<5nrtttll Htiroerattg Slibrarg 3tliara, New fork FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY The date shows when this volume was taken. To renew this book copy the call No. and give to the librarian/ HOME USE RULES All books subject to recall All borrowers must regis- ^er in the library to borrow^ books for home use. """"'•*"*"' ■ All books must be re- turned at end of college **"*' """* """" "" year £ or inspection and .... repairs- Limited books must be returned within the four week limit and not renewed'. Students must return all books before leaving town. Officers should arrange for the return of books wanted during their absence from town. Volumes of periodicals and of pamphlets are held in the library as much as possible. For special pur- " poses they are given out for a limited time. Borrowers should not use their library privileges for, the benefit of other persons. Books of special value and gift books, when the giver, wishes it, are not allowed to circulate. *"■;* Readers are asked to re- port all cases of books marked or mutilated. Do not deface books by marks and writing. PR C3 BS The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013466671 PffMlill - : 4 W -i - - • • i Dr :>viuj ;■• ;-">ffj > THE LAUGHING AUDIENCE. BROAD GRINS MY NIGHTGOWN & SLIPPERS AND OTHER HUMOROUS WORKS PROSE AND POETICAL OF GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. NOW FIRST COLLECTED. WITH LIFE AND ANECDOTES OF THE AUTHOR EDITED BY GEORGE B. BUCKSTONE. LONDON : JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 8: 75,' PICCADILLY ^fs C> ^ tOKDOS" : SXVttL, EDWAttDS AMD CO., PKINTHHS, CHANDOS BTHBET, COVhNI CA.UDBN. CONTENTS. PAGE Memoib OF GeoEGE Colman the Youngee . . I Preface to the "Iron Chest," 1796 .... 14 Advertisement to the Reader 31 Postscript 33 The " Iron Chest" 36 My Nightgown and Slippebs 63 Preface to my Nightgown and Slippers . . .65 Advertisement 66 The Maid of the Moor; or, the Water Fiends . . 71 The Newcastle Apothecary 78 Lodgings for Single Gentlemen . . . .81 Broad Geins 85 The Knight and the Priar 87 Sir Thomas Erpingham's Sonnet on his Lady . . 91 The Elder Brother •. .117 Poetical Vagaeies 127 An Ode to We, a Hackneyed Critic . . . . 1 29 Low Ambition ; or, the Life and Death of Mr. Daw . 132 A Reckoning with Time 138 The Lady of the Weece ; ob, Castle Blabneygig . 149 Dedication 151 Advertisement 152 Song 159 Banquet Song . * 166 Song of the Bridegroom 179 Song 190 two paesons ; ob, the talk of a shiet . . . 199 Vagaeies Vindicated ; oe, Hypoceitic Hypeeceitics 219 Advertisement . • . . . . . . 221 Appendix to Vagaries Vindicated .... 252 ECCENTEICITIES FOB EdISBUBGH 263 Advertisement 265 iv CONTENTS. P.AGH A Lamentation 267 Advertisement 272 Fire! oe the Sun-Pokeb 273 Mb. Champeenoune 296 The Luminous Histoeian ; oe, Learning in Love . 303 London Euealitt ; oe, Miss Bunn and Mes. Bunt . 318 Ballads and Songs 325 The Marvellous Physicians 327 Song 333 Song 333 Song 334 Tippet's Song 334 Captain's Song 333 Captain's Song ....... 335 The Mercer's Song 336 John and Betty ....... 337 Up and Down 338 Cupid 339 The Country Girl 339 Polly the Chambermaid 341 Song 341 TheCit 342 Song 343 Song at a Wedding 343 Epilogue 345 Sir Marmaduke 347 Song 34 8 The Traveller and the Widow 349 Son S 35° Duet ■ ; 351 Song. — Down by the River «i Lines Written at the Inn at Bedfont . . . oj-2 Epilogue to the Maid of Bristol .... 3150 Paddy O'Kaffarty's Song to an Old Coquette . . 354 Song 355 Bachael ,-g So, 'S • • 357 Son S 35 8 Corporal Casey -- CONTENTS. PAGE Mynheer Vandunk 360 Song on Woman 360 Song 361 Song 362 Song 362 Epilogue to " Ways and Means" . . . .364 Prologue for Mr. Jones's Masquerade . . . 365 An Address to the Present Year, Eighteen Hundred and Nineteen 367 Address at Drury Lane 369 Lydia's Song 371 Oh ! when ray Farm is Taken 37 2 Damon and Phyllis 374 The Guardian 375 Unfortunate Miss Bailey 575 Hero and Leander . . . . . . 377 The Guitar 377 Song 378 Song 379 Song 379 Bluebeard 380 Ibrahim's Song 381 Adeline. — The Petticoat 382 The Valiant Hero 382 The Bed Rose 383 Song 384 Villagers' Song 385 Song. — Moderation and Alteration .... 386 Silent Love 387 Nehemiah Flam 387 Beneath the Elm Tree 388 Song 389 Pegasus Puncheon 390 Epilogue to " John Bull" 391 Song 393 Duet. — Sadi and Agnes 394 The Muleteer 395 Song 395 Chorus of Goatherds 39 6 vi CONTENTS. PiGE Faint and Wearily 397 Agnes . . '" 398 Goatherds' Song 399 A Medley - 4°° Song. — Judy O'Plannikin 4°° Caleb Quotem 4°l Song 4°3 Song 4°4 Duet 4°5 Song '4° 6 .Rondeau 4°6 Song 4°7 Song 407 Song 408 Song 408 Song 409 Song ......... 410 Thimble's Wife 411 Random Kecobds and Anecdotes .... 413 Prospectus of my Random Records .... 416 Smoking for Corns 417 Colman — no Calm . . . . . . .418 Mrs. Fountain 418 Puddings 420 A Dose of Senna ....... 421 The Higgler's Cart ....... 423 Take away the Eiver ...... 424 Taming of the Shrew 424 Indecency of Terence 426 An Introduction to Dr. Johnson .... 427 Goldsmith 429 Foote's Wooden Leg 430 Gibbon 431 At the Next Plague 432 The Elephant-maker ...... 433 The " Oxford Sausage" 434 Pog and Sun 433 John Hall Stevenson ...... 436 Foote and Colman the Elder 437 CONTENTS. PAGE A Tour to the North of England .... 438 Oxford 438 Bonnell Thornton 440 Stratford-on-Avon ....... 442 The Devil's ...:... 442 Cocken Hall 442 Westminster School 445 " Georgius Colmanus'' 443 Reminiscences of a Freshman ..... 446 Poet Harding 454 Doctor Graham and the Temple of Health . . 454 Kiddy Davies 457 Banishment to Aberdeen ...... 458 Poote's Ostentation ....... 461 An Expensive Dinner ...... 462 Brechin and Laurencekirk 465 Aberdeen 467 "The Man of the People" 477 The Laird of Col 479 Daffy's Elixir 481 A Nautical Play 481 Toujour* Perdrix 481 Gifford and Colman 4S3 Apres vous 483 The North Pole 484 The Woolsack 484 A Dead Wall 484 Ell or Inch ? 48,5 Authorship . , 485 Ah ! where is my Honour now P . . . . 485 A Bad Actor 486 Eyes and no Eyes 486 A Rowland for an Oliver ...... 487 Index , 4S8 MEMOIR OF GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. MEMOIR OF GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. GEORGE COLMAN the Younger belonged to a genial school of humorists, now unhappily ex- tinct, whose frank and cordial gaiety took the reader along with them in one uninterrupted stream of merri- ment and joyous fun, as superior to the sickly hot-house witticisms of the present day as the generous beverage of Champagne is to the smallest of small beer. No apology, therefore, is needed for the present reprint of his famous tales in verse, and ballads : they excited the delight and laughter of our grandsires, and cannot prove unacceptable to readers of the present generation wherever true wit is appreciated and enjoyed. George Colman was born on the 21st of October, 1762. His father was the friend and intimate of nearly all the chief literary men of the time, of Johnson, Garrick, Gibbon, Reynolds, and all that circle with which Boswell has made us so familiar. He was the associate of Lloyd and Bonnell Thornton in the Connoisseur ; he produced a translation of Terence remarkable for its ease, grace, and scholarship — a translation which has not yet been super- seded ; and he ranks as one of the foremost dramatists of the eighteenth century. To distinguish himself from his father, and avoid all possibility of confusion, the subject b 2 4 MEMOIR OF [1782- of the present memoir always styled himself GEORGE COLMAN the YOUNGER, and continued to do so long after his father's death, and -when he himself had attained a ripe old age. His first recollection was of the death of his grand- mother, Mrs. Francis Colman, for whom he remembered mourning in a black sash, tied round the waist of a white linen frock. The next impression on his infant mind was caused by no less a person than David Garrick, of whom he thus speaks : — " Garrick was so intimate with my father, soon after I was born, that my knowledge of him was too early for me to recollect when it commenced ; it would be like the remembrance of my first seeing a tree, x>r any other object which presents itself to vision, at our beginning to look about us.'' Colman has himself related, in his own exquisite land inimitable way, many anecdotes of his early days at Westminster and Oxford, and of his banishment for two years to Aberdeen, in consequence of an over-abundant sowing of wild oats at the English University. It was in the barren and uncongenial soil of North Britain that he first began to try his wings as a dramatist and poet. Among the rarest of rare books coveted by the curious collector is a poem which Colman printed and published at Aberdeen in 1782, under the title of " The Man of the People," a boyish satire upon Fox, in which that statesman was " blackened as black as the devil himself." Colman seems in his maturer years to have been thoroughly ashamed of this juvenile production, and it doubtless has no value whatever except as a literary curiosity.' The twig, however, had been bent in a dramatic direc- tion ; and the young tree was mainly inclined to the stage. Colman's poem accordingly had scarcely appeared in 1782.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 5 print when he had finished a musical farce, which he entitled " The Female Dramatist," and transmitted to hia father. The principal character was borrowed from Mrs. Metaphor, in Smollett's " Eoderick Eandom." "It puzzled the managerial papa," says Colman; "he thought it had some promise ; but that it was too crude to risk, as regularly accepted by the theatre : so it was brought out, anonymously, on the benefit night of Jewell, the treasurer, August 16th, 1782. " Little is expected from novelties produced at a benefit ; and considering the apathy with which they are usually received, I may without vanity state, that this farce was noticed in a very conspicuous manner — for it was uncom- monly hissed in the course of its performance. The audience, I was told, laughed a good deal in various parts of the piece ; but there were passages in it to excite disapprobation ; and much too broad to have escaped the erasing hand of the examiner of plays in the present day. " On perusing the manuscript after a long lapse of time, I threw ' The Female Dramatist ' into the flames, as a fit companion for ' The Man of the People ;' and if this consumed couple had belonged to any author but myself, he would not perhaps have had the folly or candour -(or whatever else it may be called) to rake up their ashes."* Undismayed by these failures, Colman proceeded, not * Colman's recollection as to some matters appears to have been very faulty, or the paper on which he had written was made of the imperishable aRbestos, and was not only purified by its transmission through the flames, but had absolutely become a twin phrenix, as among the manuscripts in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire there were two copies of " The Female Dramatist" in the author's autograph. — Peakk . 6 MEMOIR OF [1783- long afterwards, from a two-act farce to a three-act comedy. "This last," he says, "was entitled 'Two to One,' the first of my publicly avowed dramas. It was sent to town early in 1783, two-thirds of it having been finished on the preceding Christmas. Hence it will appear to the reader, should he think it worth while to recur to dates, in the matters which I have related, that I was guilty of a poem, a farce, and a play (such as they were), in the course of twelve months — the first two crimes having been committed in my twentieth year, and the third nearly accomplished before I had entered my twenty-first. " ' Two to One' was immediately accepted by my sire for his ensuing season in the Haymarket ; but by some accident not performed till the season afterwards, when I had returned to town, and witnessed its first representa- tion. Its success was very flattering, and the play had a •run." Colman. has given an amusing description in his " Random Records" of the loose way in which this piece was constructed. " I had no materials for a plot, further than the common- place foundation of a marriage projected by parents, con- trary to the secret views and wishes of the parties to be united ; and which of course is to be obviated by the usual series of stratagems, accidents, and equivoques. Alas ! what those stratagems, &c, were to be, or how the second scene was to be conducted, I had not any idea while I was writing the first. But having finished the first, I hurried on into the second with as little forecast about the third ; and so on from scene to scene, spinning out stage business (as it is termed) as I went along, and scribbling at haphazard, ' as humours and conceits might govern,' till I came to the conclusion of act one. 1784.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 7 " One act completed, enabled me to proceed some- what less at random in the two acts to come, by obliging me to consider a little about the means of continuing, and then unravelling, the perplexities I had already created ; still I persevered, as to whole acts, in the same want of regular plan which had marked my progress in respect to scenes ; at Christmas, however, I found that I had floundered through two-thirds of a three-act piece, which I called a musical comedy, under the title of ' Two to One.' In this improvident way I have written all my dramas which are not founded either on some historical incident, or on some story or anecdote which I have met with in print ; and of those thus founded, I never made out a scheme of progressive action before I began upon the dialogue." This play was introduced to the public by a prologue in verse written by Colman the Elder, in which he speaks of his son as a " chip of the old block." It was performed for the first time on June 19th, 1784.* In this year Colman made a short tour in France. Returning to Loudon, " I found my father," he * This piece gave rise to the following ingenious epigram : — " To George Colman, Esq., jun., on the deserved success of his Comedy, ' Two to One.' ' ' ' Another writes because his father writ, A.nd proves himself a bastard by his wit :' So Young declaims — but you, by right divine, Can claim a just, hereditary line ; By learning tutor' d as by fancy nursed, A George the Second sprung from George the First." The words of the songs only were printed in 1784, but a transcript of the piece with Colman's autograph corrections is now in the Duke of Devonshire's "Collections of the English Drama." 8 MEMOIR OF [1784- " still firm in his resolution of making me a barrister ; but aware of my nights, poetical and others, he was not quite so sanguine, in the fond hope of seeing me on the Woolsack, as many an old simple soul is who sends his plodding prodigy to the Inns of Court. He had been upon the alert, in my absence, to effect his intentions ; and had taken chambers for me, up two pair of stairs, in the Temple, having first entered my name as a student at Lincoln's Inn ; where I afterwards kept a few Terms by eating oysters ; a custom taken, I suppose, from the Fable, and truly emblematical of a law-student's future practice ; the whole process consisting in swallowing up the fish, and leaving the shells. " To the above-mentioned apartments (in the King's Bench Walk) my sire consigned me ; having first sprinkled them with a prudential paucity of second-hand moveables — a tent bed, two tables, half a dozen chairs, and a carpet as much too scanty for the boards as Sheridan's ' rivulet of rhyme' for its ' meadow of margin :' to these he added about ten-pounds' worth of Law Books which had been given to him in his own early Lincoln's Inn days, by Lord Bath ; with which he told me (mentioning the sum he should allow me, pro tempore), I must work out my fortunes ; then, enjoining me to labour hard, he left town upon a party of pleasure." We now come to Colman's clandestine marriage. He had contracted an intimacy with Miss Catherine Morris, an actress belonging to the Haymarket Theatre, which intimacy the father considered it not advisable for him to continue. No sooner, however, had the elder Colman left ais son in the Temple and joined his party, than the immediate consequence was that he joined in a second trip to Scotland with Miss Morris, whom he married at Gretna Green, October 3, 1784, This occasioned something 1788.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 9 like a hard run on the sum allowed him pro tempore, and the apprehensions of his father's resentment on learning his improvidence, impelled a silence on the transaction, for which no favourable opportunity of disclosure occurred till November, 1788, when, with the father's sanction, they were publicly married on the 10th of that month at Chelsea Church, and the affair was openly avowed. We grieve to say that Colman hardly ever mentions his father without an overt or covert sneer, as in the above passage. It is to be feared that filial reverence was not one of his strong points. Elated by the success of his first comedy, Colman now set to work to produce another. " I conceived," he writes, " that having once felt the pulse of the public, I was thoroughly acquainted with its constitution ; that I had taken measure of the town's taste, and knowing now exactly how to fit it, I could lead the playgoing world in a string. ' Oho !' said I, mentally, ' if " Two to One" has tickled them so much, I shall tickle them a great deal more the next time.' So down I sat again to be most inveterately comical, and even to outdo MYSELF. " I did outdo myself, at a furious rate ! I doubled all the faults of my first composition in my second. Instead of splashing carelessly with a light brush, I now delibe- rately laid it on with a trowel ; to say nothing of the flimsiness and improbability of my plot, I laboured so much to sparkle in dialogue, studied so deeply for anti- theses, quibbles, and puns — ' And glittering thoughts struck out at ever; line,' that I produced a very puerile and contemptible per- formance — a second musical comedy in three acts, under the title of ' Turk and No Turk.' . » 1* io MEMOIR OF * [1787- " This piece, however, -was received much better than it deserved, and without one dissentient voice. It was acted, however, only ten nights, in the summer of 1785 ; and to the very slight scratch my amour propre re- ceived — but which I would not confess, scarcely to myself — I applied the flattering unction, from Horace, of ' decies repetita placeoit.' But I could not be so blinded by youthful coxcombry as not to suspect that I had been a little mistaken in the measure I had taken of the town." Such were the first attempts of one who was destined in a few years to be acknowledged as the foremost dramatic writer of his age. In the summer of 1787 Colman ■ produced his excellent drama of " Inkle and Yarico." He thus alludes to it : — " The opera of ' Inkle and Yarico ' owes its origin to a page or two in the Spectator ; in these, and other instances, where I adopted less limited though not extensive ground- works, I found, or fancied I found, that, however eligible the subjects which I borrowed, if the loans had been larger I should have been duller. " Critics have been pleased to observe, that it was a good hit when I made Inkle offer Yarico for sale to the person whom he afterwards discovers to be his intended father-in-law. The hit, good or bad, only occurred to me when I came to that part of the piece in which it is introduced, and arose from the accidental turn which I had given to previous scenes ; as it is not in the original story, it would in all probability not have occurred to me while coldly preparing an elaborate prospectus ; and such a prospectus once made, it is ten to one that I should have followed it mechanically." The rising dramatist did not, however, find it all smooth sailing. " After the commencement," he says, " of my course as I794-] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. n an avowed author for the stage, the first check which my ardour experienced was in the production of my fourth play, called ' Ways and Means,' which encountered some opposition on the night of its probation. This op- position was by no means what sailors would call a downright gale of wind ; but the weather was squally, and not at all pleasant to a young navigator who had per- formed three previous voyages in perfectly untroubled waters. The little vessel, however, rode it out gallantly. " The epilogue too (written by myself) was taken in high dudgeon by the newspaper writers, whom it some- what impoliticly ridiculed, and they joined common cause by endeavouring to run down thepiece, with much acrimony, in almost all their journals." A review* of it in its printed form says, " This is a play of considerable merit, abounding in wit and well- drawn characters. The plot is simple, but clear, lively, and probable. The character of Sir David Dunder is well imagined, and naturally supported throughout. The dialogue is neat, and well suited to the respective dramatis personce. The author tells us [in a preface] that in this piece laugh and whim were his objects ; and the mirth and good humour of his audience, whatever malice and misrepresentation may affirm to the contrary, have con- vinced him that his design is accomplished." On the 14th of August, 1794, Colman the Elder died at Paddington, at the age of sixty-two, after eight years of great physical suffering and mental alienation. His melancholy disorder began in 1786 by an hemiplegia. In 1789 he was struck with paralysis, which nearly de- prived him of the use of one side of his body, and in a * "Biographia Dramatica," edit. 1812, vol. iii. p. 393. 