"One hour, or the Carnival Ball," in which Charles Mathews danced the Tarantêlla 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 Bologna played harlequin, and the well-known Mrs. Wybrow, columbine. 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 antics 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 Wedding."

Delpini, who was indicted, in 1787, for introducing speaking without musical accompaniments, and threatened with

"Water and bread for calling out' Roast Beef!"

roast beef! being literally the offending words, was a great favourite with George the Fourth when Prince of Wales. The Prince generally patronised his benefit; and indeed it would have been difficult 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 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."

you no

Laurent, whose graceful performance of serious pantomime—a species of theatrical entertainment now rarely produced-was the admiration of the play-going public at the commencement 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 mention. 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 inflicting 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 immediately 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 applause 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 engagement, 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 quid 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 bore strong marks of that neatness and finish for which Laurent's clown was distinguished. Southby was principally 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

ter 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 immortalized the Brobdignagians of this piece in one of the admirable 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 poe Joe endured from the bayonets of the Liliputian soldiery as the

marched through 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 Grimaldi'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!"

66

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 knees 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
He doth now attention crave;
For, since death took Joe Grimaldi,
Who can doubt but we must all die!

W. J. T.

INDEX

TO THE THIRD VOLU M E.