“I remember, too acutely for my peace, the deadly extinguisher which he put upon my friend G.’s ‘Antonio’ G., satiate with visions of political justice, (possibly not to be realized in our time,) or willing to let the skeptical worldlings see that his anticipations of the future did not preclude a warm sympathy for men as they are and have been, wrote a tragedy.  He chose a story, affecting, romantic, Spanish,—­the plot simple, without being naked,—­the incidents uncommon, without being overstrained.  Antonio, who gives the name to the piece, is a sensitive young Castilian, who, in a fit of his country honor, immolates his sister—­

“But I must not anticipate the catastrophe.  The play, reader, is extant in choice English, and you will employ a spare half-crown not injudiciously in the quest of it.

“The conception was bold, and the denouement—­the time and place in which the hero of it existed considered—­not much out of keeping; yet it must be confessed that it required a delicacy of handling, both from the author and the performer, so as not much to shock the prejudices of a modern English audience.  G., in my opinion, had done his part.  John, who was in familiar habits with the philosopher, had undertaken to play Antonio.  Great expectations were formed.  A philosopher’s first play was a new era.  The night arrived.  I was favored with a seat in an advantageous box, between the author and his friend M.G. sat cheerful and confident.  In his friend M.’s looks, who had perused the manuscript, I read some terror.  Antonio, in the person of John Philip Kemble, at length appeared, starched out in a ruff which no one could dispute, and in most irreproachable mustachios.  John always dressed most provokingly correct on these occasions.  The first act swept by, solemn and silent.  It went off, as G. assured M., exactly as the opening act of a piece—­the protasis—­should do.  The cue of the spectators was to be mute.  The characters were but in their introduction.  The passions and the incidents would be developed hereafter.  Applause hitherto would be impertinent.  Silent attention was the effect all-desirable.  Poor M. acquiesced,—­but in his honest, friendly face I could discern a working which told how much more acceptable the plaudit of a single hand (however misplaced) would have been than all this reasoning.  The second act (as in duty bound) rose a little in interest; but still John kept his forces under,—­in policy, as G. would have it,—­and the audience were most complacently attentive.  The protasis, in fact, was scarcely unfolded.  The interest would warm in the next act, against which a special incident was provided.  M. wiped his cheek, flushed with a friendly perspiration,—­’tis M.’s way of showing his zeal,—­’from every pore of him a perfume falls.’  I honor it above Alexander’s.  He had once or twice during this act joined his palms in a feeble endeavor to elicit a sound; they emitted a solitary noise without