Thus exclaims Lord Byron, and he is but one of the long list of English poets, dramatists and essayists who have found delight and inspiration at the puppet booth. “One could hardly name a single poet from Chaucer to Byron, or a single prose writer from Sir Philip Sidney to Hazlitt in whose works are not to be found abundant information on the subject or frequent allusions to it. The dramatists, above all, beginning with those who are the glory of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, supply us with the most curious particulars of the repertory, the managers, the stage of the marionettes.” With this introduction M. Magnin brings forward a brilliant array of English authors in whose works we may find traces of the puppets, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Davenant, Swift, Addison, Steele, Gay, Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan and innumerable others. In _The Winter’s Tale_ Autolycus remarks: “I know this man well. He hath been a process server, a bailiff, then he compassed a motion of _The Prodigal Son_.” Many other dramas of Shakespeare have similar allusions. Milton’s _Areopagitica_ contains these lines: “When God gave Adam reason, he gave him freedom to choose: he had else been a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as seen in the motions.” Perhaps the casual mention of a popular diversion in the literature of a nation is not as impressive as the fact that it has served to suggest the themes of numberless dramas and poems. Shakespeare is said to have taken the idea for _Julius Cæsar_ from the puppet play on the same subject which was performed near the Tower of London in his day; Ben Jonson’s _Everyman Out of his Humour_, Robert Greene’s _Orlando Furioso_, Dekker’s best drolleries and certainly _Patient Grissel_ in the composition of which he had a hand, Marlowe’s _The Massacre at Paris_ and many others may safely be said to have been suggested by the puppets. There are marionettes in Swift’s _A Tale of a Tub_, illustrated by Hogarth. Some authorities claim that Milton drew the argument for his great poem from an Italian marionette production of _Paradise Lost_ which he once witnessed. Byron is supposed to have found the model for his _Don Juan_ in the popular play of Punch’s, _The Libertine Destroyed_. Hence it cannot be an exaggeration to state that even in England, where the puppets are not supposed to have attained such prestige as on the Continent, they were, nevertheless, not wholly insignificant nor without weight.