with the author of “Captain Rock,” and engaged in seditious designs against the peace and Protestantism of Ireland!  Some five years later, it may be noted, “Alasco” was played at the Surrey Theatre, without the slightest regard for the opinion of the Examiner of Plays, or with any change in the passages he had ordered to be expunged.  Westminster was not then very well informed as to what happened in Lambeth, and probably it was not generally known that “Alasco,” with all its supposed seditious utterances unsilenced, could be witnessed upon the Surrey stage.  Nor is there any record that anybody was at all the worse, or the treasury of the theatre any the better, for the representation of the forbidden tragedy.

The Examiner of Plays at this time was George Colman the younger, who was appointed to the office, less on account of the distinction he enjoyed as a dramatist, than because he was a favourite and a sort of boon companion of George IV.  Colman had succeeded a Mr. Larpent, who had filled the post for some twenty years, and who, notwithstanding that, as a strict Methodist, he scarcely seemed a very fit person to pronounce judgment upon stage plays, had exercised the powers entrusted to him with moderation.  It was generally agreed that he was a considerate and benignant ruler, and that his career as Examiner offered few occasions for remark, although upon its close some surprise was excited at the exposure for sale by public auction of the many manuscripts of plays, &c., which were found in his possession, and which should certainly have been preserved among the archives of the Chamberlain’s office.  Colman, however, proved a very tyrant—­a consummate Jack-in-office.  As a gentleman of rather unbridled habits of life, and the author of “Broad Grins” and other works certainly paying small heed to the respectabilities, it had been hoped that he would deal leniently with his brother playwrights.  But he carried to fanatic extravagance his devotion to the purity of the stage.  Warned by earlier example, few dramas which could possibly be considered of a political complexion were now submitted for examination.  Still the diction of the stage demanded a measure of liberty.  But Mr. Colman would not allow a lover to describe his mistress as “an angel.”  He avowed that “an angel was a character in Scripture, and not to be profaned on the stage by being applied to a woman!” The exclamation, “Oh, Providence!” was not permitted.  The words “heaven” and “hell” he uniformly expunged.  “Oh, lud!” and “Oh, la!” were condemned for irreverence.  Oaths and all violent expletives were strictly prohibited.