The Sun.
London, England, 1840-07-09 00:00:00

LfTEIIATuitk.

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THE S',2'AGE. Vols: Bentley, London, 1840.
From the motto affixed to tbd title-page of these
volumes we were prepared for much personality ; and
we have not been disappotntee. Mr. pun, conceiv-
ing himself, to have received injury at
,the hands or
certain individuals, expresses his opiniond of those
indiViduals is no very gUarded terms—in fact, shows
himself quite a ho! cross-bun. (This is a villainous
pun, but the temptation td perpetrate it was iN
resistible' and we trust, therefore, that oe'r
readers will generously accord us their forgiveness.]
Without entering inio i,113 qtiestion of Mr. Bunn's
likes and dislikes, with which we have kitaiit to do,
and which can be a matter of moment solely to the
parties coneerhed, we may say that he has produced a
very readable work, full of anecdote, not wanting in brief
but racy sketches of character, and penned in an easy
colloquial. style, Mg against one of the author's
peculiarities, we must beg to enter otir most serious—
our most impassioned protest. He is cruelly addicted
to quoting his own poesy, which is a lamentable weak-
ness, and prbduees the. most distressing effects on the
reader's nerves. So long as he confines himself to plain
prose he acquits himself passably enough ; but the instant
he " ritehes into rhyme," he administers so potent a
soporific, that it becomes a matter of very consider-
able doubt, whether or not the reader will ever wake
again. Let Mr. Dunn take the friendly hint, and
henceforth diligently eschew the poetics As regards
his defence of his long management of the two patent
theatres, we must do him the justice to say, that we
think he hag made out a strong case in his favour.
It was his duty, as manage!, to cater for the public
taste ; and if he found that Macready's representations
of Sbakspeate's characters did not attract the plays
goers. he was perfectlY justified in having recourse to
melodrama and opera. In the course of his volumes he
frequently discusses the question of the present detaining
state of the stage, which he attributes in great part to
the enormous salaries paid to a few principal performers,
which have the effect of crippling the manager, and re-
stricting the sphere of his exertions. Doubtless this
is true, but it is not the whole truth. The great cause
of the decline of the drama, we take to be the
dearth of first-rate tragic and comic actors. Ster-
ling comedy is almost lost to us 1 and in tragedy,
we have but Charles Kean and Macready ; and
these play, not together, but on difteretit nights:
What inducement then have the public to attend the
-theatre, where the odds are that they will see a play of
, Shakspeare, or of Congreve, Farquhar, or Colman,
not efficiently represented, but most villanously bur-
lesqued ? Mr. Bunn's recollections of Malibran—
of whom he seems to have been an enthusiastic
admirer—are among the pleasantest portions of
his work, and give us a highly favourable impres-
sion of her character. All his anecdotes of this
gifted songstress are told with archness and spirit,
but indeed he shows himself, throughout his volumes,
an excellent hand at telling a story ; in proof of which, we
may refer to his numerous" Eilistonia," which we prefer
even to those chronicled by Charles Lamb in his Elia.
As the work will soon be—if it be not so already—in
every body's hands, there is little or no need for us to
(Jive extracts from it ; we shall content ourselves,
therefore, with the remark that it does not disappoint
expectation ; but that we should have been better pleased
with it, had the author refrained from giving numerous
letters from his correspondents, which—so far as we
can judge from their contents—were never intended for
publication.