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You have read, Sir, the last manifesto, or mountebank's bill, of the National Assembly. You see their presumption in their promises is not lessened by all their failures in the performance.
Shou'd I discover this Rascal, he wou'd tell the old Gentleman I was the same that attempted his House to day in Woman's Clothes, and I should be kick'd and beaten most insatiably. Scar. What, Seignior, for a Man of Parts to be impos'd upon, and whip'd through the Lungs here like a Mountebank's Zany for sham Cures Mr. Doctor, I must tell you 'tis not civil. Doct.
I also send a print which is an old favourite of mine, from the humorous correspondence between Mr. Mountebank's face and the monkey's. I leave town to-day or to-morrow at furthest. When I return in May I shall be Bachelor Bluff, bachelor Bluff, Hey for a heart that's rugged and tough.
Having pleasantly shown the sordid spirit that underlies the mountebank's sublime professions of disinterestedness,
We have grown accustomed to these gew-gaws, and we should miss them in spite of our knowledge of their trashiness: you, your palace and your little gold crown; I, my mountebank's cap, and the answering laugh that goes up from the crowd when I shake my bells. We want everything. All the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing.
Their authors are of the same level; fit to represent them on a mountebank's stage, or to be masters of the ceremonies in a bear-garden. Yet these are they who have the most admirers. These are above liking Martial or Owen's epigrams, but they would certainly set Virgil below Statius or Lucan. I need not say their poets are of the same paste with their admirers.
Here you beheld no piles of straw-stuffed game never destined to make the acquaintance of the spit, no fantastical fish to justify the mountebank's remark, "I saw a fine carp to-day; I expect to buy it this day week."
I ought at least to bring in a band of music or a company of mountebanks." "One mountebank's enough, and you do very well. Pray go on, and in another ten minutes I shall begin to laugh." "I assure you I'm very serious," said Ralph. "You do really ask a great deal." "I don't know what you mean. I ask nothing." "You accept nothing," said Ralph.
For a buffoon is like a mad dog that has a worm in his tongue, which makes him bite at all that light in his way; and as he can do nothing alone, but must have somebody to set him that he may throw at, he that performs that office with the greatest freedom and is contented to be laughed at to give his patron pleasure cannot but be understood to have done very good service, and consequently deserves to be well rewarded, as a mountebank's pudding, that is content to be cut and slashed and burnt and poisoned, without which his master can show no tricks, deserves to have a considerable share in his gains.
But he learned many things, the little Lagardere, under the care of that same mountebank; all that the mountebank could teach him he learned, and he invented for himself tricks that were beyond the mountebank's skill. How long ago it seemed! Would ever space of time seem so long again?
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