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Doubtless Byron had been emboldened by his skill in mimic combat to try conclusions, under the very different conditions of real fighting, with a man whose massive shoulders and determined cast of features ought to have convinced him that such an enterprise was nothing short of desperate. Fortunately the police had interfered before he had suffered severely for his rashness.
The fountains, however, were especially curious, diversified, and elaborate: some shot up as pyramids, others coiled in undulating streams, each jet chasing the other as serpents; some, again, branched off in the form of trees, while mimic birds, perched upon leaden boughs, poured water from their bills.
Here were ultimate quintessences pines reduced to a drop of honeyed delight; bananas whose life lay in points of bewildering sweetness; enormous steamboat puddings compressed within the compass of a thimble, exclusive of the sauce; chocolates, oceans of which lay in mimic lakes, each of which the bill of a humming-bird might expand; tongues of most melodious singing birds the nightingale, the thrush, and the goldfinch; lambs en suprême, each eliminated of earthly particles, and spiritualized in scarcely tangible results.
However, be this as it may, in the "Daily Courant," of December 20, 1717, we find him, advertising for his "Italian Mimic Scenes" as he, for long enough, so termed his Pantomimes as follows: "Harlequin Executed: a new Italian Mimic Scene between a Scaramouch, a Harlequin, a Country Farmer, his Wife, and others." Of Rich and his early Pantomimes, Davies observes:
I went to that spot so consecrated to my memory by bright skies and brighter faces; the spot where I had so often urged the flying ball and marshalled the mimic army it was there that I stood; and I asked of a miserable half-starved woman, "where was the play-ground of my youth?" and she showed me a "brick-field."
Peckover, as she appeared on the memorable evening when she stopped him mysteriously in the passage of Mr. Blyth's house. Zack was really a good mimic; and he now hit off all the peculiarities of Mrs. Peckover's voice, manner, and gait to the life Mat chuckling all the while, rolling his huge head from side to side, and striking his heavy fist applaudingly on the table.
For, if we suppose the case in which the greatest part, and even the totality, of these mimic features express nothing more than animal sensations or instincts, and, in consequence, would show nothing more than the animal in him, it would still remain that it was in his destiny and in his power to limit, by his liberty, his sensuous nature.
The last trace of the mimic battle had been cleared away, and now where tin cavalry had ridden boldly to their fate, and lead guards had died but not surrendered, nothing was to be seen but peaceful plum-cake, or bread and butter cut in thin and appetizing slices. "I'm sorry you weren't able to make a longer stay," said Aunt Mabel, as she poured out the tea.
For an hour or more he rubbed shoulders with the press that was on its way to find relief from their own lives in the mimic lives of others behind the footlights. To him in the Now it was comedy enough to watch them as they filed in; it would have been an anticlimax to have gone further.
With his retreating forehead, and his immense ears, his odious turned-up nose, tiny eyes, and coarse, thick lips, M. Tabaret seemed an excellent type of the ignorant, pennywise, petty rentier class. Whenever he took his walks abroad, the juvenile street Arabs would impudently shout after him or try to mimic his favorite grimace.
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