[Footnote 33:  Tacitus, Annals, lib. i. sect. 77, in Murphy’s translation.]

[Footnote 34:  This measure of “restrictive policy,” which gave to the patent theatres the sole right of performing the legitimate drama properly, led to the construction of plays for the minor theatres, entirely carried on by action, occasionally aided by inscriptions painted on scrolls, and unrolled and exhibited by the actor when his power of expressing such words failed.  This led to the education of a series of pantomimists, who taught action conventionally to represent words.  At the close of the last century, there were many such; and the reader who may be curious to see the nature of these dumb dramas, may do so in two volumes named “Circusiana,” by J.C.  Cross, the author of very many that were performed at the Royal Circus, in St. George’s Fields.  The whole action of the drama was performed to music composed expressly to aid the expression of the performers, among the best of whom were Bologna and D’Egville.  It is a class of dramatic art which has now almost entirely passed away; or is seen, but in a minor degree, in the pantomimic action of a grand ballet at the opera.]

[Footnote 35:  L’Antiq.  Exp. v. 63.]

[Footnote 36:  Louis Riccoboni, in his curious little treatise, “Du Theatre Italien,” illustrated by seventeen prints of the Italian pantomimic characters, has duly collected the authorities.  I give them, in the order quoted above, for the satisfaction of more grave inquirers.  Vossius, Instit.  Poet, lib. ii. 32, Sec. 4.  The Mimi blackened their faces.  Diomedes, de Orat. lib. iii.  Apuleius, in Apolog.  And further, the patched dress was used by the ancient peasants of Italy, as appears by a passage in Varro, De Re Rust, lib. i. c. 8; and Juvenal employs the term centunculus as a diminutive of cento, for a coat made up of patches.  This was afterwards applied metaphorically to those well-known poems called centos, composed of shreds and patches of poetry, collected from all quarters.  Goldoni considered Harlequin as a poor devil and dolt, whose coat is made up of rags patched together; his hat shows mendicity; and the hare’s tail is still the dress of the peasantry of Bergamo.  Quadrio, in his learned Storia d’ogni Poesia, has diffused his erudition on the ancient Mimi and their successors.  Dr. Clarke has discovered the light lath sword of Harlequin, which had hitherto baffled my most painful researches, amidst the dark mysteries of the ancient mythology!  We read with equal astonishment and novelty, that the prototypes of the modern pantomime are in the Pagan mysteries; that Harlequin is Mercury, with his short sword called herpe, or his rod the caduceus, to render himself invisible, and to transport himself from one end of the earth to the other; that the covering on his head was his petasus, or winged cap; that Columbine is Pysche, or the Soul;