THE MACARONI CLUB Leap-Frog 1772 Leap-Frog As Dapper Davy & his favourite Bick Gambol’d from sport to sport from trick to trick Davy in glee his Sooty Bick ajog. They’d play’d at length that hateful game leap frog. Poor Bicky fear’d discovery & shame, But Davy sooth’d him, & play’d out the game ‘No eye, tho’ e’er so peircing now can bore us’ Says the Theatric Caesar to his Sporus ‘These pleasures licenc’d for the Rich, I prove, Illicit rapture, & forbidden Love. Let vulgar minds keep Nature in their Sight. I snatch a joy beyond the rule of Right Why do I drudge? the Monarch of a Stage, When sickness presses a declining age? What more can honour wish than fame & money To Tilney the whole Dramatis Personae. To Tilney authors Comic – haud indignum Authors of Farce & Opera – Ecce signum!’ – Bick renews his fears; says crafty Davy, ‘Even in Discovery my power can save ye; If eyes obtrude, no doubt this sight won’t please ‘em, – But, my dear Bick – ne times, vehis Caesarem.’ NOTE: For further details about the alleged homosexual relationship between the dramatists David Garrick and Isaac Bickerstaffe, see The Macaroni Club. SOURCE: This poem was originally published in the Public Ledger on 18 June 1772. No copies of this issue of the newspaper survive, but a handwritten copy was sent to Garrick. It is published in Peter A. Tasch, The Dramatic Cobbler: The Life and Works of Isaac Bickerstaff [sic] (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1971). CITATION: If you cite this Web page, please use the following citation: Rictor Norton (ed.), "The Macaroni Club: Leap-Frog, 1772", Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook, 19 December 2004 <http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/macaron3.htm>. Return to The Macaroni Club, or return to The First Public Debate about Homosexuality in England, or return to Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England