VIVAT REGINA!
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, BANGOR HOUSE, SHOE LANE.
Footnotes:
[1] It may be said that Punch is a foreign importation. True; and the same assertion may be made respecting the drink of that name, the ingredients of which are all exotic, except the water: nevertheless the peculiar fondness of our countrymen for it will hardly on that account be questioned. But the real fact is, that there is nothing outlandish about Punch except the name, and even that has been Anglicised. We are proverbial for improving on the inventions of other nations, but we have done more than improve upon Punch; we have entirely remodelled his character; and he is now no more an Italian than the descendant of one who came in with the Conqueror is a Norman. The correctness of this position will be found to be singularly borne out on a perusal of that celebrated work, “Punch and Judy;” in which (no doubt from unavoidable circumstances) the dialogues were actually taken down from the mouth of an Italian, one Piccini, an itinerant exhibitor of the drama. The book is, or ought to be, in everybody’s hands. Still, let any one refer to that particular part of it, and, provided that his taste is a correct one, he will not fail to be struck with the deteriorating effect which Signor Piccini’s broken English and Italian loquacity have produced on the spirit of the original. Nothing is more characteristic of the real Mr. Punch than the laconic manner in which he expresses himself, and nothing at the same time is more English. As to the embellishments of his discourse, introduced by Piccini, they are about as appropriate and admirable as Colley Cibber’s improvements on Richard the Third.
[2] See Warren’s “Ode to Kitty of Shoe Lane,” Advertisements, London Press, passim.