They must remind them of a last farewell, and we know
The sense of death is most in apprehension.
But, is this fitting for the obituary of a _comic_ actor? Yes, we reply,
and as both are but occasions of appeal to the passions, we may think the
death of a tragedian less striking than the former, since all tragedies
end with death, and death in itself is but a scene of tragedy. Is any
lament of Shakspeare's heroes more touching than his apostrophe to the
scull of Yorick, the King's jester, the mad fellow that poured a flagon of
Rhenish on the clown's head: "a fellow of infinite jest; of most excellent
fancy. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of
merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock
your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?"
Munden was the son of a poulterer in Brooke's Market, Holborn, where he
was born in the year 1758. His father died soon afterwards, leaving his
widow with slender means, and Munden was thrust upon the world to seek his
fortune at twelve years of age. He was placed in an apothecary's shop, but
soon left it for an attorney's office. Perhaps, like Dr. Wolcot, he
fancied the clinking of the pestle and mortar said "Kill 'em again! kill
'em again." From the attorney's office, he "fell off," as Hamlet's Ghost
would say, to a law-stationer's shop, and became "a hackney writer:" the
technicality needs not explanation: to hack at anything is neither the
road to fame nor a good meal.
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