12 MEMOIR OF D79S- short time afterwards lie exhibited unquestionable proofs of mental derangement, thus furnishing a rather deplorable instance that the best intellects and finest talents have but a precarious tenure in our frail and feverish being. It was found necessary to place Mr. Colman under proper care at Paddington, and the conduct of the theatre devolved upon his son. "Having purchased the Haymarket Theatre on the demise of my father," says George Colman the Younger, " I continued to manage it as my own. During such pro- gression, up to the year 1796 inclusive, I scribbled many dramas for the Haymarket, and one for Drury Lane ; in almost all of which the younger Bannister, being engaged at both theatres, performed a prominent character ; so that for most of the thirteen years I have enumerated, he was of the greatest importance to my theatrical pros- perity in my double capacity of author and manager ; while I was of some service to him, by supplying him with new characters. These reciprocal interests made us of course such close colleagues, that our almost daily con- sultations promoted amity, while they forwarded business. " Immediately after my father's demise," continues Col- man, " I opened the Haymarket Theatre, in 1795, with an occasional piece,* which contains a ridicule, a good- natured one I hope, on the extended dimensions of the two principal London play-houses, wherein I say, in a song alluding to them : — " 'When people appear Quite unable to hear, 'Tis undoubtedly needless to talk ;' * " New Hay at the Old Market ;" the first scene of which is still acted under the title of " Sylvester Daggerwood." 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 13 and that — " ' 'Twere better they began On the new invented plan, And with telegraphs transmitted us the plot.' " The new large houses soon found the necessity of recurring to that ' magnificence of spectacle ' of which my father speaks; they introduced white oxen, horses, elephants, both sham and real; and the song above quoted ends with the following verse : — " Bat our House here's so small That we've no need to bawl, And the summer will rapidly pass, So we hope you'll think fit To hear the Actors a bit, Till the Elephants and Bulls come from grass : Then let Shakspeare and Jonson go hang, go hang ! Let your Otways and Drydens go drown ! Give them but Elephants and White bulls enough, And they'll take in all the town, Brave boys !" The year 1796 was remarkable in the life of Colman for the production and failure of his play entitled "The Iron Chest," at Drury Lane Theatre. Its non-success was attri- buted by the author to Mr. Kemble, the original representa- tive of Sir Edward Mortimer. Colman was so sore on this subject at the period, that he commemorated his bitterness in a preface prefixed to the play — which we have thpught it well to reprint here, as a literary curiosity, and as illus- trating an interesting portion of Colman's dramatic career — written with a pen which assimilated in its texture to the iron instrument presented by the devil to Father Ambrosio, in Monk Lewis's romance. This caustic record was subsequently suppressed ; both author and actor having relinquished a mutual animosity, which in its character and conduct could reflect but little credit on either. 14 MEMOIR OF [i79 6 - "preface to 'the iron chest,' 1796. "Having been for some time a labourer in the drama, and finding it necessary to continue my labours, I cannot help endeavouring to guard the past from misrepresentation, lest my supineness may injure the future. Conscious that a prejudice has been raised against the play which I now submit to the reader, and conscious how far I am innocent of raising it, it were stupid to sit down in silence, and thus tacitly acknowledge myself guilty of dulness ; dumbly confess I have been deficient in the knowledge of my trade, damn myself for a bungling workman, and fix a disrepute upon every article which may hereafter come from my hands. " Thanks to you, ladies and gentlemen ! you have been kind customers to me ; and I am proud to say that you have stamped a fashion upon my goods. Base, indeed, and ungrateful were the attempt, after your favours, so long received and continued, to impose upon you a clumsy commodity, and boast it to be ware of the first quality that I ever put up to sale! No — on the word of an honest man, I have bestowed no small pains upon this ' Iron Chest,' which I offer you. Inspect it : examine it ; you see the maker's name is upon it. I do not say it i$ perfect ; I do not pretend to tell you it is of the highest polish ; there is no occasion for that — many of my brethren have presented you with mere linings for chests, and you have been content. But I trust you will find that my ' Iron Chest ' will hold together, that it is tolerably sound, and fit for all the purposes for which it was intended. " Then how came it to fall to pieces after four days' wear ? I will explain that. But alas ! alas ! my heart I796-] GEORGE COLMAN 1HE YOUNGER. 15 doth yearn when I think on the task which' circumstance has thrust upon me. " Now, by the Spirit of Peace, I swear ! were I not still doomed to explore the rugged windings of the drama, I would wrap myself in mute philosophy, and repose calmly under the dark shade of my grievance, rather than endure the pain and trouble of this explanation. I cannot, however, cry ' Let the world slide !' I must pursue my journey, and be active to clear away the obstacles that impede my progress. " I am too callous now to be annoyed by those innume- rable gnats and insects who daily dart their impotent stings on the literary traveller ; and too knowing to dis- mount and waste my time in whipping grasshoppers. But here is a scowling, sullen, black bull right athwart my road — a monster of magnitude, of the Boeotian breed, perplexing me in my wanderings through the entangled labyrinth of Drury ! He stands sulkily before, with 'sides seemingly impenetrable to any lash, and tougher than the Dun Cow of Warwick 1 His front out-fronting the brazen bull of Perillus ! He has bellowed, gentlemen I Yea, he hath bellowed a dismal sound ! A hollow, unvaried tone, heaved from his very midriff, and striking the listener with torpor ! Would I could pass the animal quietly, for my own sake — and for his, by Jupiter ! I repeat it, I would not willingly harm the bull. I delight not in •baiting him. I would jog as gently by him as by the ass that grazes on the common ; but he has obstinately blocked up my way — he has already tossed and gored me severely. I must make an effort, or he batters me down and leaves me to bite the dust. " The weapon I must use is not of that brilliant and keen quality which, in a skilful hand, neatly cuts up the sub- ject, to the delight and admiration of the bystanders. It 16 MEMOIR OF [1796- is a homely cudgel of narrative ; a blunt Mtoh of matter of fact ; affording little display of art in the wielder ; and so heavy in its nature, that it can merely claim the merit of being appropriate to the opponent at whom it is levelled. " Pray stand clear ! for I shall handle this club vilely : and if any one come in my way he may chance to get a rap which I did not intend to bestow upon him. Good venal and venomous gentlemen, who dabble in ink for pay or from pique, and who have dubbed yourselves critics, keep your distance now ! Kun home to your garrets ! — Fools ! ye are but Ephemera at best ; and will die soon enough, in the paltry course of your insignificant natures, without thrusting your ears (if there be any left you) into the heat of this perilous action. Avaunt ! — well, well, stay if ye are bent upon it, and be pert and busy ; your folly to me is of no moment.* " I hasten now to my narrative. "I agreed to write the following play at the instance of the chief proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre, J who uncon- ditionally agreed to pay me a certain sum for my labour : and this certain sum, being much larger than any, I be- lieve, hitherto offered on similar occasions, created no small jealousy among the Parnassian Sans-culottes ; several of whom have of late been vapidly industrious to level to the muddy surface of their own Castalian ditch so aristocratico-dramatic a bargainer. The play, as fast as written (piecemeal), was put into rehearsal ; but let * " Te who impartially and conscientiously sit in diurnal judgment upon modern dramatists, apply not this to yourselves. It aims only at the malevolent, the mean, and the ignorant, who are the disgrace of your order." t Richard Brinsley Sheridan.— Ed. 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 17 it here be noted, gentle reader 1 that a rehearsal in Drury Lane (I mean as far as relates to this ' Iron Chest') is lucus a non lucendo. They yclep it a rehearsal, I conjecture, because they do not rehearse. I call the loved shade of Garrick to witness ; nay, I call the- less loved presence of the then acting manager to avow, that there never was one fair rehearsal of the play. Never one rehearsal wherein one, or two, or more of the performers very essential to the piece were not absent : and all the re- hearsals which I attended so slovenly and irregular, that the ragged master of a theatrical barn might have blushed for the want of discipline in the pompous director of his majesty's servants, at the vast and astonishing new-erected Theatre Eoyal in Drury Lane. " It is well known to those conversant with the business of the stage that no perfect judgment can be formed of the length of a play, apparent to the spectator, nor of the general effect intended to be produced, until the private repetitions, among the actors, have reduced the business into something like lueidus ordo — then comes the time for the judicious author to take up his pruning-knife or handle his hatchet. Then he goes lustily to work, my masters ! upon his curtailments or additions ; his trans- positions, his loppings, his parings, trimmings, dockings, &c. &c. As in the writing, so in the rehearsal. " ' Ordinis hsec virtus erit et venus, aut ego fallor ; Ut jam nunc dicat, jam nunc debentia dici Pleraque differat, et prsesens in tempus omittat : Hoc amet, hoc spernat, promissi carminia Auctor.' " But woe is me 1 while I was patiently waiting the ex- pected crisis, a circumstance occurred which compelled me to watch a crisis of a less agreeable nature. A fever at- tacked me as I sat beneath the damp dome of Drury, and drove me, malgr$ moi, to bed ; where I lay during a week c 18 MEMOIR OF [1796. till three hours before the play was exhibited. In addition to the unavoidable injury arising from the author's absence, Mr. Kemble, the acting manager and principal performer in the piece, was, and had been for a few days previous to my own illness, confined to his chamber by indisposition. I lay little stress indeed upon his temporary incapacity to perform his managerial duty ; his mode of discharging it hitherto was productive of little benefit to me ; still it was some drawback, for were a mere log thrown amidst a Thespian community, and nominated its dull and ponderous ruler, still the block, while in its place, would carry some sway with it ; but his non-attendance as an actor, so much engaged in the play, was particularly detrimental. " Nay, even the composer of the music — and here let me breathe a sigh to the memory of departed worth and genius as I write the name of Storace — even he could not preside in his department. He was preparing an early flight to that abode of harmony where choirs of angels swell the note of welcome to an honest and congenial spirit. "Here then was a direct stop to the business. No such thing. The troops proceeded without leaders : in the dark, messieurs ! ' sans eyes, saws everything.' The prompter, it is true, a kind of non-commissioned officer, headed the corps, and a curious march was made of it ! " But lo! two days, or three (I forget which), previous to the public representation, up rose King Kemble ! like Somnus from his ebon bed, to distribute his dozing direc- tions among his subjects. " ' Tarda, gravitate jacentes Vix oculos tollens ; Summaque percutiens nutanti peetora mento, Excussit, tandem, sibi se ; cubitoque levatus,' &c. " He came, saw, and pronounced the piece to be ripe for 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 19 exhibition. It was ordered to be performed immediately. News was brought to me in my sickness of the mighty fiat ; and although I was told officially that due care had been taken to render it worthy of public attention, I submitted with doubt and trembling to the decree. My doubts too of this boasted care were not a little increased by a note which I received from the prompter, written by the manager's order, three hours only before the first re- presentation of the play ; wherein, at this late period, my consent was abruptly requested to a transposition of two of the most material scenes in the second act ; and the reason given for this curious proposal was that the present stage of Drury — where the architect and machinist, with the judgment and ingenuity of a politician and a wit to assist them, had combined to outdo all former theatrical oufdoings — was so bunglingly constructed that there was not time for the carpenters to place the lumbering frame- work, on which an abbey was painted, behind the repre- sentation of a library without leaving a chasm of ten minutes in the action of the play ; and that in the middle of an act. Such was the fabrication of that new stage whose ' extent and powers ' have been so vauntingly advertised, under the classic management of Mr. Kemble, in the edifying exhibition of pantomimes, processions, pageants, triumphal cars, milk-white horses, and elephants ! " As I did not choose to alter the construction of my play without deliberation merely to screen the ill- con- struction of the house, I would not listen to the modest and well-timed demand of turning the progress of my fable topsy turvy. " Very ill and very weak from the effects of the fever, which had not yet left me, I made an effort and wenf^ to the theatre to witness the performance. I found Mr. Kemble in his dressing-room, a short time before the o 2 20 MEMOIR OF [1796. curtain was drawn up, taking opium pills ; and nobody who is acquainted with that gentleman will doubt me when I assert, that they are a medicine which he has long been in the habit of swallowing. He appeared to be very unwell ; and seemed indeed to have imbibed " ' Poppy and mandragora, And all the drowsy syrups of the world.' " The play began ; and all went smoothly till a trifling disapprobation was shown to the character personated by Mr. Dodd — the scene in which he was engaged being much too long. A proof of the neglect of those whose business it was to have informed me (in my unavoidable absence from the theatre) that it appeared in tbe last rehearsals to want curtailment. I considered this, however, to be of no great moment ; for Mr. Kemble was to appear immediately in a subsequent scene, and much was expected from his execution of a part written expressly for his powei's. " And here let me describe the requisites for the charac- ter which I have attempted to draw, that the world may judge whether I have taken a wrong measure of the personage whom I proposed to fit ; premising that I have worked for him before with success, and therefore it may be presumed that I am somewhat acquainted with the dimensions of his qualifications. I required then a man " ' Of a tall stature, and of sable hue, Much like the son of Kish, that lofty Jew.' " A man of whom it might be said — " ' There's something in his soul O'er which his melancholy sits and broods.' " Look at the actor ; and will anybody do him the in- justice to declare that he is deficient in these qualifications. 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 21 It would puzzle any author, in any time or country, from iEschylus down even to the translator of Lodoiska* — and really, gentlemen, I can go no lower — to find a figure and face better suited to the purpose. I have endeavoured moreover to portray Sir Edward Mortimer as a man stately in his deportment, reserved in his temper, myste- rious, cold, and impenetrable in his manner : and the candid observer I trust will allow that Mr. Kenible thoroughly adequate to such a personation. " To complete my requisitions, I demanded a performer who could enter into the spirit of a character proceeding upon romantic, half-witted principles, abstracted in his opinions, sophisticated in his reasonings, and who is thrown into situations where his mind and conduct stand tiptoe on the extremest verge of probability. Here surely I have not mistaken my man ; for if I am able to form any opinion of him as an actor — and my opinion I know is far from singular — his chief excellence almost approaches that style which the learned denominate caricature. Possi- bility on the stretch, passion over-leaping its customary bound, movements of the soul, sullen or violent, very rarely seen in the common course of things, yet still may be seen — in these is his element. As our language is said to have sunk under the vast conception of Milton, so does the modesty of nature suffer a depression beneath the unwieldy imaginings of Mr. Kemble. He seldom deigns to accompany the goddess in her ordinary walks, when she decently paces the regular path with a sober step and a straight person ; but he kindly assists her when she is doubtless in need of assistance — when she appears out of her way, crazy and crooked. " The arrogant fault of being more refined than refine- * J. P. Kemble himself. 