With this correspondence all communication between us ceased, beyond the frequent interchange of welcome, whenever I had the pleasure of meeting him behind the scenes of the thetre, until May, 1835, when I was favoured with the following letter, accompanying a presentation copy of his tragedy of Ion:

"MY DEAR SIR,

"2, Elm Court, Temple,
"May 2, 1835.

But I

"I take leave to request your acceptance of a drama, a few copies of which have been printed for private circulation only. As it has been written out of mere love of theatrical enjoyments, without any idea of its being acted, and with the consciousness that it is unfit for representation, you will not be bound by your managerial duties to read a word of it. cannot present it to my friends, for whose indulgent eyes alone it is adapted, without gratifying myself by sending a copy to you, from whom I have received so much unmerited civility. With my heartiest wishes that the cause of the Drama, to which I have always been devoted, may prosper under your auspices,

"I remain,

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"To Alfred Bunn, Esq."

My dear Sir,
"Yours very faithfully,

"T. N. TALfourd.

The reader is now in possession of the terms upon which Sergeant Talfourd and myself stood at the time of Mr. Macready's aggression; and, without enlarging upon it, I will content myself by observing that, according to his own showing, he had received, from me "much unmerited civility." Now let us see how he returned it-to my poor way of thinking, with "much unmerited incivility." We shall, however, see. It was but natural that, from the friendship subsisting between them, Sergeant Talfourd, in the capacity of either client or friend, would espouse the cause of Mr. Macready. To such a course neither surprise nor dissatisfaction could be expressed; but that it should be adopted at the expense of truth and propriety, both feelings were manifested by all acquainted with the circumstances. The action brought against Mr. Macready, in conse quence of the defendant suffering judgment to go by default, was tried in the Sheriff's Court, and was conducted, on my part, by Mr. Thessiger, one of the most eminent men at the

bar, who justly designated the assault as "an atrocious, unmanly, dastardly, and cowardly "-nay, "a most wanton and unprovoked attack.” The defence set up by Sergeant Talfourd, instead of being confined to a proper expression of regret, was a luminous, or (to use a pun of the late Mr. Sheridan) rather a voluminous display of justification, and personal abuse of the very man from whom he confessed to have received so "much unmerited civility." In stating that his client deplored “his haste, smarting under a sense of wrong, but that Mr. Bunn only thought of pounds, shillings, and pence in damages." Sergeant Talfourd stated that which was not fact; for it was very properly observed by Mr. Thessiger, that, "while Mr, Bunn, since the gross outrage having been committed upon him, had acted with the utmost temperance and caution, Mr. Macready and his friends of the press had taken every occasion to poison the public mind against Mr. Bunn,-no expression of sympathy for the sufferer had escaped the haughty lips of the tragedian; and his last act, in coming to the court to-day to hear the verdict of the jury, was not an act of feeling, or atonement for his wrongs, but through the mouth of his eloquent, esteemed, and learned friend, (Sergeant Talfourd,) perhaps to add insult to injury." It was impossible that the verdict could repay me, in a mere case of "pounds, shillings, and pence:" and had any other reparation been held out at the time, I should not have troubled myself at all about a verdict. The course I adopted was at the recommendation of some gentlemen of the highest abilities and most irreproachable characters to be found; and it would indeed have been the introduction of a new code of nature's laws, if a man were suffered to pass altogether unpunished for committing one of the most glaring acts of unmanly baseness. But the chief aim of Sergeant Talfourd, after a necessary attempt at the reduction of damages, was to puff up his client, as a Shaksperian actor, whose refulgent genius it had been attempted to eclipse by Mr. Bunn's poetry in the Maid of Artois. If this had been true, there would have been some reason for such disparagement, considering that the genius of "the Shaksperian actor was totally unequal to the task of attracting an audience that would meet (or any thing near it) the expenses of the establishment; while the said "poetry" was warbled by the exquisite tones of a real child of genius, who filled the theatre every night she performed. Pray let it not be supposed that I imagine my "poetry" had any thing to do with this-Malibran would have done the same with the "London Primer," and could have done no more with the sublimest of Shakspeare's verses.

