Edgar; and our theatre, which was little better than a large barn, was remarkably crouded against the time of reprefenta tion. The univerfal approbation which I met with, at my very entrance, gave me fpirits to go on in the part with tolerable propriety; and, had it not been for an unexpected accident or two, the piece would, in general, have been pretty well perfonated. The firit caufe of complaint was given by the lady who played the part of Goneril. It feems, this illuf. trious princess was violently afflicted with a weakness of her nerves; and this unfortunate diforder obliged her to make frequent application to a certain underbred potable called gin; an additional quantity of which, as the tincture of jage was not then in existence, the generally took, to fortify herself against the terrors of an audience. Unluckily, however, this medicine always difappointed Mrs. Torrington in it's operation: intead of removing her complaint, it conftantly increated her infirmity, and rendered her fometimes fcarcely able to utter an articulate fyllable. This was the cafe the above evening; and nothing could be more diverting than to fee a staggering prince's upbraiding the intemperance of her father's followers. The barn-I beg pardon the houfe, was in an abfolute roar all the time of her performance; which her majetty conceiving to be rather the fhout of contempt than the voice of approbation, she advanced with a haughty fte, to the edge of the stage, and in a language little fuited to the dignity of her character, ftammered out

That it was no unufual thing for a woman to be overtaken a little; and that fhe warranted many of the conceited b--ch-s who were patched up in the boxes could drink double the quantity she had taken; and therefore need not turn away their faces with fuch an • air of infolence. Whether her efforts to make this excellent, elegant harangue, Occafioned any agitation at her ftomach, or whether nature of itself was determined to throw off the load with which it was oppreft, is not my business to determine: but, to the everlasting stain of the drama, I am obliged to acknowledge, that her oration was not half a minute pronounced, before it was attended with fuch a difagreeable difcharge upon the two fiddlers who compofed our entire band of mufic, as reduced them to the neceffity of making a precipitate retreat;

and made it abfolutely proper for two lords, a candle-inafter, and journeyman barber, to carry off the queen by force to her own apartment.

The confufion occafioned by this unlucky accident was just beginning to be removed, when a fresh affair arofe, that excited, if poffible, a ftill stronger laugh of ridicule from the audience. Mr. Grandifon, (for all our ftolling players are very fond of founding names) who performed the part of Glofter, and was reckoned one of the beft ftudies in the company, depending too much upon the goodnets of his memory, found himfelf at a dead stand in the most essential part of his character. Till his eyes were put out, no man could be more perfect; but this melancholy fentence had no fooner taken place, than he was obliged to beg permiflion to read the remainder of his character; and not cally finding this remarkable line

1

Alack, I have no eyes!

there was no restraining the merriment of our auditors: a thousand jokes were inceffantly cracked upon every one who appeared; fo that we were fairly obliged to drop the curtain in the middle of the fourth act, and forced to fpin out the evening's entertainment with the Mock Doctor, Mr. Pope's Prologue to Cato, and a double hornpipe.

There are a number of infatuated young people, Mr. Babler, who, because they fee what an eaty appearance the pe.formers of the London theatres generally make, are idle enough to fuppole that the very meaneft itages of an itinerant actor must afford at least a tolerable maintenance. But, alas! Sir, abtracted from the continual contempts to which the profeffion is liable, there is not a more miferable way of getting bread in the univerfe. I have many nights played Califa for two-pence halfpenny; and fometimes, after exhaufting my fpirits perhaps as a Tragedy Queen for a whole night together, have returned home to a wretched little room in an alehoufe, and there, without haring a morfel for my fupper, been obliged to buck up my only thift in the washhand bafon, and to get a part of twenty lengths by heart against the next night of performance.

