We know not how the gentlemen on the
stage might like this mode of appraisement;
but we suspect that the ladies would esteem
it in the same odious light as declarations of
their age. The figures look awfully unpolite.
Miss A would scarcely like to see herself
quoted as fifty-two three-eighths; Miss B,
fifty-eight three-quarters; Mrs. C as sixty;
Mrs. D as sixty-five; Mrs. E as sixty-seven
and a half; and Miss F as seventy-nine three-
eighths. Authors, on the contrary, might
like the mode of announcement; as it might
be mistaken to indicate the number of nights
during which a piece had run, instead of its
factitious value in the managerial market.
Nothing, frequently, is more different than
the appreciation of the same drama behind
the scenes, and before them.

One sees at once that a notion of this kind
is a whimsical crotchet, and employed with a
satiric aim. But such crotchets are
sometimes unconsciously adopted;by none more
than by members of the histrionic profession.
They are, in fact, a crotchetty people. Many
of them, for instance, have a strong and
strange impression that they are far greater
and wiser than the authors whose words they
recite. In their estimation the poet is a mere
accidental appendage to a theatre. Nor is
this whim the caprice of the modern player
or the peculiar stigma of the English stage.
We read that, in France, Mayret, the
predecessor and rival of Corneille, was paid by
the Company to which he was attached at
the rate of three crowns for each piece, and
was required to beat a drum at the door of
the theatre to assemble an audience. This,
however, is only a primitive illustration of
the rank awarded in the Green-room to the
most favoured poet. He is still expected,
though under another form, to beat a drum
for the actors. Not until a new part becomes
needful to sustain the position of the favourite
performer is he resorted to; until then he is
held at arm's length; and, like the constituent
of a member of Parliament, made to
feel himself an intruder on the precincts
sacred to his representative. Mayret, moreover,
was more necessary to the stage for
which he worked than any living author can
now be.

To the Theatre, the whole body of our
dramatic literature has been handed over,
for the actor's exclusive benefit. The
revival of an old play costs nothing for the
authorship. The actor stands in the shoes
of Massinger, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Shakspeare, and all other dramatists,
preceding the passing of Sir Edward Lytton
Bulwer's Act, and wields the mighty power
thus lodged in his hands by the dead, against
the living poet. That the latter has any chance
at all, is owing entirely to the accident that
performers and managers have not, usually,
intelligence commensurate with the forces
at their disposal. But for this evil there is
an obvious remedy. Theatres, under private
management, should be required to pay into
a Public Fund a fee for every performance of
an old drama; and this same fund should be
applied to the maintenance of a National
Theatre, under a properly constituted
directorship for the encouragement of authors and
actors of the highest genius. A simple
legislative enactment of this nature, would again
give dignity to the stage, and make it worth
the while of the true poet to labour hard in a
dramatic apprenticeship, for the sake of the
ultimate " sovran sway and masterdom " to be
achieved.*

Individual freaks of humour are numerous
with histrionic professors. Some of
the highest have had strange empirical
notions of the means of study. Garrick was
not exempt from this infirmity; nay, in him
it even looks like a special vanity. The actor
should imitate nature. Granted. Garrick,
however, sought to create opportunies of
imitation. It is related of him that he had a
trick of attracting attention in the crowd, in
order to observe the attitudes of the
bystanders. One day in the city, Garrick
separated from his companions, and walking
into the middle of the road, turned his gaze
upwards, and, in a posture of thought and
admiration, exclaimed, " I never saw two
before." Attracted by his manner, multitudes
gathered round him, curious what could be
the object of his attention, while Garrick
continued to excite their conjectures by repeating
the same mysterious words—"I never
saw two before! " " Two what? " " Two
storks, perhaps," said one, "for it would be
strange to see more than one stork at a time."
Nobody, however, had seen a single stork.
Still Garrick kept his secret; and meanwhile,
was careful and diligent to watch the different
attitudes with which the common feeling was
expressed by different individuals. For the
sake of this experience, he pretended to have
practised the ruse; but the mode of procedure
it is evident, was altogether a whim—a mere
piece of vanity; though by some of his friends
and admirers considered an ingenious
contrivance for inducing a number of persons to
become the unconscious models, for the nonce,
of a celebrated artist. We suspect, however,
that if any one should deliberately resolve on
making himself a great actor, by projecting
ruses of this kind, he would find himself
grievously disappointed. A little consideration
will serve to show, that the artistic
qualification precedes the trick; and that
Garrick's success was owing to the histrionic
skill that he already possessed. He had
merely descended from the stage to the street,
and, for the gratification of his personal
vanity, exhibited gratuitously to the crowd
what his audience had paid for in the theatre.
Such things are among the "pitiful ambitions"
which Shakspeare would have as readily
condemned in a Garrick as in a Tarleton.

* This is the individual Play-goer's "Crotchet.'' We
doubt its efficacy, and do not adopt it.