has been entertained with my prowess, and Mr. Conway has given me the name of Wat Tyler.' But, heigh presto! now for the Clown, and he is sketched in a few words by the pencil of a master, "round faced, goggle-eyed, knockkneed, but agile to a degree of the dislocated, with a great smear from his mouth, and a cap on his head, half fool's, and half-cook's." No one need ask from whose hand the picture is. There is Leigh Hunt in every touch. Nor who sat for the likeness, for there is Joe Grimaldi in every feature. Before, however, discoursing upon how pregnant with humour were those features, we must, as we have paid harlequin the compliment of inquiring into his family history, do the same by his merrier playmate. And this, too, if for no other reason, at least for that which induced Lord's gardener to put his unoffending son into the stocks by the side of the boy whom he caught pilfering apples, "just, ye see, for the sake o’ uniformity!" But this same family history is as intricate, if not as dry, as a Peerage case in the House of Lords. The Clown of the present day is indubitably descended from one common stock, the Vice of the earlier drama, with Mr. Punch, whose history has been collected with great industry and ability by Mr. Payne Collier, and illustrated by the magic graver of George Cruikshank. Indeed, so lately as the year 1800, the character of Punch was substituted for that of the Clown in the pantomime of " Harlequin Amulet, or the Magic of Mona." Those, too, who had the good fortune to witness Mazulier's admirable performance of Punch at Covent Garden Theatre, some few years since, will see the truth of this proposition. Again, our clown can undoubtedly call cousins with Scaramouche, a character invented by Tiberio Fiorilli, whose extraordinary abili. ties may be judged of from one couplet of the verses subscribed beneath his portrait: "Il fut le maitre de Moliere, Et la nature fut le sien." His life published by Constantini, who himself invented the character of Merzetin, and was ennobled for his talents by the King of Poland, is a curious little volume, to which further reference will be made upon some future occasion. The more immediate relative, however, of the modern clown, is the Pierrot, a character now very rarely introduced upon the stage. Pierrot, who was in the Italian pantomimes nothing more than a simple-minded servant, had his intellects so sharpened upon the French stage, as to rival in wit, mischief, and malice the other heroes of harlequinade. Pierrot still figures occasionally in masquerade scenes, where he may be easily recognised by his flow. ing white dress, and the extreme length of his sleeves. A Pierrot was very properly produced in that scene of the little piece entitled The reader who would wish for further information on the pantomimical characters, is referred to the chapter so entitled in D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, where he will find abundance of materials collected upon the subject. Has Mr. D'Israeli never seen Mr. Collier's observations on the espee de boys bien dorée, given by Panurge to Triboullet, (see Punch and Judy, page 12,) that no other allusion is made to the "light sword of harlequin, which had hitherto baffled his most painful researches," than that Dr. Clarke had discovered it amongst the dark mysteries of Ancient Mythology? "One hour, or the Carnival Ball," in which Charles Matthews danced the Tarantella so cleverly; and another attended as Clown at an exhibition of rope-dancing, some two or three years since, at Astley's. The Clown of the present day seems gradually to have appropriated to himself the peculiarities of these three characters, formerly so distinct, and which we have already seen figuring together in Monsieur Thurmond's pantomime of Doctor Faustus. The first attempt at this incorporation was probably made by Follet, whose performance of the Clown was so highly relished by George the Third, that that monarch is said to have visited the theatre repeatedly, for the purpose of witnessing one of Follet's most celebrated tricks, namely, his swallowing a carrot, and which we may reasonably suppose, from its attraction, to have been a very ludicrous piece of acting. Signor Delpini, who has been celebrated by Miles Peter Andrewes, "I'm all for fun and frolic, whim and glee, Signor Delpini is the man for me," was the contemporary of Follet. Originally an actor of Pierrot, he very frequently played pantaloon to old Bologna's clown; this he did in the year 1801 in Harlequin Almanack, in which young Bo logna played harlequin, and the well-known Mrs. Wybrow, co. lumbine. He does not appear to have adopted the character of the "lean and slippered pantaloon" in his old age only, inasmuch as we find him showing his autics as clown in "Harlequin Teague, or the Giant's Causeway," produced in 1782, and in the following year playing pantaloon to old Grimaldi's clown in "Harlequin's Wed ding." Delpini, who was indicted, in 1787, for introducing speaking without musical accompaniments, and threatened with "Water and bread for calling out' Roast Reef!" roast beef! being literally the offending words, was a great fa. vourite with George the Fourth when Prince of Wales. The Prince generally patronised his benefit; and indeed it would have been diffi. cult for any reasonably good-natured man to have resisted so droll an appeal as Delpini used to make