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Untitled Article
hear all about it . ' These questions were put by several who had witnessed the performances : but among my acquaintances , that is , those who supposed they knew me , I had the reputation of being somewhat of an oddity ; there was , consequently , a curiosity to know how a play , for the first time , would operate on an oddity , and doubtless a hearty laugh at my simplicity was in the
perspective of their questions : and they had their laugh ; but the wind that raised it blew from a quarter unexpected by them . I commenced at the opening of the farce , and ' ran it through , ' scene and circumstance , from beginning to end ; repeating much of the dialogue on the road ; ticlding myself and my hearers with the incipient Toryism of Risk , who , « when his farm was taken / would
Hire a lout to wield the flail , Small beer should serve the bumpkin : While he , by guzzling home-brewed ale , Grew rounder tlian a pumpkin—Grew rounder than a pumpkin . '
Then I * shold the fine picture of Chupiter and Danae , to de Arshpishop of Cologne—drapery and all—and put up mine oomprella , de cloudsh vas sho pootiful , and sheerned as if dey vas choost coin to rain . ' But the flower of the exhibition was a double of Vigil and old Totterton , before the painter ' s door—Vigil upbraiding the old man with his age and ocular dimness , and Totterton peevishly replying with his shrill pipe , ' Bless us !' and chuckling in falsetto in triumph over Vigil , whose boasted keenness had failed to detect what old Totterton saw , ' the carriage of letters by the first-floor mail , ' &c , &C , &c . Oh ! they had it over and over again . Totterton and Vigil became a pest . * But the tragedy , Pel . ; what did you think of the tragedy ? ' How did you like the tragedy ? ' Hah ! the curtain refused to rise for their entertainment on that subject . I was silent . I remember all my mirth forsook me ; and they , in their wisdoms , carne to the satisfactory conclusion that I had no taste for tragedy , and if ever I turned ' play actor / I should shine in comedy . Good judges of the future , were they not ? I revelled in * tragedy ' silently , unseen , in remotenesses ; it was too sacred for the world ' s eyes . Parents , guides , guardians , and elders , are all , in their own fancy , apt discriminators of the indications of future promise in children . Parents are most liberally endowed with this faculty of penetration . They ever see a future military hero in the boy who is fond of looking at a red coat and flourishing a sword of lath . R . A . is certainly in the distance , if a child scrawl some crooked lines for arms and legs , and drop a blotch for a head ; and the shoving a paper boat across a tub of water , is the first nautical essay of him who is to discover the N . W . passage . I was inordinately , passionately fond of bathing and swimming
Untitled Article
Mjjjlrst Play . 485
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1833, page 485, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2618/page/45/
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