22 MEMOIR OF [1796. merit, more proper than propriety, more sensible than sense, which nine times in ten will disgust the spectator, becomes frequently an advantage to him in characters of the above description. " In short, Mr. Kemble is a paragon-representative of the lusus naturce ; and were Mr. Kemble sewed up in a skin, to act a hog in a pantomime, he would act a hog with six legs better than a hog with four. " If any one ask why I chose to sketch a lusus naturce when it might better become an author to be chaste in his delineation, I can only reply that I did so to obtain the assistance of Mr. Kemble in his best manner ; and that now I do most heartily repent me : for never, sure, did man place the main strength of his building upon so rotten a prop ! " Well, the great actor was discovered as Sir Edward Mortimer in his library. Gloom and desolation sat upon his brow ; and he was habited, from the wig to the shoe- string, with the most studied exactness. Had one of King Charles the First's portraits walked from the frame upon the boards of the theatre, it could not have afforded a truer representation of ancient and melancholy dignity. "The picture could not have looked better — but, in justice to the picture, it must also be added, that the picture could scarcely have acted worse. " The spectators, who gaped with expectation at his first appearance, yawned with lassitude before his first exit. It seemed, however, that illness had totally in- capacitated him from performing the business he had undertaken. For his mere illness he was entitled to pity ; for his conduct under it, he undoubtedly deserved censure. "How can Mr. Kemble, as a manage; and an actor, justify his thrusting himself forward in a new play, the material interest of which rested upon his own powers, at 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 23 a moment when he must be conscious that he had no powers at all ? Mr. Kemble owes a duty to the public, to his employer, and to an author writing for his employer's house. How does he treat the claimants upon his service in this instance ? Exactly thus — he insults the under- standing of the first, and injures the interests of the two last, by calling in a crowd to an entertainment which he knows he must mar. "I requested him, at the end of the first act, to order an apology to be made for his indisposition, lest the uninformed or malicious might attribute the ponderosity of the per- former to the heaviness of the author. I was anxious to disavow all right and title to those pigs of lead which did not belong to me, and of which Mr. Kemble was the just proprietor. But no, he peremptorily declared he would not suffer an apology to be made ! It should have been made (if at all) before the play began. Then why was it not made ? He did not then imagine that illness would have disabled him. So then a man quits his chamber, after an attack which has evidently weakened him ex- tremely, and he has no bodily feel, no internal monitor, to whisper to him that he is feeble, and that he has not re- covered sufficient strength to make a violent exertion! This mode of reasoning, adopted by Mr. Kemble, is much in the spirit of that clown's who did not know whether he could play on a fiddle till he tried. Be it noted also, that Mr. Kemble was swallowing his opium pills before the play began, because he was ill. But opium causes strange oblivious effects ; and these pills must have occasioned so sudden a lapse in Mr. Kemble's memory, that he forgot when he took them, why he took them, or that he had taken them at all. The dose must have been very power- ful. Still, for the reasons already stated, I pressed for an apology ; still Mr. Kemble continued obstinate in opposing 24 MEMOIR OF [I79& it. His indisposition, he said, was evident; he had coughed very much upon the stage, and an apology would make him ' look like a fool.' " Good-nature in excess becomes weakness ; but I never yet found, in the confined course of my reading, that good nature and folly would bear the same definition. Mr. Kemble, it would seem (and he produced at least mana- gerial authority for it), considered the terms to be synonymous. Freely, however, forgiving him for his un- kindness in refusing to gratify a poor devil of an author, who, very anxious for his reputation, was very moderate in his request, I do, in all Christian charity, most sincerely wish that Mr. Kemble may never find greater cause to look like a fool than an apology for his indisposition. " At length, by dint of perseverance, I gained my point. A proprietor of the theatre was called in upon the occa- sion, whose mediation in my favour carried more weight with the acting manager than a hapless dramatist's en- treaty ; and the apology was in due form delivered to the audience. " One-third of the play only was yet performed ; and I was now to make up my mind, like an unfortunate traveller, to pursue my painful journey through two stages more upon a broken-down poster, on whose back lay all the baggage for my expedition. Miserably and most heavily in hand did the poster proceed ! He groaned, he lagged, he coughed, he winced, he wheezed ! Never was seen so sorry a jade ! The audience grew completely soured ; and once completely soured, everything naturally went wrong. They recurred to their disapprobation of poor Dodd — and observe what this produced. I must relate it. " Mr. Kemble had just plodded through a scene, regard- less of those loud and manifest tokens that the critics de- lighted not in the ' drowsy hums' witli which he ' rang I796-] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 25 night's yawning peal,' when Dodd appeared to him on the stage; at whose entrance the clamour was renewed. Then, and not till then, did the acting manager, who had been deaf as any post to the supplications of the author for an apology — then did he appear suddenly seized with a fit of good nature. He voluntarily came forward ' to look like a fool,' arid beg the indulgence of the town. He feared he was the unhappy cause of their disapprobation ; he en- treated their patience ; and hoped he should shortly gain strength to enable them to judge, on a future night, what he handsomely termed the merits of the play. Here was friendship ! Here was adroitness ! While the public were testifying their disgust at the piece, through the medium of poor Dodd, Mr. Kemble, with unexampled generosity, took the whole blame upon his own shoulders, and he- roically saved the author by so timely an interposition. I was charmed with this master-stroke, and at the impulse of the moment, I thanked him. But alas ! how narrow is the soul of man ! how distrustful in its movements, how scanty in its acknowledgments, how perplexing to itself in its combinations ! Had I afterwards looked on the thing simply and nakedly by itself, why, the thing is a good- natured thing ; but I must be putting other circumstances by the side of it, with a plague to me ! I must be puzzling myself to see if all fits ; if all is of a piece. And what is the result ? Miserable that I am ! I have lost the pleasure of evincing a gratitude which I thought I owed, because I no longer feel myself a debtor. Had I abandoned my mind to that placid negligence, that luxurious confidence, which the inconsiderate enjoy, it had never occurred to me that Mr. Kemble, foreseeing perhaps that an ag- grieved author might not be totally silent, stepped for- ward with this speech to the public, as a kind of salvo (should a statement be made) for his rigidity in the first 26 MEMOIR OF [1796. instance. It had never occurred to me that Mr. Kemble was sufficiently hissed, yawned at, laughed at, and coughed down, to have made his apology before Mr. Dodd appeared. It had never occurred to me that his making his apology at a previous moment would have answered the same purpose to me, and not to him. It had never occurred, in short, that there is such a thing as ostentatious humility and a politic act of kindness; and that I should have waited the sequel of a man's conduct before I thanked him for one instance of seeming goodwill, close upon the heels of stubborn ill-nature, and in the midst of existing and palpable injury. The sequel will show that I was prema- ture in my acknowledgment ; but before I come to the sequel, a word or two (I will be brief) to close my account of this first night's eventful history. The piece was con- cluded, and given out for a second performance with much opposition. " Friends who never heard the play read shook their heads ; friends who had heard it read scarcely knew it again. Several, I doubt not, of the impartial, who chose to be active, actively condemned ; and enemies of course rejoiced in an opportunity of joining them. " No opportunity could be fairer. The play was at least a full hour too long ; and had Job himself sat to hear it, t he must have lost his patience. But if, gentle reader, -thou possessest Job's quality, and hast followed me thus far in my narrative, it will appear to thee (for I doubt not thy retention and combination) that I was unable to cur- tail it effectually at the proper time — the last rehearsals.' I was then laid flat, my dear friend, as you remember I bave told you, by a fever. The acting manager did attend the last rehearsals, and suffered the piece to be produced uncut, to ' drag its slow length along,' surcharged with all its own incapacity and all his opium. 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 27 " How then do I stand indebted, according to the articles of this night's statement ? I owe to Mr. Kemble : — " For his illness Compassion. For his conduct under it Cehsure. For his refusing to make an apology . A Smile. For his making an apology .... A Sneer. For his mismanagement A Groan. For his acting ........ A Hiss. " This account is somewhat like the tavern bill picked from Falstaffs pocket, when he is snorting behind the arras. There is but one halfpennyworth of compassion to this intolerable deal of blame. "Now for the sequel. I have shown, I think, that Mr. Kemble, in the first instance, undertook a duty which he could not perform. I have now to affirm, with all the difficulty of proving a negative full in my face, that he afterwards made a mockery of discharging a duty which he would not perform. " After a week's interval, to give him time to recruit his strength, and the author time to curtail and alter the play (for the impression which the mismanager and actor had contrived to stamp rendered alteration necessary), it was a second time represented. I must here let the uninformed reader into a secret ; but I must go to Newmarket to make him understand me ; no, Epsom will do as well, and that is nearer home. It often happens at a race that a known horse, from whom good sport is expected, disappoints the crowd by walking over the course ; he does not miss an inch of the ground, but affords not one jot of diversion, unless some pleasure is received in contemplating his figure. Now an actor can do the very same thing. He can walk over his part ; he can miss no more of his words than the horse does of his 2S MEMOIR OF [1796. way; he can be as dull and as tedious and as good looking as the horse in his progress. The only difference between the two animals is that the horse brings in him who bets upon him a gainer, but the luckless wight who' has a large stake depending upon the actor, is decidedly certain to lose. There is a trick too that the jockeys practise which is called, I think, playing booty. This consists in appearing to use their utmost endeavour to reach the win- ning post first, when they are already determined to come in the last. The consequence is, that all except the knowing ones attribute no fault to the jockey, but damn the horse for a sluggard. An actor can play booty if he chooses ; he can pretend to whip and spur and do his best, when the connoisseur knows all the while he is shirking ; but sluggard is the unmerited appellation given by the majority to the innocent author. " Mr. Kemble chiefly chose to be horse, and walked over the ground. Every now and then, but scarcely enough to save appearances, he gave a slight touch of the joGkey, and played booty. " Whether the language which is put into the mouth of Sir Edward Mortimer be above mediocrity or below contempt is not to the present purpose ; but the words he is made to utter certainly convey a meaning, and the circumstances of the scenes afford an opportunity to the performer of playing off his mimic emotions, his transi- tions of passion, his starts, and all the trickeries of his trade. The devil a trick did Mr. Kemble play but a very scurvy one. His emotions and passions were so rare and so feeble that they seasoned his general insipidity like a single grain of wretched pepper thrown into the largest dose of water gruel that was ever administered to an invalid. For the most part he toiled on, line after line, in a dull current of undiversified sound, which stole I796-] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 29 upon the ear far more drowsily than the distant mur- murings of Lethe, with no attempt to break the lulling stream, or check its sleep-inviting course. " Frogs in a marsh, flies in a bottle, wind in a crevicW, a preacher in a field, the drone of a bagpipe, all, all yielded to the inimitable and soporific monotony of Mr. Kemble. " The very best dramatic writing, where passion is expressed, if delivered languidly by the actor, will fail in its intended effect ; and I will be bold enough to say that were the curse in ' King Lear ' new to an audience, and they heard it uttered for the first time in a croak fainter than a crow's in a consumption, it would pass unnoticed or appear vapid to the million. " If I raise a critical clatter about my ears by this assertion, which some may twist into a profanation of Shakspeare, I leave it to Horace, who can fight battles better than I, to defend me. " ' Si dicentis erunt fortunis absona dicta, Bomani tollent equites peditesque cachinnum.' " That Mr. Kemble did not misconceive the part is cer- tain ; for he told me, some time before the play was acted, that he feared the exertions requisite in Sir Edward Mortimer would strain his lungs more than Octavian iD ' The Mountaineers.' " That he can strain his lungs to good purpose in Octa- vian is well known : and after this, his own intimation, how will he escape the charge of wilful and direct delin- quency, when, with such' a conception of the part, and with health recovered, lie came forward in the true spirit of Bottom, and ' aggravated his voice so that he roared you as gently as any sucking dove ?' * * " Mr. Kemble informed me, previous to the second representation, of the play, that he felt himself capable of exertion." 30 MEMOIR OF [1796. " He insulted the town and injured his employer and the author sufficiently in the first instance ; in the second, he added to the insult and injury a hundredfold ; and as often as he mangled the character (three or four times, I am uncertain which, after the first night's performance) he heaped aggravation upon aggravation. " The most miserable murmur that ever disgraced the walls of a theatre could not have been a stronger draw- back than Mr. Kemble. He was not only dull in himself, but the cause of dulness in others. Like the baleful upas of Java, his pestiferous influence infected all around him. When two actors come forward to keep up the shuttlecock of scenic fiction, if one plays slovenly the other cannot maintain his game. Poor Bannister, jun., would he speak out (but I have never pressed him, and never shall press him, to say a word upon the subject), could bear ample testimony to the truth of this remark. He suffered like a man under the cruelty of Mezentius. All alive himself, he was tied to a corpse, which he was fated to drag about with him scene after scene, which weighed him down and depressed his vigour. Miss Farren too, who might animate anything but a soul of lead and face of iron, experienced the same fate. " I could proceed, and argue, and reason, and discuss, and tire the reader, as I have tired myself (it is now, my good friend, one o'clock in the morning), to prove further that Mr. Kemble was unsound in my cause, and that he ruined my play. But I will desist here. I think I have prosed enough to manifest that my arguments are not unfounded. " They who are experienced in Dramatics will, I trust, see that I have made a fair extenuation of myself ; they who are impartial will, I hope, be convinced that I have set down nought in malice. " The only question that may arise to shake materially 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 31 the credit of all I have said is, ' How is it probable* that Mr. Kemble should injure you thus without provocation ? Is it in nature ? Is it in man ?' I can merely answer that I am unconscious of having given him a cause for provocation ; that if I have given him cause, he has taken a bad mode of revenge ; that Mr. Kemble's nature has frequently puzzled me in my observation upon it ; and that I think him a very extraordinary man.' " But let him take this with him, should this crudely written preface ever fall in his way. I have committed it to paper currente calamo. I mean no allusion, no epithet, to apply to him as a private individual. As a private individual, I give him not that notice which it might here be impertinent to bestow. But I have an undoubted right to discuss his merits, or demerits, in his public capacities of manager and actor ; and my cause of com- plaint gives me a good reason as well as a right. His want of conduct, his neglect, his injustice, his oppression, his finesse, his person, his face, are, in this point of view, all open to my animadversion. " ' He is my goods, my chattels ; My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.' " And I would animadvert still further, did I not think I had already said sufficient to gain the object of guarding my own reputation. That object has solely swayed me in dwelling so long upon a ' plain tale,' encumbered with so fatiguing a hero as John Kemble." "advertisement to the reader. " I am indebted for the groundwork of this play to a novel, entitled ' Things as They Are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams ; written by William Godwin.' Much of 32 MEMOIR