Every reader of dramatic history has heard of Garrick's contest with
Madam Clairon, and the triumph which the English Roscius achieved over
the Siddons of the French stage, by his representation of the father
struck with fatuity on beholding his only infant child dashed to pieces
by leaping in its joy from his arms: perhaps the sole remaining conquest
for histrionic tragedy is somewhere in the unexplored regions of the
mind, below the ordinary understanding, amidst the gradations of
idiotcy. The various shades and degrees of sense and sensibility which
lie there unknown, Genius, in some gifted moment, may discover. In the
meantime, as a small specimen of its undivulged dramatic treasures, we
submit to our readers the following little anecdote:--
A poor widow, in a small town in the north of England, kept a booth or
stall of apples and sweetmeats. She had an idiot child, so utterly
helpless and dependent, that he did not appear to be ever alive to anger
or self-defence.
He sat all day at her feet, and seemed to be possessed of no other
sentiment of the human kind than confidence in his mother's love, and
a dread of the schoolboys, by whom he was often annoyed. His whole
occupation, as he sat on the ground, was in swinging backwards and
forwards, singing "pal-lal" in a low pathetic voice, only interrupted
at intervals on the appearance of any of his tormentors, when he clung
to his mother in alarm.
From morning to evening he sang his plaintive and aimless ditty; at
night, when his poor mother gathered up her little wares to return home,
so deplorable did his defects appear, that while she carried her table
on her head, her stock of little merchandize in her lap, and her stool
in one hand, she was obliged to lead him by the other. Ever and anon as
any of the schoolboys appeared in view, the harmless thing clung close
to her, and hid his face in her bosom for protection.
A human creature so far below the standard of humanity was no where ever
seen; he had not even the shallow cunning which is often found among
these unfinished beings; and his simplicity could not even be measured
by the standard we would apply to the capacity of a lamb. Yet it had a
feeling rarely manifested even in the affectionate dog, and a knowledge
never shown by any mere animal.
He was sensible of his mother's kindness, and how much he owed to her
care. At night when she spread his humble pallet, though he knew not
prayer, nor could comprehend the solemnities of worship, he prostrated
himself at her feet, and as he kissed them, mumbled a kind of mental
orison, as if in fond and holy devotion. In the morning, before she went
abroad to resume her station in the market-place, he peeped anxiously
out to reconnoitre the street, and as often as he saw any of the
schoolboys in the way, he held her firmly back, and sang his sorrowful
"pal-lal."
One day the poor woman and her idiot boy were missed from the
market-place, and the charity of some of the neighbours induced them to
visit her hovel. They found her dead on her sorry couch, and the boy
sitting beside her, holding her hand, swinging and singing his pitiful
lay more sorrowfully than he had ever done before. He could not speak,
but only utter a brutish gabble! sometimes, however, he looked as if
he comprehended something of what was said. On this occasion, when the
neighbours spoke to him, he looked up with the tear in his eye, and
clasping the cold hand more tenderly, sank the strain of his mournful
"pal-lal" into a softer and sadder key.
The spectators, deeply affected, raised him from the body, and he
surrendered his hold of the earthy hand without resistance, retiring in
silence to an obscure corner of the room. One of them, looking towards
the others, said to them, "Poor wretch! what shall we do with him?" At
that moment he resumed his chant, and lifting two handfuls of dust from
the floor, sprinkled it on his head, and sang with a wild and clear
heart-piercing pathos, "pal-lal--pal-lal."--_Blackwood's Magazine_.
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