Serjeant Glynn's Addrefs of Thanks to the Freeholders of Middlefex. 229 comes out; but have endeavoured with fuccefs, and are fill endeavouring to put it in the power of the Serjeant to fulfil his promife, and to bring the charge home to the HIRED and the HIRERS. But you endeavour to juftify what you have done; and hint that it was a fair return, be cause the Serjeant, you fay, had let loose on you a band of writers, to be the affaffins of your reputation. I will tell you what you know already; I wrote most of the letters that appeared against you in the papers. In them I have afferted nothing but public facts, which I am ready to be answerable for, which I can prove, and which you cannot difpute. And I tell you this now, notwithstanding we are to have another day's election, which you may, perhaps, intend to make another day's car nage, You falfely accufe the Serjeant of having "exerted every effort to fet up USAGE in oppofition to the LAW OF THE LAND." Mr. Glyn never defired any thing from the Sheriffs, but that they would take fuch measures as might tend to finish the poll, as ufual, in one day. He gave some of his reasons why he wifhed it to be fo, and he propofed fuch meafures as he thought would effect it; but he fubmitted them entirely to the Sheriffs. The meatures he propofed were fuch as had been always taken; fuch as are not in oppofition to any one law of the land; and to which I defy you, or your agents, to make any folid objection. If I could efface the melancholy impreffions of laft Thursday, I fhould, with other unfeeling men, laugh at the abfurdity of what follows, where you endeavour to juftify your proceedings, by the USAGE of all contefted popular elections," and where you affect to confider thofe new-fashioned Conftables, as Sir John Fielding termed them, I mean your hired ruffians, the Irifh chairmen, as" affiftants to the Civil Magiftrates.' The bufinefs of the approaching poll prevents my faying half what I have to tell you; but Ï mife pro you, you shall hear from me again and again, if you will please to iflue out your orders to your ruffians to grant me a REPRIEVE till after the election. JOHN HORNE, A Plain Common Freeholder. To the Gentlemen, Clergy, and Freeholders of the County of Middlefex. GENTLEMEN, THE fuccefs with which your public virtue and perfeverance have been crowned, gives me a fatisfaction equal to the honour it reflects on you. My thanks will beît be expreffed by my future conduct, which alone can determine whether I am, or am not, wor thy of that generous fupport I have met with from you. You have triumphed over every intereft, over every difcouragement; and have fhewn yourfelves, in the difcharge of your duty to your country, equally unbiafied by hope, or by fear. May you meet with the only reward you look for,- the confirmation of all your Rights, the enjoyment of all your Liberties. As my private advantage and honour were by no means the motives of your exertion in my behalf, fo neither fhall they be the objects of my actions. I confider the choice you have made of me for your Reprefentative, as the most authentic declaration of your abhorrence of thofe arbitrary and oppreffive measures which have too long difgraced the Administration of these kingdoms; and which, if purfued, cannot fail to deftroy our most excellent Conftitution. I hope that your example will lead other counties alfo to affert their independence; and that the facred flame of Liberty, which always afcends, will reach at length the higher orders of this nation, and warm them like wife to a difdain of offering or accepting the Wages of Corruption. Again, and again, Gentlemen, I congratulate and thank you; and shall efteem those the happieft moments of my life, in which I fhall be employed in paying off any part of that great debt of gratitude, which, by your kindness, I have contracted. You fhall always find me, Your moft grateful, and Bloomsbury-Square, JOHN GLYNN, To the EDITORS of the OXFORD MAGAZINE. A B. C. The The OCCASIONAL IS T. "All the world's a flage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man, in his time, plays many parts; His acts being seven ages. First, the infant Mewling and pewking in his nurse's arms: Then, the whining school-boy, with his fatchel, And shining morning face, creeping, like fnail, Unwillingly to fchool: and then the lover, Sighing, like Furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his miftrefs' eye-brow: then, a foldier Full of frange oaths, and bearded like the Pard; Jealous in honor; sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation, cv'n in the cannon's mouth. Then, the juftice, in fair round belly, with good capon lin'd; With eyes fevere and full of formal cut; THE fpeech of Jacques, in Shake pear's admirable comedy of As you like it, which has been lately performed with great applaufe; abounds with a most inflructive leflon of morality. It opens with a moft appofite comparifen of mankind to the incidental changes of a play; and, with great propriety, the dawnings of our life are reprefented as occupying the first act, of the feven, which the poet affigns us. With pain and difficulty are we brought into the world; and, at first, are inferior to the very brutes in our abilities and capacity, to afiift ourfelves. No fooner is the tottering infant reared upon its feet, and enfranchifed from its mother's or nurse's arms, but it is gradually trained up in the art of fpeech, utterance, and pronunciation. The fcenery of the fecond act opens with a fchool; where the child (if a boy) is lashed into the firit rudiments of grammatical knowledge. The painful and inftructive leffons of his preceptor operate very flowly upon his wayward inclinations, and the dread of them, and their rucnacing concomitant, the birchen red, occafion the youth to creep like a fail" willingiv to fchool." Having feen how weak and impotent the first efforts of nature are in un us, and how infignificant her fecond; a new act commences, throughout the course of which, we too frequently endeavour to unlearn what, with fo much drudgery, we had been under a neceffity of learning. The dangerous follies of Love's forbidden dalliances, and caroufing debauches, occupy, for the most part, every fcene of this third act. As for the fourth, it begins to dawn into fomething above the past extravagancies and irregularities of a mispent adolefence. Something of spirit and vivacity rouzes the intoxicated ftrippling, and, now, forfooth, nothing will ferve him but he must commence foldier, and ftrut about in a more active fcene of life. In this diffipated occupation, the few remaining feeds of virtue and erudition, are in too great danger of being totally eradicated from within him. The numberless impertinencies, fwaggerings, and follies, which in Shakespear's time, this profeffion abounded with, difplay much too fruitful a field for fatire, for us to dwell upon, in this more reformed and enlightened age. In compaffion, therefore, to fo honourable a profeffion, we will endeavour to waft our better difciplined gentleman over thefe embers, which, by being difturbed, might chance to be once more lighted up; and will usher. him, with the Poet, into the venerable Juftice's "Cathedra;" where," in fair round belly, with good capon lin'd," he takes a comfortable afternoon's nap. If youthful rudeness, or boyish infolence, provokes the gormandizing Bafhaw, he begins to descant on the modesty, the fobriety, the temperance, and refervedness of young perfons, in his own more caftigated days; and is "full of his wife faws and modern instances." A "lean, flipper'd Pantaloon" is exhibited to us in the fixth act; whom vices, not age, have reduced to a mere skeleton; and whom avarice (now getting the better of the spendthrift lover, the domineering faldier, and the proverbializing juftice) has won over to its fordid views; and now it is that he grudges himself common neceffaries, clad in his old old thread-bare cloaths, and drawing from his moth-eaten cheft, his "youthful hofe" which hang, like loofe bags on his " fhrunk shank.” The melancholy fcene that clofes this event; fnl hiftory of man, is to fee him once more become a child, and a mere driveller. A total forgetfulness of paft tranfactions has darkened his understanding, and buried all his bewil dered ideas in oblivion. In fhort, he now ap: pears a mournful spectacle of horror. "Sans eyes; fans tafte; fans teeth; fans every thing." |