It was admitted that the trunkmaker had rendered important service to the theatre, insomuch that, upon his failing to attend at his post by reason of serious illness, the manager employed a substitute to officiate in his stead, until such time as his health was restored to him.  The incompetence of the deputy, however, became too manifest; though he laid about him with incredible violence, he did it in such wrong places, that the audience soon discovered he was not their old friend the real trunkmaker.  With the players the trunkmaker was naturally a favourite; they not only connived at his obstreperous approbation, but cheerfully repaid such damage as his blows occasioned.  That he had saved many a play from condemnation, and brought fame to many a performer, was agreed upon all hands.  The audience are described as looking abashed if they find themselves betrayed into plaudits in which their friend in the upper gallery takes no part; and the actors are said to regard such favours as mere brutum fulmen or empty noise, when unaccompanied by “the sound of the oaken plant.”  Still, the trunkmaker had his enemies, who insinuated that he could be bribed in the interest of a bad poet or a vicious player; such surmises, however, the “Spectator” averred to be wholly without foundation, upholding the justice of his strokes and the reasonableness of his admonitions.  “He does not deal about his blows at random, but always hits the right nail upon the head.  The inexpressible force wherewith he lays them on sufficiently shows the strength of his convictions.  His zeal for a good author is indeed outrageous, and breaks down every fence and partition, every board and plank, that stands within the expression of his applause.”

Moreover, the “Spectator” insists upon the value and importance to an audience of a functionary thus presiding over them like the director of a concert, in order to awaken their attention and beat time to their applauses; or, “to raise my simile,” Addison continues, “I have sometimes fancied the trunkmaker in the upper gallery to be, like Virgil’s ruler of the winds, seated upon the top of a mountain, who, when he struck his sceptre upon the side of it, ’roused a hurricane and set the whole cavern in an uproar.’”

In conclusion, the writer, not caring to confine himself to barren speculations or to reports of pure matter of fact, without deriving therefrom something of advantage to his countrymen, takes the liberty of proposing that upon the demise of the trunkmaker, or upon his losing “the spring of his arm” by sickness, old age, infirmity, or the like, some able-bodied critic should be advanced to his post, with a competent salary, and a supply, at the public expense, of bamboos for operas, crab-tree cudgels for comedies, and oaken plants for tragedies.  “And to the end that this place should be always disposed of according to merit, I would have none preferred to it who has not given convincing proofs both of a sound judgment and a strong arm, and who could not upon occasion either knock down an ox, or write a comment upon Horace’s ‘Art of Poetry.’  In short, I would have him a due composition of Hercules and Apollo, and so rightly qualified for this important office that the trunkmaker may not be missed by our posterity.”