er.

Not long ago, conversing at the Club
Which Londoners with 'GARRICK'S' title dub,
We both confessed, and each with equal grief,
That poor Melpomene was past relief;
So many symptoms of her dotage shows
This nineteenth century of steam and prose.
Nor in herself, said you, entirely lies
Th' incurable complaint whereof she dies;
'Tis not alone that play-wrights are too poor
For gods or men or columns to endure;[4]
Nor that all players in a mould are cast,
Every new Roscius aping still the last;
Nor yet that Taste's too delicate excess
Demands perfection and despises less;
But mere indifference, that worst disease,
From bard and actor take all power to please.
How strive to please? when all their friends that were,
To empty benches empty sounds prefer;
And seek, like bees attracted by a gong,
The fairy-land of tip-toe and of song;
Whether a voice of more than earthly strain
Be newly sent by Danube or the Seine,
Or some aerial, thistle-downy thing
Float from La Scala on a zephyr's wing.
Say, might a SIDDONS, conjured from the tomb,
Again the scene of her renown illume?
Could her high art, (ay, even at half price,)
The crowd from 'La Sonnambula' entice?
No; dance and song, the Drama's deadly plagues,
RUBINI'S notes, and ELLSLER'S heav'nly legs,
Would nightly still bring amateurs in flocks,
To watch the bravos of the royal box.

[4] By the word 'columnae,' Horace (though BENTLEY knew it not)
evidently meant the columns of the Roman newspapers.

While thus, between our filberts and our wine,
We mourned with sighs your mistress's decline,
You half indulged the fond imagination,
That what seemed death was but her _emigration_.
Perhaps, quoth you, and 'twas a bold 'perhaps,'
Ere many years of exile shall elapse,
The wand'ring maid may find in foreign lands
More loving hearts and hospitable hands.
Perchance her feet, with furry buskins graced,
May shuddering walk the cold Canadian waste,
And rest contented with a bleak repose
In shrubless climes of never-thawing snows.
Yes, in those woods that gird the northern lakes,
Pathless as yet, and wild with shaggy brakes,
Or in the rank savannahs of the south,
Or sea-like prairies near Missouri's mouth,
Fate may conduct her to some sacred spot,
Where to resume her sceptre and to--squat.
Some happier settlement and simpler race,
Where, though her worship