ewers."

[17] According to Mr. Grego, L2,000.

CHAPTER III.

_MISCELLANEOUS CARICATURES AND SUBJECTS OF CARICATURE, 1812-1819._

1812. REBUILDING OF DRURY LANE THEATRE.

Drury Lane Theatre, which was burnt down in 1811, was rebuilt the
following year, and the committee, anxious to celebrate the opening by
an address of merit corresponding to the occasion, advertised in the
papers for such a composition. Theatrical addresses, however, as we all
know by reference to a recent occasion,[18] are not always up to the
mark; and whether the result of their appeal was unsatisfactory, or
whether--as appears not unlikely--they were appalled by the number of
competitors, which is said to have been upwards of one hundred, not one
was accepted, the advertisers preferring to seek the assistance of Lord
Byron, who wrote the actual address which was spoken at the opening on
the 10th of October, 1812. Among the competitors was a Dr. Busby, living
in Queen Anne Street, who apparently unable to realize the fact that
competent men could have the effrontery to reject his "monologue,"
refused to accept the verdict of the committee. A few evenings
afterwards, the audience and the company were electrified by an
unexpected sensation. Busby and his son sat in one of the stage boxes;
and the latter, to the amazement of the audience, stepped at the end of
the play from his box upon the stage, and began to recite his father's
nonsense, as follows:--

"When energizing objects men pursue,
What are the prodigies they cannot do?"

DR. BUSBY'S "MONOLOGUE."

The question remained unanswered; for Raymond, the stage manager,
walked at this moment upon the stage accompanied by a constable, and
gave the amateur performer into custody. It is said that his father, not
content with this failure, actually made an attempt to recite the
"monologue" from his box, until hissed and howled down by the half
laughing, half indignant audience. The circumstance is commemorated by
an admirable pictorial satire entitled, _A Buz in a Box, or the Poet in
a Pet_, published by S. W. Fores on the 21st of October, in which we see
the doctor gesticulating from his box, and imploring the audience to
listen to his "monologue." Young Busby, seated on his father's Pegasus
(an ass), quotes one of the verses of the absurd composition, while the
animal (after the manner of its kind) answers the hisses of the audience
by elevating its heels and uttering a cha