528 Letter on Affairs in general. | [Nov. 
I see people go past my house of evenings to “the play” sometimes for 
amusement! This seems odd, There isa lady, who lives ari 4 opposite, 
keeps amonkey—a pretty considerably-sized one :—and it is all nonsense 
to talk about Mr. Liston or Mr. Macready—a good monkey is worth all the 
low comedy actors in the world. Mazurier, the French man-monkey, was 
ill received in London; but that arose from the degree of pretence that he 
came with. And, moreover, his characters were ill selected ;—though there 
were some comical points about what he did too. The laughableness 
of a monkey arises out of something more profound than the mere felicity 
with which he burlesques humanity and human affairs. ‘There is a fund 
for thought as well as merriment in the odd mixture of cunning with 
simplicity which his tricks exhibit; the close approach which he makes 
to reason, and yet the decided insurmountable barrier which divides him 
from it !—In the same way that madmen, if we could divest ourselves of 
the knowledge that they are suffering, constantly do things which are 
diverting in the highest possible degree. The scene in which Mazurier 
found a child—in one of the pieces that he acted a monkey in—always 
seemed to me to be extremely well imagined and ingenious. He used 
to play with a stone on the ground for a long time in the beginning of 
the scene. Presently, on finding the child (asleep), he becomes highly 
delighted, and carries it about for several minutes with every antic of 
pleasure and surprise. And then, just as you become interested with 
the thought that this excessive admiration of the child will lead to some 
curious incident or effect—he looks round him—sees the stone again—and 
returns to it, as the better plaything of the two. Now this is excellent. 
It is one little trait that yet speaks volumes. If he had represented a 
woman, instead of a monkey, the actor could not have done any thing 
more characteristic than this. 
But my opposite neighbour (the real Szmzus) is, in the way of facetious- 
ness, far beyond the reach of any histrionic imitation. He regularly 
gets loose about once a week ; when a reward is offered, and half the 
neighbourhood rises in arms for his apprehension. I watched an affair 
‘of this kind the other day from the commencement ;—I rather think, on 
that occasion, that a footboy, who acts (worthily) as the beast’s fellow- 
servant, had let him loose on purpose. The first sight T had of him was in 
his mistress’s chamber—at her dressing-drawer—out of which he’ fished 
‘a great quantity of ornaments—combs, necklaces, bracelets, and the like. 
The whole of these he tried on, seriatim, looking betimes in the glass, 
and putting every article to the wrong purpose; and concluding, 
as fast as he had done with each, by throwing it under the grate. 
Presently, he disappeared from this place,—hearing a voice, I rather 
think, which disturbed him; nnd in a few minutes, there was the usual 
hue-and-cry in the street;—he had got out at the drawing-room window ; 
and was skipping along upon the balcony rails from house to house. 
Generally a minute or so after he got to every fresh balcony, and was 
looking down, chattering at the mob, with his back to the building, up 
went the window on a sudden, and some daring housemaid made sure ‘she 
had secured him ; but as regularly as he jumped round—facing the étie- 
my—down the sash went again, with a roar from the crowd, and a squeak 
(which might have been heard a great way beyond St. Paul’s,) from the 
house-maid; and away the tormentor skipped off, in triumph, to a 
fresh tenement. 
All this while, there was a long chain, with which,he wasjusually 
