[24] Byron was indebted to Mme. D'Aulnoy for the idea of his "Orange Tree and the Humble Bee, or The Little Princess who was Lost at Sea" (Vaudeville, 1871). I'll run a race With any living ped, through wind or rain; Some like what's handsome--I prefer the _plain_. I have this morning run a spanking heat, Two miles in just ten minutes. _King._ Wondrous _feat_! _Prin._ Everything pedal has its charms for me. I'd have gone miles the great Miss _Foote_ to see. My tastes are visible e'en at my meals; My favourite fish, of course, are _soles_ and _eels_. Pota_toes_ I consider are _A-oners_, Though I've a preference for scarlet-_runners_. And when at children's parties I am present, I think a game at four-_feits_ very pleasant. "The White Cat," by Planché (1842), has among its _personæ_ Wunsuponatyme, King of Neverminditsnamia; Prince Paragon; and Jingo, a Court fool. In "The Fair One with the Golden Locks" (1843), the King is called Lachrymoso,[25] and the woman of the bedchamber Molly-mopsa. Finally, there is "The Seven Champions of Christendom" (1849), in which Charles Mathews played Charles Wag, Esq., "in attendance on" St. George of England. With this ends the list of Planché's compositions of this kind--a remarkable contribution to the stage literature of wit and humour. [25] Lachrymoso was played by Mr. Toole at the Adelphi so recently as 1860. From Planché's "Seven Champions of Christendom" to the "St. George and the Dragon" of Gilbert Abbott a'Beckett (1845) and the "Sir George and a Dragon, or We are Seven" of Mr. Burnand (1856) is a natural and easy transition. In A'Beckett's piece, Kalyba, the sorceress, has stolen St. George when a child, in order that he might fall in love with her, and so rescue her from prophesied destruction. Getting rid of her with a wave of her own wand, he turns up with his fellow Champions at Memphis, where King Ptolemy is in a state of impecuniosity, the Dragon having swallowed up all his resources. The monster demands the King's daughter Sabra, but St. George contrives to trick him out of the legal securities he holds, and eventually destroys him by the power of the steam press. There is a vein of allegory running through the piece, which has, however, its share of _jeux de mots_. Thus, Kalyba's handmaid says to her:-- Your hair, my lady, 's getting rather dry, Some of the Russian balsam shall I try? _Kaly._ Well, p'raps you may--yet no--upon the whole, Anything Russian's hurtful to the _Pole_. The very thought my nervous system shocks, O! would that mine were like Chubb's--safety locks! Should I turn grey, I'd bid the world good-bye. _Maid._ If you turn grey, it would be time to _dye_. Elsewhere there is some sarcasm at the expense of the newspapers. St. George says to Sabra:--