dramatist whose “Gustavus Vasa” had no great deal to recommend it, perhaps, beyond the fact of its performance having been prohibited.  Yet some few years since, it may be noted, the late Charles Kingsley made endeavours, more strenuous than successful, to obtain applause for Brooke’s novel, “The Fool of Quality;” but although a new and handsome edition of this work was published, it was received with some apathy by the romance-reading public.

The author of “The Seasons” hardly seems a writer likely to give offence designedly to a Chamberlain.  But Thomson was a sort of Poet Laureate to Frederick, Prince of Wales, then carrying on fierce opposition to the court of his father, and the play of “Edward and Eleonora”—­a dramatic setting of the old legend of Queen Eleanor sucking the poison from her husband’s arm—­certainly contained passages applicable to the differences existing between the king and his heir-apparent.  In the first scene, one of the characters demands—­

    Has not the royal heir a juster claim
    To share his father’s inmost heart and counsels,
    Than aliens to his interest, those who make
    A property, a market of his honour?

And King Edward apostrophises his dead sire—­

    O my deluded father! little joy
    Hadst thou in life, led from thy real good
    And genuine glory, from thy people’s love,
    The noblest aim of kings, by smiling traitors!

In 1775, however, the play was produced at Covent Garden.  George III. was king, and the allusions to the squabbles of his father and grandfather were not, perhaps, supposed to be any longer of the remotest concern or significance to anybody.

At this time and long afterwards, the Licenser regarded it as his chief duty to protect the court against all possibility of attack from the stage.  With the morality of plays he did not meddle much; but he still clung to the old superstition that the British drama had only a right to exist as the pastime of royalty; plays and players were still to be subservient to the pleasure of the sovereign.  The British public, who, after all, really supported the stage, he declined to consider in the matter; conceding, however, that they were at liberty to be amused at the theatre, provided they could achieve that end in strict accordance with the prescription of the court and its Chamberlain.  In George III.’s time King Lear was prohibited, because it was judged inexpedient that royal insanity should be exhibited upon the stage.  In 1808 a play, called “The Wanderer,” adapted from Kotzebue, was forbidden at Covent Garden, in that it dealt with the adventures of Prince Charles Edward, the Pretender.  Even after the accession of Queen Victoria, a license was refused to an English version of Victor Hugo’s “Ruy Blas,” lest playgoers should perceive in it allusions to the matrimonial choice her Majesty was then about to make.