The newspapers have always given an absurd importance to the
private and most trivial actions of players. One journal records their movements with the precision of the Court Circular ; others insert their most foolish speeches, as if they were extracts from a jest- book. A specimen of this folly has just appeared in the daily journals.
" Jack Bannister visited the Haymarket Theatre on Wednesday, and made in the free-list book the following entry :—` Fifty years ago, in the year 1778, I made my first appearance at this Theatre. :Half a century is not had. Hurra!! John Bannister.' "
We see nothing either in the nature or manner of this entry in the free-list book which entitles it to the honours of public perusal and universal circulation. But Bannister was a player, and that is enough. It' an ancient haberdasher had entered a shop in Fleet- street, and bought a paper of socks, recording in the clay-book, by favour of a young apprentice who permitted him the use of a pen and ink, that fifty years ago he had himself set up business in the same shop, we presume the public would not have heard of the transaction. •
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