READE'S PEG WOPFIN GTON. * AGES upon ages have been laughing

at Esop's fable of the player, the peasant, and the pig ; yet in spite of such high authority, we incline to take part with the Grecian audience. No doubt, many of the citizens might have been ignorant of a pig's inarticulation, and applauded a conventional squeak while they hissed the real. Every one, however, who has given attention to the subject, must have observed that there is in single bits, as it were, of nature, (for it is only a trained observation that sees nature even on a large scale,) something weak, and generally something narrow, un- finished, and slovenly. The mime's squeak, after all, might have been better and broader, more finishes; more universal, than the individual pig produced under an unnatural pinch : so that the player's reputation perished and the audience were taken in by an experiment which was rather specious than just.

There is such a thing as being too natural for purposes of art : and it is of no use to say that art was not intended in poetry and fiction, since whatever passes beyond accurate account comes within the scope of art, though it is easy enough to let it sink be- low by failure. Mr. Reade's animated, keen, and clever sketch of theatrical people, and a certain kind of town life some century ago, falls under the category just mentioned, and is too natural, at least too like the reality. This does not diminish the pleasurable effect upon readers whose understandings can follow the author ; but it removes Peg Wojfington from that class of stories which improve and elevate the mind, by removing from nature that which is low and raising that which is selected for treatment.

The story of Mr. Reade is in part that of the "Masks and Faces," lately produced at the Haymarket Theatre. A married country squire comes up from Shropshire on business, and is detained much longer than is necessary by his admiration of Peg Woffington, the celebrated actress. A fact like this may be true enough as it respects the theatrical world of yore, and well adapted to introduce sketches of the living celebrities of the time: yet the truer this is done to the life, the more questionable the effect in a proper view of art, however cleverly the whole may be stripped of grossness; while the pettinesses, the jealousies, the received loose lives of the lady players, rather lower the tone of the reader's mind from what we are accustomed to in modern fiction. The attempt at impressing an ethical lesson does not redeem the tale from the peculiarity we speak of; for one portion of the moral is obvious, and the other partakes too much of the playwright, if not of the player notion of "good feeling." When these considerations are waived, the book may be recom- mended as an animated and lifelike sketch of theatrical character and customs, enriched by considerable knowledge of the history of the stage, as well as by original reflection on that knowledge, and a power of sufficiently vivifying the past. Mr. Reade has also a knowledge of the town fine gentleman of the last century, and presents him sobered down to the ideas of the present day, without losing his distinctive traits. We have all known some- thing of the Continental art-novels ; Mr. Reade's Peg Woffington is a capital green-room novel.

Its manner will be best judged of by a specimen. The follow- ing is Vane's first introduction to Mrs. Woffington's presence. -Vane has met at the theatre a fine gentleman acquaintance, Sir Charles Pomander, who carries him bend the scenes.

" Silence gives consent, and Mr. Vane, though he thought a great deal, said nothing; so Pomander rose, and they left the boxes together. He led the way to the stage-door, which was opened obsequiously to him ; they then passed through a dismal passage, and suddenly emerged upon that scene of enchantment the stage ; a dirty platform, encumbered on all sides with piles of scenery in fiats. They threaded their way through rusty velvet actors and fustian carpenters, and entered the green-room. At the door of this ma- gic chamber Vane trembled, and half wished he could retire. They entered : his apprehension gave way to disappointment ; she was not there. Collecting himself, he was presently introduced to a smart, jaunty, and to do him jus- tice, distingue old beau. This was Colley Cibber, Esq., poet laureate, and

retired actor and dramatist. • "Mr. Cibber was now in private life, a mild edition of his own Lord Fop- pington ; he had none of the snob-fop as represented on our conventional stage ; nobody ever had, and lived. He was in tolerably good taste ; but he went ever gold-laced, highly-powdered, scented, and diamonded, dispensing graceful bows, praises of whoever had the good luck to be dead, and satire of all who were here to enjoy it. "Mr. Vane, to whom the drama had now become the golden branch of

• Peg Woffington : a Novel. By Charles Reade. Published by Bentley.

letters, looked with some awe on this veteran, for he had seen many Wof- fingtons. He fell soon upon the subject nearest his heart. He asked Mr.

