allusion in the Tatler to English Marionnettes
neUes is in the number published on the 26th
of May, 1709, where a fictitious predecessor
of Punch is thus spoken of:—" Mrs. Saraband,
so famous for her ingenious puppet-show, has
set up a shop in the Exchange, where she
sells her little troop under the term of 'jointed
babies.'" Powel, the puppet-showman, is the
perpetual theme of Steele and Addison. This
autocrat of the wooden world acquired a great
reputation at Bath. It was while Powel was
delighting his invalid audiences in that ancient
city, that Steele engaged with him in a
fictitious controversy, under the assumed name
(which he borrowed from Swift) of Isaac
Bickerstaff. " I would have him to know,"
says Steele, in the Tatler, number Forty-four,
"that I can look beyond his wires and know
well the whole trick of his art; and that
it. is only by these wires that the eye of the
spectator is cheated, and hindered from
seeing that there is a thread- on one of
Punch's chops, which draws it up, and lets it
fall, at the discretion of the said Powel, who
stands behind and plays him, and makes him
speak saucily of his betters."  Of the license
of language in which Punch indulged; Steele
speaks in the following number. His principal
design was, no doubt, to throw ridicule
upon the controversy which, at that time,
raged between Dr. Hoadley and Bishop
Blackall; but, by choosing Mr. Powel and his
puppets to illustrate the quarrel, he
accidentally rendered, good service to the cause
of the Marionnettes. After asserting, that
"all sorts of wood and wire were made for
the use and benefit of man," and that he
has" an unquestionable right to frame, fashion,
and put them together as he pleases," Mr.
Powel is made to say: " I order you to
handle only these two propositions, to which
our dispute may be reduced:—the first,
whether I have not an absolute power,
whenever I please, to light a pipe with one of
Punch's legs, or warm my fingers with his
whole carcass? The second, whether the
Devil would not be in Punch, should he, by
word or deed, oppose niy sovereign will and
pleasure?"

This supposed controversy was very
advantageous to Powel; for, in 1710, he made his
appearance in London with his troop
reinforced by the addition of Doctor Faustus.
His success was such as to make his theatre a
counter attraction to the Italian Opera, with
Nicolini as the principal singer. In the
following year, Powel established himself under
the little Piazza, in Covent Garden, on the side
opposite St. Paul's church; and here he set
up ' Whittington and his Cat," against
"Rinaldo and Armida." Steele, in the Spectator,
makes the undertaker of St. Paul's lay a
whimsical complaint against Powel, asserting
that, since he brought Punch to that locality,
the under-sexton has lost his only two customers
on week-days, who used to pay him
sixpence apiece for placing them in pews; and he
expresses a hope, that Punch may be made to
choose less caonical hours for his performance,
as " Mr. Powel has always a full congregation,
while, we have a very thin house."
In the same paper, Steele again introduces
Powel: contrasting his performances with
those at the Opera. Animals had a run at both
theatres. ''The sparrows and chaffinches at
the Haymarket fly, as yet, very irregularly over
the stage; and, instead of perching on
on the trees, and performing their parts, these young
actors either get into the galleries, or put out
the candles; whereas Mr. Powel has so well
disciplined his pig, that, in the first scene, he
and Punch dance a minuet together. I am
informed, however, that Mr. Powel resolves
to excel his adversaries in their own way;
and introduce larks in his next opera of
'Susanna, or Innocence Betrayed,' which will
be exhibited next week, with a paiir of new
elders."

Powel's most famous plays were "The
Children in the Wood," "King Bladud," "Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay," "Robin Hood and
Little John," " Mother Goose," and " Mother
Shipton." In the Spectator, for January
17th, 1711-12, it is related that, a short time
before the rupture with France, the English
ladies received, the fashions from Paris by
means of a jointed baby, dressed in the height
of the mode, which was forwarded every month
to London.

The most celebrated of Powel's successors
were Russell and Charlotte Charke,
daughter of Colley Gibber. The lady opened
a great puppet-show in 1737, at the Tennis
Court, in James Street, Haymarket; but
her own conduct compelled her to abandon
the speculation, and to take service with
her rival, Russell, who paid her a guinea
a-day as his stage-manager. Between this
date and the commencement of the reign
of George the Third, Punch fought his
way to immense favour with the public.
In 1763 the Fantoccini came from Italy,
and fluctuating as their popularity may
have been, it is at any rate a feather in
their cap that they excited the jealousy of
Dr. Johnson.

If more allusions to our English classical
literature were requisite to give puppets their
literary due, we might reproduce Swift's
apostrophe to Stretch, the owner of the
Dublin Marionnettes—quote Fielding's Tom
Jones—and show, from one of his earlier
plays, " The Author's Farce.'' how he
produced bodily upon the stage, a puppet-show
called "The Pleasures of the Town." We
might also tell of the puppets that Burke and
Goldsmith went to see in Panton Street,
Haymarket, and of the argument which
ensued at supper; ending with an act of
tumbling by Goldsmith, to demonstrate the
clumsy vaulting of the puppets; and which
was suddenly arrested by the bruising of his
own dear shin.

From that day to this, the popularity of