The National Register. — London, England, 1809-07-09 00:00:00

TIIE NATIONAL REGISTER. (epilog, perhaps, WILLIAM CODSZTT ? It would be a ser vice worthy of his tergiversative talents to administer ex treme unction to your expiring popularity, and ue know thatiyour wounded spirit would derive consolation from a well.turned malignant invective against Mrs. Geirke. Do you not know that Mr. Serjeant BEST has desired his friends to say, that you never sent him one line of writing during the trial, If you have not heard as much, this will furnish you with an excuse for inquiry. If this be so, either you or Sedeunt BEST have told a FALSEHOOD ; but fier the truth of Mathis assertion I believe you do not appeal to God. n is, however, something more than a parole assertion.— scripta ntanent. Did you not pledge ,your honour to Mrs. Clarke that you would not mention the business of Samuel Carter ; and have you not basely forfeited your honour to a woman who had more g enerosity and feeling than you had ? Did you not aselutely steal, feloniously steal, the bundle of letters P Had you any authority from Mrs. Clarke for what you said about Donovan ? We have heard your reason why Dodd was not examin ed, but why was not Mr. Glennie produced, and the other respectable witnesses you allude to, and why are their names concealed. Mr. lllingworth, who paid the bill of .6001. to Wright, could have no objection to swear to that fact, but perhaps he could have mentioned others—we know he could. Your .friend Mr. MacCullum, too, would at least have found in you a precedent for short memory, and an example too of the convenience which attaches to this failing. And Mr. Thomas Hague, could he have rendered you no service upon his oath ? He has talents, you know, that can be made veil useful in that way, and his modesty would have been no hindrance to the employment of them upon proper occasions. Was not Serjeant BEST instructed to state, that such a person as Major DODD did not exist Do you not know that there are Letters of your own still in existeuce about DODD, and was it not the fear of this that prevented DODD from being produced ?—Did you net instruct Mr. Serjeant Best to tell the Jury that the whole Bill was an imaginary one 7-1\ o, Sir : Is not every article of it at Mrs. Ccanoes, and did you not pay the five hundred pounds in the manner stated. Have you paid your Bill at ,the Col Fee house for your witnesses dinner, who attended at the House of Commons an the first day of the Investigation ? This is mentioned to give you an opportunity of proving that if your u•ickets are not running over, they are at least full enough to pay what even you -must admit to be a just debt. COLONEL WARDLE TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. gi Honoured as my Parliamentary conduct leas been by the approbation of so many of my countrymen, I &el na3self called upon, in consequence of as sweet that yesterday took place, hit mediately to address you, and that In vindication of my character, rendered open to attack from the verdict of the Jury, upon the evidence of Mrs. Clarke and Mr. Wright, the brother of her Upholsterer, in a cause in which I was defendant, in the Court of King's Bench.—The detail of the evidence the public prints will afford. It is with me to state, that my Counsel, satisfied in their minds that the Jury would not, upon such testimony as IRA been given by the plaintiff's brotherand Mrs. Clarke, alone, fnd a verdict against me, did not comply with my earnest en treaty (repeated to them in writing, during the trial, in the sgrogest terms), that Major Dodd, Mr. Glenie, and other re , Jectahle witnesses, subpcened by the plaintiff and myself, might be examined, as I knew their testimony would he founded in truth, and be in direct contradiction to what had been sworn against me. Under such circumstances the verdict was obtained. There only remains for me now, before my God sad my Country, to declare, that it was obtained by perjnry alone; and I do pledge myself to prove that fact the earliest moment the forms of the law will allow me do so. Anxiously, therefore, do I look forward to that period ; and I tr us t that, till then, the public will suspend their judgment upon the case. W ith sentiments of the deepest gratitude and respect, I remain Tour ever faithful! y,devoted Servant, " July 4, lb®. " Gs L. WARDLE." THE Alltle4LS. JULY P. TUEODORE :woes "KILLING NO MURDER." Farces are play-things it is true,but they are play-things of the Comic Muse. Mr. Theodore Hook having no ac fuaintance with the Comic Muse, seems to consider a arce as the the rattle of absurdity. Thanks to the per vasive power of folly, every provocative to laughter is now honoured with the name of wit, and every ideot who, with our pity for his condition, excites a smile at his stu pidity, may set himself up as a man of humour. Happy age! emancipated from the fetters of sense, and the toils of thought, we laugh we know not Ow, and we care not wherefore 1 In such an age it is no wonder if we find an Ar;stophanes in Theodore Hook, a Menander in Thomas Dibdin, and the second Terence of England in Mr., Cherry! There was a time when the minor drama, or farce of England abounded in broad and strong traits of character; when sterling wit sparkled in the dialogue. and Vi hen the incidents, unassisted. by the grin of bulloonery, were re plete with genuine humour. An author did not then poach for puns in ()Idlest books, or pillage the walls of Moorfields, where funny folly is strung in sheets, for public study, to the great advantage of such readers as Mr. Tie, whose multiplicity of engagements we are told. oblige him, to " read while he runs, and to write while , he eats." It would be setting out too seriously were we to attempt to define what a farce ought to be; but we may surely ven ture to ask this question of that good-natured and indul gent being, Pusvie TASTE, what is expected in a farce 7 Poor Public Taste, who is daily imposed upon by the nu merous men if genius with whom this metropolis abounds, and who good humouredly puts up with alt these imposi. tions, whether i they come from picture-dealing daubers, or their subscribing patrons in Pall Mall ; whether they spring from the paste-pot of book-making authors, or their bc. knighted publishers; whether Mr. Ackerman, in his double, capacity of print-broker and magazine-monger, ber almost blind. Or the two knights-errauts of Ire land and Russia, Sir John Carr and Sir Bob Cur, throw the spoils of all her former travellers in pictured bundles at her feet ; whether this quack fiddles, or that quack phy sics; still poor, indulgent Public Taste, we say, will hardly allow us to ask wkat iv expected in a force j Debauched. disordered, and diseased—drunk at night, and &amid in the morning, Public Taste can answer no questions. Let her then be told what is not expected in a farce. Since she is become the public prostitute of every flippant fool who can raise a laugh, let her be told of the things which she path left undone, and let her be sent to repent in sack. cloth and ashes, in some tenvile Penitentiary, for her pre 'sent sin and iniquity w ith th a t p unn i n g plagiarist, Mr, Theodore Hook. A Farce ought not to be without wit. True—but Theodore's wit being otherwise engaged, in private parties, and select entertainments, he is compelled to find a substitute for public service. Substitutes for this sort of Militia are always ready at the offices of Messrs. Joe Miller, Thomas Brown and Co. A Farce ought not to be without character. True again. Theodore acknowledged this, and had in stantly an expedient for it " Let every performer appear in his own character," he exclaimed, " and the devil's in it if it can want character when Mathews and Liston are in it."--A Farce ought not to be without incident. --Very true. But the invention of incident being in itself of too serious a nature, and requiring so much thought, Theodore swore that it would hurt his natural vivacity to attempt such a labour; he therefore left all incident to accident. He could not have done better. The recollections of Mathews and Liston were better than all the inventions of twenty Theo dore Hooks; and by thrusting in a bit of one Farce in one place and a bit of another in another, no incidents could jumble more ludicrously together than the incid:nts of Theudore's Farce l Perhaps the public (as well those who