| Citation |
SCGCJ.768.042
5 Apr 1768:21 (122)
(Mr. Punch insisting upon the liberty of the press, we
therefore give the following a place in our gazette.)
Suspended, one evening last week, in an obscure corner,
behind the scenes (after the fatigue of an evening's hard
labour) by the wire through my head, my master with some of
his friends seated near me, on the other side, asked what
news, and immediately one of the gentlemen presented him
with a news-paper, at the same time shewing him a paragraph,
wrote by a very ingenious performer of the j*ggl*ng art; my
master, with his accustomed good nature, smiled at the
envious, malicious design of so learned a philosopher, and
threw down the paper; now I being the principal person
concerned in the puppet-shew, as I am sole manager and
director of the wooden tribe, who form that entertainment,
have resolved, in behalf of myself and wooden family, to
take up the cudgels, and though only a figure of wood, not
the least beholden to Mr M*rt*n's lectures, or any other
exhibitor's, for my oratory, and performances, or the
mechanical turning of a wheel, shall endeavour, as much as a
wooden head can, to vindicate my own and family's character:
My master, though only proprietor of a puppet-shew, and
neither a man of letters, or of a philosophical or
astrological genius, thinking it beneath him to endeavour to
ingratiate himself into the favour of the publick, by any
mean insinuations, or by degrading in the least, any other's
performance; but it verifies an old proverb, two of a trade
can never agree, and perhaps, jealousy which of the two
performers were the greatest jugglers, as occasioned this
misunderstanding: Were I a living being, as I am not, would
explain myself better, but unless enlivened by Prometheus's
fire, or the force of El*ctr*c*ty, must remain, as I am now,
a log of wood. [signed] Punchinello.
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