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Nicholas. How sensibly he talks! why, 'tis five thousand per cent. profit. I'll be bled directly.

Act V. Scene 2.

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BY THOMAS MORTON, ESQ.

Author of A Cure for the Heart-Ache, Speed the Plough, School of Reform, Town and Country, Education, Zorinski, Columbus, The Slave, &e.

PRINTED FROM THE ACTING COPY, WITH REMARKS,
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL, BY D-G.

To which are added,

A DESCRIPTION OF THE COSTUME,-CAST OF THE CHARACTERS,
ENTRANCES AND EXITS,-RELATIVE POSITIONS OF THE
PERFORMERS ON THE STAGE, AND THE WHOLE OF
THE STAGE BUSINESS,

As now performed at the

THEATRES ROYAL, LONDON.

EMBELLISHED WITH A FINE ENGRAVING,

By Mr. BONNER, from a Drawing taken in the Theatre by
MR. R. CRUIKSHANK.

LONDON:

JOHN CUMBERLAND, 2, CUMBERLAND TERRACE,

CAMDEN NEW TOWN.

REMARKS.

Secrets Worth Knowing.

IT would be difficult to discover what analogy the title of "Secrets Worth Knowing," bears to this comedy. If it was intended as a bait for curiosity, it was ingenious enough; for mankind are so prone to busy themselves with the affairs of their neighbours, that the promise of so tempting a revelation would be sure to attract crowds to the theatre. That those whose only motive was curiosity had their desire gratified, we may fairly answer in the negative: Mr. Morton has revealed no secret particularly worth knowing, but he has ingeniously thrown out a decoy-duck, to allure the idle and the curious to hear a moral lesson from the stage; not a tragedy mixed with most pleasant mirth, nor a farce devoted to licentiousness and buffoonery-but a drama, where merriment and sorrow take their urns, and almost constrain us to laugh with one side of the face, and to cry with the other.

When the love of money has once laid fast hold of the mind, there is no act, however base, that will stop its career. Like the

object of Richard's ambition, which was placed at such a height as to require the utmost reaching of his soul to attain it, it pursnes one undeviating course, and, when the fancied summit is gained, there is something beyond that leads it still higher. If it be true that

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen,"

We recommend all who have the sin of avarice-who are halting between right and wrong, for the gratification of that execrable pas. sion, to come and see this play, and they will behold a miser and his minion drawn in the truest colours. The character of Undermine is not in the least overcharged-bis acts are of every-day occurrence. He exerts his influence over a wretch as sordid as himself, and grasps the inheritance of the rightful heir. And, when his design is baffled by the compunction of the testator, who revokes the gift by a subsequent will, he artfully suppresses that fatal instrument, to add another heap to his ill-gotten store. In this plan he is assisted by his worthy compeer, one Nicholas Rue-an anatomy, old, trembling, and cadaverous :

"Hell in his heart, and Tyburn in his face,"

Who, like his master, lives in continual fear of death and the devil. We now turn to a more pleasing object

"Look here upon this picture, and on this❞—

April-on whose reverend head winter has dropped its snows but

whose mental and bodily faculties are the prototype of his namegreen, healthy, and vigorous. Would we account for this, let us consider his "conscience ever gay." His clean hands, and his cheerful countenance ; his upright heart and figure may well keep each other company. How exactly does this good old man illustrate the beautiful lines of Pope

"Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,

Lie in three words-health, peace, and competence;
But health consists with temperance alone,

And peace, Oh, Virtue! peace is all thy own!”

An example of the corrupting influence of dissipation is Plethora, a once healthy importation from the country, poisoned and emaciated by town follies-the companion and victim of jockey lords and titled blacklegs, whose purse and constitution have alike given way, as in duty bound, to those of his superiors. Yet is Phethora a philosopher-he has fairly counted the cost of his excesses, and has made up his mind to a short life and a merry one.

We have never yet had the good fortune to meet with a universal genius-an admirable Crichton, who was excellent in every thing. The only character that at all approximates to this universality, is our dramatic friend, Caleb Quotem. Putty and lead-magnets and marble slabs-polar stars and corner cupboards, are no trifling acquisitions in the way of learning. Rostrum, though a superb auctioneer, is nevertheless a confined genius. He shines no where but in his own sphere-he handles no subject with half the dexterity that he does his own hammer-he preaches no where but in his own pulpit. When peeping over the timber, and descanting upon the beauty of an Apollo in bronze, or a Venus in plaster, he borrows the quality of one to describe the other, and becomes most impu dently eloquent; but let a Venus in reality appear before him, he is extinguished, snuffed out, abashed, and crest-fallen

"F'en such a man,

So dull, so dead in look,

Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,

And would have told him half his Troy was burn'd."

No prophet is honoured in his own country-no man is a hero to is valet-de-chambre: but exery auctioneer is king of his own pulhit, where, like Chanticleer on his particuler eminence, he is entitled po crow. His tongue, like his lots, is always a-going-but when he is gone, so is his occupation. Rostrum has, however, some points that deserve high praise: his generous and manly feeling towards Egerton, at their first interview, and his justice in restoring to him that property which had been hoarded for his use.

The sentimental portion of this comedy is in better taste than Mr. Morton's serious efforts generally are. There is no German mystification or bombast about it. The perplexities that arise out of the concealment of Greville's marriage, are well contrived, and the denouement is brought about in a very pleasing and satisfactory manner. We rejoice to see poetical justice assigned to Under mine, and the most galling part of it executed by the very wretch whom he had seduced by the promise of a bribe. As in a criminal sense the finisher of the law is a degraded outcast, cast-off and

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