He Begins, You Will Observe, With
The Conjugation, And Ends With The Declensions And The Genders; The
Whole Is Inimitably Droll:
"Amo, amas,
I love a lass,
She is so sweet and tender,
It is sweet Cowslip's Grace
In the Nominative Case.
And in the feminine Gender."
Those two sentences in particular, "in the Nominative Case," and "in
the feminine Gender," he affects to sing in a particularly
languishing air, as if confident that it was irresistible. This
Edwin, in all his comic characters, still preserves something so
inexpressibly good-tempered in his countenance, that notwithstanding
all his burlesques and even grotesque buffoonery, you cannot but be
pleased with him. I own, I felt myself doubly interested for every
character which he represented. Nothing could equal the tone and
countenance of self-satisfaction with which he answered one who
asked him whether he was a scholar? "Why, I was a master of
scholars." A Mrs. Webb represented a cheesemonger, and played the
part of a woman of the lower class so naturally as I have nowhere
else ever seen equalled. Her huge, fat, and lusty carcase, and the
whole of her external appearance seemed quite to be cut out for it.
Poor Edwin was obliged, as school-master, to sing himself almost
hoarse, as he sometimes was called on to repeat his declension and
conjugation songs two or three times, only because it pleased the
upper gallery, or "the gods," as the English call them, to roar out
"encore." Add to all this, he was farther forced to thank them with
a low bow for the great honour done him by their applause.
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