uthor before the
public, that they may the more easily play with an actress in private.
Yon coxcomb, for instance, who buffoons Brutus, with his brothers, are
indeed capital brutes by nature, but as deficient of the art histrionic
as any biped animals well can be. I remember a very clever artist
exhibiting a picture of the colonel and his mother's son, Augustus, with
a Captain Austin, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy for the year
1823, in the characters of Brutus, Marc Antony, and Julius Caesar, which
caused more fun than anything else in the collection, and produced more
puns among the cognoscenti than any previous work of art ever gave
rise to. The Romans were such rum ones--Brutus was a black down-looking
biped, with gray whiskers, and a growl upon his lip; Marc Antony,
without the remotest mark of the ancient hero about him; and
~266~~Cassius looked as if he had been cashiered by the commander of
some strolling company of itinerants for one, whose placid face could
neither move to woe, nor yield grimace; and yet they were all accounted
excellent likenesses, perfect originals, like Wombwell's bonassus, only
not quite so natural."

During this rhapsody of Blackstrap's, Transit on the one side, and the
English Spy on the other, endeavoured to restrain the torrent of his
satire by assuring him that the very persons he was alluding to were the
amateurs on the stage before him; and that certain critical faces behind
him were paid like the painter, of whom he had previously spoken,
to produce flattering portraits in print, and might possibly make a
satirical sketch of the bon vivant at the same time; an admonition that
had not the slightest effect in abridging his strictures upon amateur
actors. But as the English Spy intends to finish his sketches on
this subject, in a visit to the national theatres, he has until then
treasured up in his mind's stores the excellent and apposite, though
somewhat racy anecdotes, with which the comical commercial critic
illustrated his discourse.

The "liquor in, the wit's out," saith the ancient proverb; and,
although my "Spirit in the Clouds" had already hinted at the dangerous
consequences likely to result from a visit to the "Oakland Cottages,"
yet such was the flexibility of my friend Transit's ethics, his penchant
for a spree, and the volatile nature of his disposition, when the ripe
Falerian set the red current mantling in his veins, that not all my
philosophy, nor the sage mo