applause.  They expended their ammunition at the commencement of the struggle, and when they were, so to say, out of range.  It was one of Monsieur Auguste’s principles of action that public opinion should never be outraged or affronted; it might be led and encouraged, but there should be no attempt to drive it.  “Above all things, respect the public,” he said to his subordinates.  Nothing so much stimulates the disapprobation of the unbiassed as extravagant applause.  Reaction certainly ensues; men begin to hiss by way of self-assertion, and out of self-respect.  They resent an attempt to coerce their opinion, and to compel a favourable verdict in spite of themselves.  The attempt to encore the prologue to “Mr. H.” was most unwise.  It was a strong prologue, but the play was weak.  The former might have been left to the good sense of the general public; it was the latter that especially demanded the watchful support of the author’s friends.  The infirm need crutches, not the robust.  The playbills announced, “The new farce of ‘Mr. H.,’ performed for the first time last night, was received by an overflowing audience with universal applause, and will be repeated for the second time to-morrow.”  Such are playbills.  “Mr. H.” never that morrow saw. “’Tis withdrawn, and there’s an end of it,” wrote Lamb to Wordsworth.

Hissing is no doubt a dreadful sound—­a word of fear unpleasing to the ear of both playwright and player.  For there is no revoking, no arguing down, no remedying a hiss; it has simply to be endured.  Playgoers have a giant’s strength in this respect; but it must be said for them, that of late years at any rate, they have rarely used it tyrannously, like a giant.  Of all the dramatists, perhaps Fielding treated hissing with the greatest indifference.  In 1743, his comedy of “The Wedding Day” was produced.  Garrick had in vain implored him to suppress a scene which he urged would certainly endanger the success of the piece.  “If the scene is not a good one, let them find it out,” said Fielding.  As had been foreseen, an uproar ensued in the theatre.  The actor hastened to the green-room, where the author was cheering his spirits with a bottle of champagne.  Surveying Garrick’s rueful countenance, Fielding inquired:  “What’s the matter?  Are they hissing me now?” “Yes, the very passage I wanted you to retrench.  I knew it wouldn’t do.  And they’ve so horribly frightened me I shall not be right again the whole night.”  “Oh,” cried the author, “I did not give them credit for it.  So they have found it out, have they?” Upon the failure of his farce of “Eurydice,” he produced an occasional piece entitled “Eurydice Hissed,” in which Mrs. Charke, the daughter of Colley Cibber, sustained the part of Pillage, a dramatic author.  Pillage is about to produce a new play, and one of his friends volunteers to “clap every good thing till I bring the house down.”  “That won’t do,” Pillage sagaciously replies; “the town of its own accord will applaud what they like; you must stand by me when they dislike.  I don’t desire any of you to clap unless when you hear a hiss.  Let that be your cue for clapping.”  Later in the play three gentlemen enter, and in Shakespearean fashion discuss in blank verse the fate of Pillage’s production.