the company have commenced their career. The pieces on Saturday and Tuesday were the Opera of Penelope by Cimarosa, and the inimitable comic Ballet, The Dansomanie. The first is, what it professes to be, a Grand Serious Opera: but it is somewhat heavy and monotonous. It introduced to the English Stage several actors of considerable eminence abroad. The principal were Mad. Camporese as Penelope, Madame Pasta as Telemachus, and Signor Crivelli as Ulysses. The last of these appears to be as good an actor as a singer. His gestures have considerable appropriateness and expression, besides having that sustained dignity and studied grace, which are essential to the harmony of the Opera; and his tones in singing are full, clear, and so articulate, that any one at all imbued with the Italian language can follow the words with ease. Madame Camporese performed Penelope, and drew down the frequent plaudits of the house by the sweetness of her voice, and the flexibility of execution which she manifested in some of the most difficult and impassioned passages. If we were to express our opinion honestly, we should say that we received most pleasure from Madame Pasta's Telemachus. There is a natural eloquence about her singing which we feel, and therefore understand. Her dress and figure also answered to the classical idea we have of the youthful Telemachus. Her voice is good, her action is good: she has a handsome face, and very handsome legs. The ladies, we know, think otherwise: this is the only subject on which we think ourselves better judges than they.-Of the Dansomanie we will say nothing, lest we should be supposed to have caught the madness which it ridicules so sportively and gracefully. The whole is excellent, but the Minuet de la Cour is sublime: and the Gavot which succeeds it, is as good. Madame Leon was exquisite, and she had a partner worthy of her.

'Such were the joys of our dancing days.'

Really when we see these dances, and hear the music, which our old fantastical dancing master used to scrape upon his kit, played in full orchestra, we do not know what to make of it; we wish we were old dancing-masters, or learning to dance; or that we had lived in the time of Henry IV. The tears do not come in our eyes; that source is dry but we exclaim with the Son of Fingal,

'Roll on, ye dark-brown years! ye bring no joy on your wing to Ossian.'

OROONOKO.

The Examiner.]

[January 26, 1817. DRURY-LANE.

SOUTHERN's tragedy of Oroonoko, which has not been acted, we believe, for some years, has been brought forward here to introduce Mr. Kean as the Royal Slave. It was well thought of. We consider it as one of his best parts. It is also a proof to us of what we have always been disposed to think, that Mr. Kean, when he fully gives up his mind to it, is as great in pure pathos as in energy of action or discrimination of character. In general, he inclines to the violent and muscular expression of passion, rather than to that of its deep, involuntary, heart-felt workings. If he does this upon any theory of the former style of expression being more striking and calculated to produce an immediate effect, we think the success of his Richard II. and of this play alone (not to mention innumerable fine passages in his other performances), might convince him of the perfect safety with which he may trust himself in the hands of the audience, whenever he chuses to indulge in the melting mood.' We conceive that the range of his powers is greater in this respect than he has yet ventured to display, and that if the taste of the town is not yet ripe for the change, he has genius enough to lead it, wherever truth and nature point the way. His performance of Oroonoko was for the most part decidedly of a mild and sustained character; yet it was highly impressive throughout, and most so, where it partook least of violence or effort. The strokes of passion which came unlooked for and seemed to take the actor by surprise, were those that took the audience by surprise, and only found relief in tears. Of this kind was the passage in which, after having been harrowed up to the last degree of agony and apprehension at the supposed dishonourable treatment of his wife, and being re-assured on that point, he falls upon her neck with sobs of joy and broken laughter, saying, 'I knew they could not,' or words to that effect. The first meeting between him and Imoinda was also very affecting; and the transition to tenderness and love in it was even finer than the expression of breathless eagerness and surprise. There were many other passages in which the feelings, conveyed by the actor, seemed to gush from his heart, as if its inmost veins had been laid open. In a word, Mr. Kean gave to the part that glowing and impetuous, and at the same time deep and full expression, which belongs to the character of that burning zone, which ripens the souls of men, as well as the fruits of the earth! The most striking part

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in the whole performance was in the uttering of a single word. Oroonoko, in consequence of his gentle treatment, and the flattering promises that are held out to him of safe conduct to his own country, of the restoration of his liberty and his beloved Imoinda, thinks well of the persons into whose hands he has fallen; and it is in vain that Aboam (Mr. Rae) tries to work him up to suspicion and revenge by general descriptions of the sufferings of his countrymen, or of the cruelty and treachery of their white masters: but at the suggestion of the thought, that if they remain where they are, Imoinda will become the mother, and himself, a prince and a hero, the father of a race of slaves, he starts and the manner in which he utters the ejaculation Hah!' at the world of thought which is thus shewn to him, like a precipice at his feet, resembles the first sound that breaks from a thunder-cloud, or the hollow roar of a wild beast, roused from its lair by hunger and the scent of blood. It is a pity that the catastrophe does not answer to the grandeur of the menace; and that this gallant vindicator of himself and his countrymen fails in his enterprise, through the treachery and cowardice of those whom he attempts to set free, but who were by nature slaves!' The story of this servile war is not without a parallel elsewhere: it reads a great moral lesson' to Europe, only changing black into white; and the manner in which Oroonoko is prevailed on to give up his sword, and his treatment afterwards, by a man in British uniform, seems to have been the model of the Convention of Paris. It only required one thing to have made it complete, that the Governor, who is expected in the island, should have arrived in time to break the agreement, and save the credit of his subaltern. The political allusions throughout, that is, the appeals to common justice and humanity, against the most intolerable cruelty and wrong, are so strong and palpable, that we wonder the piece is not prohibited. There is that black renegade Othman, who betrays his country in the hopes of promotion, and the favour of his betters: how like he is to many a white-faced loon, but that the devil has not damned them black!' Politics apart-Oroonoko is a very interesting moral play. It is a little tedious sometimes, and a little commonplace at all times, but it has feeling and nature to supply what it wants in other respects. The negroes in it (we could wish them out of it, but then there would be no play) are very ugly customers upon the stage. One blackamoor in a picture is an ornament, but a whole cargo of them is more than enough. This play puts us out of conceit with both colours, theirs and our own; the sooty slave's, and his cold, sleek, smooth-faced master's.-Miss Somerville was a great relief to the natural and moral deformity of the scene. She

