Different times, then, are regulated by different tastes.  What makes a strong impression on the public at one time, ceases to interest it at another; an author who sacrifices to the prevailing humours of his day has but little chance of being esteemed by posterity; and every age of modern literature might, perhaps, admit of a new classification, by dividing it into its periods of fashionable literature.

THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.

Il est des gens de qui l’esprit guinde
Sous un front jamais deride
Ne souffre, n’approuve, et n’estime
Que le pompeux, et le sublime;
Pour moi j’ose poser en fait
Qu’en de certains momens l’esprit le plus parfait
Peut aimer sans rougir jusqu’aux marionettes;
Et qu’il est des tems et des lieux,
Ou le grave, et le serieux,
Ne valent pas d’agreables sornettes. 

                                                    Peau d’Ane.

People there are who never smile;
Their foreheads still unsmooth’d the while,
Some lambent flame of mirth will play,
That wins the easy heart away;
Such only choose in prose or rhyme
A bristling pomp,—­they call sublime! 
I blush not to like Harlequin,
Would he but talk,—­and all his kin. 
Yes, there are times, and there are places,
When flams and old wives’ tales are worth the Graces.

Cervantes, in the person of his hero, has confessed the delight he received from amusements which disturb the gravity of some, who are apt, however, to be more entertained by them than they choose to acknowledge.  Don Quixote thus dismisses a troop of merry strollers—­“Andad con Dios, buena gente, y hazad vuestra fiesta, porque desde muchacho fui aficionado a la Caratula, y en mi mocedad se ne ivan los ojos tras la Farandula.”  In a literal version the passage may run thus:—­“Go, good people, God be with you, and keep your merry making! for from childhood I was in love with the Caratula, and in my youth my eyes would lose themselves amidst the Farandula.”  According to Pineda, La Caratula is an actor masked, and La Farandula is a kind of farce.[30]

Even the studious Bayle, wrapping himself in his cloak, and hurrying to the market-place to Punchinello, would laugh when the fellow had humour in him, as was usually the case; and I believe the pleasure some still find in pantomimes, to the annoyance of their gravity, is a very natural one, and only wants a little more understanding in the actors and the spectators.[31]