University of Virginia Library

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TO J. BALDWIN BUCKSTONE, Esq. OF THE HAYMARKET THEATRE.

Dear Buckstone,

Suppose we dedicate this Burlesque to you. We have no objections; and if you have any, you will not be in time to urge them, as—unless our plot against you happens to be betrayed by some Tresham of a compositor or printer's devil—you will know nothing about it till the entire impression of the work has issued from that celebrated “Nassau Steam Press,” of which our friend Johnson is so justly proud.

The fact is, this piece owes more to you than you may be aware of. No allusion is intended to your admirable performance of the hard-working woodcutter; where all were excellent it would be unfair to signalize one, however good. Nor yet to the fact of your having suggested (and how gloriously assisted in carrying out the suggestion!) one of the greatest “goes” in the piece—the parody on In my Cottage. Our chief obligation to you arises from the fact of your having unconsciously and unintentionally helped us out of the greatest “fix” the treatment of our subject placed us in.

How to finish our first Act we had not the ghost of an idea, when a copy of your Green Bushes providentially fell into our hands. This happened to remind one of us of an effect in it that might be stolen to effect our infamous purpose. We read it; it would do! With the prompt rapacity of the comic writer we seized on it. You know the result.

This dedication is therefore a sort of conscience-money— a kind of compensation that a penitent ogre might make to a bereaved parent, whose offspring he has devoured.

Seriously though (if the public will believe in anything serious among such tremendously funny dogs as ourselves), as a slight tribute of esteem for a man whom it is a pleasure to write for, and to know, this trifle is gratefully inscribed by