to him upon the occasion. "Ah, Mister Prince, you please come to my benefit. If you no come, I must go live inside your papa's big house!" The King's Bench has had many names bestowed upon it, but none more strictly correct than "your papa's big house." Laurent, whose graceful performance of serious pantomime-a species of theatrical entertainment now rarely produced-was the adiniration of the play.going public at the commencernent of the present century, was also a very clever Clown. He has had the credit awarded to him of having given to the character its present shape, or, as it is said, of having Anglicised the Pierrot. But it would seem that this had been previously attempted, and with considerable success, by Follet. Laurent was a very accomplished fencer, and an accident which he once met with in a fencing bout, is so remarkable as to deserve especial notice. It was during the performance of a serious pantomime, when, in the business of the stage, he was engaged in a combat with small swords. His adversary's foot slipping as he was making a pass, his foil struck Laurent on the cheek-bone so forcibly, as to snap off the button and a small portion of the foil, apparently inflicung no other injury upon him than a slight scratch by the side of one of his eyes, which had the effect, however, of turning the eye ball on one side. The broken piece of the foil could nowhere be found, although the button of it had been picked up on the spot; and it was not until after the lapse of a week or two, that Laurent, finding himself disappointed in his hopes of the eye-ball resuming its natural position without surgical assistance, consulted an oculist upon the case, when the missing fragment was, upon examination, discovered in one corner of the eye, from whence it was imme. diately removed with as little pain as had been felt at its introduction. Among the Clowns of the present century, Bradbury, Paulo, and Southby are perhaps, next to Grimaldi, the most remarkable. Bradbury's Clown was distinguished more by violence of action than by that greatest of all requisites, humour. His leaps were of astonishing height and extent, and his performance altogether was characterised by a daring and reckless display of animal power little likely to be frequently rivalled. One of Bradbury's leaps, technically called the Lion's leap, used to bring down thunders of ap plause in Dublin, where it was he alone could perform it. But it is said that a certain clever musician, whose love of fun and pun is well known, and who was then in the orchestra of the Dublin theatre, took up the character of clown at the termination of Bradbury's engagement, and performed the whole of it! Kean, it is well known, was an admirable harlequin; and the gentleman above alluded to is said, in the very same season in which he played in pantomime, to have displayed a versatility of talent which few can boast of. He was leader of the band, and composer of music. He produced a successful farce. At the termination of Braham's en. gagement, when Dublin was all for operas, he quitted the orchestra for the stage, and played all Braham's parts with considerable effect; and finally, as if to show that he could be everything by turns, and that to him might be applied what Johnson engraved upon the monument of his countryman, "Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit !" he took Bradbury's character of Clown, and with it the Lion's leap, to the unbounded delight of the Dublin audience. Bradbury is dead, and so is Paulo, whose Clown, if more humorous than Bradbury's, was spoiled by that besetting sin, vulgarity. From this fault Southby's performance of the character was remarkably free. He was, we believe, a pupil of Laurent's; at all events his performance bere strong marks of that neatness and finish for which Laurent's clown was distinguished. Southby was prin. cipally engaged at Astley's, but has now, we believe, quitted the stage, and devotes himself solely to his pyrotechnical pursuits. Instead of starring it in the provinces, he now stars it at Vauxhall, where his labours throw a very brilliant light upon that somewhat obscure passage in the Critic, in which the author speaks of two revolving suns and three revolving moons." Southby beats Sheridan hollow, for he will show a dozen revolving suns and moons upon any night of the week on which Messrs. Gye will commission him to do so. The equestrian Clown at Astley's, as the Mister Merryman who attends the horsemanship at that theatre is professionally designated, has, as the reader has before now no doubt painfully experienced, a certain series of standard jokes, which have remained unchanged any time these twenty years. It is, perhaps, not generally known that these jokes were for the most part coined originally by the Westminster scholars. The fact is so, however. The jokes were made by the Westminsters, and brought out at Astley's, where the Clown, having been fee'd and properly instructed how to perpetrate them, used to fire them; the rival makers listening with the greatest anxiety to ascertain which told best. Those which were most successful became of course stock jokes. What Boswell did for Johnson has Boz well done for Grimaldi. The book which contains his Biography, edited by Mr. Dickens, is a good one; there is no straining after effect, no seeking to elevate the subject into a hero, but it tells with