OF [1796. Mr. Godwin's story I have omitted ; much which I have adopted, I have compressed ; much I have added ; and much I have taken the liberty to alter. " All this I did that I might fit it, in the best of my judgment, to the stage. " I have cautiously avoided all tendency to that which vulgarly (wrongly in many instances) is termed politics ; with which, many have told me, ' Caleb Williams' teems. " The stage has now no business with politics ; and should a dramatic author endeavour to dabble in them, it is the Lord Chamberlain's office to check his attempts before they meet the eye of the public. I perused Mr. Godwin's book as a tale replete with interesting incident, ingenious in its arrangement, masterly in its delineation of character, and forcible in its language. I considered it as right of common; and by a title which custom has given to dramatists, I enclosed it within my theatrical paling. However I may have tilled the land, I trust he discovers no intentional injury to him in my proceeding. " To all the performers (excepting Mr. Kemble) I offer my hearty thanks for their exertions, which would have served me more had not an actor, ' dark as Erebus,' cast a gloom upon them, which none of their efforts, however brilliant, could entirely disperse. " But this does not diminish my obligations to them — so much indeed I owe to them, that when the play was last performed it was rising, spite of ' Erebus,' in favour with the town. It was then advertised, day after day, at the bottom of the play-bills, for repetition, till the pro- missory advertisement became laughable ; and at length the advertisement and the play were dropt together. " If after the foregoing preface I should at a future period bring the play forward in the Haymarket Theatre, I am fully aware of the numbers who, from party and 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 33 pique, may now oppose it. 1 am aware too of the weight which a first impression leaves upon the minds of the most candid. Still so strong is my confidence in the genuine decision of a London audience, who have a fair oppor- tunity of exercising their judgment and feelings (which they have not had yet in respect to this play), that I believe I shall venture an appeal. " The piece is now printed as it was acted on the jirst night; that they who peruse it may decide whether, even in that shape (with all the misfortunes before enume- rated with which it was doomed to struggle) it should be for ever consigned to moulder on the shelf. "The songs, duets, and choruses are intended merely as vehicles for musical effect. Some critics have pompously called them ' lyric poetry' — that by raising them to dignity, they may more effectually degrade them : as men lift a stone very high, before they let it fall, when they would completely dash it to pieces. "I now leave the gentle reader to the perusal of the play — and lest my father's memory may be injured by mistakes ; and, in the confusion of after-times, the Translator of Terence, and the Author of ' The Jealous Wife,' be sup- posed guilty of ' The Iron Chest,' I shall, were I to reach the patriarchal longevity of Methuselah, continue (in all my dramatic publications) to subscribe myself " George Colman the Youngeb. " Piccadilly, July 20th, 1796." "POSTSCRIPT. " ' Irwerti Porfoml' " I have now, previous to the publication of this edition of ' The Iron Chest,' made the appeal, suggested in the fore- D 34 MEMOIR OF [1796. going advertisement. I have produced the play at my own theatre in the Haymarket. "Eeflecting on the prejudice it would encounter, my hopes of success were very moderate ; had my expec- tations, however, been most sanguine, I should not have suffered a disappointment. The piece was received with strong marks of approbation ; it is now nightly performing ; and if numerous auditors and full applause can gratify a dramatic author, I am gratified completely. " The play, as now representing, varies from the printed copy in scarcely more than six lines, except in mere curtailment : and it is printed (as I have already stated) as it was first acted in Drury Lane. " The chief performers new in the piece, at the Hay- market, are Messrs. Elliston, Aickin, Eawcett, Palmer, C. Kemble, Mrs. Kemble, and Mrs. Bland. Their efforts to serve me demand my warmest acknowledgments; to dwell upon their abilities would be superfluous. Suffice it to say, that all the representatives of the dramatis persona did ample credit to themselves; and added, I trust, no small portion of reputation to the theatre. " But let not my corps dramatique think it invidious if I single Mr. Elliston from their number, who is pe- culiarly predicamented in coming forward in a character of which so much has already been said. This young actor, new this summer, to the boards of a London theatre, with a juvenility of person, in this instance unfavourable to him, has sustained a part written expressly for the powers of another man (and that man as strong a man- nerist as ever wore a buskin), in a mode which might well become an established veteran of the stage. It is far from my intention to draw general comparisons ; but it is impossible here to avoid speaking of the two actors of Sir Edward Mortimer. The first mangled, and finally sunk 1796.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 35 my play ; the second healed the wounds it had received and is now (with the rest of his brethren) ably supporting it. It is "bare truth to say that Mr. Elliston's conduct to me and his performance of the character have been the very reverse of Mr. Kemble's : were it more than bare truth, it would be a high compliment. " I now beg the reader to compare this postscript with Has preface; and I think he will readily observe that the one most fully establishes the other. Here are facts, ex- perimental facts, now given, and nightly continuing to be given, to corroborate the arguments I have advanced, and to prove that my complaint is well founded. " I must here repeat that I have had but one motive in these statements — the motive which I have avowed in the conclusion of my preface. I have effected my pur- pose ; and I feel not the least ill will towards Mr. Kemble. But my reason tells me that I had better go to Constantinople to do him a service than put future faith in .his management and his acting. "As to the poor, pelting paragraphists and pamphleteers, he cannot, I am sure, be pleased in observing the con- temptible dirt with which they have endeavoured to be- spatter me. I have I think stated that they are below my notice ; but so sore is man, spite of his boasted apathy, that I cannot help giving here a general reply to their animadversions. " My language will, I trust, be found more liberal than the jargon of my opponents ; and my arguments fully as convincing. Thus I address them : " Gentlemen ! ! I " Pshaw ! Pish ! Pooh ! Ha, ha, ha ! " Your obedient, "G. COLMAN THE YOUNGER. "Piccadilly, Septembers, I79 6 -" D 2 36 MEMOIR OF [1796. THE IRON CHEST. First performed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, on March 12, 1796. "THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS By Mr. KEMBLE, &o." Drury Lane Play Bill. " I had as lieve the town-crier had spoke my lines." Shakspeare. Characters. SIR EDWARD MORTIMER Me. Kemble ! ! ! FITZHARDING {his elder Brother) . . . . Me. Wroughton. WILFORD (Secretary to Sir Edward) . . . Me. Bannister, jun. ADAM WINTERTON (the Steward) . . .Mr. Dodj>. RAWBOLD Mr. Bareymore. SAMSON RAWBOLD (his Son) Me. Suett. BOY Master Welsh. COOK Me. Hollingswoeth. PETER Me. Banks. WALTER Mr. Maddoks. SIMON Me. Webb. GREGORY Me. Tedehan. ARMSTRONG Me. Kelly. ORSON Mr. R. Palmer. FIRST ROBBER Mr. Dignott. SECOND ROBBER Mr. Sedgwick. THIRD ROBBER Mr. Bannister. ROBBER'S BOY Master Webb. LADY HELEN Miss Faeeen. BLANCH Mrs. Gibbs. DAME RAWBOLD Miss Tidswell. BARBARA Sionora Storage. JUDITH Miss Db Camp. I797-] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 37 It must be remembered that the above was written under the impulse of feelings rendered poignantly acute by the loss of the unprecedented sum which had been agreed to be paid to Colman had the play proved success- ful, and therefore must be received with caution. That Mr. Kemble's behaviour throughout the business was not such as to exculpate him entirely from the charges urged against him must be admitted ; but that he was so grossly culpable as Mr. Colman endeavours to prove may be unequivocally denied. The life of a manager of a theatre is one of harass and perplexity; but we are inclined to think that George Colman the Younger had not so much troublesome cor- respondence with his performers as his father endured before him. The summer performances of 1797 began about the usual period. Munden was engaged in the place of Bannister ; or we should rather say, that he was intended to succeed Parsons. Mrs. Davenport was retained this season for the old women, formerly played by Mrs. Hopkins; and the sudden retirement of that charming vocalist, Miss Leak, gave an opportunity for a young lady of the name of Andrews (another pupil of Dr. Arnold) to make her d'ebut. A farce entitled " The Irish Legacy " was produced at this time, but without success. It was a very early work of a young author, who subsequently wrote with considerable popularity — Samuel James Arnold. The music was composed by his father. The best production of this season was " The Heir at Law.'' Of the merits of this agreeable comedy there can be but one opinion. The characters (the amusing Pan- gloss, perhaps, excepted) axe true pictures of common life. Mrs. Inchbald remarked, " Invention, observation, good intention, and all the powers of a complete dra- 38 MEMOIR OF [1797- matist, are in this comedy displayed, except one — taste seems wanting ; but this failure is evidently not an error in judgment, but an escape from labour. The finer colours, for more polished mankind, would demand the artist's more laborious skill." With all due deference to the fair critic, the dramatic author, to be effective on the stage, must work freely, and, like the scene-painter (to use a technical term), with the pound brush ! Of the comedy of " The Heir at Law," a critic has remarked of Dr. Pangloss, one of the most pleasant of the dramatis personse, that the originality of the cha- racter may be reasonably disputed, by a reference to " Fortune in her "Wits,'' a comedy translated from the " Naufragium Joculare " of Abraham Cowley, and printed in 1705. The comedy of " The Heir at Law " has recently (1871) been revived with great success, owing to the inimitable acting of Mr. Clarke in the principal character. It was in 1797 that Colman published the first instal- ment of that series of humorous tales in verse which we now present to the public. This consisted of a thin quarto, entitled " My Nightgown and Slippers," containing only three stories — " The Maid of the Moor, or the Water Fiends " (a burlesque on the then existing rage for German ballads), " The Newcastle Apothecary," and " Lodgings for Single Gentlemen." The whole were connected by intercalary conversations between Tom, Dick, and Will, an alehouse triumvirate, who rail at modern poets and novel writers. The novelty of the style immediately attracted attention; the , book became very popular, and the whole edition was soon exhausted. In 1802 the little work reappeared, with considerable additions, under the title of " Broad Grins." As a story- teller in verse George Colman can scarcely be reckoned i8oo.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 39 inferior to Laf Fontaine. He was certainly the real father of all the Hoods and Ingoldsbys of a later generation. We must revert, however, for the present, to Colman' ,s dramatic performances. On the 16th of January, 1798, he produced the ro- mance of " Blue Beard" at Drury Lane Theatre. As a dramatic piece little can be said in its favour, but the spectacle was grand in the extreme. The procession was the best regulated effect of pageantry that had been at that time witnessed on the stage. Michael Kelly was very happy in the selection of the music ; Mrs. Crouch, in the zenith of her . beauty, was the original Fatima ; Miss Decamp gained great popularity by her performance and singing in Irene; Bannister and Suett were very pleasant ; and the celebrated Madame Parisot danced exquisitely. " The Castle Spectre" and " Blue Beard" ran together for a great number of nights, with unpre- cedented success. On the 19th of January, 1799, Colman produced a melodramatic romance at Drury Lane, entitled " Feudal Times, or the Banquet Gallery." It was showy but dull. There was little novelty in the plan, neither interest nor ingenuity in the construction of the story ; nor was there anything attractive in it upon the stage except what was supplied by the composer, the mechanist, and the scene- painter. On the nth of February, 1800, Colman brought before the public his comedy of " The Poor Gentleman," at Covent Garden Theatre, with great success. It waa represented for many nights with roars of laughter. Munden, Lewis, Fawcett, and Mrs. Mattocks were irresis- tible in it. "The Poor Gentleman" was of considerable service to the treasury. In addition to the plums of this fortunate season, .40 . MEMOIR OF [1800. Colman, on the 31st of August, presented his "Review; or, the "Wags of "Windsor." Without plot or interest, the dialogue and the characters are so pleasant that if, at this distance of time, the " Review," even tolerably acted, is amusing, what must the farce have been, supported as it was seventy years ago ! Nearly, if not entirely, the whole of this capital farce was written, or rather put together, by Colman in sudden haste, at Dr. Arnold's table in Duke Street. The character and principal dialogue, &c, of Caleb Quotem was transferred, without much addition, from a piece called " Throw Physic to the Dogs,'' which had failed a season or two before. Songs which Dr. Arnold had by him, ready cut and dried, were adapted, and even cha- racters introduced to sing them. " A Poor Little Gipsy I wander forlorn," sung by Mrs. Bland, and another ballad, sung by Miss Decamp disguised as a young recruit, were written by Samuel James Arnold, and when so adapted, proved a high feather in his youthful cap of vanity. The power of a man of talent to elicit amusement from the slightest and least promising materials is strikingly displayed by this dramatic trifle. Few pieces are more destitute of novelty in every point of view. Plot there is none. The incidents are few and trivial, and the same characters have been exhibited in the same situations in innumerable previous instances. Suspicious guardians, intriguing wards, and blundering servants have composed >the dramatis persona? of half the plays and farces pro- duced during the last century; yet they are here so pleasantly grouped, coloured with so happy an extrava- gance, and made to converse in language so pregnant with whim and drollery, that the " Review " has always been a decided favourite, and will long continue to excite 1803.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 4I the laughter of those careless mortals who visit the theatre merely to be amused, without examining too curiously into the construction of the piece which calls forth their merriment. The vulgar Irishman of the modern stage is a descrip- tion of character in depicting which the author of the "Eeview" remarkably excels. Looney Mactwolter is a rich specimen of this ability ; and as the author was most happy in his delineation of the part, he was equally for- tunate in having it sustained by so inimitable a performer as the original representative. The stoical gravity of the mind which can remain proof against the exquisite humour of Looney's bulls and blunders, when played by John- stone, is little to be coveted. The Yorkshireman, the Deputy, and the two pair of lovers, possess few shining characteristics ; but the voluble Quotem must not be passed over in silence. On the 5th of March, 1803, the most popular of George Colman's plays, " John Bull, or an Englishman's Fireside," was produced at Covent Garden. The un- bounded humour of Dennis Brulgruddery and Dan, the honest energy of Job Thornberry, the pathos, moral effi- cacy, character, and contrast that pervaded this comedy, immediately caused it to become a universal favourite. It was acted most admirably, and had a great run — forty-seven nights ! Colman now disposed of part of the Theatre Eoyal, Haymarket, to his brother-in-law, Mr. Morris, Mr. Win- ston, and an attorney of the name of Tahourdine. This partnership eventually led to a quarrel, and soon afterwards to a vexatious lawsuit, by which Colman's pecuniary affairs suffered so much that he was for some time compelled to live within the Eules of the Court of King's Bench. When Colman was in the Eules (and Dubois said that 42 MEMOIR OF [1808. he only stayed there to prove by a practical joke that he could be kept within them), he lived in the last house of the Rules towards Westminster, which, however, he left suddenly, and gave this reason for his departure. The staircase had a window looking out of the Eules, and he said " that after one of his nightly symposiums, he was afraid, in going to bed, he might fall out of this window, and so fix his bail." Honour therefore made him retreat. All retreats are not of that character. About this time His Royal Highness the Duke of York obtained leave from the King's Bench for Colman to dine at Carlton House. He accompanied the Duke thither. On his walking through the apartments with him, Colman remarked, " What excellent lodgings ! I have nothing like them in the King's Bench ! " After dinner, he exclaimed, " Eh ! why this is wine ; pray do tell me who that fine- looking fellow is at the head of the table ?" The good- natured Duke said, " Hush, George, you'll get into a scrape." " No, no," said Colman, in a louder voice, " I am come out to enjoy myself; I want to know who that fine, square-shouldered, magnificent-looking, agreeable fellow is, at the head of the table ?" " Be quiet, George," inter- rupted the Duke ; " you know it is the Prince." " Why then," continued Colman, still louder, " he is your elder brother. I declare he don't look half your age. Well, I remember the time when he sung a good song ! and as I am come out for a lark, for only one day, if he is the same good fellow that he used to be, he would not refuse an old playfellow." The Prince laughed, and sang. " What a magnificent voice ! " exclaimed Colman, " I have heard nothing to be compared to it for years. Such expression too ! I'll be damned if I don't engage him for my theatre." It would appear that this freak gave no offence to the 1809.