—to adapt another play, Pizarro, also by Kotzebue. Did we not know the history of the celebrated first night of his play, on unimpeachable evidence, we should be inclined to look upon it as one of those exaggerated tales that, related by one of the many gossips of the time, had grown out of all possibility of credence. Sheridan was up-stairs in the prompter's room, stimulating his jaded brain by sips of port, and writing out the last act of the play, while the earlier parts were acting; every ten minutes he brought down as much of the dialogue as he had done piecemeal into the green-room, abusing himself and his negligence, and making a thousand winning and soothing apologies for having kept the performers so long in such painful suspense. What, under these circumstances, became of the thorough and elaborate study declared by the Kembles to be necessary for the perfection of the dramatic art, we know not. Rolla and Mrs. Siddons's Elvira must have been extemporaneous acting. Perhaps the performances gained in vivid power and effect what they lost in finish from the nervous strain and excitement of such a mental effort as they were called upon to make. It is difficult to account for the success of the play unless the acting was superlatively good. It is overlaid with bombast and claptrap, and, as Pitt said, was but a second-rate re-echo of his speeches on the Hastings trial. For no one but the "hapless genius" would the brother and sister have thus thrown to the winds all their artistic traditions. We hear of the inflexible John saying, when irritated past bearing: "I know him thoroughly, all his paltry tricks and artifices"; yet immediately after we find both him and the great actress submitting to all his whims and eccentricities.