looked like the idea of the poet's mind. Her resigned, pensive, unconscious look and attitude, at the moment she is about to be restored to the rapturous embrace of her lover, was a beautiful dramatic picture. She is an acquisition to the milder parts of tragedy. She interests on the stage, for she is interesting in herself. She cannot help being a heroine, if she but shews herself. She was as elegantly dressed in Imoinda, for an Indian maid, in light, flowered drapery, as she was in Imogine, for a lady of old romance, in trains of lead-coloured satin. Her voice is sweet, but lost in its own sweetness; and we who hear her at some distance, can only catch the music of her honey-vows,' like the indistinct murmur of a hive of bees. Mr. Bengough does not improve upon us by acquaintance. All that we have of late discovered in him is that he has grey eyes. Little Smith made an excellent representative of the coasting Guinea captain. John Bull could not desire to have better justice done to his mind or his body.Southern, the author of Oroonoko, was also the author of Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage, in both of which he often has beguiled us of our tears.' He died at the age of eighty-six, in 1746. Gray, the poet, speaks thus of him in a letter, dated from Burnham, in Buckinghamshire, 1737. We have here old Mr. Southern, at a gentleman's house a little way off: he is now seventy-seven years old, and has almost wholly lost his memory: but is as agreeable as an old man can be at least I persuade myself so, when I look at him, and think of Isabella and Oroonoko.

THE PANNEL' AND THE RAVENS'

[February 2, 1817.

The Examiner.] THERE has been little new this week. A new after-piece or melodrame has been brought forward at Covent-garden, and the old farce of the Pannel revived at Drury-Lane. We can say but little in praise of the former, except the excellence of the acting and the manner in which it is got up. The strength of the house is mustered in a second-rate production, and from the list of names in the play-bills, the public go to see the performers, if not the performance, and come away at least half satisfied. They manage these things differently at Drury-lane, and not so well. We deny that the comic strength of the two houses is so unequal as is sometimes supposed. For instance, at Drury-lane, they have Munden, Dowton, Oxberry, and Knight; Harley is droll too; and in women, they beat them out and out, for they have Miss Kelly. To be sure, they have not Liston; so they

must kick the beam. Mr. Liston is the greatest comic genius of the
age. If we were very dull and sad indeed, we should avoid going to
any farce or comedy in which he did not appear, as only tantalising
to our feelings, and promising relief without affording it: but we
must be dull indeed, if we did not bite at the bait of Mr. Liston's
Lubin Log. His comic humour is a sort of oil or balsam of fierabras'
for all imaginary wounds that are not a foot deep. His laugh might
tickle royalty itself after the howling of the rabble, or make one of
the wax figures at Mrs. Salmon's relax from the inflexibility of its
state. Then there is Miss Stephens at Covent-garden, and there
are the three Miss Dennets-like 'Circe and the Sirens three.' We
always see the Miss Dennets at the theatre, and they sometimes glide
before our imagination at other times; but we seldom hear Miss
Stephens now. We want to see her again in Mandane, in which we
have seen her eight times already, and to hear her sing If o'er the
cruel tyrant Love, which we could hear her sing for ever.
We want
to see her in Polly for the seventh time, and in Rosetta for the fifth,
we believe it will be, when we see her in it again, which will be when
she next plays in it. Pray how long will it be first, Mr. Fawcett ?
We suppose not till Miss O'Neill is tired of tiring the audience in
Mrs. Oakley, or the ravens are hoarse that croak over Mr. Emery's
head' in the Pangs of Conscience. Something new, always something
new. That is the taste of Covent Garden, and the town. It is not
our's. We are for something old. Toujours perdrix. We like to read
the same books, and to see the same plays, and the same faces over
again-always provided we liked them at first. Now there is one
face which we never liked, and never shall like, which is the face of
Tyranny, and the older it gets, the uglier it gets in our eyes, and in
this, as a matter of taste, we differ entirely with Mr. Canning, though
he has been declared by a classical authority to be the most elegant
mind since Virgil.' We differ with him notwithstanding. The
Ravens, or the Pangs of Conscience, is a melo-drame taken from the
French, of the same breed, but an inferior specimen, as the Maid and
Magpie, and the Family of Anglade. It is a kind of renewal of the
age of augury adapted to the modern theories of probability, by being
reduced within the limits of natural history. These pieces take for
their text the lines,

And choughs and magpies shall bring forth
The secret'st man of blood.'

In the Pangs of Conscience, as in the Maid of Palisseau, there is a robbery, a trial of persons innocently suspected of it, and a discovery of the real perpetrators, just at the critical moment, by the interven

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