“ The artist who gives up his time to drawing in albums is like a midshipman on half pay—gets “nothing a day and finds himself.”
A. Durer. Nay, you are modest, my Rubens. For the Liebe Deutsche Schule, I must speak for you. Not Charles alone—but the Gonzaga of Mantua, Duke Albert, Philip the Spaniard, and the queenly Medici, gloried in calling you their friend and counsellor. ”

“ We shall assume that it is first and foremost a place of entertainment. Many are the comedies, from Shakespeare’s to Shaw’s, that have tickled the ribs of the “groundlings,” but there is also about stage performances a frequent element of diversion supplied by effects entirely unrehearsed. In most cases these “unrehearsed effects” assume the form of amusing blunders, in others they may be witty impromptus on the part of an actor or an auditor, “gags,” “wheezes,” what not! A laughable mistake has often afforded relief to a dull play ”

“ Why should you wish to exist in a country where your works have been impotent to implant the seeds of Art, or aid in their growth and nurture.
Titian. Oimè for Venice.
Rafael. Oh Roma, Roma!
A. Durer. Nay—Nüremberg, also, is a town of burghers, and it is not so with them.
Sir J. Reynolds (aside) . I cannot console them. Their indignation is too well grounded. I, too, am a painter, but I alone am ashamed of my country!
Punch, 1847.
Our artist enjoying himself in the Highlands. * * * * “On fine hot days, I have this to carry on my back.” ”

“ AN ARTIST SCAMP IN THE HIGHLANDS.
Artist (entering) . My good woman, if you’ll allow me, I’ll just paint that bedstead of yours.
Cottager (with bob-curtsey) . Thank ye, sir, I’ sure it’s very kind of ye—but dinna ye think the wee yin wants it more?
Titian (aside) . These islanders! But our pictures which adorn your English galleries, my Bacchus and Ariadne—I painted it for Gonzaga.
M. Angelo. Well remembered, Vicellio. There’s Sebastiano’s picture, too, in your gallery; I painted the Lazarus, my Rafael, to shame thee. Blister my hand for it! How of it?
Rafael. ”

“ Indeed, it still passes current among modern barbarians for humour, while in civilized States, where humour is something that appeals to the intellect, joking in the practical sort is generally regarded as buffoonery. Having admitted thus much, it may be said that even practical joking is not all bad, and is sometimes “a source of innocent merriment.”
Joking of the practical kind is very often a pronounced characteristic of the actor, as the countless stories of players and their pranks abundantly prove. ”

“ The comedian once entered a dairy, and solemnly remarked to the shopman—“I will take a boy,” with a glance at his shelves. “A boy, sir?” asked the puzzled shopman. “Yes, or a girl,” replied the comedian. The man never doubted but his visitor was a lunatic, and said, mildly—“Pardon me, this is a milkshop.” “Come outside,” said Toole, and taking the dairyman by the arm he led him out of the shop and pointed to the sign. “I’ll take a boy or a girl,” he solemnly repeated. ”

“ The dramatic idea of the country consists usually of a series of set pieces, backed by a six-inch deal bridge, surmounting a two-foot waterfall, and leading to a profile cottage of such diminutive dimensions that when the feet of any one entering it are on the basement, his head soars into the second story, and he cannot, without doubling himself completely up, go either in or out of the door. ”

“ The burly gold-seekers, who mainly composed the audience, ordered the players to stop till the child was finished with its entertainment, as an infant’s voice was such a rarity in the Wild West at that time that it awakened pleasant memories of the old home and tugged at the heart-strings of the rough-and-ready miners. ”

“ A thoroughly trained printer should have had a stepmother, and then a stepfather, and then have been bound out to a tanner, and then have married a scolding wife, and lived in a smoky house, and have had a family of babies who were afflicted with colic. He should have added to all this discipline a thorough knowledge of science, art, law, language, theology, history and biography. If, in addition, he has a vicious looking countenance and an amiable disposition, he may stand some chance with these authors and editors ”

“ GOOD AND BAD BUSINESS AT THE THEATRE.
When a play is a success the theatre-goer is treated with less consideration than when it is a failure. In the latter case he is overwhelmed with attention and kind words.
[36]
Stage “waves” have often afforded no little amusement to the audience. The troubled ocean is simulated on the stage by a number of men lying on their backs under a painted canvas, kicking their legs and throwing their arms about with a certain amount of regularity, the men being blindfolded to prevent the dust getting into their eyes. ”

“ E. A. Sothern, the famous “Lord Dundreary,” had an insatiable propensity for practical joking, and many are the stories of his pranks. One of the most amusing, though, perhaps, a little cruel, tells of his treatment of his guests on the occasion of a dinner party to a number of congenial souls. They were all assembled but one, who was rather late. After waiting a few minutes, the host suddenly exclaimed—“Here he comes—let’s all get under the table—make haste.” Anticipating a joke, they all scrambled under, except Sothern himself. Enter guest—“Hallo! where are all the other fellows?” ”

“ We sink in our own estimation as we sit down to write; we blush involuntarily, although we are in the deepest solitude; we look at our arm, in dread lest we should find a napkin hanging on it, in true waiterish attitude ”

“ Sometimes there is, by way of background, a castle, frightfully foreshortened, with its battlements half a yard high, and its towers towering among the sky-borders, while its foundations rest on a rock no higher than the top of the low comedian’s hat ”

“ Is Art so honoured by the great of England?
Sir J. Reynolds. Hum! Oh, His Majesty George the III was pleased to give a charter to the Royal Academy. I have been presented—but, certainly, I don’t remember to have seen him in my painting room at Leicester Square, or to have been asked to take a seat in the Privy Council.
Rafael. But your reigning monarch is a Queen. Woman has ever loved the Beautiful. Surely she much affects you painters.
Sir J. Reynolds. Hum—ha—I am extremely deaf.
P. Veronese (shouting into his trumpet) . Does the Queen give due honour to our brethren?
Sir J. Reynolds. ”

