Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/432

 428 MILLIKIN. in America, and another founded on Lewis's Tale of the Anaconda. Probably about this time Mr. Millikin paid some attention to dramatic composition, as we find that a tragedy of his, called “Macha,” was offered by some friend at Drury-lane; but it was either rejected, or received no notice. In 1807, appeared his poem of “The Riverside,” in three books, which is but little known, owing to the limited number of quarto copies which were printed, and which cannot be found in either the Cork Library, or that of the Institution, though dedicated to the president and members of the former. A classic feeling of rural elegance breathes throughout this composition, though many of the passages are of unequal merit. A little exhibition of puppets, named the Patagonian Theatre, now received a good deal of Mr. Millikin's atten tion. This puppet-shew was in the present lecture room of the Cork Institution. Never, perhaps, was more wit or ingenuity displayed than in the various bills of per formance, and mechanical contrivances; and several of our most popular operas and farces were performed by these wooden actors in a very pleasing manner; the prologue usually spoken was written by Mr. Millikin, and is pecu liarly playful:—as a specimen, “Look at the stage of life, and you shall see How many blockheads act as well as we; Through all this world, such actors still abound, With heads as hard, but not with hearts as sound. Of real life, to make the likeness good, We have our actors from congenial wood; For instance, Doctor Bolus here you'll see Shake his grave noddle in sage ebony; Soldiers in laurel, lawyers and the church In sable yew, and pedagogues in birch; Ladies in satin-wood, and dying swains, In weeping willow melodize their pains; Poets in bay, in crab-tree, politicians, And any bit of stick will make musicians; Quakers in good sound deal we make—plain folk, And British tars in heart of native oak."