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 43 Royal host ; for Colman was ever treated with kindness by George the Fourth. In 1808 Colman produced apiece entitled " The Afri- cans ; or War, Love, and Duty." It certainly is far from being his best drama. He bestowed his chief labour upon the dialogue, which is highly ornamented, and in the most vigorous style of the author; but this labour was mis- applied, for the characters required the utmost simplicity of diction. This was one of the great faults of the play. The three brothers were well represented by Young, Parley, and Fawcett; the latter played admirably, and was doubtless the great support of the piece. Henry Augustus Mug (Liston) was dragged into the play. There are boundaries even to extravagance, and when Colman planned the introduction of a vulgar cockney into Tatte- conda and made him Secretary of State, he must have been astonished at his own temerity. Liston, however, was himself alone, his humour never failed, and the song which he had to sing, to the tune of " Will you come to the Bower?" he had frequently to warble thrice. The annexed invitation was sent by Colman to William Augustus Downs, better known at the period' as " Fat Major Downs," of the St. James's Eoyal Volunteers, a fellow of infinite humour, though professing the grave trade of an undertaker. It is dated December 3, 1809, « To W. A. Downs, Esq." " Boisterous Sie ! — " (In whom all the fleet was moored, as the poet sings.) " What effect had the heavy gale of wind upon you one night in the course of this last week ? I apprehend that it occasioned a tremendous swell in you, and that you must have run very high. It is with painful anxiety that I wait for a detail of the damages done to the shipping which lay at anchor in you in such tempestuous weather. 44 MEMOIR OF [1812. ' ' ' Tour name brings to mind, dear funereal Downs, Both your coffins and one of our maritime towns. Renowned Undertaker ! all mortals must feel, That we car't mention Downs, without thinking on Deal. Derry Downs, Downs, Downs, derry Downs !' " Will you dine with me to-morrow at five, to meet the great Liston and his little wife ; and will you also under- take to forward the enclosed to the Cambridge Coffee House, for I know not where it is ? I am obliged to send an apology to Grubb. "Walter Raleigh. " Send a goose — i.e. (latind), an Anser." Downs was the original " Two Single Gentlemen rolled into One," the actual " Will Waddle" of Colman's capital song. In 1812 Colman published his " Poetical Vagaries," a se- cond series of tales in verse. Its supposed freedom of subject and style, together with its appearance in the ambitious but then fashionable quarto form, called forth some very severe and perhaps somewhat overstrained animadversions from the Quarterly Review, to which Colman soon retorted in a satire entitled "Vagaries Vindicated"— as bitter and caustic as the " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." A few years later, a firm of publishers in Edinburgh, attracted by the great popularity of the "Broad Grins" and the " Poetical Vagaries," wrote and offered the author a handsome sum for a third volume of a similar character. To this fortunate proposal, which was accepted by Colman, we owe the little work entitled " Eccentricities for Edin- burgh," — a third series of talcs in no way inferior to their more well known predecessors. In the two last-named books, Colman thought fit to indulge in certain very ab- surd idiosyncrasies of spelling and punctuation, which we have thought it best to remove in the present edition, 1822.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 45 together with his elaborate preface to the " Vagaries," in. which he endeavours to justify them. As an etymologist, Colman is certainly out of his element, and r-eaders will enjoy his humour all the better freed from the impedi- ments to which we have alluded. Accordingly we have ruthlessly eradicated his apostrophes and terminal k's, and restored the missing integral e's to their proper places. The long series of Colman's dramatic performances ends with "The Law of Java," produced in 1822. It is sin- gular that of a writer so prolific, and whose name holds so high a place in our dramatic literature, no collection of the plays has ever appeared in this country, but is still a desideratum. With what an indefatigable pen, and what exhaustless humour, he amused the playgoers of two score successive years, we have endeavoured imperfectly to de- scribe. The scope of the present undertaking does not admit of our giving many specimens of these admirable productions, but we have culled from them a number of songs and ballads, some of them well known, but for the first time assembled here, such as " Mynheer van Dunk" and " Unfortunate Miss Bailey." Colman received very considerable sums for his plays. For " The Poor Gentleman" and " "Who "Wants a Guinea i" he was paid 550Z. each, then the customary price for a five-act comedy; that is to say, 300Z. on the first nine nights, 100Z. on the twentieth night, and 150^. for the copyright.* For " John Bull" (the most attractive comedy * That is to say, 33Z. 6s. 8d. per night for the first nine nights, 100Z. on the twentieth night, and 100I. on the fortieth night. This was the plan settled by Cumberland with Sheridan at Drury Lane, and Harris at Covent Garden, for remunerating authors instead of their (generally losing) benefits. The copyright was usually understood to be a distinct bargain — the proprietor of the theatre was to have the refusal at any bond fide price offered by a bookseller. 46 MEMOIR, OF [1822. ever produced, having averaged 470Z. per night for forty- seven nights), Mr. Harris paid 1000?., and Colman after- wards received twice an additional 100Z., making 1200?. Mr. Harris was accustomed to pay an author one or two hundred pounds above the 550/., when the drama was very successful, which was the case with most of Colman's plays. We have not any record to prove what sum was re- ceived for the farce of "X. Y. Z. ;" but it appears that Mr. Harris paid Colman 600Z. for that, and patching up one or two things. As a manager, Colman the Younger was liberal, affable, and assiduous; he assumed no affected reserve or su- periority, but was with all his performers familiar and friendly, though he never lost sight of the respect due to the audience, and of the proper interests of the theatre ; and though, as Sir Fretful Plagiary says, " he writes himself," yet he was exempt from the narrow jealousy too often prevalent in the literary character, and they who aspired at dramatic distinction were sure to meet at his theatre with counsel, assistance, and protection. A proof of his affability as a manager, was observable in a kind of theatrical club, which he introduced among his performers, the object of which was to procure proper refreshments for them between the acts, and to promote a general spirit of good-fellowship and harmony. The club alluded to was called the Property Club, being held at the back of the stage, among the scenery and other theatrical matters, which, in the language of the green-room, are termed properties. The club commenced at the end of the second act of the play, and concluded with the fall of the curtain. The chair was taken in succession, and several gentlemen of acknowledged merit in the literary world were members of it. It had, moreover, the recommendation of being i822.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 47 attended by the female performers, who imparted a softer charm to the spirit of gaiety, and prevented it from deviating into excess. In private life Colman was social and intelligent, expert in the playful contentions of wit and humour, and per- fectly ready at what is termed repartee ; and when sur- rounded by men of acknowledged pleasantry, in the general skirmish of raillery, was never at a loss for a spirited retort ; though it must be acknowledged that in this kind of amicable warfare he has been fairly foiled with his own weapons by Theodore Hook, the most rapid wit and humorist of the age. The life of Colman, though subject to some vicissitudes, can never be said to have made him acquainted with want, though frequently compelling him to struggle through fluctuations of fortune, the unavoidable results of his own indiscretion and the ruinous vanity of aping the style and expenses of many associates far above him in rank and fortune. The keenest censure, however, must admit that this fault, unjustifiable as it was, arose oiit of an ambition to emulate the gentlemanly character ; and when the disadvantage of his birth and the reckless inadvertencies of his early life are taken into the scale, even censure must be silent, and nothing beyond the honest plea of liberality be heard in his requiem. So far the labour of a biographer would be found easy and rapid enough ; but the ghost of George Colman, autocratically nicknamed " the Younger," could he " revisit the glimpses of the moon," would scarcely thank the man who passed over his name with notice so slight and favourable : his object through life was distinction and notoriety ; and he certainly was not nice at any period of it how that fame was acquired. For the reputation of a wit, Colman laboured with 48 MEMOIR OF [1822. unwearied assiduity, and alike sacrificed a friend or pro- voked an enemy by his efforts to obtain it. Notwithstanding this undignified ambition, with high spirits, a natural vein of humour, and a command of language which embraced a happy knack of playing upon words with that ludicrous association of things apparently opposed to each other which has been one of the definitions of wit, but which is in fact the very essence of a pun, and which the French call a calembourg, or in better words a jeu de mots, in con- tradistinction to a jeu d'espkit; with such qualifications for an agreeable companion, with the perfect manners and habits of a gentleman, with an excellent memory and the all but self-acquired knowledge of classical and modern languages, it can be no wonder that his society was sought, his talents appreciated, and his fame extended. Although Colman was more nearly allied to the character of a punster than that of a wit, he was more than either that of a humorist ; he said thousands of good things which would entirely lose their poignancy by repetition, since the inimitable chuckle of his voice, and the remarkable expression of his countenance, would be wanting. The intelligent roll of his large and almost glaring eyes, with the concurrent expression of his hand- some face, were ever the unerring avant-couriers of his forthcoming joke ; and if anything curtailed the mirth he had provoked, it was the almost interminable laughter with which he honoured his own effusion. His friend, Mr. Samuel Arnold, thus speaks of Colman's relations with Sheridan : — " It must be reluctantly admitted that no man was ever more tainted by jealousy as an author and a wit (the late celebrated, and justly celebrated, author of the ' West Indian' perhaps alone excepted) than Colman. I never heard him speak of the dramatic works of Sheridan with- 1827.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 49 out some debasing alloy ; he undervalued him as a wit, and somewhat more than hinted that he thought himself more than a match for him in convivial society. By way of salvo, indeed, he lauded him to the skies as an orator ; but even as such, I once heard him conclude his eulo- gium by adding, ' but that is not a gift, but an acquire- ment ; any man of sound sense and ordinary information, with good nerves, may make an orator by practice and preparation ;' still, if honest truth is to be spoken, the wit of Sheridan was a razor, compared to which our friend Colman's was a bludgeon. I have been many times in company with both, when Sheridan was silent, and not easily drawn out ; on which occasions Colman would gnarl and fret and talk at him as if to rouse and provoke him to the combat ; but this was in Sheridan's later days, when suffering under, bodily as well as mental ailment. He once said, when Colman made a successful hit, ' I hate a pun, but Colman sometimes almost reconciles me to the infliction.' " When Colman received the appointment of Examiner of Plays for the Lord Chamberlain, he seems to have exer- cised his office with a rigour and severity which one would hardly have expected from the licence and freedom of his own writings. The Examiner who preceded him was a gentleman of the name of Larpent, understood to be a rigid Methodist, and certainly a rigid censor of the dramas submitted to his perusal. But Mr. Larpent's objections never extended beyond any dangerous sentences which appeared to meddle in politics in his dangerous times, or with sentiments which were calculated to subvert mora- lity, glaringly to shock decency, or, above all, to bring religion of any description into contempt. But, generally speaking, the good taste or the precautionary judgment of modern managers has left little occasion for such critical E So MEMOIR OF [1827. censorship. Colman therefore, in order to be distingue, was driven to close quarters ; where nothing blasphemous, immoral, or political was to be discovered he marked his critical acumen by disavowing a lover's right to call his mistress ' an angel ;' an angel, he said, was a character in Scripture', and not to be profaned on the stage by being applied to a woman. He would not license an address to the Deity in any shape whatever. ".Oh, Providence !" he said, was an address to the Providence of God, and ought not to be allowed. The name of heaven or hell he uniformly expunged. On one occasion he observed, " The phrase ' Oh, Heaven !' 'Ye Heavens,' occurs seven times in this piece — omit them." A " damn'' was a pill he could never swallow, which may in part account for the volubility with which that and other such unmeaning expletives flowed almost perpetually from his mouth. On one occasion he expunged the exclama- tion of " Oh, lud !" He said it meant, " Oh ! Lord," which was inadmissible. On another, where a dandy had to say while addressing the chambermaid, " Demme my dear," he observed, " Demme means damn me — omit it ;" but puerili- ties of this sort, annoying enough to author, manager, and actor, were too numerous to be quoted or remembered. In 1827, some years after he had ceased to write for the stage, Colman commenced to write some autobiogra- phical recollections of the earlier portions of his life, which were published in 1830, under the title of " Random Records."* Of these volumes we have made large use in compiling the present memoir. They contain also several humorous ballads and tales in verse, which we have in- * "Eandom Eecords," by George Colman the Younger. In Two Volumes. London : Colburn and Bentley, 1830. He retained some of his eccentricities of spelling in this work. 1830.] GEORGE COLMAN THE VOUNGER, 51 eluded in our collection. In concluding his " Kamdom Kecords," Colman held out .some hope that he might favour the world with a continuation of his autobiography, deal- ing with the events of his later life. " Further materials," he says, " are not wanting to me for a continuance of my autobiography, materials which may promise perhaps to be more acceptable to modern readers than these which I here put forth ; since (from ray pro- gressive mingling with the world) they will approach nearer to the present times. " If then the specimens of seribbling which I now pub- lish should not prove altogether unentertaining to the million, I propose to follow them up, in due time, with further records." This promise, however, he was prevented from fulfilling by the ill health under which lie suffered miore arid more from 1830 down to the close of hi* life. The following very interesting account of his later years is derived from his medical attendant :* — " It was early in February, 1830, that my attendance on Mr. Colman commenced. He had for many years been suffering from gout, and on this occasion I was apprehen- sive that there were evidences of some organic disease ; he also was annoyed with a painful affection of the bladder, which in the strongest constitutions and most firm and philosophic minds generally produces nervous irritation to a distressing degree. Each attack increased his inability to take exercise, and rendered it necessary for me to impose restrictions on his ordinary arrangements, and advise an avoidance as much as possible of social excitement. "In November, 1832, he was the subject of a very severe attack, accompanied with alarming symptoms of * Dr. H. S. Chinnock. E 2 52 MEMOIR OF [1836. internal mischief, so as to require bleeding and other active measures. This illness continued three months ; fortunately he rallied, and his health for some time sub- sequently was manifestly improving. " This improvement, however, was only temporary. Some months after the old enemy visited him, and mv former fears of the existence of organic disease of the liver and other parts returned ; and to avoid the excitement attending his permanent residence in town, and to gain the advantage of country air, he removed to Greenford, the residence of my late friend Mr. Henry Harris. The result of this proceeding was more beneficial than my most sanguine expectations had induced me to anticipate. ' Nevertheless, my visits were necessary, and although the improvement was so evident, I could not but apprehend on many occasions, when I was with him, after a three months' residence at Greenford, that it was in a great measure depending on the mental quiet and perfect do- mestic happiness he enjoyed under Mr. Harris's roof. "There were evident symptoms of decay of constitu- tional power, although his nervous energy was as stringent as ever. He remained at Greenford, with occasional visits to Brompton, till August, 1836, when it was necessary, in consequence of increasing infirmities, that I should see him very much oftener than I possibly could at such a distance. Soon after his return to his old residence, it was too plain to my mind that we were to lose one of the brightest orna- ments of this country ; the painful malady I have referred to was lamentably increasing both in virulence and degree, and notwithstanding we had the advantage of the unceasing attention, kindness, and skill of Dr. Chambers, in addition to whatever assistance I could render him, he ceased to exist on the 17th October, 1836. " It has never fallen to my lot to witness ' in the hour 1836.