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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
women , and youths , of different degrees , temperament , and character , the rough and the courtl y ^ the rude and the refined , the semi-savage and the delicate , the educated and the illiterate , the turbulent and the meditative _ , the timid and the tipsy : not a whisper , not a breathed sound curled on the atmosphere to disturb ttife adoring silence ; there was a tranquillity as perfect as in the stars , the quiet of a moonray sleeping on , and borne about by , a vivified statue . Oh , how I was enthralled , enchanted , spell-wrought ; by what I saw and heard ! With utter unconsciousness of myself I arose and bent forward , with outstretched artns , as if to fly whither I was irresistibly and dreamingly drawn , when a jerk at my coat tail , and a voice in anger ' s shrillness , crying ' CAwh ' t yfc sit deawn ? y ' ore rucking mygeawn'd / drew me back . Oh , whafc a hurling down from the heaven of imagination was that ! Gi that gewee some woots ! turn um hout ! throw uni hover \*
screamed and bellowed from every side , and a thousand heads and as many pair of exasperated eyes were directed towards itifc . * Oh , that this too , too solid flesh would thaw and resolve itself into a dew ! ' ( I had read Hamlet ) was my prayier . I was stepped , saturated , parboiled in a caldron of shame . I was for some moments in a state of utter annihilation : but the storm died
away , peace returned , and with it my fixedness of < eye arid devouring of ear . I was forgotten , praise be to the saints ! arid the splendid phantasm a proceeded . The play-bill , which was crushed and doubled up to a hazel-nut ' s bulk by this time , had told me that Pylades was Mr . King , Orestes 'by the young Roscius * . Then came the deep-toned , stately Pyrrhus , a
metempsychosis of Mr . Barrymore , or Mr . Barrymore a metempsychosis of Pyrrhus : take your choice , reader ; yet I offer another versioh of the ' say , ' I think Mr . Barryrnore was himself all the While . Heavens ! what majesty of step ! Oh , reader , if you are very young , you can form no idea of it , unless you have seen Liston in Lord Grizzle , or Jack Reeve in Abrahamides ; no disparagement to Barrymore though ; he was as good as nine-tenths of hifc day : that c stage tread' is obsolete now ; but how it was bepraiaed
and beworshipped by your papa and mamma ! The legs superlatively proud of bearing such a body , the feet speaking tnfeir conscious dignity of belonging to the legs , each wrinkle in the stocking ' s instep and ham seemed to say how all these pebple are admiring me ! ' There were guards , and battle-axes , ah& shields , and spears , and a throne ! Lawks me ! I had never &een a throne before ; that is to say , a real , genuine , bbnft-fede thrbn £ , nothing but pictures of them in books . Sir reader , I woultt have sacrificed my dinner every day for the next rhorith ; iVen fo have touched one of those blessed battle-axes , or to halve clutched the shaft of one of those honoured spears ! Biit the men thiit bore them ! Oh ! to their glorious state , ambition cotild hot dream of aspiring ! Then the ladies , the angels , the deess ^ ft ,
Untitled Article
Myfirti , Play . it *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1833, page 479, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2618/page/39/
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