In all thefe mortifying scenes, the wretched itinerants are under a neceffity of affuming a contented afpect, and

putting

putting on an air of the utmost life, when perhaps they are abfolutely pcrithing for bread. Forced, in the decay of bufinefs, to beg a little credit from chandlers-fhops or alehoufes, they are continually fubject to infults from the meanett members of the community; and even if matters anfwer their ampleft expectations, the defpicable shifts which they must try to make a benefit are infupportable to any mind which retains the leaft trace of fpirit or fenfibility. As for the men, they must court an acquaintance with the loweft journeyman atizan, and spend their time in the most

I

dreadful of all employments, the am:fement of underbred ignorance and brutality. As for the women, they must patiently hear the pert folicitations of the vericit little prentice of a country town; and submit to the infamy of an imaginary proffitution, even where they have virtue enough to avoid the reality. Let our young readers, Mr. Babier, icriously think on thefe cu cumstances; and then I hope few, efpecially of the fofter. fex, will ever think of embracing fo defpicable an employment. I am, Sir, &c. MARIA O BALDISTON

Tis a privilege with the greatest number of those people who entertain a high notion of their own wit, to rail forever at the only inftitution upon which the happiness of all fociety is founded; and to pour out an inceffant to rent of ridicule upon poor matrimony, though they owe thir own existence to the eftablishment of that facred ordinance. The motive, indeed, which the generality of our libertines affign for this averfion to marriage is, that the rite is a reftraint upon all their other enjoyments; and that the moment a man devotes himself to one woman, that moment he is obliged, not only to alter the former tenor of his conduct, but to put up with every petulance of the lady's temper, however unreasonable the may be in her requests, or however arbitrary fhe may be in the exercife of her authority.

For my own part, though I have bitherto continued an old batchelor, I have yet feen but few women who rule with an improper authority over their hufbands; nor can I entertain any high notions of the man's underflanding, who once makes it a doubt whether or no he fhould be able to maintain that connubial pre-eminence in his own family, which he receives from the hand of reafon and the cullom of his country. If he poffeffes but a dawn of fenfe, the object of his choice will be fuch as can give him no caufe to apprehend any turbulence of difpofition; and if he poffeffes but a dawn of fpirit, he will always have it in his power to prevent any dif agreeable exertion of it, even in cafe he Should be unhappily deceived.

The pleafanteft argument of all, however, is the neceffity which a married man is under of forfaking all those enjoyments which, while he was a batche lor, created the principal part of his felicity. Yet, furely, if thofe enjoyments are repugnant to reafon, the fooner he forfakes them the better, fince it never can be too early a period to regain the paths of difcretion and virtue; and if they are not oppofite to the dictates of prudence, he must be a very pufillanimous fellow indeed who could once dream of giving them up. In fact, thofe men are always for finding fault with the poor women, who are confcious, of imperfections in themselves; whereas men of fenie, being determined to proceed on a rational plan, are conftantly defirous of doing justice to the merit of the ladies, and never prepofterously fuppofe that they are deftitute either of be nevolence or understanding.

The general run of our libertines, though they are much too fenfible and much too fpirited to put up with any impropriety in the behaviour of a worthy woman, nevertheles fubmit with the greatest chearfulness imaginable to any treatment which a woman of the. town thinks proper to give them, and. blefs their stars with a kind of rapture that they are not hufbands. This is, in plain English, they rejoice that they are not obliged by the laws of their country to bear a merited reproach from the lips of a deferving wife, though the narrownefs of their minds, and the basenefs of their fpirits, can induce them fo readily to put up with the most impudent airs

of

of a defpicable ftrumpet, and to crouch with an infamous fervility at her feet. Sam Squander is a melancholy proof of this affertion. Sam, at the age of twenty, came into an affluent fortune, and launched into all the licentious diffipations which generally captivate young men of opulent circumftances. Fearful that his pleafures, if folly and vice may be called pleafures, would be manacled by the filken bands of wedlock, he declared hinfelf an early enemy to marriage; and has continued to this hour, when he is near as old a fellow as myself, without even withing to tafte the tweets of a domestic felicity. Yet, though averfe to an honourable connection with the fex, he could not exist without fome feminine attachment; attentive, therefore, to the mere gratifications of fenfe, he fingled out a favourite nymph from the purlieus of Drury Lane, took her publicly to his house, and has cohabited with her now above thirty years. A more ungovernable termagant probably never lived; yet Sam is quite happy he is not married. She has more than

once been detected in an amour with his footman; but what of that? Sam put it up, he was not his wife. If the throws a glafs at his head, which is fometimes the cafe, or confines him within doors, for a fortnight, it is no matter, Sam is. ftill happy, and laughs at any of his acquaintance who go home at twelve. o'clock, for fear of making their wives uneafy by a longer abfence from their families. One thing, indeed, makes him miferable; he has two fons by this infamous woman, of whom he is paffionately fond; and the reflection that his eftate muft go into another line for want of a legitimate offspring, is a circumftance which renders him constantly unhappy, even in his fortumate state of batchelorship: fo that, I believe, if the truth were known, Sam is fecretly of opinion with me, that a good wife is the first of all the human felicities; and that the greatest of all fools is he who puts up with the numberless vices of a profligate woman, through a fear of meeting fome natural imperfections in a woman of intrinfic merit and character.

