Our ingenuous and ingenious friend furthermore observed, that the
demolition of Drury Lane Theatre by fire, its reconstruction under
the auspices of the celebrated Mr. Whitbread, {2} the reward offered
by the Committee for an opening address, and the public recitation of
a poem composed expressly for the occasion by Lord Byron, one of the
most popular writers of the age, formed an extraordinary concurrence
of circumstances which could not fail to insure the success of the
Rejected Addresses, while it has subsequently served to fix them in
the memory of the public, so far at least as a poor immortality of
twenty years can be said to have effected that object. In fact,
continued our impartial and affectionate monitor, your little work
owes its present obscure existence entirely to the accidents that
have surrounded and embalmed it,--even as flies, and other worthless
insects, may long survive their natural date of extinction, if they
chance to be preserved in amber, or any similar substance.


The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare -
But wonder how the devil they got there!--POPE.


With the natural affection of parents for the offspring of their own
brains, we ventured to hint that some portion of our success might
perhaps be attributable to the manner in which the different
imitations were executed; but our worthy friend protested that his
sincere regard for us, as well as for the cause of truth, compelled
him to reject our claim, and to pronounce that, when once the idea
had been conceived, all the rest followed as a matter of course, and
might have been executed by any other hands not less felicitously
than by our own.