One of the figures, by an unobserved excitement of the attendant, now inclined its head to Sir Felix, who, nothing daunted, immediately assumed the attitude of Macbeth in the banquet scene, and exclaimed,
“Nay, if thou canst nod, speak too! if our graves And charnel houses give those we bury back, Our monuments shall be the maws of kites.”
The company present pronounced the baronet a player, and a lady, to whom the manly and athletic form of the supposed tragedian had given apparent pleasure, assured him she had never heard the passage more impressively delivered, and that certainly, in the character of the Scottish Usurper, there was no doubt of his becoming to Mr. Kran a very formidable rival!
Sir Felix sustained his part admirably, expressing his high acknowledgment of the lady's favorable opinion; but the enquiry when and in which theatre, he meant to make his first appearance, had so nearly deranged his gravity and that of his two friends, as to induce them to hasten their retreat.
Dashall and Tallyho congratulated the baronet on his promising dramatic talent, and advised him still further to court the favors of the tragic Muse.
“May the devil burn the tragic Muse!” he exclaimed;
1 Thus runs the legend.— A lady in former times, who, it seems, like some of our modern visionaries, was an enemy to superabundant population, and would have restricted the procreation of children to those only who could maintain them; was applied to for alms by a poor woman, with no less than five little famishing urchins in her train. The haughty dame not only refused to relieve the unfortunate mendicant, but poured upon her a torrent of abuse, adding that she had no right to put herself in the way of having children whom she could not support.—The woman dropped on her knees, and prayed “that the lady might have as many children at one birth as there were days in the year!” and so, (as the legend runs,) it actually happened!
“Arrah, give me the favors of that sweet pretty crature, the comical Muse at the Wax-works, who took me for a player,—Och! the fascination of her smile and the witchery of her eye before all the Muses that ever fuddled the brain of a garreteer!”
“Why baronet,” said the Squire, “you are love-struck,—deeply lurched,—taken in by the knowing one!”
“Taken in, that is as it may hereafter happen, but an Irishman, my jewel, is never so desperately in love with one girl but he can spare a bit of affection for another.