English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.Everitt, Graham
History
English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.
Everitt, Graham
Caricature -- Great Britain; Illustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century
The question remained unanswered; for Raymond, the stage manager,
walked at this moment upon the stage accompanied by a constable, and
gave the amateur performer into custody. It is said that his father, not
content with this failure, actually made an attempt to recite the
"monologue" from his box, until hissed and howled down by the half
laughing, half indignant audience. The circumstance is commemorated by
an admirable pictorial satire entitled, _A Buz in a Box, or the Poet in
a Pet_, published by S. W. Fores on the 21st of October, in which we see
the doctor gesticulating from his box, and imploring the audience to
listen to his "monologue." Young Busby, seated on his father's Pegasus
(an ass), quotes one of the verses of the absurd composition, while the
animal (after the manner of its kind) answers the hisses of the audience
by elevating its heels and uttering a characteristic "hee haw." By the
side of Busby junior stands the manager (Raymond), apologetically
addressing the audience. Certain pamphlets lie scattered in front of the
stage, on which are inscribed (among others) the following doggerel:--
"A Lord and a Doctor once started for Fame,
Which for the best poet should pass;
The Lord was cried up on account of his name,
The Doctor cried down for _an ass_."
"Doctor Buz, he assures us, on Drury's new stage
No horses or elephants there should engage;
But pray, Doctor Buz, how comes it to pass,
That you your own self should produce there an ass?"
Dr. Busby was a person desirous of achieving literary notoriety at any
amount of personal inconvenience. He translated _Lucretius_, and is said
to have given public recitations, accompanied with bread and butter and
tea; but in spite of these attractions, the public did not come and the
book would not sell, facts which a wicked wag of the period ridiculed,
by inserting the following announcement in the column of births of one
of the newspapers: "Yesterday, at his house in Queen Anne Street, Dr.
Busby of a stillborn _Lucretius_."
1813.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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