O, Mr. Reflector, is it not a pity, that the sweet human voice, which was given man to speak with, to sing with, to whisper tones of love in, to express compliance, to convey a favour, or to grant a suit--that voice, which in a Siddons, or a Braham, rouses us, in a Syren Catalani charms and captivates us,--that the musical, expressive human voice should be converted into a rival of the noises of silly geese, and irrational venomous snakes!
I shall never forget the sounds on _my night_; I never before that time fully felt the reception which the Author of All Ill in the Paradise Lost meets with from the critics in the _pit_, at the final close of his Tragedy upon the Human Race--though that, alas! met with too much success--
----from innumerable tongues, A dismal universal _hiss_, the sound Of public scorn.--Dreadful was the din Of _hissing_ through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbœna dire, Cerastes horn'd, Hydrus, and Elops drear, And Dipsas.
For hall substitute theatre, and you have the very image of what takes place at what is called the _damnation_ of a piece,--and properly so called; for here you see its origin plainly, whence the custom was derived, and what the first piece was that so suffered. After this none can doubt the propriety of the appellation.
But, sir, as to the justice of bestowing such appalling, heart-withering denunciations of the popular obloquy, upon the venial mistake of a poor author, who thought to please us in the act of filling his pockets,--for the sum of his demerits amounts to no more than that,--it does, I own, seem to me a species of retributive justice, far too severe for the offence. A culprit in the pillory (bate the eggs) meets with no severer exprobation.
Indeed, I have often wondered that some modest critic has not proposed, that there should be a wooden machine to that effect erected in some convenient part of the proscenium, which an unsuccessful author should be required to mount, and stand his hour, exposed to the apples and oranges of the pit;--this amende honorable would well suit with the meanness of some authors, who in their prologues fairly prostrate their sculls to the Audience, and seem to invite a pelting.