s 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]

The truth is, that here our Harlequin and all his lifeless family are
condemned to perpetual silence. They came to us from the genial hilarity
of the Italian theatre, and were all the grotesque children of wit, and
whim, and satire. Why is this burlesque race here privileged to cost so
much, to do so little, and to repeat that little so often? Our own
pantomime may, indeed, boast of two inventions of its own growth: we
have turned Harlequin into a magician, and this produces the surprise of
sudden changes of scenery, whose splendour and curious correctness have
rarely been equalled: