heart was
in Hanover." The most important addition to the plays of the period
was

THE CHRISTMAS PANTOMIME.

[Illustration: A NEST OF FOOLS]

In his "English Plays," Professor Henry Morley thus records the
introduction of the modern English pantomime, which has since been the
great show of Christmastide:--

"The theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which Christopher Rich had been
restoring, his son, John Rich, was allowed to open on the 18th of
December, 1714. John Rich was a clever mimic, and after a year or two
he found it to his advantage to compete with the actors in a fashion
of his own. He was the inventor of the modern English form of
pantomime, with a serious part that he took from Ovid's Metamorphosis
or any fabulous history, and a comic addition of the courtship of
harlequin and columbine, with surprising tricks and transformations.
He introduced the old Italian characters of pantomime under changed
conditions, and beginning with 'Harlequin Sorcerer' in 1717, continued
to produce these entertainments until a year before his death in 1761.
They have since been retained as Christmas shows upon the English
stage."

In a note to "The Dunciad," Pope complains of "the extravagancies
introduced on the stage, and frequented by persons of the first
quality in England to the twentieth and thirtieth time," and states
that "_all_ the extravagances" in the following lines of the poem
actually appeared on the stage:--

"See now, what Dulness and her sons admire!
See what the charms, that smite the simple heart
Not touch'd by nature, and not reach'd by art.
His never-blushing head he turn'd aside,
(Not half so pleased when Goodman prophesied)
And look'd, and saw a sable Sorcerer rise,
Swift to whose hand a winged volume flies:
All sudden, gorgons hiss, and dragons glare,
And ten-horn'd fiends and giants rush to war.
Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth:
Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth,
A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball,
Till one wide conflagration swallows all.
Thence a new world, to nature's laws unknown,
Breaks out refulgent, with a heaven its own:
Another Cynthia her new journey runs,
And other planets circle other suns.
The forests dance, the rivers upward rise,
Whales sport in woods, and dolphins in the skies;
And last, to give the whole creation grace,
Lo! one vast egg produces human race."

David Garrick, the eminent actor, wrote i