_No, no, whate'er the colour of his creed,
The man of honour's orthodox._

It is difficult now to discover what offence was contained in these
lines, and many more such as these, which were also denounced by the
Licenser. Shee expostulated--for he was not a meek sort of man by any
means, and he knew the advantages of a stir to one aiming at
publicity--appealed from the subordinate to the superior, from the
Examiner to the Chamberlain, then the Duke of Montrose, and wrote to
the newspapers; but all in vain. The tragedy could not be performed.
That the stage lost much it would be rash to assert. "Alasco" was
published, and those who read it--they were not many--found it
certainly harmless; but not less certainly pompous and wearisome.
However, that Shee was furnished with a legitimate grievance was
generally agreed, although in "Blackwood's Magazine," then very
intense in its Toryism, it was hinted that the dramatist, his religion
and his nationality being considered, might be in league with the
author of "Captain Rock," and engaged in seditious designs against the
peace and Protestantism of Ireland! Some five years later, it may be
noted, "Alasco" was played at the Surrey Theatre, without the
slightest regard for the opinion of the Examiner of Plays, or with any
change in the passages he had ordered to be expunged. Westminster was
not then very well informed as to what happened in Lambeth, and
probably it was not generally known that "Alasco," with all its
supposed seditious utterances unsilenced, could be witnessed upon the
Surrey stage. Nor is there any record that anybody was at all the
worse, or the treasury of the theatre any the better, for the
representation of the forbidden tragedy.

The Examiner of Plays at this time was George Colman the younger, who
was appointed to the office, less on account of the distinction he
enjoyed as a dramatist, than because he was a favourite and a sort of
boon companion of George IV. Colman had succeeded a Mr. Larpent, who
had filled the post for some twenty years, and who, notwithstanding
that, as a strict Methodist, he scarcely seemed a very fit person to
pronounce judgment upon stage plays, had exercised the powers
entrusted to him with moderation. It was generally agreed that he was
a considerate and benignant ruler, and that his career as Examiner
offered few occasions for remark, although upon its close some
surprise was excited at the exposure for sale by public auc