STR,

TH

TO THE BABLER.

HE ingenious Mr. Percy, in the preface to his edition of Old Ballads, declares it as his opinion, that nothing indicates the nature of the times more strongly than the compofition of thofe fongs which are in every body's mouth. Should what he advances upon this occafion be generally allowed, I am very much afraid that the pretent anno Domini would come in for a very dcfpicable fort of a character; our ballads, for the principal part, being fo flimfy in their compofition, and fo dangerous in their end, that very few of them are fit to be taken up by any perfon either of delicacy or understanding.

In the infancy of English poefy, though the verification of our bards was naturally rough and inharmonious, ftill the elevation of fentiment, and morality of defign, which breathed through all their compofitions, rendered them always paff able, and frequently entertaining and ipftructive. But in thefe politer times,

when every man is either a critic or poet, fentiment and delign are equally difregarded: fo a little fimoothnefs in the numbers, and a little chastity in the rhimes, are attended to, we never once trouble our heads about entertainment or inftruction; but go on through thirty or forty lines of lutcious infipidity with the molt perfect compofure, as if the lyric walk of poetry was invented mérêly to tupify our feelings, or to corrupt principles.

The only fubjects upon which our modern lyric poets ever think of exerting their talents, are love and wine. When the ftringer-up of a love-fong condefcends to take the pen, he tells us that young Colin met with Chloe one Maymorning in the grove, and that there he preiled her to be very naughty, and offered her a bit of ribband as a reward for fubmitting to his infamous folicitations; but that the good girl, not chufing to proftitute herfelf for fuch a trifle, Colin is fo ftruck with the dignity of her virtue, that he marries her at once; and the delicate young virgin thinks it the

greatest

greatest happiness in the world to be the wife of a rafcal who wanted to ruin her peace and blaft her reputation.

If a modern ballad-writer, indeed, wants to be uncommonly arch and humourous, he goes a different way to work; he tells us, that brifk Will the ploughman, having long had a paffion for Nell the dairy-maid, way-lays the girl as he is going to milk her cows; and finding that there is no poffibility of arguing her out of her virtue,, he -feizes that by force which the refuses to grant through favour, and very fairly ravifhes her. Nell, who all her life before had been a girl of principle, instead of harbouring the leaft refentment against the villain for fo infamous an outrage, bursts into aloudfit of laughing, acquaints him that all her former pretenfions to virtue were nothing more than the refult of affectation; and invites him, with all the confidence of habitual proftitution, to a repetition of their guilty intercourfe. The more bare-faced the indecency, the more humourous we reckon the compofition; and the prudent mamma teaches it to her infant daughter, and inflames the opening imagination with the earliest defcription of that glowing connection of the fexes, which in a little time is but too likely to endanger both her happinefs and her character.

The gentlemen, however, who celebrate the virtues of the grape, go ftill farther than the profeffed votaries of Cupid: with all the stupidity of the love fong writers, they inculcate a greater fhare of immorality, and advife us no lefs to the utmost brutalities of intoxication, than to the utmost exceffes of a Libidinous fenfuality. They teach us to think that the joys of futurity are infi nitely unequal to the profligacies of the few; and that we are raised into fomething equal with the Deity, when we have debated ourselves confiderably lower

may argue in this manner, I fhall only obferve, that if this fpecies of poetry is capable of being perverted to the porpoles of vice, it is allo capable of being turned to the interefts of virtue. It does not follow, becaufe a poem is fet to mufic, that it should be destitute of decency or fentiment, Thofe facred compofitions which we fing in honour of the Deity, however execrably we have seen them verfified, are nevertheless fraught with inftruction, and it is that inftruction only which in their prefent miferable dress has rendered them any way tolerable. Of confequence, therefore, if a little good fenfe in cur hymnus does not difgrace the importance of the fubject, it cannot poffibly leffen those inferior productions which we compofe for the bufinefs of focial enjoyment and friendly feftivity.

