ed clown Grimaldi. The manuscript had
been prepared from autobiographical notes by a Mr. Egerton Wilks, and
contained one or two stories told so badly, and so well worth better
telling, that the hope of enlivening their dullness at the cost of very
little labor constituted a sort of attraction for him. Except the
preface, he did not write a line of this biography, such modifications
or additions as he made having been dictated by him to his father; whom
I found often in the supreme enjoyment of the office of amanuensis. He
had also a most indifferent opinion of the mass of material which in
general composed it, describing it to me as "twaddle," and his own
modest estimate of the book, on its completion, may be guessed from the
number of notes of admiration (no less than thirty) which accompanied
his written mention to me of the sale with which it started in the first
week of its publication: "Seventeen hundred _Grimaldis_ have been
already sold, and the demand increases daily!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It was not to have all its own way, however. A great many critical
faults were found; and one point in particular was urged against his
handling such a subject, that he could never himself even have seen
Grimaldi. To this last objection he was moved to reply, and had prepared
a letter for the _Miscellany_, "from editor to sub-editor," which it was
thought best to suppress, but of which the opening remark may now be not
unamusing: "I understand that a gentleman unknown is going about this
town privately informing all ladies and gentlemen of discontented
natures, that, on a comparison of dates and putting together of many
little circumstances which occur to his great sagacity, he has made the
profound discovery that I can never have seen Grimaldi whose life I have
edited, and that the book must therefore of necessity be bad. Now, sir,
although I was brought up from remote country parts in the dark ages of
1819 and 1820 to behold the splendor of Christmas pantomimes and the
humor of Joe, in whose honor I am informed I clapped my hands with great
precocity, and although I even saw him act in the remote times of 1823,
yet as I had not then aspired to the dignity of a tail-coat, though
forced by a relentless parent into my first pair of boots, I am
willing, with the view of saving this honest gentleman further time and
trouble, to concede that I had not arrived at man's estate when Grimaldi
left the stage, and that my recol