, a sweetheart's
despair, and the ultimate suicide of both the lovers, is, albeit couched
in uncouth and grotesque language, as pathetic as the tragedy of "Romeo
and Juliet." Robson gave every stanza a nonsensical refrain of "Right
tooral lol looral, right tooral lol lay." At times, when his audience
was convulsed with merriment, he would come to a halt, and gravely
observe, "This is not a comic song"; but London, was soon unanimous that
such exquisite comicality had not been heard for many a long year.
"Vilikins and his Dinah" created a _furore_. My countrymen are always
going mad about something; and Englishmen and Englishwomen all agreed to
go crazy about "Vilikins." "Right tooral lol looral" was on every lip.
Robson's portrait as _Jem Baggs_ was in every shop-window. A newspaper
began an editorial with the first line in "Vilikins,"--

"It's of a liquor-merchant who in London did dwell."

A Judge of Assize absolutely fined the High Sheriff of a county one
hundred pounds for the mingled contempt shown in neglecting to provide
him with an escort of javelin-men and introducing the irrepressible
"Right tooral lol looral" into a speech delivered at the opening of
circuit. Nor was the song all that was wonderful in _Jem Baggs_. His
"make-up" was superb. The comic genius of Robson asserted itself in an
inimitable lagging gait, an unequalled snivel, a coat and pantaloons
every patch on and every rent in which were artistic, and a hat
inconceivably battered, crunched, and bulged out of normal, and into
preternatural shape.

New triumphs awaited him. In the burlesque of "The Yellow Dwarf," he
showed a mastery of the grotesque which approached the terrible. Years
before, in _Macbeth_, he had personated a red-headed, fire-eating,
whiskey-drinking Scotchman,--and in _Shylock_, a servile, fawning,
obsequious, yet, when emergency arose, a passionate and vindictive Jew.
In the _Yellow Dwarf_ he was the jaundiced embodiment of a spirit of
Oriental evil: crafty, malevolent, greedy, insatiate,--full of mockery,
mimicry, lubricity, and spite,--an Afrit, a Djinn, a Ghoul, a spawn of
Sheitan. How that monstrous orange-tawny head grinned and wagged! How
those flaps of ears were projected forwards, like unto those of a dog!
How balefully those atrabilious eyes glistened! You laughed, and yet you
shuddered. He spoke in mere doggerel and slang. He sang trumpery songs
to negro melodies. He danced the Lancashire clog-hornpipe; he rattled