As Planché was, in effect, the Father of Classical Burlesque, so was he also, even more irrefragably, the Father of the Burlesque of Faërie--of the fairy tales of the nursery, and especially of those derived from French sources. Memorable, indeed, was the production of Planché's "Riquet with the Tuft[18]"; this piece was the precursor of something like twenty others from the same pen, all written on the same principle and in the same vein. Planché had been to Paris, and had there seen Potier playing in "Riquet à la Houppe." He came home and straightway wrote his own version of the story, partly in verse, partly in prose, having in Charles Mathews a Riquet not equal indeed to Potier, but with obvious merits of his own. Vestris was the Princess Emeralda, and James Bland Green Horn the Great--Rebecca Isaacs, then only a little girl, being the Mother Bunch. The result was complete success, carrying with it great encouragement to the dramatist to persevere in the new path on which he had entered. [18] At the Olympic in 1836. These fairy pieces of Planché's were not burlesques quite in the sense in which his classical pieces were, but they belong, nevertheless, to the burlesque _genre_. Each treats lightly and humorously a story already in existence; each includes parodies of popular lyrics, as well as songs written to the airs of popular ditties; and the burlesque spirit animates the whole. Every now and then, the writer, rising superior to parody, produces a lyric which has a definite accent of its own. Here, for example, in "Riquet with the Tuft," is a song accorded to the grotesque and misshapen hero. It has genuine wit as well as genial philosophy:-- I'm a strange-looking person, I am, But contentment for ever my guest is; I'm by habit an optimist grown, And fancy that all for the best is. Each man has of troubles his pack, And some round their aching hearts wear it; My burden is placed on my back, Where I'm much better able to bear it. Again, tho' I'm blind of one eye, And have but one ear that of use is, I but half the world's wickedness spy, And am deaf to one half its abuses; And tho' with this odd pair of pegs, My motions I own serpentine are, Many folks blest with handsomer legs Have ways much more crooked than mine are! Nature gave me but one tuft of hair, Yet wherefore, kind dame, should I flout her? If one side of my head must be bare, I'm delighted she's chosen the outer! Thus on all things I put a good face, And however misshapen in feature, My heart, girl, is in the right place, And warms towards each fellow-creature!