They are "here, there, and every where," and the baboon
monopolists of Exeter 'Change and the Tower are ruined by the
importation:--a free trade in the article with the patentees of our
classic theatres, as the purchasing-merchants, has done the business for
Mr. Cross and the beef-eaters. Like the Athenian audience, the "thinking
people" of England are more pleased with the mimic than the real voice
of nature; and the four-footed puggys of the Brazils, like the true pig
of the Grecian, are cast in the shade by their reasoning imitator!
In short, not to be prosy on a subject which has awakened poetry and
passion in all, hear, as the grave-diggers say, "the truth on't."{13}
When winter triumph'd o'er the summer's flame,
And C. G. opened, Punchinello came;
Each odd grimace of monkey-art he drew,
Exhausted postures and imagined new:
The stage beheld him spurn its bounded reign,
And frighten'd fiddlers scraped to him in vain;
His seven-leagued leaps so well the fashion fit,
That all adore him--boxes, gallery, pit,{14}
13 It is suspicious, to say the least of it, this excess of
praise to an old representation; for, after all, punch, the
original punch, punch in the street, though not so loud, is
ten times more to "our manner born," and much more original.
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