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As to my own trifles, I unaffectedly assure any one who has ever had courage enough to wade through them, that I am as utterly reckless of the favourable reception they have on various occasions been favoured with, as I should be if they had been hissed from the stage. It would do the Sergeant no harm whatever if he thought as humbly (in proportion to the superiority I am willing to admit there is in his rhyme over mine own) of his compositions as I do of mine. But when this "learned pig said "Mr. Macready was shelved, that the words of the songs of the Maid of Artois should be given to the public. How polite, how modest is Mr. Bunn!-Mr. Bunn's poetry against Shakspeare's Richard the Third!”—This I will say, in reply, (and it is not saying much after all,) that the songs in question are quite as good as the performance (Macready's Richard the Third) in question. Sergeant Talfourd wound up his pretty specimen of forensic display by stating, that "Mr. Macready felt injured and insulted-he struck Mr. Bunn, a scuffle ensued, and GENIUS, right, and STRENGTH triumphed!" Can a more insolent piece of legal mendacity than this be imagined? One would think that the assault had been committed in a fair and open manner; that we had a fight to see who was the best man, and that Mr. Macready, being the strongest, TRIUMPHED! A person, for an imaginary injury, enters the room of another, and, the said room being in comparative darkness, half murders him; and yet there is to be found a limb of the law to designate such conduct as the triumph of RIGHT and STRENGTH!" What the unfortunate word "genius" had to do with the conflict, Heaven only knows, unless it was that order of genius which conceives and carries into execution the glories of the Newgate Calendar; but to assert that it was "right" to perpetrate the deed of a ruffian, and that it was "strength which defeated a man rendered powerless by a treacherous aggression, almost before he knew who was his aggressor, is surely the very acme of human impudence, deception, meanness, and folly. I did not expect any thing at Sergeant Talfourd's hands beyond common courtesy; but I certainly did not expect he would go out of the way to heap on me uncommon abuse. His speech was remarkable for a deficiency of reason, and a superabundance of frivolity; for a display of gross flattery, without discernment, towards the defendant, and for a profusion of personal rudeness, without an atom of sense, directed against the plaintiff. I have, on more occasions than one, been apprized of remarks that Mr. Sergeant Talfourd has been pleased to pass upon me, and I have been debarred, under a pledge, from taking any notice of them: but whenever he will do me the favour to make them in a more overt man

ner than his client acted towards me, I will endeavour, as overtly, to let him witness the triumph, at all events, of “RIGHT” and "STRENGTH." A latent object the learned Sergeant had in view, was to puff himself into greater notoriety than even the performance of his own "poetry” in the tragedy of Ion could then procure for him: at all events, to let the bar, through him, give a lift to the stage. Our jurisprudence, however, must be in a very questionable condition, when an advocate is obliged to resort to misrepresentation for the support of a bad cause, and can advance as truths a series of impertinences, which, if he were unprotected by the cloth of his calling, he would not venture, out of the precincts of Westminster Hall, to utter. Not only have I never given Sergeant Talfourd the slightest ground of offence, but I have on all occasions extended to him uncalledfor courtesies. I am not one of those who follow in the wake of this barrister's bleatings, because he forms one of a clique whose daily business of life it is to cry up themselves, and to cry down every other soul upon earth. The tragedies of Ion and the Athenian Captive bear the stamp of a high order of talent, but the admiration of the public has not kept pace with that of their author, who, Narcissus-like, will some day or other expire in the fountain of his own genius, absolutely out of self. love. And so much, at present, for "my learned friend,” Mr. Sergeant Talfourd.

There was but one light in which this affair was viewed by all classes of society laying any claim to respectability; and now that the intemperate feelings which led to it have probably subsided, Mr. Macready may be assured he never lost grade until that occurrence, and that his character received thereby a self inflicted wound, which will not easily be effaced. The attentions that were shown to me on the occasion by noblemen and gentlemen of the highest rank were alone sufficient to convince me that such was a general feeling; and though it would ill become me to go through the ostentatious ceremony of displaying their names, yet the kindness which led them to evince towards me such regard has left an imperishable impress on my memory.

ILLNESS AND RECOVERY.

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CHAPTER XV.

Illness and recovery-Production of the Maid of Artois-Criticism on Madame Malibran-Brilliant result of drinking a pint of porter-Ingenious mode of supplying it-Receipts to the performance of "Shakspeare's representative" pitted against the receipts to Madame Malibran-Average of the monies taken during her respective visits to England-Cooper's speech-Advertisement for a tenant-Benefits, or otherwise, of an Act of Parliament-The late and present lessee of Drury Lane-Elliston, and the late Mr. Calcraft, M.P.—The worth of a patent, and the number of claimants upon it—A “feast of reason and a flow of soul" at the "Piazza"-A speech, and an advertisement extraordinary.

HOWEVER troublesome and tedious the progress of recovery from so sudden an attack on a frame by no means so thin and genteel as it was wont to be, the delay it occasioned in the production of the new opera for Madame Malibran was a much more important affair. I could not entrust that production to any other, (and above all to another "learned friend," Mr. Cooper, then the stage manager,) because, as author and manager, the entire preparation had devolved upon me, and it would have taken me more time, even had my condition admitted of it, to have instilled my crude notions into the noddle of another, than it did in the first instance to devise them. It should be borne in mind that Madame Malibran could not remain in England beyond a given time, and that if even she could, the London season was waning fast apace. There were but two characters, La Sonnambula and Fidelio, in which she was prepared; and although their attraction was but slightly abated, every repetition of either tended to abate it the more. It would have been no difficult task to have proved "special damages," as will be presently shown; and if I had been only thinking, as Mr. Sergeant Talfourd observed, "of pounds, shillings, and pence," assuredly I should have gone for them-but I was only thinking how soon I could get on the Drury Lane stage. I went there upon crutches to attend the last six re hearsals of the Maid of Artois, which was eventually represent