Lo! Vincent comes with simple grace arrayed,
She laughs at paltry arts, and scorns parade.
Nature through her is by reflection shown,
Whilst Gay once more knows Polly for his own.
Talk not to me of diffidence and fear
I see it all, but must forgive it here.
Defects like these which modest terrors cause,
From impudence itself extort applause.
Candor and reason still take virtue's part;
We love ev'n foibles in so good an heart.

Let Tommy Arne, with usual pomp of style,
Whose chief, whose only merit's to compile,
Who meanly pilfering here and there a bit,
Deals music out as Murphy deals out wit,
Publish proposals, laws for taste prescribe,
And chant the praise of an Italian tribe;
Let him reverse kind nature's first decrees,
And teach ev'n Brent a method not to please:
But never shall a truly British age
Bear a vile race of eunuchs on the stage.
The boasted work's called national in vain,
If one Italian voice pollutes the strain.
Where tyrants rule, and slaves with joy obey,
Let slavish minstrels pour the enervate lay;
To Britons far more noble pleasures spring;
In native notes whilst Beard and Vincent sing.

Pritchard, by nature for the stage designed,
In person graceful, and in sense refined;
Her art as much as nature's friend became,
Her voice as free from blemish as her fame.
Who knows so well in majesty to please,
Attempered with the graceful charms of ease?

When Congreve's favored pantomime to grace,
She comes a captive queen of Moorish race;
When love, hate, jealousy, despair, and rage,
With wildest tumults in her breast engage;
Still equal to herself is Zara seen;

Her passions are the passions of a queen.

When she to murder whets the timorous thane,

I feel ambition rush through ev'ry vein;

Persuasion hangs upon her daring tongue,
My heart grows flint, and ev'ry nerve's new strung.
In comedy"Nay, there," cries critic, "hold,
Pritchard's for comedy too fat and old.

Who can, with patience, bear the gray coquette,
Or force a laugh with overgrown Julett?
Her speech, look, action, humor, all are just,
But then, her age and figure give disgust."

Are foibles, then, and graces of the mind,
In real life, to size or age confined?
Do spirits flow, and is good-breeding placed
In any set circumference of waist?

As we grow old, does affectation cease,
Or gives not age new vigor to caprice?
If in originals these things appear,

Why should we bar them in the copy here?
The nice punctilio-mongers of this age,
The grand minute reformers of the stage,
Slaves to propriety of ev'ry kind,

Some standard-measure for each part should find
Which when the best of actors shall exceed,

Let it devolve to one of smaller breed.

All actors too upon the back should bear

Certificate of birth; - time, when; - place, where.
For how can critics rightly fix their worth,
Unless they know the minute of their birth?
An audience too, deceived, may find too late.
That they have clapped an actor out of date.

Figure, I own, at first may give offense,
And harshly strike the eye's too curious sense.
But when perfections of the mind break forth,
Humor's chaste sallies, judgment's solid worth;
When the pure genuine flame, by nature taught,
Springs into sense, and ev'ry action's thought; -
Before such merit all objections fly;

Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick's six feet high.

What man, like Barry, with such pains, can err In elocution, action, character?

What man could give, if Barry was not here,
Such well-applauded tenderness to Lear?

Who else can speak so very, very fine,

That sense may kindly end with ev'ry line?

Some dozen lines before the ghost is there,

Behold him for the solemn scene prepare.
See how he frames his eyes, poises each limb,
Puts the whole body into proper trim. —
From whence we learn, with no great stretch of art,
Five lines hence comes a ghost, and, ha! a start.

VOL. XVIII. 5

When he appears most perfect, still we find
Something which jars upon, and hurts the mind.
Whatever lights upon a part are thrown,
We see too plainly they are not his own.
No flame from nature ever yet he caught;
Nor knew a feeling which he was not taught;
He raised his trophies on the base of art,
And conned his passions, as he conned his part.
Quin, from afar, lured by the scent of fame,
A stage Leviathan, put in his claim,-
Pupil of Betterton and Booth. Alone,

Sullen he walked, and deemed the chair his own.
For how should moderns, mushrooms of the day,
Who ne'er those masters knew, know how to play?
Gray-bearded vet'rans, who, with partial tongue,
Extol the times when they themselves were young;
Who having lost all relish for the stage,
See not their own defects, but lash the age.
Received with joyful murmurs of applause,
Their darling chief, and lined his favorite cause.

Speech! Is that all? And shall an actor found An universal fame on partial ground?

