“Ten thousand times ten thousand pardons, most divine bard! but having sunned myself in the optics of Teresa, my own became eclipsed to every object less refulgent. Gentlemen,”—pulling forward a pipe-flourishing, porter-swigging personage who belonged quite as much to Bagfair as to St. Bartlemy, and looked as if he lived in everlasting apprehension of sibillations technically called, “Goose”—“Mr. Pegasus Bubangrub the Bartholomew Fair Poet, who may challenge all the Toby Philpots in Christendom to leap up to the chin into a barrel of beer, drink it down to his foot, and then dance a jig upon the top of it! Mr. Bubangrub edits a penny weekly; reports queer trials; does our Caravan libretto; answers my challenges; roasts my rivals, puffs his pipe—and Me! At present he is a mere dab-chick of literature; but let him start a rum name, and he shall cut the genteel caper, cut, too, his sky parlour, penny-a-lining and old pals; wonder, with amiable simplicity! what 'shooting the moon' can be, and diving for a dinner; and casting off his Toady's skin for the lion's, be feasted, flattered, paragraphed—'Purge, eat cleanly, and live like a gentleman!”
Mr. Bubangrub bowed, and respectfully hinted that every kingdom has its cabals, not excepting the realm of actors and actresses. That to soothe their petty jealousies; check the too-aspiring ambition of one, tickle the self-complacency of another—to be grave with the tragic; funny with the comic; patient with the ignorant and presuming, and on terms of eternal friendship with all—to come off victorious on that slippery ground
“Where unfledg'd actors learn to laugh and cry,
Where infant punks their tender voices try,
And little Maximins the Gods defy,”
are difficulties that none but dramatic politicians of experience and discretion can surmount; and he advised every author to whom appetite offered a more powerful stimulant than genius, to make haste and possess himself of the important secret.
Mine host of the Ram now entered with a curiously compounded mug of mum, in which the great Tragedian (who was not particular from Clos Vougeot to Old Tom) drank the Stage that goes with and without wheels. Mr. Bosky, who had got scent of our “Whereabouts,” arrived in time to propose the memory of Shakspere, and Mr. Bubangrub's longevity; Uncle Timothy gave Bonassus Bigstick and Bartlemy Fair; and Pegasus toasted the Tragic Muse and Teresa Tumbletuzzy. The Tragedian unbent by degrees; his adust countenance warmed into flesh and blood, and he grew facetious and festive.
“Bubangrub, my Brother of the Sun and Moon! my Nutmeg of delight! give us a song!”
The call was a command.
To pitch the tune Pegasus twanged from his Jew's-harp a chord, and apologizing for being “a little ropy,” began, in a voice between a whistle and a wheeze,