THE CRITIC; OR, A TRAGEDY HEARSED.
Lawyers should teach justice, and Priests should teach kindness. Yet to be between the two (we are going to speak of our contemporary the Critic, who is affiché between the Law Times and the Clerical Journal, at a big house in the Strand) does not always induce either justice or charity. Theatrical “notices” are often curious things, comprehensible only by those who know why one author is “let down easy,” and another fustigated: why a long piece at one theatre is briefly dismissed, and a short one at another treated at vast and complimentary length; and why a failure occurring at one house is plainly told, and delicately left to inference if occurring at another. Human nature solves those problems, if one has the key. But why a piece that has not been produced should be stated to have come out, and been a failure, we do not know. Nevertheless, such was the statement of the Critic in regard to the Lyceum version of the Tale of Two Cities. The work was not produced until Monday, the 30th, but on the preceding Saturday the Critic recorded its production, and failure. This curious circumstance we cannot explain. Nor is much more light thrown upon it the statement of a gentleman who was the theatrical critic to the Critic. He says that he wrote to the Office of the journal that “the Tale of Two Cities had failed him,” (meaning that it had not come out) “and therefore he had nothing to write about.” But the Editor, it seems, preferred to write what appeared. Would it be taking too great a liberty to ask his reasons? We make the request for them as respectfully as Sancho’s – “Why did your ladyship come by land from the place, seeing that it is an island?” Why did your Editorship say that the piece had come out and failed, when it had not even come out? May we hear?
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