Another competitor now arose to take the crown from Thomassin, and in the person of one Carlo Bertinazzi, commonly called Carlin.  Our actor, Garrick, was an admirer of this famous Mime.  Of Carlin, M. Sand speaks:—­“Like most clever buffoons, he had a very melancholy disposition, and, as with Dominique, his gaiety was what the English term humour.  It belonged to his mind, and not to his temperament.”  Carlin also wrote a book entitled, “Les Metamorphosis d’Arlequin.”  In 1783 Carlin died, and his place in the favour of the public was filled by Galinetti.

The French view of the English Clown is interesting:  “The English clown (whose nearest representative on the French stage is Pierrot) is an odd and fantastical being.  The Florentine Stentorella alone resembles him in his jests and tricks.  His strange dress seems to have been taken from the American Indians.  It consists of a white, red, yellow, and green net work, ornamented with diamond-shaped pieces of stuff of various colours.  His face is floured, and streaked with paint a deep carmine; the forehead is prolonged to the top of the head, which is covered with a red wig, from the centre of which a little stiff tail points to the sky.  His manners are no less singular than his costume.  He is not dumb, like our Pierrot, but, on the contrary, he sustains an animated and witty conversation; he is also an acrobat, and very expert in feats of strength.”

M. Blandelaire gives a more poetical description:  “The English Pierrot is not a person as pale as the moon, mysterious as silent, straight and long, like the gallows to whom we have been accustomed in Deburean.  The English Pierrot enters like the tempest, and tumbles like a parcel; his laugh resembles joyous thunder.  He is short and fat; his face is floured and streaked with paint; he has a great patch of red on each cheek; his mouth is enlarged by prolongation of the lips by means of two red bands, so that when he laughs his mouth appears to open from ear to ear.”

The Pierrots—­not only in France, but on the Continent generally—­took all the characteristics of the Zanys, Bertoldo, Paggliaccio, Gros, Giullaume, Pedrolino, Gilles, Corviello, and Peppe Nappa, of the Italian Comedy, and all owing at least their original conception to the theatres of the Greeks, and the Romans.  On the Italian stage there was not a principal Clown like in England, the foremost place being occupied by Arlechino.  The four principal masked characters of the Italian Comedia del’ Arte in Venice consisted of Tartaglia (a stammerer), Truffildino, Brighella (a representative of orators and public personages), and Pantaloon (a native of Venice).  The name of Pantaloon is derived from planta-leone (plante-lion—­he planted the lion).  The probable meaning of it in this particular is that the Venetian merchants, it is said, in boasting of their conquests set up their standard—­the Venetian standard being the lion of St. Mark—­on various islands in the Mediterranean, and from which they were nicknamed, it is said, “plant lion.”  A more probable derivation of the word is that the ancient patron saint of Venice is San Pantaleone.  St. Pantaleone’s day is July 27.  He was martyred A.D. 303.  In “Childe Harold,” Lord Byron, in Canto IV., stanza 14, has that “The Venetian name of Pantaleone is her very by-word.”