his in it, but
there is no reason for doubting the critic's account of what he heard at
the theatre. It is not at all unlikely that it was this paragraph which
suggested to Lamb the advisability of still further revising the
"Rejected Address." In the prologue there is a good deal about the size
of the theatre, as compared with "the Lyceum's petty sphere," and of how
pleased Shakspere would have been had he been able to hear--

When that dread curse of Lear's
Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears:

rather an anti-climax, by the way, for it means an audience of but five
hundred, which would have been a beggarly account for the new Drury.
There is nothing either about its "dome," or about the scenery, except
commonplaces so flat that one doubts if it be quite fair to quote them--

The very use, since so essential grown,
Of painted scenes, was to his [Shakspere's] stage unknown.

This is not an improvement on the "waves not yet quite dry," a Lamb-like
touch which could not have been invented by the critic, and may go far
to convince us of his veracity.

Above all, there is no trace of that splendidly audacious suggestion
that Coleridge was the first "whose muse had soared" within the new
dome--unless we find a blind one in the closing lines, supposing them to
have been converted by the simple process of inversion. Instead of
Coleridge being the first whose muse had soared in the new Drury, Drury
was the first place in which his dramatic muse had soared.

Lamb was not among the writers parodied by the "sneering brothers" (as
he called them later), but Coleridge was. Lamb's turn came in 1825, when
P.G. Patmore, afterwards his friend and the father of Coventry Patmore,
wrote _Rejected Articles_, in which was a very poor imitation of Elia.

Line 9. _Betterton or Booth._ Thomas Betterton, born probably in 1635,
acted for the last time in 1710, the year in which he died. Barton Booth
(1681-1733) left the stage in 1728. Betterton was much at the Little
Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields; also at Sir John Vanbrugh's theatre in
the Haymarket.

Line 11. _Quin_. James Quin (1693-1766) of Drury Lane and Covent
Garden, Garrick's great rival, famous as Falstaff. His last appearance
was in 1753.

Line 12. _Garrick._ Garrick's Drury Lane, in which Lamb saw his first
play, was that built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1674. It lasted, with
certain alterations, including a new face by the brothers Adam, nearly