[Illustration: JOSEPH GRIMALDI.] MEMOIRS OF JOSEPH GRIMALDI EDITED BY "BOZ" _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK_ LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL NEW YORK: 416 BROOME STREET GEORGE CRUIKSHANK _Price 2s. each, boards._ The Greatest Plague of Life; or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Servant. Edited by the BROTHERS MAYHEW. With Illustrations by GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. Whom to Marry and How to Get Married; or, The Adventures of a Lady in Search of a Good Husband. Edited by the BROTHERS MAYHEW, and Illustrated by GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. Mornings at Bow Street. With Steel Frontispiece and 21 Illustrations by GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER It is some years now, since we first conceived a strong veneration for Clowns, and an intense anxiety to know what they did with themselves out of pantomime time, and off the stage. As a child, we were accustomed to pester our relations and friends with questions out of number concerning these gentry;--whether their appetite for sausages and such like wares was always the same, and if so, at whose expense they were maintained; whether they were ever taken up for pilfering other people's goods, or were forgiven by everybody because it was only done in fun; how it was they got such beautiful complexions, and where they lived; and whether they were born Clowns, or gradually turned into Clowns as they grew up. On these and a thousand other points our curiosity was insatiable. Nor were our speculations confined to Clowns alone: they extended to Harlequins, Pantaloons, and Columbines, all of whom we believed to be real and veritable personages, existing in the same forms and characters all the year round. How often have we wished that the Pantaloon were our god-father! and how often thought that to marry a Columbine would be to attain the highest pitch of all human felicity! The delights--the ten thousand million delights of a pantomime--come streaming upon us now,--even of the pantomime which came lumbering down in Richardson's waggons at fair-time to the dull little town in which we had the honour to be brought up, and which a long row of small boys, with frills as white as they could be washed, and hands as clean as they would come, were taken to behold the glories of, in fair daylight.