* "This Ethiopian savage has a black face, with a large white circle round it. He sits in a chair in a very pleasing and majestic attitude; eats his food like a Christian, and is extremely affable and polite."
** These dogs danced an allemand, mimicked a lady spinning, and a deserter going to execution, attended by a chaplain, (a dressed-up puppy!) in canonicals.
*** "June 17, 1785, at Astley's, General Jacko performs the broad-sword exercise; dances on the tight-rope; balances a i pyramid of lights; and lights his master home with a link."
In the following September the General opened his campaign at Bartholomew Fair.
**** Were you to range the mighty globe all o'er, From east to west, from north to southern shore; Under the line of torrid zone to go,-- No deserts, woods, groves, mountains, more can shew To you, than Pidcock in his forest small-- Here, at one view, you have a sight of all."
We chronicle not the gods, emperors, dark bottle-green demons, and indigo-blue nondescripts that have since strutted their hour upon the boards of "Richardson's Grand Theatrical Booth." * They, like every dog, have had their day; and comical dogs were most of them!
Of the modern minstrelsy of the "Rounds," the lyrics of Mr. Johannot, Joe Grimaldi, and the very merry hey down derry, "Neighbour Prig" song of Charles Mathews, ** are amusing specimens.
* In Sept. 1806, Mr. and Mrs. Carey (the reputed father and mother of Edmund Kean, the tragedian,) played at Richardson's Theatre, Bartholomew Fair, the Baron Montaldi and his daughter, in a gallimaufry of love, murder, brimstone, and blue fire, called "The Monk and Murderer, or the Skeleton Spectre!"
** Mathews was the Hogarth of the stage; his characters are as finely discriminated, as vigorously drawn, as highly finished, and as true to nature, as those of the great painter of mankind. His perception of the eccentric and outré was intuitive;--his range of observation comprehended human nature in all its varieties; he caught not only the manner, but the matter of his originals; and while he hit off with admirable exactness the peculiarities of individuals, their very turn of thought and modes of expression were given with equal truth. In this respect he surpassed Foote, whose mimicry seldom went beyond personal deformities and physical defects,--a blinking eye, a lame leg, or a stutter. He was a satirist of the first class, without being a caricaturist; exhibiting folly in all its Protean shapes, and laughing it out of countenance,--a histrionic Democritus! His gallery of faces was immense. He had as many physiognomies as Argus had eyes. The extraordinary and the odd, the shrewd expression of knavish impudence, the rosy contentedness of repletion, the vulgar stare of boorish ignorance, and the blank fatuity of idiocy, he called up with a flexibility that had not been witnessed since the days of Garrick. Many of his most admired portraits were creations of his own: the old Scotchwoman, the Idiot playing with a Fly, Major Longbow, &c. &c. The designs for his "At Homes" were from the same source; meaner artists filled in the back-ground, but the figures stood forth in full relief, the handiwork of their unrivalled impersonator. Who but remembers his narration of the story of the Gamester, his Monsieur Mallét, and particular parts of Monsieur Morbleu?--Nothing could be more delightful than his representation of the "pauvre barbiere had the air, the bienséance of the Chevalier, who had danced a minuet at the "Cour de Versailles" His petit chanson, "C'est V Amour!" and his accompanying capers, were exquisitely French. His transitions from gaiety to sadness--from restlessness to civility--his patient and impatient shrugs, were admirably given.