mes to the English stage. On December 18th, 1778,
was born Joseph Grimaldi--afterwards the Prince of Clowns, and the son
of Giuseppe Grimaldi ("Iron Legs"). Joe's first appearance was at
Sadler's Wells on April 16, Easter Monday, 1781, he not being quite
three years old. Dickens, in the "Memoirs of Grimaldi," has given us
from the Clown's own diary, which Grimaldi kept close up to the time of
his death, on May, 31st, 1837, a full and true account of the life of
this remarkably clever Pantomimist. To add to what Dickens has written
of "Only a Clown" (which doubtless the reader is already acquainted
with) would only be like painting the lily; and, perhaps, I cannot do
better in honouring his memory than by quoting the words of Mr. Harley
at the annual dinner of the Drury Lane Fund, spoken in the June
following Grimaldi's death:--"Yet, shall delicacy suffer no violence in
adducing one example, for death has hushed his cock-crowing cachination,
and uproarious merriment. The mortal Jupiter of practical Joke, the
Michael Angelo of buffoonery, who, if he was _Grim-all-day_, was sure to
make you chuckle at night."

A contemporary writer of Grimaldi's days thus eulogises the Prince of
Clowns:--

As a Clown, Mr. Grimaldi is perfectly unrivalled. Other performers of
the part may be droll in their generation; but, which of them can for a
moment compete with the Covent Garden hero in acute observation upon the
foibles and absurdities of society, and his happy talent of holding them
up to ridicule. He is the finest practical satyrist that ever existed.
He does not, like many Clowns, content himself with raising a
horse-laugh by contortions and grimaces, but tickles the fancy, and
excites the risibility of an audience by devices as varied as they are
ingenious. "He uses his folly as a stalking-horse, under cover of which
he shoots his wit;" and fully deserves the encomium bestowed upon him by
Kemble, who, it is said, pronounced him to be "the best low comedian
upon the stage."

There are few things, we think, more delightful than a Pantomime--that
is, a _good_ Pantomime, such as is usually produced at Covent Garden. We
know there are a set of solemn pompous mortals about town, who express
much dignified horror at the absurdities of these things, and declaim
very fluently, in good set terms, upon the necessity of their abolition.
Such fellows as these are ever your dullest of blockheads. Conscious of
their lack of ideas, they think