Long may’st thou guard the prize thy humour won,
      Long hold thy court in Pantomimic state,
    And, to the equipoise of English fun,
      Exalt the lowly, and bring down the great.

Again we are told “That his Pantomime was such that you could fancy he would have been the Pulcinello of the Italians, the Harlequin of the French, that he could have returned a smart repartee from Carlin.  His motions, eccentric as they were, were evidently not a mere lesson from the gymnasium; there was a will and mind overflowing with, nay living upon fun, real fun.  He was so extravagantly natural, that the most saturnine looker-on acknowledged his sway; and neither the wise, the proud, or the fair, the young nor the old, were ashamed to laugh till tears coursed down their cheeks at Joe and his comicalities.”

Grimaldi used sometimes to play in two different Pantomimes at two different theatres, when he would have to go through some twenty scenes.

Unlike the painting of the face with a few patches adopted by the modern Clown, Grimaldi used to give one the idea of a greedy boy, who had covered himself with jam in robbing from a cupboard.  Grimaldi dressed the part like a Clown should be dressed.  His trousers were large and baggy, and were fastened to his jacket, and round his neck he wore a schoolboy’s frill—­part of the dress, in all probability, borrowed from the Spanish Captain and the French Pierrot.

At Drury Lane on Friday, June 27, 1828, he took his farewell benefit.  The following being the bill:—­

Mr. Grimaldi’s Farewell Benefit,
On Friday, June 27th, 1828,
will be performed
JONATHAN IN ENGLAND,
after which
A MUSICAL MELANGE,
To be succeeded by
THE ADOPTED CHILD,
and concluded by
HARLEQUIN HOAX,
In which Mr. Grimaldi will act Clown in one scene,
sing a song, and speak his
FAREWELL ADDRESS.

With the reader’s permisson, I will give, from his “Memoirs,” the address he spoke:—­

“Ladies and Gentlemen:—­In putting off the Clown’s garment, allow me to drop also the Clown’s taciturnity, and address you in a few parting sentences.  I entered early on this course of life, and leave it prematurely.  Eight-and-forty years only have passed over my head—­but I am going as fast down the hill of life as that older Joe—­John Anderson.  Like vaulting ambition, I have overleaped myself, and pay the penalty in an advanced old age.  If I have now any aptitude for tumbling it is through bodily infirmity, for I am worse on my feet than I used to be on my head.  It is four years since I jumped my last jump—­filched my last oyster—­boiled my last sausage—­and set in for retirement.  Not quite so well provided for, I must acknowledge, as in the days of my Clownship, for then, I dare say, some of you remember, I used to have a fowl in one pocket and sauce for it in the other.

“To-night has seen me assume the motley for a short time—­it clung to my skin as I took it off, and the old cap and bells rang mournfully as I quitted them for ever.