THE STAGE-STRUCK HERO.

‘It must be. So Plato?—Thou reasonest?—Well.” —School Cato.

T’S very hard! oh, Dick, my boy, It’s very hard one can’t enjoy A little private spouting; But sure as Lear or Hamlet lives, Up comes our master, bounce! and gives The tragic muse a routing! Ay, there he comes again! be quick! And hide the book—a playbook, Dick, He must not set his eyes on! It’s very hard, the churlish elf Will never let one stab one’s self Or take a bowl of p’ison! It’s very hard, but when I want To die—as Cato did—I can’t, Or go non compos mentis— But up he comes, all fire and flame;— No doubt he’d do the very same With Kemble for a ‘prentice! Oh, Dick! Oh, Dick! it was not so Some half a dozen years ago! Melpomene was no sneaker, When, under Reverend Mister Poole, Each little boy at Enfield School Became an Enfield speaker! No cruel master-tailor’s cane Then thwarted the theatric vein; The tragic soil had tillage. O dear dramatic days gone by! You, Dick, were Richard then—and I Play’d Hamlet to the village, Or, as Macbeth, the dagger clutch’d, Till all the servant-maids were touch’d— Macbeth, I think, my pet is; Lord, how we spouted Shakespeare’s works— Dick, we had twenty little Burkes, And fifty Master Betties! Why, there was Julius Cæsar Dunn, And Norval, Sandy Philip,—one Of Elocution’s champions— Genteelly taught by his mamma To say, not father, but papa, Kept sheep upon the Grampians! Coriolanus Crumpe—and Fig In Brutus, with brown-paper wig, And Huggins great in Cato; Only he broke so often off, To have a fit of whooping-cough, While reasoning with Plato. And Zangra too,—but I shall weep, If longer on this theme I keep, And let remembrance loose, Dick; Now forced to act—it’s very hard— “Measure for Measure” with a yard— You Richard, with a goose, Dick! Zounds! Dick, it’s very odd our dads Should send us there when we were lads To learn to talk like Tullies; And now, if one should just break out, Perchance, into a little spout, A stick about the skull is. Why should stage-learning form a part Of schooling for the tailor’s art? Alas! dramatic notes, Dick, So well record the sad mistake Of him who tried at once to make Both Romeo and Coates, Dick!