he ought to represent.

The history of a people is often detected in their popular amusements;
one of these Italian Pantomimic characters shows this. They had a
_Capitan_, who probably originated in the _Miles gloriosus_ of Plautus;
a brother, at least, of our Ancient Pistol and Bobadil. The ludicrous
names of this military poltroon were Spavento (Horrid fright),
Spezza-fer (Shiver-spear), and a tremendous recreant was Captain
Spavento de Val inferno. When Charles V. entered Italy, a Spanish
Captain was introduced; a dreadful man he was too, if we are to be
frightened by names: Sangre e Fuego! and Matamoro! His business was to
deal in Spanish rhodomontades, to kick out the native Italian Capitan,
in compliment to the Spaniards, and then to take a quiet caning from
Harlequin, in compliment to themselves. When the Spaniards lost their
influence in Italy, the Spanish Captain was turned into Scaramouch, who
still wore the Spanish dress, and was perpetually in a panic. The
Italians could only avenge themselves on the Spaniards in Pantomime! On
the same principle the gown of Pantaloon over his red waistcoat and
breeches, commemorates a circumstance in Venetian history expressive of
the popular feeling.

The characters of the Italian Pantomime became so numerous, that every
dramatic subject was easily furnished with the necessary personages of
comedy. That loquacious pedant, the Dottore, was taken from the lawyers
and the physicians, babbling false Latin in the dialect of learned
Bologna. Scapin was a livery servant, who spoke the dialect of Bergamo,
a province proverbially abounding with rank intriguing knaves, who,
like the slaves in Plautus and Terence, were always on the watch to
further any wickedness; while Calabria furnished the booby Giangurgello
with his grotesque nose. Moliere, it has been ascertained, discovered in
the Italian theatre at Paris his "_Medecin malgre Lui_," his
"_Etourdi_," his "_L'Avare_," and his "_Scapin_." Milan offered a pimp
in Brighella; Florence, an ape of fashion in Gelsomino. These and other
Pantomimic characters, and some ludicrous ones, as the Tartaglia, a
spectacled dotard, a stammerer, and usually in a passion, had been
gradually introduced by the inventive powers of an actor of genius, to
call forth his own peculiar talents.

The Pantomimes, or, as they have been described, the continual
Masquerades, of Ruzzante, with all these diversified personages, talking
and acting, formed, in t