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 53 of death' so much serenity of mind, such perfect philo- sophy, or resignation more complete. Up to within one hour of his decease, he was perfectly sensible of his danger, and bore excruciating pain with the utmost for- titude. Towards the very latter part of his life, it was necessary that he should have medical assistance more frequently than my engagements would allow, and my then assistant (who was equally zealous in matters of religion as skilful in his profession) was with him during the night, and occasionally in the day. About four days prior to his decease, on my morning visit, Colman's first remark was, ' Don't let Mr. come here any more ; be with me yourself as much as possible.' I naturally inquired the reason, as he had hitherto given so much satisfaction. With the greatest calmness, he told me that he was and had been for some time conscious of his danger, that he had prepared himself for whatever might occur, that he had made his peace with the Almighty, and however he might suffer, I should observe he would not shrink from the decrees of Providence, but that he had no notion of being lectured on matters of religion by others than divines ; that during the greater part of the previous night my assistant had been endeavouring to make him a convert to his peculiar views, accompanied by some terrible descrip- tions attending his non-acceptation of his religious tenets, and Mr. was only quieted by Colman stating that I had sent him as a medical man, and that which he required was relief to his body, not to his soul. When he wanted a physician he would send for one ; when he had occasion for a divine, he would request the attendance of a clergyman of his own creed. " On a consequent examination of my assistant, I found that he, like many members of other religious communities, imagined that a person connected with dramatic pursuits 54 MEMOIR OF [1836. must inevitably require spiritual consolation, and ventured in this instance to overstep his professional duty. Mr. replied that he, in the most delicate manner, pointed out to my poor patient his immediate danger, and afterwards represented the immense importance of attending to the welfare of his soul. His remarks, he stated, were borne with much patience, and at length terminated in the manner I have related. " It is remarkable that although the disease of Colman was of a most painful and irritating nature, yet his mind and temper were seldom disturbed ; it appeared often to me that in the same ratio he lost physical power and suffered bodily pain, there was increased cerebral energy, intellectual activity, and wit of the most genuine character. His late friend, General Phipps, has repeatedly said to me, after the most anxious inquiries as to Mr. Colman's pro- bable recovery, when I have foreboded evil, ' I never enjoyed his society more ; he is more witty and intellectual than ever.' " This quiescence ought not entirely to be referred to the superiority of my patient's mind, or the control he exer- cised over his feelings, or to physical organization. The perfect domestic happiness he enjoyed, the constant inva- riable attention of Mrs. Colman, the affectionate character of her disposition, her anxious solicitude, combined with the most perfect judgment, have not only been observed by me, but also as constantly mentioned by him as one main, even the principal source of his comfort. Never could he bear her from his sight. " Colman, as we all know, had been for a vast number of years accustomed to the most pleasing and exciting society, but he always said to me, ' There is nothing so delightful in life as domestic happiness and comfort.' This sentiment was also often repeated at Greenford, where he 18^6.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 55 had not only the comfort resulting from Mrs. Colman's society, but the affectionate anxieties of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Harris. No man was more grateful for kindness shown to him, or more highly appreciated any interest evinced by his friends. " His funeral was private. He was buried in the vaults, under Kensington church, by the side of his father ; his old friends General Lewis, Mr. Harris, myself, and one or two others only attending." The following is a List of the Dramas written by George Colman the Younger. Two to One 1784 Turk and No Turk 1785 Inkle and Yarico 1787 Ways and Means 1788 Battle of Hexham 1789 Surrender of Calais . I79 1 -Mountaineers T 793 New Hay at the Old Market . . . . 1795 Iron Chest 1796 Heir-at-Law 1797 Blue Beard. 1798 Blue Devils '79 8 Feudal Times 1799 Review 1800 Poor Gentleman 1800 John Bull 1802 Love Laughs at \ under the name of Locksmiths V .a,,,,, n^ffi^™^ t l8 ° 2 ( Arthur Griffinhoofe ( X. Y. Z. Africans .... 1809 Law of Java [822 56 MEMOIR OF [1836. Of a man of wit and a man of the world like George Colman the Younger, it may justly be said that the repu- tation is twofold. One part of it, the brilliant repartee and sparkling conversation, almost perishes with him. The few bons mots, preserved by chance out of so many thou- sands, fall flat and seem irrelevant without the circum- stances and surroundings that produced them. The other and more enduring part of his reputation consists in the dramas and poems and prose narrative, which he skilfully and unflaggingly elaborated over a period of half a cen- tury. It must not be supposed that these cost him no pains ; for if easy writing has been described as " d — d hard reading," the reverse is also probably true, and easy reading is " d — d hard writing." Colman, though he can hardly be considered a volu- minous, was certainly an industrious, writer. The wild oats of his youth once sown, from 1782 on to 1822, few years elapsed in which he failed to enchant the public with some fresh and brilliant production of his pen. Some twenty-five plays, three (or rather four) volumes of tales in verse, a preface to a friend's novel,* and two volumes of autobiography, are what remain to us as the result. Of the plays we have already spoken separately at some length. Without any deep insight into the profounder side of life, they skim lightly and gracefully the surface of contemporary character and manners. The dialogue is incisive, interesting, and witty, the incidents for the most part humorous, and the plot well sustained. There are few in which probability is violated, either by the un- likelihood of the events, or by attributing to the persons of the drama propensities too lofty or too mean. In nearly ' Like Master like Man," by John Palmer. 1836.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 57 all there is an intimate stage knowledge. They are cer- tainly not free from the coarseness of morals and man- ners and the freedom and licence of diction which characterized . the days of the Regency ; if they were, they would be no fair reflex of the life of the time. Some of them in which these blemishes are least apparent, such as " The Heir-at-Law," still keep their place on the stage. Many of them are interspersed with admirable songs and ballads, which the reader will find collected here for the first time. But in the changes of manners and times, and the transitions of dramatic taste, it is not probable that George Colman will preserve, as a writer of plays, any- thing but a classic fame. His dramas will remain indis- pensable to any collection pretending to completeness ^ but they will stand on the shelves, praised but unread by the many; and read and admired only by the few. The writings by which George Colman's name will go down to posterity are his inimitable Tales in Verse. "We could have been well content to lose half his dramas for another small volume of these. They are unfortunately as few as they are inimitable and unique. The stamp of popularity has so long been fixed upon some of them that it seems almost impertinent to praise them. Where is the schoolboy who has not committed to memory " The Newcastle Apothecary" — reprinted in a hundred dif- ferent volumes of selections? and where is the grown man who has not split his sides over " The Elder Brother ?" The humour is so broad and large, so whole- some and genuine, that you must laugh in spite of your- self. . Then " The Two Parsons, or the Tale of a Shirt " (in the "Poetical Vagaries"), which excited the indignation of the Quarterly Review, where is there a richer or droller, or more ludicrous situation, more drolly told ? It is equal 58 MEMOIR OF [1836. to a bit of " Tom Jones," but no more intended virgini- lusgue puerisque than that admirable novel is. As in the matchless " Contes de la Fontaine," much of the charm of Colman's tales lies not so much in the story itself as in the telling of it. As an instance of this let the reader refer to the two versified letters in the poem of " London Kurality (Eccentricities for Edinburgh)," and then read the genuine and original letters which inspired them. It will immediately be seen that all the real humour has been infused into them by the happy touches of Colman : — " Mrs. Pitts' compliments to Miss Cozens ; she was in hopes to have found her at home by this time, as she wishes to speak to her about a little bad workmanship in her house since she went away, by a board or something put upon it, in what her maid calls her larder, which, by being ill-done, the nails come almost through Mrs. Pitts' passage, and there beiDg no partition wall, only thin paper, between the houses, which is very dangerous, and she is very sorry to find it being so unsafe, and she hopes her maids are very careful, for we are both in danger, espe- cially from her frequent large washes, which never were so before, though there has been four different families in that house since Mrs. Pitts has been at W., and none of them had such washes with all their great things, only their smalls, which Mrs. Pitts has; it not only is dan- gerous, but extremely disfiguring to the place, and might be taken for a washerwoman's place, rather than any- body's-else, and almost wonders Miss C. can like it her- self, only she is seldom if ever at home, she does not find it so disagreeable, especially when the things hang out on both sides; and she must excuse my mentioning her donkey frightened her very much one day as the gate was. 1836.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 59 opened, and she went there to throw some rubbish, and dropt her scissors, which she was some time in looking for, in the meantime she felt something touch her face, which proved to be this creature ; on looking up saw the monster, she screamed, and her maids heard her. " I am, Madam, your humble servant, " L. Pitts." To this we have the following reply from Miss Cozens: — " Miss Cozens's compliments to Mrs. P. ; is sorry the partition wall should be only thin paper, will put up some thicker as soon as she gets home. Miss C. is surprised to find washing great things should be so very offensive and so uncommon at W. ; I have always ' been used to clean sheets and table-cloths. Miss C. is shocked to find Mrs. Pitts so alarmed at the sight of my ass ; thought you had seen it often before ; can't guess how it came to touch her face, 'tis very quiet in general, and was never called a monster till now ; but as Mrs. Pitts had lost her scissors, cannot wonder she was so terrified. Miss C. will take care in future her maid shall hang out all on one side. " I am, Madam, your humble servant, "M. Cozens." It now only remains for us to speak of Colman's Auto- biography. In this work of his old age — interspersed as it is with anecdotes and sallies of humour full of the old fire, he begins to display somewhat of the garrulousness of senility. The book is far too rambling and bulky to be reprinted entire, but we have given all the best passages in consecutive order, and arranged under headings at the end of the present volume. 6o MEMOIR OF [1818. Colman associated with nearly all the first literary and dramatic characters of his time, at least with such of them as frequented London society. It is natural therefore that we should find in their writings many allusions and references to him, and not a few records of his " bons mots. Some of these we have collected at the end of the book. Colman was among the early associates of Theodore Hook, and of the first evening spent in the society of that distinguished wit, the former used to give an amusing anecdote. They had been sitting together for some hours, and their potations the while had probably not been con- fined to that agreeable beverage " Which cheers but not inebriates ;" and to which, by the way, Hook " entertained the pro- foundest objection," when the great dramatist, fixing his eyes upon his young companion, and ever and anon taking a sip from his glass, as he regarded him, began to mutter, " Very odd, very strange indeed ! wonderful precocity of genius ! astonishing diligence and assiduity ! You must be a very extraordinary young man. Why, •sir," he continued, raising his voice, "you can hardly yet have reached your twenty-first birthday." "I have just passed it," said the other, "vingt-un overdrawn." "Ah! very good," replied old Colman, "but, sir, pray tell me how the d — 1 did you contrive to find time to write that terrible long Eoman history ?" In the journals of Thomas Moore, a perfect repertory of literary information, there are two or three incidental references to Colman of an interesting character : — " George Colman at the Beefsteak Club lately, quite drunk, making extraordinary noises while Morris was i8l9.] GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER. 61 singing, which disconcerted the latter (who, strange to say, is a very grave, steady person) considerably. "September, 1818." " In the evening read Colman's little comedy of ' Ways and Means.' Some comical things in it : ' Curse Cupid, he has not a halfpenny to buy him breeches.' ' Always threatening to break my neck : one would think we ser- vants had a neck to spare, like the Swan in Lad Lane.' "October, 1818." " The skeleton of ' The Forty Thieves' was Sheridan's : then Ward filled it up, and afterwards George Colman got 100I. for an infusion of jokes, &c. into it." G. B. B. London, November, 1871. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS PREFACE TO "my nightgown and slippers." Courteous Header. — If after having purchased "My Nightgown and Slippers" you hold them two shillings and sixpence all too dear, you have only to journey to the fountain Castalius, in Boeotia, at the very bottom of Mount Parnassus (where such mere bijoux as these are manufactured), and I will return you the money. Pro- vided at the same time, that you there do return to me my goods clean and uncut. Let me, however, give you a brief account of these trifles. " The Maid of the Moor," " The Newcastle Apothe- cary," and " Lodgings for Single Gentlemen," are slipshod tales, written for an entertainment which I proposed to offer to the public at the Haymarket' Theatre during Lent, and two of them were intended to be spoken (read them therefore with a view to recitation), and the third to be sung, as light matter, calculated to relieve the gravity of a didactic performance. The whole performance (for reasons unnecessary to mention here) was relinquished ; but as it is my custom to avoid the accumulation of my own papers in my bureau, I hold it more advisable to print my three stories (light as they are) than to burn them. I have put them into a kind of crambo-vehicle to make them connect, and if " The Maid of the Moor" acts as an antidote, with one boarding-school miss, to the poison so plentifully distributed in the shape of novels, romances, legendary tales, &c, I may say, with philosophers, that the most insignificant things are of some utility. Vale ! George Colman the Younger. Piccadilly, March 2ist, 1797. F 66 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. ADVERTISEMENT PREFIXED TO "BROAD GRINS." My booksellers informed me lately that several in- quiries had been made for " My Nightgown and Slippers ;" but that every copy had been sold : they had been out of print these two years. " Then publish them again," said I, boldly (I print at my own risk), and with an air of triumph. Messrs. Cadell and Davies advised me to make additions. " The work is really too short," said Messrs. Cadell and Davies. " I wish, gentlemen," returned I, " my readers were of your opinion." "I protest, sir," said they (and they asserted it both together with great emphasis), " you have but three tales." I told them carelessly it was enough for the greatest bashaw among modern poets, and wished them a good morning. "When a man, as Sterne observes, " can extricate himself with an equivoque, in such an unequal match" (and two booksellers to one poet are tremendous odds) " he is not ill off;" but reflecting a little as I went home, I began to think my pun was a vile one, and did not assist me one jot in my argument : and now I have put it upon paper it appears viler still ; it is exe- crable. So without much further reasoning, I sat down to rhyming ; rhyming, as the reader will see, in open de- fiance of all reason, except the reasons of Messrs. Cadell and Davies. Thus you have " My Nightgown and Slippers," with additions, converted into " Broad Grins ;" and 'tis well if they may not end in wide yawns at last. Should this be the case, gentle reviewers, do not ungratefully attempt to break my sleep (you will find it labour lost), because I have contributed to yours. George Colman the Younger. May, 1802. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS, TOM, Dick, and Will were little known to fame — No matter ; But to the alehouse oftentimes they came, To chatter. It was the custom of these three To sit up late ; And o'er the embers of the alehouse fire, When steadier customers retire, The choice triumviri, d'ye see ? Held a debate. Held a debate ? On politics no doubt. Not so — they cared not who was in, No, not a pin — Nor who was out. All their discourse on modern poets ran, For in the Muses was their sole delight ; They talked of such, and such, and such a man, Of those who could and those who could not write. It cost them very little pains To count the modern poets who had brains. v 2 68 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. 'Twas a small difficulty — 'twasn't any; They were so few ; But to cast up the scores of men Who wield a stump they call a pen, Lord ! they had much to do — There were so many! Buoy'd on a sea of fancy Genius rises, And like the rare leviathan surprises ; But the small fry of scribblers ! tiny souls ! They wriggle through the mud in shoals. It would have raised a smile to see the faces They made, and the ridiculous grimaces, At many an author, as they overhauled him. They gave no quarter to a calf, Blown up with puff and paragraph ; But if they found him bad, they mauled him. On modern dramatists they fell, Pounce, vi et armis — tooth and nail — pell mell ; They called them carpenters and smugglers ; Filching their incidents from ancient hoards, And knocking them together like deal boards, And jugglers ; Who all the town's attention fix, By making — plays ? No, sir ; by making tricks. The versifiers — Heaven defend us ! They played the very devil with their rhymes ; They hoped Apollo a new set would send us ; And then, invidiously enough, Placed moodish verse, which they called stuff, Against the writings of the elder times. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SUFFERS. 69 To say the truth, a modern versifier Clapped cheek by jowl "With Pope, with Dryden, and with Prior, Would look damned seurvily, upon my soul ! For novels, should their critic hints succeed, The Misses might fare better, when they took 'em ; But it would fare extremely ill indeed With gentle Messrs. Lane and Hookham. ' " A novel now," says Will, " is nothing more Than an old castle and a creaking door, A distant hovel, Clanking of chains, a gallery, a light, Old armour, and a phantom all in white, And there's a novel ! " Scourge me such catch-penny inditers Out of the land," quoth Will, rousing in passion, " And fie upon the readers of such writers, Who bring them into fashion !" Will rose in declamation. " 'Tis the bane," Says he, " of youth ; 'tis the perdition ; It fills a giddy female brain With vice, romance, lust, terror, pain, With superstition. " Were I pastor in a boarding-school, I'd quash such books in toto ; if I couldn't, Let me but catch one Miss that broke my rule, I'd flog her soundly; damme if I wouldn't." William, 'tis plain, was getting in a rage ; But, Thomas dryly said, for he was cool, " I think no gentleman would mend the age By flogging ladies at a boarding-school." 