“ Then there is a certain freedom about printers’ humour which we don’t find elsewhere, save among editors: but printers, like editors, have ever been privileged individuals, and we are told that when the recording angel observes a printer hold a bit of bent brass rule between his fingers, while he misses it with a hammer, the trustworthy scribe drops into a brown study, and pretends not to hear anything. Nor is it logical to assume that a printer is a saint because he sets up a hymn-book. ”

“ The weary waiting walker drags his rubbers from the mud:
While the dizzy, dodging, dancing,
Of the umber-ella prancing,
Drives a man to lurid longings for some other fellow’s blood.
Oh, the breezy brooks may babble.
And the gentle poet dabble
[118] In his veering vernal verses and fond memories they bring;
But no earthly rhyme or reason
Makes believe in such a season
That this wishy-washy weather is a cloudy ghost of spring.
THE AGE OF INTELLECT.
These specimens may not be the best that can be quoted ”

“ Criminals (on the stage) are extraordinarily popular. In real life, we do not like being stolen from. On the stage, we love to see a fine, dashing criminal stealing from other people. The worse he is, the louder we applaud him. ”

“ Another favourite medium of printing-house fun is found in adapting Gilbert’s famous line and mourning that a “printer’s lot is not a happy one,” or magnifying the annoyances from authors and editors with which printers have to put up. In this connexion we find one printer relieving his troubled soul thus—
Working for forty editors and scores of authors, every one of whom is as sensitive [93] as a sore thumb, and as lively and interesting as a hornet, no wonder that printers die young, and only pachydermatus, grizzly, mulish specimens get their share of life. ”

“ If young Dashington calls upon Lord Toplofty, the latter lounges lazily out of the first-floor French window, in which his head and shoulders are a pretty tight fit, while the former bears about the same proportion to the house that the peasant bears to the cottage we have already been speaking of. It is a singular fact that the inside of any one room is no sooner represented to us, than we find it to be much larger than the whole house when judged by its external appearance ”

“ An incident of a similar nature occurred many years ago at the London Princess Theatre. A well-known conveyancer, noted for absence of mind, during a performance of Macbeth, one of the witches replying to the Thane, that they were “doing a deed without a name,” started up exclaiming, to the bewilderment of the audience—“A ’deed without a name’! Why, it’s void. It’s not worth sixpence!” The last time Kean played Louis XI at the Edinburgh Theatre Royal, a young Irishman who had been sitting spellbound in the stalls, after the attendants had proclaimed, “The King is dead!” ”

“ Every sonnet, no matter how inspired, must follow an artificial measure, every poem, be it never so soulful, must have a definite number of feet in each of its lines and a preconceived arrangement; yet, no one advances the opinion that Scott was wasting his sense of poetry by casting it in the form of octo-syllabic verse, or that Shakespeare had a difficulty in fitting his thoughts to the measure of his sonnets or the blank verse of his plays. ”

“ The reason for this is most likely to be found in the fact that it requires something of the actor’s talent successfully to carry out a practical joke, and actors, knowing they possess the ability, are often tempted to exercise it. The name of the genial J. L. Toole, of happy memory, will naturally occur to every one in this connexion, and the fact of that good-hearted soul having had a strong weakness for this diversion is ample proof that practical joking is quite compatible with geniality of character. ”

“ Then, the “swells”—a set of lounging insipid imbeciles, drawling out their vapid Dundrearyisms—and the old fogies, wagging their stupid old heads—I should like to knock a few of them together!—and the smug, smiling fellows whose pictures have been accepted—and the “Art-Critics,” who pretend to see power in a man like Millais, and poetry in a man like Hook, and humour in a man like Marks, but who are far too high and mighty, I promise you, to come [190] up four pair of stairs and see my “Marsh Mallows,”—and if they did, they couldn’t appreciate them! ”

“ Inserting your death one day, and contradicting it the next, is another very cheap plan of advertising in a newspaper. Besides, you have the advantage of learning in your lifetime what your friends think of you after your death. ”

“ Irascible Patron (who has wiped out a good deal of Funkie’s great work) . Confound your nasty picture, sir! See what it has done! The canvas is reeking with paint, sir—positively reeking! It’s disgraceful! [Exit in a whirlwind.
[153]
Artist (to his hypochondriacal friend with an independence) . Ah! my dear fellow, if you had to work hard and get your own living as we have, you’d have no dyspepsia, I’ll be bound; good-bye.
[154]
THE MARCH OF SCIENCE.
Artist (as a hint to his friend) . Bless me! Five o’clock! I had no idea it was so late. How quickly time does fly now! ”

“ Smith says the foolish buyer is as bad as the lying advertiser.
The judge says, no resetters, fewer thieves.
Smith says, no foolish buyers, no lying advertisers.
Why? Because, if there were no fools, it wouldn’t pay.
Thus the resetter is only responsible for some of the thieves; but the stupid, foolish buyer is entirely responsible for all the lying advertisers; and by dealing with them becomes a participator with them in their wickedness, which brought such disastrous consequences upon Ananias. ”

“ When they found Henry Watterson the conductor handed out the mileage book, and, pointing to the young man, asked if he was a reporter on the Courier-Journal.
“Yes, indeed,” was the quick reply. “He is one of our best men. How are you, Robert?”
Breathing a prayer of thanks, the young man returned to his seat and resumed his journey without further trouble. Next morning, in the dining wagon, he saw his friend and timidly approached him.
“Colonel Watterson,” he said fervently, “I can’t tell you how grateful I am for what you did for me yesterday. ”