right to frame, fashion, and put them together as I please; and having made them what they are, my puppets are my property, and therefore my slaves: nor is there in nature any thing more just, than the homage which is paid by a less to a more excellent being; so that by the right, therefore, of a superior genius, I am their supreme moderator, although you would insinuate, agreeably to your levelling principles, that I am myself but a great puppet, and can therefore have but a coördinate jurisdiction with them. I suppose, I have now sufficiently made it appear, that I have a paternal right to keep a puppet-show; and this right I will maintain in my prologues on all occasions. And therefore, if you write a defence of yourself against this my self-defence, I admonish you to keep within bounds; for every day will not be so propitious to you as the twenty-ninth of April; and perhaps my resentment may get the better of my generosity, and I may no longer scorn to fight one who is not my equal, with unequal weapons; there are such things as scandalums magnatums; therefore, take heed hereafter how you write such things as I cannot easily answer, for that will put me in a passion. 'I order you to handle only these two propositions, to which our dispute may be reduced; the first, whether I have not an absolute power, whenever I please, to light a pipe with one of Punch's legs, or warm my fingers with his whole carcase? the second, whether the devil would not be in Punch, should he by word or deed oppose my sovereign will and pleasure? and then, perhaps, I may, if I can find leisure for it, give you the trouble of a second letter. 'But if you intend to tell me of the original of puppet-shows; and the several changes and revolutions that have happened in them since Thespis, and I do not care who, that is Noli me tangere! I have solemnly engaged to say nothing of what I cannot approve. Or, if you talk of certain contracts with the mayor and burgesses, or fees to the constables, for the privilege of acting, I will not write one single word about any such matters; but shall leave you to be mumbled by the learned and very ingenious author of a late book, who knows very well what is to be said and done in such cases. He is now shuffling the cards and dealing to Timothy; but if he wins the game, I will send him to play at back-gammon with you: and then he will satisfy you that deuce-ace makes five. And so, submitting myself to be tried by my country, and allowing any jury of twelve good men and true, to be that country; not excepting any unless Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff to be of the pannel, for you are neither good nor true: I bid you heartily farewell; and am, Sir, your loving friend, ADVERTISEMENT. POWELL.' Proper cuts for the historical part of this paper, are now almost finished, by an engraver lately arrived from Paris, and will be sold at all the toyshops in London and Westminster. N° 51. SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1709. Quicquid agunt homines nostri est farrago libelli. Juv. Sat. i. 85, 86. Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream, White's Chocolate-house, August 5. P. CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF ORLANDO * THE FAIR.* FORTUNE being now propitious to the gay Orlando, he dressed, he spoke, he moved as a man might be * See N° 50. supposed to do in a nation of pygmies, and had an equal value for our approbation or dislike. It is usual for those who profess a contempt for the world, to fly from it, and live in obscurity; but Orlando, with a greater magnanimity, contemned it, and appeared in it to tell them so. If, therefore, his exalted mien met with an unwelcome reception, he was sure always to double the cause which gave the distaste. You see our beauties affect a negligence in the ornament of their hair, and adjusting their head-dresses, as conscious that they adorn whatever they wear. Orlando had not only this humour in common with other beauties, but also had a neglect whether things became him, or not, in a world he contemned. For this reason, a noble particularity appeared in all his economy, furniture, and equipage. And to convince the present little race, how unequal all their measures were to an antediluvian, as he called himself, in respect of the insects which now appear for men: he sometimes rode in an open tumbril, of less size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs, and the grandeur of his personage to the greater advantage. At other seasons all his appointments had a magnificence, as if it were formed by the genius of Trimalchio of old, which showed itself in doing ordinary things with an air of pomp and grandeur. Orlando therefore called for tea by beat of drum; his valet got ready to shave him by a trumpet to horse; and water was brought for his teeth, when the sound was changed to boots and saddle. In all these glorious excesses from the common practice, did the happy Orlando live and reign in an uninterrupted tranquillity, until an unlucky accident brought to his remembrance, that one evening he was married before he courted the nuptials of Villaria. Several fatal memorandums were produced to revive the memory of this accident; and the unhappy lover was for ever banished her presence, to whom he owed the support of his just renown and gallantry. But distress does not debase noble minds; it only changes the scene, and gives them new glory by that alteration. Orlando therefore now raves in a garret, and calls to his neighbour-skies to pity his dolours, and to find redress from an unhappy lover. All high spirits, in any great agitation of mind, are inclined to relieve themselves by poetry: the renowned porter of Oliver had not more volumes around his cell in his college of Bedlam, than Orlando in his present apartment. And though inserting poetry in the midst of prose be thought a licence among correct writers not to be indulged, it is hoped the necessity of doing it, to give a just idea of the hero of whom we treat, will plead for the liberty we shall hereafter take, to print Orlando's soliloquies in verse and prose, after the manner of great wits, and such as those to whom they are nearly allied. Will's Coffee-house, August 5. A good company of us were this day to see, or rather to hear an artful person do several feats of activity with his throat and windpipe. The first thing wherewith he presented us, was a ring of bells, which he imitated in a most miraculous manner; after that, he gave us all the different notes of a pack of hounds, to our great delight and astonishment. The company expressed their applause with much noise; and never was heard such a harmony of men and dogs: but a certain plump, merry fellow, from an angle of the room, fell a crowing like a cock, so ingeniously, that he won our hearts from the other operator in an instant. As soon as I saw him, I recollected I had seen him on the stage, and immediately knew it to be Tom Mirrour,* the comi * Mr Richard Estcourt, commonly called Dick Estcourt, celebrated for his mimic powers, in which he was inimitable. cal actor. He immediately addressed himself to me, and told me, he was surprised to see a virtuoso take satisfaction in any representations below that of human life;' and asked me, whether I thought this acting of bells and dogs was to be considered under the notion of wit, humour, or satire? Were it not better,' continued he, to have some particular picture of man laid before your eyes, that might incite your laughter?' He had no sooner spoken the word, but he immediately quitted his natural shape, and talked to me in a very different air and tone from what he had used before: upon which all that sat near us laughed; but I saw no distortion in his countenance, or any thing that appeared to me disagreeable. I asked Pacolet, what meant that sudden whisper about us? for I could not take the jest.' He answered, The gentleman you were talking to assumed your air and countenance so exactly, that all fell a-laughing to see how little you knew yourself, and how much you were enamoured with your own image. But that person,' continued my monitor, if men would make the right use of him, might be as instrumental to their reforming errors in gesture, language, and speech, as a dancing'master, linguist, or orator. You see he laid yourself before you with so much address, that you saw nothing particular in his behaviour: he has so happy a knack of representing errors and imperfections, that you can bear your faults in him, as well as in yourself: he is the first mimic that ever gave the beauties, as well as the deformities, of the men he acted. What Mr. Dryden said of a very great man, may be well applied to him: "He seems to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome." You are to know that this pantomine may be said to be a species of himself: he has no commerce with the rest of mankind, but as they are the ob |