stage effect, the want of which, like want of manners in the concerns of life, is more prejudicial than a deficiency of talent. There is an art in writing for the Theatre, technically called touch and go, which is indispensible when we consider the small quantum of patience, which so motley an assemblage as a London audience can be expected to afford. All the contributors have been very exact in sending their initials and mottos. Those belonging to the present collection have been carefully preserved, and each has been affixed to its respective poem. The letters that accompanied the Addresses having been honourably destroyed unopened, it is impossible to state the real authors with any certainty, but the ingenious reader, after comparing the initials with the motto, and both with the poem, may form his own conclusions.

The Editor does not anticipate any disapprobation from thus giving publicity to a small portion of the REJECTED ADDRESSES; for, unless he is widely mistaken in assigning the

8

respective authors, the fame of each individual is established on much too firm a basis to be shaken by so trifling and evanescent a publication as the present:

-neque ego illi detrahere ausim

Hærentem capiti multâ cum laude coronam.

Of the numerous pieces already sent to the Committee for performance, he has only availed himself of three vocal Travesties, which he has selected, not for their merit, but simply for their brevity. Above one hundred spectacles, melo-dramas, operas, and pantomimes have been transmitted, besides the two first acts of one legitimate comedy. Some of these evince considerable smartness of manual dialogue, and several brilliant repartees of chairs, tables, and other inanimate wits; but the authors seem to have forgotten that in the new Drury-Lane the audience can hear as well as see. Of late our theatres have been so constructed, that John Bull has been compelled to have very long ears, or none at all; to keep them dangling about his skull like

discarded servants, while his eyes were gazing at pieballs and elephants, or else to stretch them out to an asinine length to catch the congenial sound of braying trumpets. An auricular revolution is, we trust, about to take place, and as many people have been much puzzled to define the meaning of the new æra, of which we have heard so much, we venture to pronounce, that as far as regards Drury-Lane Theatre, the new æra means the reign of ears. If the past affords any pledge for the future, we may confidently expect from the Committee of that House, every thing that can be accomplished by the union of taste and assiduity.

B

HAIL, glorious edifice, stupendous work!
God bless the Regent and the Duke of York!
Ye Muses! by whose aid I cried down Fox,
Grant me in Drury-Lane a private box,
Where I may loll, cry Bravo, and profess

The boundless powers of England's glorious press;
While Afric's sons exclaim, from shore to shore,
"Quashee ma boo!" the slave-trade is no more.
In fair Arabia, (happy once, now stony,

Since ruined by that arch apostate, Boney,)