REMARKS. The Africans.
'Tis an humiliating truth that the nobler virtues are more practised
among barbarian tribes than by civilised society;—that the savage
heathen, who wages war to extermination and devours his captives,
not unfrequently displays a glorious self-denial, a sublime magnanimity
that, with true believers, pass for fable and romance. Mr. Colman
lays his scene in an African town; his principal characters are three
sable brothers, who exhibit those cardinal virtues, filial duty and affection,
in a degree that might startle the polished European. His black
Mandingo majesty, who lights up his faggots with Roman Catholic
fury, is an honourable exception to the general run of pale-faced potentates;
nor would his ebony holiness Farulho suffer in comparison
with the full-blown pluralist in canonicals.
Selico is to marry Berissa, the daughter of the priest. His brother
Torribal, a wicked wit, rallies the bridegroom on his wedding-day,
and accuses him of want of duty to their widowed mother, in
quitting her roof. But Madiboo, a mahogany harum-scarum and purveyor
of eatables to the Day and Martin family, takes the part of Selico,
and pays back the sable satirist in his own coin. As the day advances,
the jollity becomes more uproarious—the tang-tang thumps; the big
tabala beats; bells, flutes, and simbings; shrieks, shouts, and such-like
incongruous music swell the nuptial chorus—when, suddenly, an
alarm is given that the Mandingo warriors are pouring down in miriads:
loud yells are heard; fires are seen raging on all sides; the marriage
ceremony is suspended; the town of Fatteconda is surprised, sacked,
and burned to the ground!
Pondering on the wide-spread desolation, like Marius amidst the
ruins of Carthage, Selico indulges in bitter recollections of the past,
and mournful anticipations of the future. His betrothed bride and
her father are both slain; his aged mother and brothers, if they yet
survive, are either made captives, or fled he knows noth whither. He
is faint with hunger, and lays down to die. At this moment, a well-known
voice salutes him—'its Madiboo's: he receives the joyful intelligence
that his parent, borne by her faithful children to the woods,
has not perished. Thither he is supported by his affectionate, madcap
brother, with famine stamped upon his brow, and despair withering
his heart.
The miserable family are pinched by famine, and surrounded on all
sides by hordes of revengeful barbarians. News transpires that the
Mandingos have invited the English merchants to buy their prisoners.
Torribal had charged his brother Selico with want of filial affection—
now he will prove if the charge be true!
'Tis proposed to draw lots which of them shall sell himself for a
slave. To this Selico objects—his lot is cast already, more unhappy
he cannot be; his early hope is gone—to him the world's sweet garden
is a lonely desert.
The biddings of those respectable christians, Messrs. Grim, Marrowbone,
Flayall, and Adamant, are anything but liberal. The market
for human bones and sinews is by no means brisk—an able-bodied
black is hardly worth the price of a fat bullock; and Captain Abraham
Adamant, whom the cruel negroes chucked down the hatchways for
stowing
only fifteen of them in a hammock in hot weather! bids a sum
for the self-devoted savage, barely sufficient to support his wretched
mother through the winter. A reward of four hundred ounces of gold
is offered for the apprehension of a man who had escaped through the
musquettry of his Mandingo majesty's Spanish-liquorice body guards,
from the tent of his favourite female prisoner. Selico resolves to give
himself up as the criminal! and his brother Madiboo is to claim the
reward! Nor can Madiboo's pathetic eloquence dissuade him from
his purpose. They appear before the king—the accuser weeps on his
brother's breast, and is speechless with agony: the self-accused plays
his part nobly,—acknowledges his guilt: the reward is given to the
supposed betrayer of his friend, and Selico is borne off to an immediate
and cruel death.
A victim is to suffer with him—the female prisoner, from whose tent
the muffled stranger escaped. Two piles of faggots are heaped up;
the executioners, with their flaming brands and instruments of torture,
are ready to assist at the ceremony; and his majesty and his court are
assembled to see terrible justice done upon the delinquents. The female
prisoner is led forth; her veil is thrown aside, and she breathes a
prayer of resignation—'tis Berissa! The lovers rush into each others
arms; and Berissa solemnly declares that her fellow-sufferer is not the
guilty one. But torments shall not wrest from her the real culprit.—
The drum rolls, and the ghastly ministers of death lift high their blazing
torches to fire the funeral piles; when Farulho rushes in, prostrates
himself before the king, and pleads the circumstance of a fond
father striving to rescue his betrothed daughter from the embraces of
a foe. The royal heart feels a touch of pity; and when the mother of
the three noble sons enters the imperial presence, and tells her melancholy
tale, it melts in right earnest. He commands a dowry of two
thousand crowns to be given to the affianced bride, and unites her to
Selico.
But where is the wood and ivory-turner, “His black Mandigo majesty's
white minister of state,” Mr. Henry Augustus Mug, of No. 25, Snow-Hill?
Good luck to the nigger-slave merchant that kidnapped and
sold this frolicksome piece of human mutton to a dealer at Fatteconda!
where he jested himself into the cabinet as prime minister and buffoon;
legislator and ladies man; principal plenipo of the black petticoats,
and privy seal; with the run of the imperial kitchen, palace, palanquins,
and pretty girls, (á-la-mode d'Angletterre!) free gratis and for
nothing! This comic episode to a tagic drama plays his part with
infinite good fun and good feeling; and was originally represented by
Liston with all his broad-faced humour and grotesque gravity. His
“Won't you come, Mr. Mug?” was chanted from one end of Great
Britain to the other; and “Mug” became a cognomen for any cockney
Adonis whose constitution and countenance were uncommonly concupiscent
and charming.
This play was received with very great applause—and deservedly;
for Mr. Colman again put his axe to the root of the Upas Tree of Slavery;
which, to the honour of British humanity, is now grubbed up
and laid prostrate for ever!
D.---G.
