_Cecilia._ Your countenance grows animated, my dear madam.
_Matilda._ And yours is glowing with illumination.
_Cecilia._ I had long been looking out for a congenial spirit! My heart was withered, but the beams of yours have rekindled it.
_Matilda._ A sudden thought strikes me: let us swear an eternal friendship.
_Cecilia._ Let us agree to live together!
"The Rovers," however, would hardly come within the scope of the present volume, were it not that, in 1811, at the Haymarket, there was produced, by Colman junior, a piece called "The Quadrupeds of Quedlinburgh, or the Rovers of Weimar," in which the adapter made use of the squib in _The Anti-Jacobin_. Colman's aim in this work was to ridicule not only the German plays, including Kotzebue's "Spaniards in Peru" ("Pizarro"), which had lately been brought before the English playgoer, but also the prevailing fancy for bringing animals upon the stage. At Astley's horses had figured both in "Blue Beard" and in "Timour the Tartar," and dogs had previously been seen in "The Caravan." To this, as well as to the unhealthy importations from Germany, allusion was made in the prologue:--
To lull the soul by spurious strokes of art, To warp the genius and mislead the heart, To make mankind revere wives gone astray,
Love pious sons who rob on the highway, For this the foreign muses trod our stage, Commanding German schools to be the rage.... Your taste, recovered half from foreign quacks, Takes airings now on English horses' backs; While every modern bard may raise his name, If not on lasting praise, on stable fame.
"The Quadrupeds of Quedlinburgh" was not printed, and one does not know to what extent Colman took advantage of the text of "The Rovers." It is certain, however, that Casimere, Matilda, and Cecilia, as well as Rogero (a creation of the original parodists), all appeared in the burlesque, being enacted respectively by Munden, Mrs. Glover, Mrs. Gibbs, and Liston, Elliston taking the _rôle_ of Bartholomew Bathos, a lineal descendant (no doubt) of Bayes and Puff. We read that, in addition to the travestie supplied by _The Anti-Jacobin_, fun was poked at the sentimental sentinel in "Pizarro," and the last scene of "Timour the Tartar" was closely imitated. The piece was acted thirty-nine times, and must therefore have been what, in those days, was accounted a success.