[235] Mirror of the Months.
July 1.
Cockletop.
Munden.—Farren.
July 1, 1826.—Mr. Farren appeared in the part of Old Cockletop, in O’Keefe’s farce of Modern Antiques, at the Haymarket theatre. This will be recollected as a crack character of Munden’s; and it was one which he had hit so happily, that it became almost impossible for any other actor to play it very successfully after him. There was a sort of elfin antic—a kind of immateriality about the crotchets of Munden in Cockletop. His brain seemed to have no more substance in it than the web of a spider; and he looked dried up in body and mind, almost to a transparency; he might have stood in a window and not been in the way—you could see the light through him. Farren is the bitterest old rascal on the stage. He looks, and moves always, as if he had a blister (that wanted fresh dressing) behind each ear; but he does not touch the entirely withered, crazy-brained, semi-bedlamite old rogue, in the way that Munden did. Munden contrived to give all the weakness possible to extreme age in Cockletop, without exciting an iota of compassion. All that there was of him was dry bones and wickedness. You could not help seeing that he would be particularly comical under the torture; and you could not feel the slightest compunction in ordering that he should undergo it. There never was any thing like his walking up and down Drury-lane stage in astonishment, and concluding he must be “at next door,” when he returns home from his journey, and finds all his servants in mourning! And the cloak that he wore too! And the appendage that he called his “stormcap!” He looked like a large ape’s skin stuffed with hay, ready to hang up in an apothecary’s shop! You ran over all the old fools that you knew, one after the other, to recollect somebody like him, but could not succeed! Farren plays Foresight as well as Munden; and he plays Cockletop very successfully; but it is hardly possible for one eminent actor to follow another in trifling characters, where the first has made a hit rather by his own inventions than by any thing which the author has set down for him. Munden’s dancing in the ghost-scene with the servants, and his conclusion—striking an attitude, with the fingers of one hand open like a bunch of radish, as the fiddler, used to keep the audience in convulsions for two minutes. Farren avoided this trick, probably lest he should be charged with imitation; but acknowledged talent like his may use a latitude: he has originality enough to warrant his at least not avoiding the device which has been used by any actor, purely because it has been used by somebody else before him. Some passages that he gave were quite as good as Munden. In the scene where he fancies himself taken ill, the pit was in two minds to get up and cheer. He made a face like a bear troubled suddenly with symptoms of internal commotion! one who had eaten a bee-hive for the sake of the honey, and began to have inward misgivings that there must have been bees mixed up along with it. And Farren possesses the gift too—a most valuable one in playing to an English audience—of exhibiting the suffering without exciting the smallest sympathy! Whenever there is any thing the matter with him, you hope he’ll get worse with all your soul; and, if he were drowning—with that face!—he must die:—you could not, if you were to die yourself, take one step, for laughing, to save him.[236]
July.
The sun comes on apace, and thro’ the signs
Travels unwearied; as he hotter grows,
Above, the herbage, and beneath, the mines,
Own his warm influence, while his axle glows;
The flaming lion meets him on the way,
Proud to receive the flaming god of day.
In fullest bloom the damask rose is seen,
Carnations boast their variegated die,
The fields of corn display a vivid green,
And cherries with the crimson orient vie,
The hop in blossom climbs the lofty pole,
Nor dreads the lightning, tho’ the thunders roll.
The wealth of Flora like the rainbow shows,
Blending her various hues of light and shade,
How many tints would emulate the rose,
Or imitate the lily’s bright parade!
The flowers of topaz and of sapphire vie
With all the richest tinctures of the sky.