70 GOLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Dick knocked the ashes from his pipe, And said, "Friend Will, You give the novels a fair wipe ; But still While you, my friend, with passion run 'em down, They're in the hands of all the town. " The reason's plain," proceeded Dick, " And simply thus, Taste, over-glutted, grows depraved and sick. And needs a stimulus. " Time was (when honest Fielding writ) Tales full of nature, character, and wit Were reckoned most delicious boiled and roast ; But stomachs are so cloyed with novel-feeding, Folks get a vitiated taste in reading, And want that strong provocative, a ghost. Or, to come nearer, And put the case a little clearer ; Minds, just like bodies, suffer enervation By too much use ; And sink into a state of relaxation, With long abuse. " Now a romance, with reading debauchees, Houses their torpid powers when nature fails ; And all their legendary tales Are, to a worn-out mind, cantharides. ' But how to cure the evil ? you will say : My recipe is, laughing it away. " Lay bare the weak farrago of those men Who fabricate such visionary schemes, MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIFPERS. 71 As if the nightmare rode upon their pen, And troubled all their ink with hideous dreams. " For instance, when a solemn ghost stalks in, And through a mystic tale is busy, Strip me the gentleman into his skin: — What is he ? " Truly, ridiculous enough, Mere trash : and very childish stuff. " Draw but a ghost or fiend of low degree, And all the bubble's broken. Let us see.' THE MAID OF THE MOOR; OR, THE WATER FIENDS. ON a wild moor, all brown and bleak, Where broods the heath-frequenting grouse, There stood a tenement antique, Lord Hoppergollop's country house. Here silence reigned with lips of glue, And undisturbed maintained her law ; Save when the owl cried " whoo ! whoo ! whoo !" Or the hoarse crow croaked " caw ! caw ! caw !" Neglected mansion ! — for 'tis said, Whene'er the snow came feathering down, Four barbed steeds — from the Bull's Head — Carried thy master up to town. Weak Hoppergollop ! Lords may moan, Who stake in London their estate On two small rattling bits of bone, On little figure or on great. 72 COLMAATS HUMOROUS WORKS. Swift whirl the wheels — he's gone. A rose Remains behind, whose virgin look Unseen must blush in wintry snows, Sweet, beauteous blossom ! — 'twas the cook ! A bolder far than my weak note, Maid of the Moor ! thy charms demand. Eels might be proud to lose their coat If skinned by Molly Dumpling's hand. Long had the fair one sat alone, Had none remained save only she ; — She by herself had been, if one Had not been left for company. 'Twas a tall youth, whose cheek's clear hue Was tinged with health and manly toil : Cabbage he sowed, and when it grew, He always cut it off, to boil. Oft would he cry, "Delve, delve the hole !" And prune the tree, and trim the root ; And stick the wig upon the pole, To scare the sparrows from the fruit. A small mute favourite by day Followed his step ; where'er he wheels His barrow round the garden gay A bobtail cur was at his heels. Ah, man ! the brute creation see ! . Thy constancy oft needs the spur ; While lessons of fidelity Are found in every bobtail cur. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS. 73 Hard toiled the youth, so fresh and strong, While Bobtail in his face would look, And marked his master troll the song — " Sweet Molly Dumpling ! oh, thou cook !" For thus he sung, while Cupid smiled, Pleased that the gardener owned his dart, Which pruned his passions, running wild, And grafted true-Jove on his heart. Maid of the Moor ! his love return ! True love ne'er tints the cheek with shame ; When gardeners' hearts like hot-beds burn, A cook may surely feed the flame. Ah ! not averse from love was she, Though pure as Heaven's snowy flake. Both loved ; and though a gardener he, He knew not what it was to rake. Cold blows the blast ; the night's obscure ; The mansion's crazy wainscots crack ; — No star appeared, and all the moor — Like every other Moor — was black. Alone, pale, trembling, near the fire, The lovely Molly Dumpling sat ; Much did she fear, and much admire What Thomas Gardener could be at. Listening, her hand supports her chin ; But ah ! no foot is heard to stir. He comes not from the garden in, Nor he nor little bobtail cur. 74 COLMAWS HUMOROUS WORKS. They cannot come, sweet maid ! to thee ; Flesh, both of cur and man, is grass ; And what's impossible can't be, And never, never comes to pass. She paces through the hall antique To call her Thomas from his toil ; Opes the huge door ; the hinges creak— Because the hinges wanted oil. Thrice on the threshold of the hall She " Thomas !" cried, with many a sob ; And thrice on Bobtail did she call, Exclaiming, sweetly, " Bob ! Bob ! Bob !" Vain maid I a gardener's corpse, 'tis said, In answers can but ill succeed ; And dogs that hear when they' are dead Are very cunning dogs indeed ! Back through the hall she bent her way : All, all was solitude around ! The candle shed a feeble ray, Though a large mould of four to the pound. Full closely to the fire she drew, Adown her cheek a salt tear stole ; When lo ! a coffin out there flew, And in her apron burnt a hole ! Spiders their busy death-watch ticked, A certain sign that fate will frown ; The clumsy kitchen-clock too clicked, A certain sign it was not down. MY NIGHTGO WN AND SLIPPERS. 75 More strong and strong her terrors rose, Her shadow did the maid appal ; She trembled at her lovely nose, It look'd so long against the wall. Up to her chamber, damp and cold, She climbed Lord Hoppergollop's stair, Three stories high, long, dull, and old, As great lords' stories often are. All nature now appeared to pause, And "o'er the one half world seemed dead." No " curtained sleep" had she — because She had no curtains to her bed. Listening she lay. With iron din The clock struck twelve; the door flew wide ; When Thomas grimly glided in, With little Bobtail by his side. Tall, like the poplar, was his size ; Green, green his waistcoat was, as leeks ; Bed, red as beetroot, were his eyes ; Pale, pale as turnips, were his cheeks. Soon as the spectre she espied, The fear-struck damsel faintly said, " What would my Thomas ?" He replied, " Oh, Molly Dumpling, I am dead ! " All in the flower of youth I fell, Cut off with health's full blossom crowned ; I was not ill — but in a well I tumbled backwards and was drowned. 76 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. " Pour fathom deep thy love doth lie, His faithful dog his fate doth share; — We're Fiends ! — this is not he and I We are not here, for we are there. " Yes, two foul Water-Fiends are we. Maid of the Moor, attend us now ! Thy hour's at hand ; we come for thee !" The little Fiend-cur said "Bow wow !" " To wind her in her cold, cold grave, A Holland sheet a maiden likes : A sheet of water thou shalt have — Such sheets there are in Holland dykes." The Fiends approach ; the Maid did shrink ; Swift through the night's foul air they spin ; They took her to the green well's brink, And with a souse they plumped her in. So true the fair, so true the youth, Maids to this day their story tell ; And hence the proverb rose, that truth Lies in the bottom of a well. Dick ended : Tom and Will approved his strains, And thought his legend made as good a figure As naturalizing a dull German's brains, Which beget issues in the Heliconian stews, Upon a profligate tenth Muse, In all the gloomy impotence of vigour.* * Half our modem legends are either borrowed or translated from the German. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIFPERS. 77 " 'Twas now tne very witching time of night, When prosers yawn." Discussion grew diffuse : Argument's carte and tierce were lost outright ; And they fought loose. Says Will, quite carelessly, " The other day, As I was lying on my back In bed, I took a fancy in my head : Some writings aren't so difficult as people say — They are a knack." "What writings? whose ?" says Tom, raking the cinders. " Many," cried Will. " For instance, Peter Pindar's." " What ! call you his a knack ?" — " Yes ; mind his measure : In that lies half the point that gives us pleasure." " Pooh ! 'tisn't that," Dick cried : " That has been tried Over and over. Bless your souls ! 'Tis seen in Crazy Tales, and twenty things beside ; His measure is as old as poles." " Granted," cries Will; "I know I'm speaking treason : For Peter. With many a joke and queer conceit doth season v His metre : " And this I'll say of Peter, to his face, As 'twas time past of Vanbrugh writ — Peter has often wanted grace, But he has never wanted wit. " Yet I will tell you. a plain tale, And see how far quaint measure will prevail." 78 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. THE NEWCASTLE APOTHECARY. A MAN in many a country town we know, Professes openly with Death to wrestle ; Entering the field against the grimly foe, Armed with a mortar and a pestle. Yet some affirm no enemies they are ; But meet just like prize-fighters in a fair, Who first shake hands before they box, Then give each other plaguy knocks, With all the love and kindness of a brother ; So (many a suffering patient saith), Though the apothecary fights with Death, Still they're sworn friends to one another. A member of this jEsculapian line Lived at Newcastle-upon-Tyne : No man could better gild a pill, Or make a bill, Or mix a draught, or bleed, or blister, Or draw a tooth out of your head, Or chatter scandal by your bed, Or give a clyster. Of occupations these were quantum suff., Yet still he thought the list not long enough ; And therefore midwifery he chose to pin to't. This balanced things : for if he hurled A few score mortals from the world, He made amends by bringing others into't. His fame full six miles round the country ran ; In short, in reputation he was solus : All the old women called him " a fine man I" His name was Bolus. MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS. 79 Benjamin Bolus though in trade, (Which oftentimes will genius fetter) Bead works of fancy, it is said, And cultivated the Belles Lettres. And why should this be thought so odd ? Can't men have taste who cure a phthisic ? Of poetry though patron-god, Apollo patronizes physic. Bolus loved verse, and took so much delight in't, That his prescriptions he resolved to write in't. No opportunity he e'er let pass Of writing the directions on his labels, In dapper couplets, like Gay's Fables, Or rather like the lines in Hudibras. Apothecary's verse ! and where's the treason ? "Tis simply honest dealing — not a crime. When patients swallow physic without reason, It is but fair to give a little rhyme. He had a patient lying at death's door, Some three miles from the town — it might be four : To whom one evening Bolus sent an article, In pharmacy that's called cathartical ; And on the label of this stuff He wrote this verse ; Which, one would think, was clear enough, And terse : — " When taken, To be well shaken." 80 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS.- Next morning early Bolus rose, And to the patient's house he goes, * Upon his pad, Who a vile trick of stumbling had : It was indeed a very sorry hack ; But that's of course ; For what's expected from a horse With an apothecary on his back ? Bolus arrived, and gave a doubtful tap, Between a single and a double rap. Knocks of this kind Are given by gentlemen who teach to dance ; By fiddlers and by opera singers : One loud, and then a little one behind, As if the knocker fell by chance Out of their fingers. The servant lets him in with dismal face, Long as a courtier's out of place, Portending some disaster ; John's countenance as rueful looked, and grim, As if the apothecary had physic'd him, And not his master. " Well, how's the patient ?" Bolus said. John shook his head. " Indeed ! hum ! ha ! that's very odd ! He took the draught ?" John gave a nod. "Well, how? What then ? Speak out, you dunce !" " Whythen," says John, " we shook him once.'' " Shook him ! how ?" Bolus stammered out. " We jolted him about." MY NIGHTGOWN AND SUPPERS. %\ " Zounds I shake a patient, man ? A shake wont do." " No, sip, and so we gave him two." " Two shakes! od's curse ! 'Twould make the patient worse." " It did so, sir! and so a third we tried." " Well, and what then?" " Then, sir, my master died." Ere Will had done 'twas waxing wondrous late, And reeling bucks the street began to scour, While guardian watchmen, with a tottering gait, Cried everything quite clear except the hour. " Another pot," says Tom, " and then A song ; and so good night, good gentlemen ! " I've lyrics, such as bon vivants indite, In which your bibbers of champagne delight. The poetaster, bawling them in clubs, Obtains a miserably noted name ; And every noisy bacchanalian dubs The singing-writer with a bastard fame." LODGINGS FOR SINGLE GENTLEMEN. WHO has e'er been in London, that overgrown place, Has seen " Lodgings to Let" stare him full in the face; Some are good and let dearly ; while some, 'tis well known, Are so dear and so bad, they are best let alone. Derry down. Will Waddle, whose temper was studious and lonely, Hired lodgings that took Single Gentlemen ouly ; 82 COLMASTS HUMOROUS WORKS. But Will was so fat lie appeared like a ton, Or like two single gentlemen rolled into one. He entered his rooms, and to bed he retreated, But all the night long he felt fevered and heated, And though heavy to weigh as a score of fat sheep, He was not by any means heavy to sleep. Next night 'twas the same, and the next, and the next; He perspired like an ox, he was nervous and vexed ; "Week passed after week, till by weekly succession, His weakly condition was past all expression. In six months his acquaintance began much to doubt him,, For his skin, " like a lady's loose gown," hung about him ; He sent for a doctor, and cried like a ninny, " I have lost many pounds ; make me well, there's a guinea. " The doctor looked wise ; " A slow fever," he said ; Prescribed sudorifics and going to bed. " Sudorifics in bed," exclaimed Will, " are humbugs ; I've enough of them there without paying for drugs." Will kicked out the doctor ; but when ill indeed, E'en dismissing the doctor don't always succeed ; So calling his host, he said, " Sir, do you know I'm the fat Single Gentleman six months ago ? " Look'ee, landlord, I think," argued Will, with a grin, " That with honest intentions you first took me in; But from the first night, and to say it I'm bold, I have been so damned hot, that I'm sure I caught cold." Quoth the landlord, " Till dow I ne'er had a dispute; I've let lodgings ten years ; I'm a baker to boot. In airing your sheets, sir, my wife is no sloven, And your bed is immediately — over my oven." MY NIGHTGOWN AND SLIPPERS. 83 " The oven !" say3 Will. Says the host, " Why this pas- sion? In that excellent bed died three people of fashion ! Why so crusty, good sir?" "Zounds!" cries Will in g, taking, " Who wouldn't be crusty with half a year's baking ?"' Will paid for his rooms. Cried the host, with a sneer, " Well, I see you've been going away half a year." " Friend, we can't well agree, yet no quarrel," Will said, *" But I'd rather not perish while you mahe your bread."^ * " For one man may die where another makes bread," 1797. •(■ This is the conclusion of all that was originally printed under the title of " My Nightgown and Slippers." 6 2 BROAD GRINS. BROAD GRINS. THE KNIGHT AND THE FRIAR. PART THE FIRST. IN our Fifth Harry's reign, when 'twas the fashion To thump the French, poor creatures ! to excess ; Though Britons now-a-days show more compassion, And thump them certainly a great deal less ; In Harry's reign, when flushed Lancastrian roses Of York's pale blossoms had usurped the right;* As wine drives nature out of drunkards' noses, Till red triumphantly eclipses white ; In Harry's reign — but let me to my song, Or good King Harry's reign may seem too long. Sir Thomas Erpingham, a gallant knight, When this King Harry went to war in France, Girded a sword about his middle ; Resolving very lustily to fight, And teach the Frenchmen how to dance Without a fiddle. *" Roses were not emblems of faction," cries the critic, "till the reign of Henry VI." Pooh ! this is a figure, not an anachronism. Suppose, Mr. Critic, you and all your descendants should be hanged, although your father died in his bed. Why then posterity, when talking of your father, may allude to the family gallows, which his issue shall have rendered notoriously symbolical of his house. 88 COlMAATS HUMOROUS WORKS. And wondrous bold Sir Thomas proved in battle, Performing prodigies with spear and shield ; His valour, like a murrain among cattle, "Was reckoned very fatal in the field. Yet though Sir Thomas had an iron fist, He was at heart a mild philanthropist. Much did he grieve, when making Frenchmen die> To any inconvenience to put 'em ; " It quite distressed his feelings," he would cry, " That he must cut their throats" — and then he cut 'em. Thus, during many a campaign, He cut and grieved and cut and came again ; Pitying and killing ; Lamenting sorely for men's souls, While pretty little eyelet holes Clean through their bodies he kept drilling ; Till palling on his laurels, grown so thick (As boys pull blackberries till they are sick), Homeward he bent his course to wreathe 'em ; And in his castle, near fair Norwich town, Glutted with glory he sat down, In perfect solitude beneath 'em. Now sitting under laurels, heroes say, Gives grace and dignity, and so it may, When men have done campaigning; But certainly these gentlemen must own, That sitting under laurels quite alone, Is much more dignified than entertaining. BROAD GRINS. S9 Pious j33neas, who in his narration Of his own prowess felt so great a charm (For though he feigned great grief in the relation, He made the story longer than your arm*) — Pious w9£neas no more pleasure knew Than did our knight, who could be pious too — In telling his exploits and martial brawls ; But pious Thomas had no Dido near him, No queen, king, lord, nor commoner to hear him, So he was forced to tell them to the walls ; And to his castle walls, in solemn guise, The knight fall often did soliloquize. For " walls have ears," Sir Thomas had been told ; Yet thought the tedious hours would seem much shorter If now and then a tale he could unfold To ears of flesh and blood, not stone and mortar. At length his old castellum grew so dull, That legions of blue devils seized the knight ; Megrim invested his belaurelled skull ; Spleen laid embargoes on his appetite ; * " Qnis talia fando Temperet a lachrymis ?" says JEneas, by way of proem ; yet for a hero tolerably ' ' used to the melting mood," he talks on this occasion much more than he cries ; and though he begins with a wooden horse, and gives a general account of the burning of Troy* still the quorum pars magna fid is evidently the great inducement to his chattering ; accordingly, he keeps up Queen Dido to a scandalous late hour after supper, for the good folks of Carthage, to tell her an egotistical story that occupies two whole books of the " .ffineid." Oh, these heroes ! I once knew a worthy general — but I wont tell that story. 