h
Captain was introduced; a dreadful man he was too, if we are to be
frightened by names: _Sanqre e Fuego_! and _Matamoro_! His business was
to deal in Spanish rhodomontades, to kick out the native Italian
_Capitan_, in compliment to the Spaniards, and then to take a quiet
caning from Harlequin, in compliment to themselves. When the Spaniards
lost their influence in Italy, the Spanish Captain was turned into
Scaramouch, who still wore the Spanish dress, and was perpetually in a
panic. The Italians could only avenge themselves on the Spaniards in
pantomime! On the same principle the gown of Pantaloon over his red
waistcoat and breeches, commemorates a circumstance in Venetian history
expressive of the popular feeling; the dress is that of a Venetian
citizen, and his speech the dialect; but when the Venetians lost
Negropont, they changed their upper dress to black, which before had
been red, as a national demonstration of their grief.

The characters of the Italian pantomime became so numerous, that every
dramatic subject was easily furnished with the necessary personages of
comedy. That loquacious pedant the _Dottore_ was taken from the lawyers
and the physicians, babbling false Latin in the dialect of learned
Bologna. _Scapin_ was a livery servant who spoke the dialect of Bergamo,
a province proverbially abounding with rank intriguing knaves, who, like
the slaves in Plautus and Terence, were always on the watch to further
any wickedness; while Calabria furnished the booby Giangurgello with his
grotesque nose. Moliere, it has been ascertained, discovered in the
Italian theatre at Paris his "Medecin malgre lui," his "Etourdi," his
"L'Avare," and his "Scapin." Milan offered a pimp in the _Brighella_;
Florence an ape of fashion in _Gelsomino_. These and other pantomimic
characters, and some ludicrous ones, as the _Tartaglia_, a spectacled
dotard, a stammerer, and usually in a passion, had been gradually
introduced by the inventive powers of an actor of genius, to call forth
his own peculiar talents.

The Pantomimes, or, as they have been described, the continual
Masquerades, of Ruzzante, with all these diversified personages, talking
and acting, formed, in truth, a burlesque comedy. Some of the finest
geniuses of Italy became the votaries of Harlequin; and the Italian
pantomime may be said to form a school of its own. The invention of
Ruzzante was one capable of perpetual novelty. Many of these actors have
been chronicled