he sphere of its legitimate function received
from historic tradition. The design of the great dramatic master had
been in his own words to hold the "mirror up to nature." The interest of
London stage-managers led them to pander to public taste, and crowd the
boards with sensational makeshifts and spectacular unrealities. Otway's
"Venice Preserved" and Heman's "Vespers of Palermo" could not attract a
pit full; while scenes introducing battlefields, burning forests, and
cataracts of real water crowded the houses to overflowing. It was at
this juncture that Griffin hoped to bring about his dramatic revolution.
It was with this object in view that he composed a tragedy and read it
for his brother, who, seeing that it contained much that was excellent
and much that gave evidence of future success, no longer withheld his
permission for Gerald to try his future in the heart of the English
metropolis.

One cold morning, in the autumn of the year 1823, Gerald Griffin found
himself a bewildered stranger in the streets of London. The sense of
utter loneliness, the feeling of timid embarrassment, which overpowered
him in the bustle and uproar, amid the winding streets and smoky
labyrinths of the densely populated Babel, had been experienced by many
another aspiring adventurer, whom the glitter of a great name and the
hope of literary preferment had drawn from happy retirements to battle
through adversity to fame and fortune. His first object on his arrival
in town was to seek the shelter of respectable lodgings; his next, to
introduce himself, to explain his projects and to submit his tragedy to
the manager of a London theatre. The manuscript was returned after some
months delay, with the intimation that it was too poetic and too
didactic, and would require extensive revision before it could be
brought upon the stage. Accident, rather than good luck, threw Banim
across his path, and he proved to be a valuable and a faithful friend.
In the little sanctum at the rear of No 7 Amelia Place, Brompton, where
Curran had written his speeches and Banim had composed his tragedies,
Gerald sat down to reinspect the returned work, and at the suggestion of
his friend to omit whole scenes, to substitute others, to lop off
epithets which were too glaringly poetic, and to abbreviate speeches
which were too discursively long. But despite all the author's revision
and Banim's abler experience "Aquire" was fated never to occupy the
boards. No amount