one[1] and the obesity of the other. He is, as it were, a combination and concentration of two of the most prominent and original delineations on the stage: as if
"The force of nature could no farther go:
To make a third, she joined the other two."
The similarity between Richard and Falstaff, though not very obvious, has been fully established; and it consists in the intellectual superiority they both possess, and with the exercise of which the first gratifies his ambition, and the last his appetites. It is the possession of the same high talents (in the last instance applied very much to the attainment of the same ends,) which constitutes Punch's chief moral resemblance. The high authority to which we have just alluded lays it down, and, we may say, proves that "the pleasure we receive from the character of Richard is produced by those emotions which arise in the mind, on beholding great intellectual ability employed for inhuman and perfidious purposes."[2] If we try the character of Punch by this test, shall we not arrive at the identical conclusion? Like the "crook-back prodigy," he is not "shaped for sportive tricks," and
"wants love's majesty,
To strut before a wanton, ambling nymph:"
- ↑ As he was to have "a spice or somewhat more" of Don Juan about him, and as we are told
"A decent leg is what all ladies like,"
it was not thought expedient by the inventor or inventors of Punch, to represent him with Richard's tibial disfigurement. Punch's legs are not "legs for boots," but legs fit "to make legs with," and to make legs by. We never saw him at any exhibition without a pair, models of their kind, and in showing which he evinced no slight degree of vanity. There is not, at present, such a thing as a good male leg on the stage; so that Punch may be excused if he is a little ostentatious. Lord Byron calls a delicate hand and a good leg the criterion of good blood; Punch's leg is not so remarkable for "a vulgar quantity of calf," as for the fineness of its ankle, and the general symmetry of its proportions.
- ↑ Edition 1797, p. 204.