90 OILMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. Till through the daytime he was haunted wholly By all the imps of " loathed Melancholy !" Heaven keep her and her imps for ever from us ! And Incubus,* whene'er he went to bed, Sat on his stomach like a lump of lead, Making unseemly faces at Sir Thomas. Plagues such as these might make a parson swear ; Sir Thomas being but a layman, Swore very roundly a la militaire, Or rather (from vexation) like a drayman ; Damning his walls out of all line and level ; Sinking his drawbridges and moats ; Wishing that he were cutting throats, And they were at the devil. " What's to be done," Sir Thomas said one day, " To drive ennui away ? How is this evil to be parried ? What can remind me of my former life ? Those happy days I spent in noise anl strife !" The last words struck him. " Zounds !" says he, " a wife !" And so he married. * Far be it from me to offer a pedantic affront to the gentlemen who peruse me by explaining the word incubus, which Pliny and others more learnedly call Epliialies ; I modestly state it to mean the night- mare for the information of the ladies. The chief symptom by which this affliction is vulgarly known is a heavy pressure upon the stomach when lying in a supine posture in bed. It would terrify some of my fair readers, who never experienced this characteristic of the Incubus, were I to dwell on its effects ; and it would irritate others who are in the habit of labouring under its sensations. BROAD GRINS. 91 Muse ! regulate your pace ; Eestrain awhile your frisking and your giggling! Here is a stately lady in the case ; We mustn't now be fidgetting and niggling. god of love ! urchin of spite and play ! Deserter oft from saffron Hymen's quarters ; His torch bedimming as thou runn'st away, Till half his votaries become his martyrs. Sly, wandering god ! whose frolic arrows pass Through hearts of potentates and prentice-boys ; Who mark'st with milkmaids' forms the tell-tale grass, And mak'st the fruitful prude repent her joys ! Drop me one feather from thy wanton wing, Young god of dimples ! in thy roguish flight ; And let thy poet catch it now, to sing The beauty of the dame who won the kuight ! Her beauty ! — but Sir Thomas's own sonnet Beats all that I can say upon it. SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM'S SONNET* ON HIS LADY. SUCH star-like lustre lights her eyes, They must have darted from a sphere, Our duller system to surprise, Outshining all- the planets here; * An old gentlewoman, a great admirer of the biack letter (as many old gentlewomen are), presented the author of these tales with the original MS. of this sonnet, advising the publication of zjav-simtie 92 COLMAWS HUMOROUS WORKS. And having wandered from their wonted place, Fix in the wondrous heaven of her face. ii. The modest rose whose blushes speak The ardent kisses of the sun, Offering a tribute to her. cheek, Droops to perceive its tint outdone ; Then withering with envy and despair, Dies on her lips and leaves its fragrance there. of the knight's handwriting. It is painful after this to advance that the sonnet, so far from being genuine, is one of the clumsiest literary forgeries that the present times have witnessed. It appears in this authentic story that Sir Thomas Erpingham was married in the reign of Henry V. ; and it is evidently intended that moderns should believe he writ these love verses almost immediately after his marriage, not only from the ardour with which he celebrates the beauty of his wife, but from the circumstance of a man writing any love verses upon his wife at all ; but the style and language of the lines are most glaringly inconsistent with their pretended date. The fact is, we have here foisted upon us a close imitation of Cowley (vide the " Mistress"), who was not horn till the year 161S, two centuries after the era in question. Chaucer died a.b. 1400, and Henry V. (who was king only nine years, five months, and eleven days) began his reign scarcely thirteen years after the death of that poet. Sir Thomas then must at least have written in the obsolete phraseology of Chaucer, and pro- bably would have imitated him, as did Lydgate, Occleve, and others — nay, Harding, Skelton, &c, who were fifty or sixty years subsequent to Chaucer, were not so modern in their language as their celebrated predecessor. Having in few words proved (it is presumed) this sonnet to be spurious, an apology may be thought necessary for not saying a great deal more ; but this herculean task is left in deference to the disputants on " Vortigern," who will doubtless engage in it as a matter of great importance, and once more lay the world under very heavy obligations, with various pamphlets in folio upon the subject ; and surely too many acknowledgments cannot be given to men who are so indefatigably generous in their researches, that half the result of BROAD GRINS. 93 in. Ringlets that on her breast descend Increase the beauties they invade, Thus branches in luxuriance bend To grace the lovely hills they shade ; And thus the glowing climate did entice Tendrils to curl, unpruned, o'er Paradise. Sir Thomas having closed his love-sick strain, Come, buxom Muse, and let us frisk again ! Close to a chapel near the castle gates Dwelt certain stickers in the devil's skirts, Who with prodigious fervour shave their pates, And show a most religious scorn for shirts. Their hoiuse's sole endowment was our knight's ; Thither an abbot and twelve friars retreating, Conquered, sage, pious men ! their appetites With that infallible specific, eating. 'Twould seem, since tenanted by holy friars, That piece and harmony reigned here eternally ; Whoever told you so were cursed liars ; The holy friars quarrelled most infernally. them when published causes even the sympathetic reader to labour as much as the writer. How ungratefully did Pope say : — " There, dim in clouds, the poring scholiasts mark, Wits, who like owls, see only in the dark ; A lumber-house of books in every head, For ever reading, never to be read !" — Dunciad. 34 C0LMA1TS HUMOROUS WORKS. Not a day past Without some schism among these heavenly lodgers ; But none of their dissensions seemed to last So long as Friar John's and Friar Eoger's. I have been very accurate in my researches, And find this convent (truce with whyssxidi hows), Kept in a constant ferment with the rows Of these two quarrelsome fat sons of churches. But when Sir Thomas went to his devotions, Proceeding through their cloister with his bride,. You never could have dreamed of their commotions, The stiff-rumped rascals looked so sanctified. And it became the custom of the knight To go to matins every day ; He jogged his bride as soon as it was light, Crying, " My dear, 'tis time for us to pray." This custom he established very soon After his honeymoon. Wives of this age might think his zeal surprising, But much his pious lady did it please To see her husband every morning rising, And going instantly upon his knees. Never, I ween, In any person's recollection Was such a couple seen For genuflection ! Mating as great a drudgery of prayer As humble curates are obliged to do, Whose labour, woe the while ! scarce buys them cassocks ; BROAD GRINS. 95 And every morning, whether foul or fair, Sir Thomas and the dame were in their pew Craw-thumping upon hassocks. It could not otherwise befall (Sir Thomas and his wife this course pursuing), But that the lady, affable to all, Should greet the friars on her way To matins as she met them every day, Good morninging, and how d'ye doing? Now nodding to this friar, now to that, As through the cloister she was wont to trip, Stopping sometimes to have a little chat On casual topics with the holy brothers ; So condescending was her ladyship To Roger, John, and all the others. All this was natural enough To any female of urbanity ; But holy men are made of as frail stuff As all the lighter sons of vanity ! And these her ladyship's chaste condescensions In Friar John bred damnable desire ; Heterodox unclean intentions ; Abominable in a friar ! Whene'er she greeted him his gills grew red, While she was quite unconscious of the matter ; But he, the beast ! was casting sheep'seyes at her Out of his bullock head. That coxcombs were and are I need not give, Nor take the trouble now to prove ; Nor that those dead, like many now who live, Have thought a lady's condescension love. 96 COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORK'S. This happened with fat Friar John ; Monastic coxcomb ! amorous and gummy ! Filled with conceit up to his very brim ! He thought his guts a garbage doated on By a fair dame whose husband was to him Hyperion to a mummy. Burning with flames the lady never knew, Hotter and heavier than toasted cheese, He sent her a much warmer billet-doux Than Abelard e'er writ to Eloise. But whether Friar John's fat shape and face, Though pleading both together, Were sorry advocates in such a case ; Or whether He marred his hopes by suffering his pen With too much fervour to display 'em— As very tender nurses now and then Cuddle their children till they overlay 'em — 'Twas plain his prayer to decorate the brows Of good Sir Thomas was so far from granted, That the dame went directly to her spouse And told him what the filthy friar wanted. Think, reader ! think ! if thou hast ta'en for life A partner to thy bed, for worse or better, Think what Sir Thomas felt when his chaste wife Brandished before his eyes the friar's letter ! He felt, sir, — zounds ! — Yes, zounds, I say, sir — for it makes me swear — More torture than he suffered from the wounds He got among the French in France ; Not that I take upon me to advance The knight was ever wounded there. BROAD GRINS. 97 Think gravely, sir, I pray — fancy the knight — ("Tis quite a picture) — with his heart's delight ! Fancy you see his virtuous lady stand Holding the friar's foulness in her hand ! How should Sir Thomas, sir, behave ? Why bounce and sputter surely like a squib : You would have done the same, sir, if a knave, A frowsy friar, meddled with your rib. His bosom almost burst with ire Against the friar ! Rage gave his face an apoplectic hue ; His cheeks turned purple and his nose turned blue. He swore with this mock saint he'd soon be even : He'd have him flayed like Saint Bartholomew, And now again he'd have him stoned like Stephen. But " Ira furor brevis est," As Horace quaintly has expressed. Therefore the knight, finding his foam and froth "Work through the bunghole of his mouth like beer, Pulled out the vent-peg of his wrath To let the stream of his revenge run clear ; Debating with himself what mode might suit him, To trounce the rogue who wanted to cornute him. First an attack against his foe he planned. Learned in the field where late he fought so felly ; That is, to march up bravely, sword in hand, And run the friar through his holy belly At last his better judgment did declare — Seeing his honour would as little shine H 98 COLMAWS HUMOROUS WORKS. By sticking friars as by killing swine — To circumvent him by a ruse de guerre ; And as the project ripened in his head, Thus to his virtuous wife he said : " Now sit thee down, my lady bright, And list thy lord's desire ; An assignation thou shalt write, Beshrew me! to the friar. " Aread him at the midnight hour In silent sort to go, And bide thy coming in the bower, For there do crabsticks grow. " He shall not tarry long — for why ? When twelve have striking done, Then, by the god of gardens,* I Will cudgel him till one .'" 4 If the knight knew the aptness in its full extent of his oath upon this occasion, we must give him more credit for his reading than we are willing to allow to military men of the age in which he flourished : for observe, he vows to cudgel a man lurking to rob his lady of her virtue in a bower ; how appropriately therefore does he swear by the ' ' god of the gardens ! " who is represented with a kind of cudgel (falx lignea) in his right hand ; and is moreover furnished with another weapon of formidable dimensions (Horace calls it palus), for the express purpose of annoying robbers. ' ' Fures dextra coercet, Obsccenoque ruber porrectus ab inguine^mZtis." It must be confessed that the last mentioned attribute of this Deity was stretched forth to promote pleasure, in some instances, instead of fear ; for it was a sportive custom, in the hilarity of recent marriages, to seat the bride upon his palus ; but this circumstance by no means disproves its efficacy as a dread to robbers ; on the contrary, that implement must have been peculiarly terrific, which could sustain the weight of so many brides, without detriment to its firmness or elasticity. BROAD GRINS. 99 The lady wrote just what Sir Thomas told her ; For it is no less strange than true That wives did once what husbands bid them do. Lord ! how this world improves as we grow older ! She named the midnight hour, Telling the friar to repair To the sweet secret bower ; But not a word of any crabsticks there. Thus have I seen a liquorish black rat Lured by the cook to sniff and smell her bacon ; And when he's eager for a bit of fat, Down goes a trap upon him — and he's taken. A tiny page — for formerly a boy Was a mere dunce, who did not understand The doctrines of Sir Pandarus of Troy — Slipped the dame's note into the friar's hand, As he was walking in the cloister, And then slipped off — as silent as an oyster. The friar read, the friar chuckled ; For now the farce's unities were right : Videlicet — the argument, a cuckold ; The scene, a bower ; time, twelve o'clock at night. Blithe was fat John, and dreading no mishap, Stole at the hour appointed to the trap ; But so perfumed, so musked for the occasion — His tribute to the nose so like invasion — You would have sworn to smell him 'twas no rat, But a dead putrefied old civet cat. 11 2 ao COLMAN'S HUMOROUS WORKS. He reached the spot, anticipating blisses, Soft murmurs, melting sighs, and burning kisses, Trances of joy and mingling of the souls — When whack ! Sir Thomas hit him on the jowls. Now on his head it came, now on his face, His neck and shoulders, arms, legs, breast, and back- In short, on almost every place We read of in the almanack. Blows rattled on him thick as hail, Making him rue the day that he was born. Sir Thomas plied his cudgel like a flail, And thrashed as if he had been thrashing corn. At length a thump (painful the facts, alas ! Truth urges us historians to relate) Took Friar John so smart athwart the pate, It acted like a perfect coup de grace. Whether it was a random shot Or aimed maliciously — though fame says not — Certain his soul (the knight so cracked his crown) Fled from his body ; but which way it went, Or whether friars' souls fly up or down, Remains a matter of nice argument. Points so abstruse I dare not dwell upon ; Enough for me his body is not gone. For I have business still in my narration With the fat carcass of this holy porpoise ; And death, though sharp in his administration, Never suspended such a habeas corpus. BROAD GUINS. 101 PART THE SECOND. Header ! if you have genius you'll discover, Do what you will to keep it ctfol, It now and then in spite of you boils over Upon a fool. Haven't you (lucky man if not) been vexed, Worn, fretted, and perplexed By a pert, busy, would-be-clever knave, A forward, empty, self-sufficient slave ? And haven't you, all Christian patience gone, At last' put down the puppy with your wit, Whom it seemed (though you had whole mines of it.) Extravagance to spend a jest upon ? And haven't you (I'm sure you have, my friend!), When you have laid the puppy low, All 'little pique and malice at an end, Been sorry for the blow? And said (if witty so would say your bard), " Damn it ! I hit that meddling fool too hard." Thus did the brave Sir Thomas say, Whose genius didn't much disturb his pate ; It rather in his bones and muscles lay, Like many other men's of good estate. Thus did Sir Thomas say ; and well he might, When pity to resentment did succeed ; For certainly (though not with wit) the knight Had hit the friar very hard indeed ! And heads, nineteen in twenty, 'tis confessed, Can feel a crabstick sooner than a jest. COZMAJVS HUMOROUS WORKS. There was in the knight's family a man Cast in the roughest mould dame nature boasts, "With shoulders wider than a dripping-pan, And legs as thick about the calves as posts. All the domestics, viewing in this hulk So large a specimen of nature's whims, With kitchen wit, allusive to his bulk, Had christened him the Duke of Limbs. Throughout the castle every whipper-snapper Was canvassing the merits of this strapper ; Most of the men voted his size alarming, But all the maids nem. con. declared it charming I This wight possessed a quality most rare ; I tremble when I mention it, I swear, Lest pretty ladies question my veracity ; 'Twas when he had a secret in his care, To keep it with the greatest pertinacity. Pour but a secret in him, and 'twould glue him Like resin on a well-corked bottle snout ; Had twenty devils come with corkscrews to him,. They never could have screwed the secret out.. Now when Sir Thomas in the dark alone Had killed a friar weighing twenty stone, Whose carcass must be hid before the dawn, Judging he might as hopelessly desire To move a convent as a friar, He thought on this man's secrecyand brawn j. And like a swallow o'er the lawn he skims, Up to the cock-loft of the Duke of Limbs ; BROAD GRINS. 103 Where Somnus, son of .Nox, the humble copy Of his own daughter Mors,* had made assault On the Duke's eyelids, not with juice of poppy, But potent draughts distilled from hops and malt. Certainly nothing operates much quicker Against two persons' secret dialogues Than one of them being asleep in liquor, Snoring like twenty thousand hogs. Yet circumstances pressingly require The knight to tell his tale, And to instruct his man knocked down with ale, That he (Sir Thomas) had knocked down a friar. How wake a man in such a case ? Sir, the best method — I have tried a score — Is, when his nose is playing thorough bass, To pull it till you make him roar. A sleeper's nose is made on the same plan As the small wire 'twixt a doll's wooden thighs ; For pull the nose or wire, the doll or man Will open in a minute both their eyes. This mode Sir Thomas took, and in a trice Grasped with his thumb and finger, like a vice, * There is a terrible jnmble in Somnus's family. He was the son of Nox, by Erebus ; and Erebus, according to different accounts, was Hot only Nox's husband, but her brother, and even her son by Chaos, and Mors was daughter of Somnus, by that devil of a goddess Nox, the mother of his father, and himself ! The heathen deiiies held our canoni- cal notions in litter contempt ; and must have laughed at the idea. (which ' surely nobody does now) of forbidding a man to marry his grandmother. i