Page:Table-Talk, vol. 2 (1822).djvu/72

 “What things,” exclaims Beaumont in his verses to Ben Jonson, “have we not seen done at the Mermaid!

I cannot say the same of the S, though it stands on classic ground, and is connected by vocal tradition with the great names of the Elizabethan age. What a falling off is here! Our ancestors of that period seem not only to be older by two hundred years, and proportionably wiser and wittier than we, but hardly a trace of them is left, not even the memory of what has been. How should I make my friend M stare, if I were to mention the name of my still better friend, old honest Signor Friscobaldo, the father of Bellafront:—yet his name was perhaps invented, and the scenes in which he figures unrivalled might for the first time have been read aloud to thrilling ears on