Inconfiderable as the compofition of a fong may feem upon it's first appearance, nevertheless, when we reflect that, of all the different kinds of poetry, it is what is molt generally in our mouths, and confequently what is moft familiar to our recollection, a man of any sense or benevolence cannot but regret to find it fo generally prostituted to the purpofes of folly or vice. The elegance of an air can by no means deftroy the profligacy of a fcandalous fentiment. Mufic, on the contrary, is well known to give an additional energy to language; and many a young lady, by habituating her felf to hear the infidious addresses of a defigning lover in, verfe, has been brought to countenance the most imme diate applications of palpable profe; and led at lait into an eftcem of thofe principles by a fong, which would have shocked her to the laft degree had they been first of all communicated in commen converfation.

For thefe reafons, therefore, I wish to fee the lyric fpecies of compofition refcued from contempt, efpecially fince it is a mortification to every gentleman-of mufical abilities to be under a necefluy of giving fuch an embellishment to the productions of vice or ftupidity, as muit not only greatly difgult his own good fenfe, but materially injure the morals of the public. I am, Sir, Se..

CRITO.

in the world which poffeffes more humi lity than pride; and nothing which induces us to make more unneceffary conceffions to other people, than a defire of enhancing the importance of ourselves. This vanity leads us into a thousand abfurdities, and not feldom into a number of vices to expofe it, therefore, fhall be the business of the prefent paper; and if I can make but one reader a little afhamed of his low-minded exaltation, 1 fhall do more effential fervice than if I had employed half a century in the more elegant purposes of that delicate amufe ment, where fober inftruction is facrificed to a prettiness of ftile, and the imagination kept perpetually alive at the total expence of the understanding.

My nephew, Harry Rattle, called upon me yesterday, and told me, if I would pafs the evening with him at the Cardigan Head, he did not doubt but what I fhould meet with a fufficient fubject for a paper or two, as he was engaged in a party where there were to be fome extraordinary characters. Having nothing very material on my hands, I affented to his propofal; and calling upon him about feven o'clock in a hackneycoach, we went together to the tavern,

ing among his most intimate acquaint

If any body differed from his opinion, he had canvaffed the point with Lord Such-a-thing but the day before; and as to fecrets of a political nature, 'no man in the kingdom knew more of the most private tranfactions of govern. ment. He had called upon a certain Earl in the morning, who let him into fome matters of the firit confequence; and dined with a noble Duke, who af fured him, that there would be no change whatfoever in the ministry. In short, let the converfation turn upon what it would, he bore down all oppofition with fome right honourable friend of his; and thought it an unaccountable prefumption in any perfon who did not allow a nobleman's name to have more weight than an abfolute matter of fact in an argument.

When Harry and I were returning home, he gave me the captain's history in nearly the following words. The

captain,' fays he, though an honest and a brave man at bottom, is neverthelefs fuch a compound of arrogance and fervility, that I am often at a lofs to know which he most deferves, our refentment or our contempt. Originally bred in obfcurity, he conceives a fort of adoration for every man with

The firft perfon who attracted my obfervation was a young fellow of about thirty, dreffed in regimentals, whom I found to be a captain of dragoons, and who, it feems, had raised himself from the humble Ration of a quarter-mafter to the command of a troop, merely by the bravery of his behaviour in the celebrated battle of Minden. I had not been in company many minutes before I faw this gentleman entertained the higheft notions imaginable of his own importance: when he spoke, it was with an air of vifible fuperiority; he affumed a dignity of look, and an indifference of accent, as if he conferred a prodigious favour in every fyllable he uttered; and took care to lofe no opportunity of informing us what a number of the first nobility he had the honour of rank.

company of a lord, is mean enough. to put up with ail the infolence of coronated pride, and even stoops to run on the most pitiful errands, for the fa⚫tisfaction of being reckoned among the number of it's acquaintance. Yet this affiduity to oblige the great is not fufficient to preserve him even from their ridicule; they fee from what trivial motive his attachment arifes, and treat him with more difrefpect than the loweft of their footmen, because they know his pride will not foffer him on any account to discontinue his attendance. Thns his vanity defeats it's own purpofes: instead of encreafing his confequence, it renders him utterly defpicable, and makes him no lefs a jelt to his fuperiors, than to those who are merely on a footing with himfelt.

That little man, whom you took notice of, in black,' continued Harry, S

is