Jean Baptiste Louis Gresset wrote a lively poem called Vert - vert,
which every educated Frenchman knows almost by heart. The poem furnished a hint for a less lively vaudeville of the same name, known to Londoners through the medium of a version called The Pet of the Petticoats. The vaudeville has supplied the plot of a dull ballet, (also named after the poem,) recently produced at Paris, and more recently at Drury Lane : and. thus we have a pretty complete scale, with Gresset and brilliancy at one end and Terpsichore and dulness at the other. A ballet in which there is a great deal more acting than dancing is not at all to the English taste ; and this, in spite of the merits of Mademoiselle Plunkett and Made- moiselle de Vecchi, is preeminently the case with Pert-vent. In Paris, we understand, a scene, where the dormitory of the maids of honour is besieged by the pages of Louis Quinze, was represented in a manner somewhat licentious, and thereby acquired a sort of disreputable popu- larity. In London, the scene is perfectly proper—and perfectly inef- fective.
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