Parrots themselves speak properly by rote,

And, in six months, my dog shall howl by note.

I laugh at those, who, when the stage they tread,
Neglect the heart to compliment the head;
With strict propriety their care's confined

To weigh out words, while passion halts behind.
To syllable-directors they appeal,

Allow them accent, cadence, fools may feel;
But, spite of all the criticising elves,

Those who would make us feel, must feel themselves.
His eyes, in gloomy socket taught to roll,
Proclaimed the sullen habit of his soul.
Heavy and phlegmatic he trod the stage,
Too proud for tenderness, too dull for rage.
When Hector's lovely widow shines in tears,
Or Rowe's gay rake dependent virtue jeers,
With the same cast of features he is seen
To chide the libertine and court the queen.

From the tame scene, which without passion flows,

With just desert his reputation rose;

Nor less he pleased, when, on some surly plan,
He was, at once, the actor and the man.

Last Garrick came. --- Behind him throng a train Of snarling critics, ignorant as vain.

One finds out, "He's of stature somewhat low,Your hero always should be tall, you know. True nat❜ral greatness all consists in height." Produce your voucher, critic. "Sergeant Kite." Another can't forgive the paltry arts

-

By which he makes his way to shallow hearts;
Mere pieces of finesse, traps for applause--
"Avaunt, unnat'ral start, affected pause."

Let wits, like spiders, from the tortured brain
Fine-draw the critic-web with curious pain;
The gods
a kindness I with thanks must pay -
Have formed me of a coarser kind of clay;
Nor stung with envy, nor with spleen diseased,
A poor dull creature, still with nature pleased;
Hence to thy praises, Garrick, I agree,

And, pleased with nature, must be pleased with thee.
Now might I tell how silence reigned throughout,
And deep attention hushed the rabble rout!

How ev'ry claimant, tortured with desire,

Was pale as ashes, or as red as fire:

But, loose to fame, the muse more simply acts,
Rejects all flourish, and relates mere facts.

The judges, as the several parties came,

With temper heard, with judgment weighed each claim, And, in their sentence happily agreed,

In name of both, great Shakespeare thus decreed: "If manly sense; if nature linked with art

If thorough knowledge of the human heart;

If pow'rs of acting vast and unconfined;

If fewest faults with greatest beauties joined;

If strong expression, and strange pow'rs which lie
Within the magic circle of the eye;

If feelings which few hearts, like his, can know,
And which no face so well as his can show;
Deserve the pref'rence; - Garrick, take the chair;
Nor quit it-till thou place an equal there."

THE SHIPWRECK.

BY WILLIAM FALCONER.

[WILLIAM FALCONER was born at Edinburgh in 1732, son of a poor shopkeeper, and was sent to sea after a scanty schooling; at eighteen his ship was wrecked off Cape Colonna, and he was one of three saved. On his return he wrote some short poems, but remained a seaman. In 1762 he published the first edition of “The Shipwreck," describing his own experiences and still justly remembered; in 1764 a second, much enlarged, and a satire, "The Demagogue," against Wilkes and Churchill; in 1769 a valuable "Marine Dictionary," and a third edition of "The Shipwreck." The same year he sailed for India, but the ship was never heard of after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, December 27.]

IN VAIN the cords and axes were prepared,
For every wave now smites the quivering yard;
High o'er the ship they throw a dreadful shade,
Then on her burst in terrible cascade;
Across the foundered deck o'erwhelming roar,
And foaming, swelling, bound upon the shore.
Swift up the mountain billow now she flies,
Her shattered top half buried in the skies;
Borne o'er a latent reef the hull impends,
Then thundering on the marble crag descends:
Her ponderous bulk the dire concussion feels,
And o'er upheaving surges wounded reels-
Again she plunges! hark! a second shock
Bilges the splitting vessel on the rock-
Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries,
The fated victims shuddering cast their eyes
In wild despair; while yet another stroke
With strong convulsion rends the solid oak:
Ah, Heaven!-behold her crashing ribs divide,
She loosens, parts, and spreads in ruin o'er the tide.
As o'er the surf the bending mainmast hung,

Still on the rigging thirty seamen clung:

Some on a broken crag were struggling cast,
And there by oozy tangles grappled fast;

Awhile they bore the o'erwhelming billows' rage,
Unequal combat with their fate to wage;
Till all benumbed, and feeble, they forego
Their slippery hold, and sink to shades below:
Some, from the main yardarm impetuous thrown
On marble ridges, die without a groan: