The Sun. — 1864-09-13 (London, England)

ITSELF SARCASTICALLY COMMEMORATED BY A SATURDAY REVIEWER.  - Surely we have seen the last of it, exclaims our sardonic contemporary, who adds—To talk Shak. speie on a Shakspere subject—  • . . . the times have been That when the brains were out the man would die, And there an end ; but now they rise again With twenty mortal murders on their crowns. Twenty ! twice twenty times was the Shakspere Tercentenary celebration done to death. Every art and device of mortal man combined to produce the terrible and ignominousfiaseo of this unlucky scheme. The two committees which quarrelled about the honour of inventing what was destined from the first to fail ; the secretaries who quarrelled with the committee, and the committee which disavowed the secretaries, and then disavowed and dissolved itself; the somebody who affronted the late Mr. Thackeray, and the somebody who affronted Mr. Phelps, and the somebody who affronted Mr. Pechter, and the somebody who affronted Mr. Bellew, and Mr. Bele lew who affronted everbedy the Memorial Committee which passed a solemn vote, "Agreed unanimously that we receive 1;39,000, to be furnished by public subscription ;" and the public who never would subscribe thirty thousand ehiliings—the whole thing runs into a parody. This is the statue that the committee did not set up ; this is the actor that worried the committee; this is the parson that riled the actor that worried the committee, &a. &c. ad infinitum—and infinite series of blunders, breakdowns, quarrels, vanities, absurd ities,extravagances. Wo thought that we had done with it. But it reappears. Even the dinner at Stratford, at which Lord Carlisle presided, was not the last of it—the dinner which was so bad that the excellent Viceroy has never recovered from it. Nor was the Primrose-hill oak-planting the last of it, at which the Shakspere worshippers and the Garibaldi worship. pers, after the fashion of rival religionists, got to loggerheads. Ecce iterum Mr Hepworth Dixon, who promised that the minutes of the Shakepere Memorial Committee should be deposited in the British Museum, but who will now be called upon, we fear, to deposit them in Baeinghall-street. At any rate, the Stratford Shakspearian Tercentenary Commemoration Committee is in a hopeless state of insolvency. Whether the two Committees—the London Committee and the Stratford Committee— ever coalesced, we are not quite sure. Nor are wo cortain whether any Rump of the London Memorial Committee survives to be roasted yet once more. We remember only that secession alter secession took place. We have an indistinct recol'ection that the Monumental Committee fell to pieces after a literary gentleman, without consulting the whole body, drew up the famous programme of a "monument embracing a statue" in " the style of the poet's period." Nor can we call to mind that the Memorial Committee, if it still exists, has ever presented a report, or told us how much of the £30,000 which it passed a resolution to receive has been received. Indeed, as we are not aware whether the London Committee is alive or dead, hybernating or aestivating, asleep or awake or on a journey, we desire to say nothing about it. it is only to be hoped that, when its day of account comes, the London Committee may present a better balances sheet than its Stratford brethren.