DRURY ,LA.NE.
THE Lord of the Manor has been this week revived ; partly in honour of its ancient songs, sacred to the memory of our grand- mothers, and partly, we suppose, to give the new -Mr. JONES an opportunity-of doing justice to the exquisite of the piece, Young Contrast. Until the arrival of Mr. JONES from Edinburgh, and after the departure of our old favourite, -his namesake, from the boards of Drury, there did not remain a single actor capable of in- fusing its proper and peculiar spirit into this character. There was no one whose figure, manner, dress, or talent, could render it even endurable. Even the JONES of London celebrity hardly hit our notion of it ; he was-too vivacious, too active, too- mercurial, for the part; -his voice was too loud, and his enunciation had a precision and a decision in it, inconsistent with the utter effeminacy and indifference of the Young Contrast of BURGOYNE. We desi- derate, in the character, a fragility, a delicacy, and an extreme affectation of nicety, but no brilliant bustle or dashing extrava- gance. The only point on which. Young Contrast can condescend to make an effort, is in the appropriate selection of his oaths,—and they are of an exceeding refinement ; • the only matter of life in which he is energetic, is in the prosecution of poachers,—and that not because he has a manly love of sport, but because shoot- ing is too aristocratic a pleasure for persons beneath the de- gree of a gentleman. -This outline was exceedingly well filled up by Mr. JONES; in fact, he left nothing to be desired. His form is as slender as is compatible with grace; his dress is extremely studied, and with a considerable knowledge of effeet ; and his air was that precise mixture of impudence and exquisiteness, of indifference joined with a certain sly taste of humour and enjoyment in his folly, which exactly characterize tte BRUMNIEL of his day. When he is rudely laid hold of by the re- cruiters, and ultimately fails into the hands of Moll Flagon, his imbecility and distress are as laughably piteous as the extrava- gance of his refinement and the preposterousness of his impudence had been laughably absurd: a beau in misery is a proverbial hard case, and assuredly no dandy covered with a shower of mud, or just after being dragged through admrse-pond, ever looked so humorously deplorable as did JoNEs when, under the discipline of the respectable Mrs. Flagon, and pushed in before his father, the justice (FARREN), as a deserter. There is a plaintiveness in Mr. JONES'S drollery, which is irresistibly laughable, while it is fortunately counteracted by a certain gentlemanliness of flguie and air, that saves his part from contempt; and this, we presume, is precisely what the author meant. With the exception of FARREN, who played Old Contrast, there was no other part in the piece even tolerably acted. Mrs. WOOD, indeed, threw some good-nature into hers ; and in consideration of her delicious voice, we were glad to take the will for the deed, and, simply to hear her, would have been content with much worse acting. In the- afierpiece, she played Clari, and better supplied. he place of Miss M. TREE than anybody. else could.
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