tical, and not a trivial art.
That these arts of gesticulation had something in them peculiar to
Italian humour, we infer from Gherardi, who could not explain the term
but by describing it as "_Un Tour_; JEU ITALIEN!" It was so peculiar to
them, that he could only call it by their own name. It is difficult to
describe that of which the whole magic consists in being seen; and what
is more evanescent than the humour which consists in gestures?

"_Lazzi_," says Riccoboni, "is a term corrupted from the old Tuscan
_Lacci_, which signifies a knot, or something which connects. These
pleasantries called _Lazzi_ are certain actions by which the performer
breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or
jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on,
the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and
connecting the _Lazzi_ with it; thus to _tie_ the whole together."
_Lazzi_, then, seems a kind of mimicry and gesture, corresponding with
the passing scene; and we may translate the term by one in our
green-room dialect, _side-play_. Riccoboni has ventured to describe some
_Lazzi_. When Harlequin and Scapin represent two famished servants of a
poor young mistress, among the arts by which they express the state of
starvation, Harlequin having murmured, Scapin exhorts him to groan, a
music which brings out their young mistress, Scapin explains Harlequin's
impatience, and begins a proposal to her which might extricate them all
from their misery. While Scapin is talking, Harlequin performs his
_Lazzi_--imagining he holds a hatful of cherries, he seems eating them,
and gaily flinging the stones at Scapin; or with a rueful countenance he
is trying to catch a fly, and with his hand, in comical despair, would
chop off the wings before he swallows the chameleon game. These, with
similar _Lazzi_, harmonise with the remonstrance of Scapin, and
re-animate it; and thus these "_Lazzi_, although they seem to interrupt
the progress of the action, yet in cutting it they slide back into it,
and connect or tie the whole." These _Lazzi_ are in great danger of
degenerating into puerile mimicry or gross buffoonery, unless fancifully
conceived and vividly gesticulated. But the Italians seem to possess the
arts of gesture before that of speech; and this national characteristic
is also Roman. Such, indeed, was the powerful expression of their
mimetic art, that when the select troop under Riccoboni, on t