* Another link in the dramatic chain is broken. Arthur Griffinhoof has joined the jocund spirits of Garrick, Hoadly, and the elder George.
Rejoice, ye witlings! for the lamp that dimmed your little farthing rushlights, Death, the universal extinguisher, has eclipsed for ever! Retailers of small talk, who fattened on the unctuous crumbs of conceit that fell from the merry man's table, make the most of your legacy: your master hath carried his Broad Grins to Elysium. Ye select few, who admired the wit and loved the man, mourn!
Thanks to the ghastly monarch! for he hath been a forbearing creditor:--So large an amount of fun payable at sight, and George a septuagenarian! Three days' grace--three score and ten!
A day of mirth will it be on Styx, when the ferryman rows over Mr. Merryman. Faith, Mr. Colman, you're a very droll man!
What a coil attends the new comer! Churchill, Lloyd, Thornton, Garrick, all inquiring about the modern Dram. Pers.--"Ye jovial goblins," quoth George, "a Dram, per se!"
Whereupon Sam--not the lexicographer--marching forth his wooden leg, accepts, with an approving chuckle, the pun as Foote-ing, or garnish; they are hail spirit well met, and become as merry as ghosts.
Life's a Jest; and a merrier one than thine, facetious George, Time shall not crack till the crack of doom.
The stalls (the cart-horses having been temporally ejected) sparkled with the elite--sixpenny-worth of coppers being paid for sitting apart in aristocratical exclusiveness. My declamation might have electrified Gog and Magog, and made the Men in Armour start from their spears! The barn rang with applause, my success was triumphant, and my fate decided.
"I next joined Mr. Dunderhead, the Dunstable manager, on whose boards I had the supreme felicity of beholding, for the first time, the Tum-bletuzzy. She danced with the castanets (le Pantomime de Vamour); my heart beat to her fairy footsteps; the long sixes capered before my eyes, my pulse thumped a hundred and twenty per minute--I wooed, and had well nigh won her--when our Harlequin, a ci-devant, ubiquitous, iniquitous barber, all but dashed the nectared cup from my lip. I did not horsewhip him, 'for that were poor revenge,'--no! I shewed him up on my benefit night in a patter song."