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    Untitled Article

    Found among the Papers of the late Charles Lamb ,

    The Human Mind—words which have commenced such innumerable essays—being manifestly the prototype of every super- ' human , infra-human , and fanciful character , ih all its yarjatiojls and shades of thought and action which the imagination pay call into being , either through the medium of literature Or mechanics ; I shall proceed to the consideration of the subject before us , as one expressly appertaining to the development of existing principles and feelings of our common humanity .

    It is not my intention to enter into the early traditions , or trace the history of characters from their first presentment before the eyes of an enthusiastic public , through their various gradations down to the present time . Passing over , therefore , all elaborate and apochryphal accounts , I shall merely observe that I have no doubt but this most constantly popular drama

    had its origin in Italy . A hump-backed , pugnacious , comical old country fellow , with a long red nose and a high cracked voice , is said to have come regularly to market , crying polchinelli "a sort of fowl or capon—and the eccentricities of his appearance and conduct being represented , and probably caricatured , if possible , by some clever wag during one of the Carnivals , the joke succeeded so admirably that certain ' trading ' wags sdion

    came to represent the same with additional characters by means of a puppet-show . Be this as it may , the original prime ch aracter no doubt owes its extraordinary inexhaustibility of " flowing spirits" to a continental source , very unlike the p hlegmatic , heavy , double-X of England . Notwithstanding this , however , there has been so many striking features added to the hero of the piece , which are thorou ghly English , that I consider ((

    a great moral lesson" may be administered to our nation through the present analysis , the which I accordingly submit forgeneral study , and almost for universal self-application . The character of Punch is that of a being totally devoicj of every moral principle . Everybody is pleased with him . He is not only thus totally devoid of moral principles , but exults

    and crows to the top of his bent in a public manifestation of the fact . Everybody is delighted wiin him ;—men , Woolen , and children . The nobility , tne clergy , and the King , are a / so delighted with him , as well as their natural subjects , Frota the

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    Analytical Disquisition on Hpinch avid Judy . SO

    Untitled Article

    ANALYTICAL DISQUISITION © n $ mtcD attfr ^ utriu

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 39, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/41/