best judges. [Colley was evidently thinking of himself as one of these
judges.] His point was to please the majority who could more easilly
comprehend anything they _saw_ than the daintiest things that could be
said to them."

Nay, Christopher actually went so far that he once sought the
services of an elephant to add to the strength of his company, thus
anticipating the realism of our own time, when a few cows, a horse or
two, a lot of chickens and some real straw will cover a multitude
of sins in the construction of a play.[A] Yet, sad to relate, the
elephant was never allowed to lend weight to the drama, as "from the
jealousy which so formidable a rival had rais'd in his dancers, and by
his bricklayer's assuring him that if the walls were to be open'd wide
enough for its entrance it might endanger the fall of the house [the
old theatre in Dorset Garden, which Rich wished to use] he gave up his
project, and with it so hopeful a prospect of making the receipts of
the stage run higher than all the wit and force of the best writers
had ever yet rais'd them to."

[Footnote A: Apropos to the appearance of elephants on the stage, a
capital anecdote is told by Colman in his "Random Records." Johnstone,
a machinist employed at Drury Lane during the latter portion of the
eighteenth century, was celebrated for his superior taste and skill
in the construction of flying chariots, triumphal cars, palanquins,
banners, wooden children to be tossed over battlements, and straw
heroes and heroines to be hurled down a precipice; he was further
famous for wickerwork lions, pasteboard swans, and all sham birds and
beasts appertaining to a theatrical menagerie. He wished on a certain
occasion to spy the nakedness of the enemy's camp, and therefore
contrived to insinuate himself, with a friend, into the two-shilling