_Cind._ At morn, when reading, as the fire up-burns, The print to stops--to semi-_coaluns_--turns. I might as well read Coke. _Prince._ Quite right you are,-- He's very useful reading at the _bar_. (_Chaffingly_) Who is your favourite poet?--Hobbs? _Cind._ Not quite. No, I think, _Cole_-ridge is my favourite; His melan-_coally_ suits my situation; My dinner always is a _coald coal_-lation, Smoked pictures all things seem, whate'er may be'em, A _cyclorama_, through the "_Coal I see 'em_" More acceptible in, pantomime than in travestie, "Little Red Riding Hood" has nevertheless been the heroine of at least one burlesque which has made its mark--namely, that which Leicester Buckingham brought out at the Lyceum just thirty years ago, under the auspices of Edmund Falconer. He had Miss Lydia Thompson for his Blondinette (Red Riding Hood), and Miss Cicely Nott for the young lady's lover, Colin. The fairy element was freely introduced, and instead of the wolf of the original there was a Baron Reginald de Wolf ("the would-be abductor of Blondinette, who finds he is sold when she 'ab duck'd herself to escape him"). Here and there one gets in the "book" a glimpse of parody; as in-- My protegè--my protegè, Ah! never look so shy, For pretty girls seem ugly When a gloom is in their eye. Or, again, in-- They say the peasant's life is sweet, But that we know all trash is, O; He very little gets to eat, For often scarce his cash is, O. Teeth then he gnashes, O, Gnaws his moustaches, O; But jolly are the hours he spends When plentiful the cash is, O. Passing over "Jack the Giant Killer," which H. J. Byron made the subject of a burlesque, and "Jack and the Beanstalk," which was treated in the same vein by the late Charles Millward, we come to the travesties suggested by stories in the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." These are fairly numerous. We may note, in particular, some of the versions of the tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, Prince Camaralzaman, and Abon Hassan, which seem to have offered most attractions to our comic writers. The first "Aladdin" of importance was that given to the world by Gilbert Abbott a'Beckett in 1844. This was entitled "The Wonderful Lamp in a New Light," and had Wright for its Aladdin and Paul Bedford for its Magician. Next in order of time comes H. J. Byron's "Aladdin, or the Wonderful Scamp,"[26] which has shared the fate of his "Cinderella" as a basis for pantomimes. In this his fondness for _jeux de mots_ is as patent as ever, as well as the ease (without conspicuous finish) with which he fitted words to the songs of the day. Of direct parody there is little in this "Aladdin," which, however, opens with a brief suggestion of "The sea, the sea," sung by the Vizier:--