At the conclusion of this fresh specimen of our chairman's original
talent, it was proposed we should adjourn to the theatre, where certain
fashionable amateurs were amusing themselves at the expense of the
public. "Sir, I dislike these half and half vagabonds," said Blackstrap,
with one of his original gestures, "who play with an author before the
public, that they may the more easily play with an actress in private.
Yon coxcomb, for instance, who buffoons Brutus, with his brothers, are
indeed capital brutes by nature, but as deficient of the art histrionic
as any biped animals well can be. I remember a very clever artist
exhibiting a picture of the colonel and his mother's son, Augustus, with
a Captain Austin, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy for the year
1823, in the characters of Brutus, Marc Antony, and Julius Caesar, which
caused more fun than anything else in the collection, and produced more
puns among the cognoscenti than any previous work of art ever gave
rise to. The Romans were such rum ones--Brutus was a black down-looking
biped, with gray whiskers, and a growl upon his lip; Marc Antony,
without the remotest mark of the ancient hero about him; and
~266~~Cassius looked as if he had been cashiered by the commander of
some strolling company of itinerants for one, whose placid face could
neither move to woe, nor yield grimace; and yet they were all accounted
excellent likenesses, perfect originals, like Wombwell's bonassus, only
not quite so natural.
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