kindly feeling the varied story of a chequered life, and paints very vividly the hopes and disappointments, the histrionic glories and painful realities which fell to the lot of one of the simplest-minded and honestest men who ever won the fair favour of the public. Alas, poor Yorick! He was indeed a fellow of infinite jest. How surely was every one of his hearty grins re-echoed by a thousand. What magic was there in his quiet mirth, making age and care throw off for awhile all thoughts that overburthened them. His courtships so seductive who could resist! Petty larceny with him were pretty larceny. He did appropriate unto himself purses, strings of sausages, and all such unconsidered trifles as fell in his way, with a grace which would have made the Lord Chief Justice himself sum up for his acquittal. And as for glozing and flattering, noble lords now-a-days need not quarrel for superiority in this respect, for Joe Grimaldi could outgloze them all. If his drollery had at times a smack of vulgarity, a breadth of colouring, the smallest spice, as it were, of that ruder mirth in which our grandfathers delighted, he did so varnish it over with his irresistible humour, that the veriest prude looked on and laughed, without once deeming it essential to hide her enjoyment behind her fan. In none of his performances was this rare quality, which so distinguished Grimaldi from all other Clowns, more clearly manifested than in the pantomime of Harlequin Gulliver, which, to the best of our judgment, was one of his masterpieces. Cruikshank has im. mortalized the Brobdignagians of this piece in one of the admir. able sketches with which he has illustrated Grimaldi's life; but this pantomime alone would have furnished him with subjects for a dozen such. There was the Brobdignagian Princess Glumdulditch in a go-cart with, if we recollect rightly, poor Joe as her doll. Then, again, there was the gigantic canary, which Grimaldi pronounced, in his unctious voice, to be a " Casso-wa-ry," and with which he sang the duet beginning, "Say, little, foolish, fluttering thing, If you're a cock-bird, why not sing?" he being all the time quietly seated on a Brobdignagian quartern loaf, into which he might have eaten his way like a mouse into a cheese. Then who but Cruikshank could paint the inconveniences poor Joe endured from the bayonets of the Liliputian soldiery as they march. ed throngh the palace gate which he was bestriding? or show how, when the King of Liliput's palace was in flames, he plied the Liliputian engines, and extinguished the fire in a way which would have delighted Swift? and yet "without any offence in't, only in jest,” as Hamlet says. We ought not, perhaps, to insist so strongly on Grimaldi's merits in Harlequin Gulliver, as we never saw him in Mother Goose, in which he first established his reputation. The European Magazine for January 1807, speaking of this piece, says, "Grimaldi, whom we always believed to possess talents that were not sufficiently called into exercise at Drury Lane, made his first appearance at Covent Garden as the clown in this piece; and his performance astonished us by the variety of his tricks, and the neatness and promptitude with which they were executed." From this criticism we may justly infer that Grimaldi's humour, like good wine, mellowed with age; for it was long after this period that old Chapman, who was regarded as the best theatrical teacher of his day, and the finest judge of acting, was heard to declare that the greatest enjoyment he knew at the theatre was to go in front, and see Grimaldi in a new pantomime! This was a compliment to Grimaldï's genius, which was not even surpassed by that paid to it by John Kemble; who, standing at the wings one night, watching with great delight Joe's drolleries, exclaimed in his musical and measured phrase,-"My sister never did any thing finer in her life than that man is doing now, in his way-in his way!" We have said that Grimaldi's humour got richer and racier as he grew older. It was so but, alas! while the spirits mellowed, the vessel that contained them was rapidly decaying; and, for some seasons before he quitted the stage, he whose nimble wit and ready drollery drew roars of laughter from all who witnessed his performances, sunk as he left the stage into a decrepid and enfeebled man. And now farewell, Joe Grimaldi! We had thought to have told a tale or two which were once current touching your encounters with those who sought to despoil you. How, after being robbed one night, in those times when there were watchmen upon the face of the earth, thou didst follow the spoiler upon hands and knces until he came to his box, reassumed his great-coat and lantern, and walked forth, like any other guardian of the night, to look after bigger rogues than himself! How, on another occasion, in the neighbourhood of Bagnige Wells, thou didst escape the fangs of two footpads, who simultaneously clapped thee on either shoulder, by falling suddenly to the ground, and letting thy foes fall with thee, and how thou didst then escape from them by throwing a somerset, while they rightly swore thou must be either the devil or Joe Grimaldi. But, as thou hast made no record of these tales, we must reject them as apocryphal, and substitute in lieu thereof a quatrain, which we would fain pass off for JOE GRIMALDI'S EPITAPH.' Great once in droll scenes, in a grave W. J. T. |