Cibber what he thought of Mrs. Woffington. The old in thought well of the young lady's talent, especially her comedy; in tragedy, said he, she imitates Mademoiselle Dumesnil, of the Thane Francais, and confounds the stage rhetorician with the actress. The next question was not so fortu- nate. Did you ever see so great and true an actress upon the whole ?' "Mr. Cibber opened his eyes, a slight flush came into his wash-leather face and he replied—' I have not only seen many equal, many superior to her; but I have seen some half-dozen who would have eaten her up and spit her out again, and not known they had done anything out of the way.'

"Here Pomander soothed the veteran's dudgeon by explaining in dulcet tones that his friend was not long from Shropshire; and—the critic inter- rupted him, and bade him not dilute the excuse. "Now, Mr. Vane had as much to say as either of them ; but he had not the habit, which dramatic folks have of carrying his whole bank in his cheek-pocket ; so they quenched him for two minutes. But lovers are not Si- lenced; he soon returned to the attack ; he dwelt on the grace, the ease, the freshness, the intelligence, the universal beauty of Mrs. Woffington. Pomander sneered, to draw him out. Cibber smiled, with goodnatured superiority. This nettled the young gentleman ; he fired up, his handsome countenance glowed, he turned Demosthenes for her he loved. One ad- vantage he had over both Cibber and Pomander, a fair stock of classical learning ; on this he now drew.

"Other actors and actresses,' said he, are monotonous in voice, mono- tonous in action ; but Mrs. Woffington's delivery has the compass and variety of nature, and her movements are free from the stale uniformity that distin- guishes artifice from art. The others seem to me to have but two dreams of grace; a sort of crawling on stilts is their motion, and an angular stiffness their repose.' He then cited the most famous statues of antiquity, and quoted situations in plays, whereby .her fine dramatic instinct Ma. Wof- fington, he said, threw her person into postures similar to these and of equal beauty: not that she strikes attitudes like the rest, but she melts from one beautiful statue into another ; and if sculptors could gather from her immortal graces, painters too might take from her face the beauties that belong of right to passion and thought, and orators might revive their wi- thered art, and learn from those golden lips the music of old Athens, that quelled tempestuous mobs and princes drunk with victory. "Much as this was, he was going to say more, ever so much morel but he became conscious of a singular sort of grin upon every face : this grin made him turn rapidly round to look for its cause. It explained itself at once : at his very elbow was a lady, whom his heart recognized, though her back was turned to him. She was dressed in a rich silk gown, pearl white, with flowers and sprigs embroidered; her beautiful white neck and arms were bare. She was sweeping up the room with the epilogue in her hand, learning it off by heart; at the other end of the room she turned, and now she shone full upon

him. • • *

"It seemed to him, as she swept up and down, as if the green-room was a shell, and this glorious creature must burst it and be free. Meantime the others saw a pretty actress studying her business ; and Cibber saw a drama- tic school-girl learning what he presumed to be a very silly set of words. Sir C. Pomander's eye had been on her the moment she entered, and he watched keenly the effect of Vane's eloquent eulogy; but, apparently, the actress was too deep in her epilogue for anything else. She came in, saying 'Mum mum, mum,' over her task, and she went on doing so. The expe- rienced Mr. Cibber, who had divined Vane in an instant, drew him into a corner, and complimented him on his well-timed eulogy. "You acted that mighty well, sir,' said he. 'Stop my vitals ! if I did not think you were in earnest, till I saw the jade had shpped in among Us. It told, sir—it told.'

"Up fired Vane. What do you mean, sir ?' said he. 'Do you suppose my admiration of that lady is feigned ?'

"'No need to speak so loud, sir,' replied the old gentleman ; she hears you. These hussies have ears like hawks.' " lie then dispensed a private wink and a public bow ; with which he strolled away. from Mr. Vane, and walked feebly and jauntily up the room, whistling Fair Hebe ' ; fixing his eye upon the past, and somewhat ostenta- tiously overlooking the existence of the present company."

The true denouement consists in Mrs. Vane's sudden arrival from the country, and her appearance at a grand dinner-party which Vane is giving to Pomander, the players, and a couple of critics, with Mrs. Woffington by his side ; none of the party knowing he is a married man, except Pomander, who, together with the reader, has just found it out by accident. The author, however, drags on the story for a long time before he winds up ; and nobody can com- plain of this part being too natural. On the contrary, the recon- ciliation by means of Peg exhibits all and more than all the forced and improbable incidents and effects by which the wildest comedy of adventure was wont to be closed.