uld
puff, till we grow sick, a "thing of shreds and patches!"
But "the world is still deceived by ornament."

~279~~But Charles Kemble pays well on occasions, and gold would make
"Hyperion" of a "satyr." Seriously, Mr. Blackmantle, the town is overrun
with monkeys; they are as busy, and as importunate, as Lady Montague's
boys on May day, or the Guy Fawkes representatives on the fifth of
November. They are "here, there, and every where," and the baboon
monopolists of Exeter 'Change and the Tower are ruined by the
importation:--a free trade in the article with the patentees of our
classic theatres, as the purchasing-merchants, has done the business for
Mr. Cross and the beef-eaters. Like the Athenian audience, the "thinking
people" of England are more pleased with the mimic than the real voice
of nature; and the four-footed puggys of the Brazils, like the true pig
of the Grecian, are cast in the shade by their reasoning imitator!
In short, not to be prosy on a subject which has awakened poetry and
passion in all, hear, as the grave-diggers say, "the truth on't."{13}

When winter triumph'd o'er the summer's flame,
And C. G. opened, Punchinello came;
Each odd grimace of monkey-art he drew,
Exhausted postures and imagined new:
The stage beheld him spurn its bounded reign,
And frighten'd fiddlers scraped to him in vain;
His seven-leagued leaps so well the fashion fit,
That all adore him--boxes, gallery, pit,{14}

13 It is suspicious, to say the least of it, this excess of
praise to an old representation; for, after all, punch, the
original punch, punch in the street, though not so loud, is
ten times more to "our manner born," and much more original.
That the beings who banish legitimate performers should
puff, till we grow sick, a "thing of shreds and patches!"
But "the world is still deceived by ornament."

14 One Dr. Samuel Johnson has something like this, but then
his lines were in praise of a "poor player," of a man who
wasted much paper in writing dramas now thought nothing of.
This is his doggrel.

~280~~But I must have done. Christmas will soon be here, and "I have a
journey, sirs, shortly to go" to be prepared for its delights, and to
fit myself for its festivities; and yet I am unwilling, acute Bernard,
merry Echo, cheerful Eglantine, correct Transit, to "shake hands