One hardly expects so curious a piece of orthoepy in the preface to a comedy.  It may have required great observation and ingenuity to have discovered the cause of old toothless men mumbling their words.  But as a piece of comic humour, on which the author appears to have prided himself, the effect is far from fortunate.  Humour arising from a personal defect is but a miserable substitute for that of a more genuine kind.  I shall give a specimen of this strange gibberish as it is so laboriously printed.  It may amuse the reader to see his mother language transformed into so odd a shape that it is with difficulty he can recognise it.

Old Bartoline thus speaks:—­“I wrong’d my shelf, cho entcher incho bondsh of marriage and could not perform covenantsh I might well hinke you would chake the forfeiture of the bond; and I never found equichy in a bedg in my life; but I’ll trounce you boh; I have paved jaylsh wi’ the bonesh of honester people yen you are, yat never did me nor any man any wrong, but had law of yeir shydsh and right o’ yeir shydsh, but because yey had not me o’ yeir shydsh.  I ha’ hrown ’em in jaylsh, and got yeir eshchatsch for my clyentsh yat had no more chytle to ’em yen dogsh.”

THE COMEDY OF A MADMAN.

Desmarets, the friend of Richelieu, was a very extraordinary character, and produced many effusions of genius in early life, till he became a mystical fanatic.  It was said of him that “he was the greatest madman among poets, and the best poet among madmen.”  His comedy of “The Visionaries” is one of the most extraordinary dramatic projects, and, in respect to its genius and its lunacy, may be considered as a literary curiosity.

In this singular comedy all Bedlam seems to be let loose on the stage, and every character has a high claim to an apartment in it.  It is indeed suspected that the cardinal had a hand in this anomalous drama, and in spite of its extravagance it was favourably received by the public, who certainly had never seen anything like it.

Every character in this piece acts under some hallucination of the mind, or a fit of madness.  Artabaze is a cowardly hero, who believes he has conquered the world.  Amidor is a wild poet, who imagines he ranks above Homer.  Filidan is a lover, who becomes inflammable as gunpowder for every mistress he reads of in romances.  Phalante is a beggarly bankrupt, who thinks himself as rich as Croesus.  Melisse, in reading the “History of Alexander,” has become madly in love with this hero, and will have no other husband than “him of Macedon.”  Hesperie imagines her fatal charms occasion a hundred disappointments in the world, but prides herself on her perfect insensibility.  Sestiane, who knows no other happiness than comedies, and whatever she sees or hears, immediately plans a scene for dramatic effect, renounces any other occupation; and finally, Alcidon, the father of these three mad girls, as imbecile as his daughters are wild.  So much for the amiable characters!