g,
were less fortunate, and one of them is the subject of perhaps the most
successful of Thackeray's early reviews in the grotesque style,
preserved in the _Yellowplush Papers_.

It will be observed that, with the single and not very notable exception
of Sheridan Knowles, almost all the names already mentioned are those of
persons to whom drama was a mere by-work. Another exception may be found
in James R. Planche (1796-1880), a man of no very exalted birth or
elaborate education, but an archaeologist of some merit, and from 1854
onwards an official representative of the honourable though discredited
science of Heraldry as Rouge Croix Pursuivant and Somerset Herald. From
1818 onward Planche was the author, adapter, translator, and what not,
of innumerable--they certainly run to hundreds--dramatic pieces of every
possible sort from regular plays to sheer extravaganzas. He was happiest
perhaps in the lighter and freer kinds, having a pleasant and never
vulgar style of jocularity, a fair lyrical gift, and the indefinable
knowledge of what is a play. But he stands only on the verge of
literature proper, and the propriety, indeed the necessity, of including
him here is the strongest possible evidence of the poverty of dramatic
literature in our period. It would indeed only be possible to extend
this chapter much by including men who have no real claim to appear, and
who would too forcibly suggest the hired guests of story, introduced in
order to avoid a too obtrusive confession of the absence of guests
entitled to be present.

The greater and more strictly literary names of those who have tried the
stage in the intervals of happier studies, from Miss Mitford and R. H.
Horne to Tennyson, have been mentioned elsewhere; and there is no need
to return to them. Dr. James Westland Marston (1820-90) was once much
praised, and was an author of Macready's. Miss Isabella Harwood,
daughter of the second editor of the _Saturday Review_, produced under
the pseudonym of "Ross Neil" a series of closet-dramas of excellent
composition and really poetical fancy, but wanting the one thing
needful. Perhaps a few other writers might with pains be added; and of
course every reviewer knows that the flow of five-act tragedies, though
less abundant than of old, has continued. But, on the whole, the
sentence already put in more than one form remains true and firm--that
in this period the dramatic work of those who have been really men and
women of