So when I presume to show
My shape, I am just such another;
By my sweet looks and good humour, I know,
You must take me for him or his brother.
The fair and the comely
May think me but homely,
Because I am tawney and crooked;
But he that by nature
Is taller and straighter,
May happen to prove a blockhead.
But I, fair ladies, am full as wise,
As he that tickles your ears with lies,
And think he pleases your charming eyes
With a rat-tail wig and a cockade:
I mean the bully that never fought,
Yet dresses himself in a scarlet coat,
Without a commission not worth a groat,—
But struts with an empty pocket.
It deserves remark, that Punch has not always been a mere puppet in the British empire; for in the "Biographia Dramatica" there is an entry of a farce called "Punch turned Schoolmaster," which we have not been able to obtain, and therefore cannot speak of the nature or conduct of it. The date of its representation is not ascertained, but a prologue for it was written by Sheridan, and printed in 1724. The performances of M. Mazurier in 1825, in the "Shipwreck of Pulcinella, or the Neapolitan Nuptials," are so well remembered, that it is needless to do more than allude to them.
