s thor should be required to mount, and stand his hour, who will not give a plain man leave to "enjoy an exposed to the apples and oranges of the pit ;-this evening's entertainment, but with their frothy as amende honorable would well suit with the mean- and incessant finding of faults, either drown his paraness of some authors, who in their prologues fairly sure quite, or force him in his own defence to prostrate their sculls to the audience, and seem to their clamorous censure. The hiss always invite a pelting. Or why should they not have their with these. When this creature springs ha pens publicly broke over their heads, as the swords you would think, from the noise it makes, fer va of recreant knights in old times were, and an oath something in it; but you have only to exam administered to them that they should never write instrument from which the noise proceeds, l again. will find it typical of a critic's tongue, membrane, empty, voluble, and seated it contemptible part of the creature's body. The Whip Snake. This is he that lashes the p author the next day in the newspapers. The Deaf Adder, or Surda Echidna of Las Under this head may be classed all that The provocations to which a dramatic genius is exposed from the public are so much the more vexatious, as they are removed from any possibility of retaliation, the hope of which sweetens most other injuries for the public never writes itself.Not but something very like it took place at the time of the O.-P. differences. The placards which were the spectators (for audience they properly nightly exhibited, were, properly speaking, the com- who not finding the first act of a piece answer position of the public. The public wrote them, the preconceived notions of what a first acts public applauded them, and precious morceaux of like Obstinate, in John Bunyan, pasively wit and eloquence they were; except some few, of their fingers in their ears, that they may mas a better quality, which it is well known were fur-word of what is coming, though perhaps th nished by professed dramatic writers. After this next act may be composed in a style as dif specimen of what the public can do for itself, it should be a little slow in condemning what others do for it. As the degrees of malignancy vary in people according as they have more or less of the Old Serpent (the father of hisses) in their composition, I have sometimes amused myself with analyzing this many-headed hydra, which calls itself the public, into the component parts of which it is "complicated, head and tail," and seeing how many varieties of the snake kind it can afford. First, there is the Common English Snake.-This is that part of the auditory who are always the majority at damnations, but who, having no critical venom in themselves to sting them on, stay till they hear others hiss, and then join in for company. The Blind Worm is a species very nearly allied to the foregoing. Some naturalists have doubted whether they are not the same. The Rattle Snake.-These are your obstreporous talking critics,—the impertinent guides of the pit, possible, and be written quite to their ows These adders refuse to hear the voice of the c because the tuning of his instrument gus offence. I should weary my reader and myself were to go through all the classes of the kind. Two qualities are common to them are creatures of remarkably cold dige chiefly haunt pits and low grounds. I proceed with more pleasure to give of a club to which I have the honour to There are fourteen of us, who are all as have been once in our lives what is ralle We meet on the anniversaries of our respecturi and make ourselves merry at the expense of > lic. The chief tenets which distinguish eas and which every man among us is bound to gospel, are, That the public, or mob, in all ages, la a set of blind, deaf, obstinate, sessel es. That no man of genius in his senses would | the proposition, we lost the benefit of that highly sabitious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrate-lutary and antidotal dish. The privilege of admis bble. That the only legitimate end of writing sion to our club is strictly limited to such as have em is to pick their pockets, and, that failing, been fairly damned. A piece that has met with ever re at full liberty to vilify and abuse them as so little applause, that has but languished its night or as ever we think fit. two, and then gone out, will never entitle its author it authors, by their affected pretences to humi- to a seat among us. An exception to our usual reahich they made use of as a cloak to insinuate diness in conferring this privilege is, in the case of a writings into the callous senses of the multitude, writer, who, having been once condemned, writes to every thing but the grossest flattery, have again, and becomes candidate for a second martyrgrees made that great beast their master; as we dom. Simple damnation we hold to be a merit, but et submission to children till we are obliged to to be twice damned we adjudge infamous. Such a e it in earnest. That authors are and ought to one we utterly reject, and black-ball without a sidered the masters and preceptors of the pub-hearing : id not vice versa. That it was so in the days heus, Linus, and Musæus, and would be so if it were not that writers prove traitors to Ives. That in particular, in the days of the f those three great authors just mentioned, ces appear to have been perfect models of what ces should be; for though along with the trees rocks and the wild creatures, which he drew An author had just seen one of his pieces damned im to listen to his strains, some serpents doubt-at the theatre, when he had somewhat recovered from ne to hear his music, it does not appear that the mortification of this fall, he went to visit the among them ever lifted up a dissentient voice. actress who had played the principal part; he told new what was due to authors in those days. her, in the hope that she would say something to very stock and stone turns into a serpent, and console him, that the public was not always just; that, besides, his friends were wrong for having the terms "Courteous Reader" and "Can-pressed him so much to write, and that the fruit was ditors," as having given rise to a false notion not yet ripe.-" Oh, ripe or not," replied the actress, to whom they were applied, as if they con- it has, however, fallen." =pon them some right, which they cannot have, cising their judgments, ought to be utterly d and exploded, The common damn'd shun his society. Hoping that this publication of our regulations may be a means of inviting some more members into our society, I conclude this history. oice. e are our distinguishing tenets. To keep up mory of the cause in which we suffered, as ents sacrificed a goat, a supposed unhealthy to Esculapias, on our feast-nights we cut ose, an animal typical of the popular voice, eities of Candour and Patient Hearing. A member of the society once proposed that we revive the obsolete luxury of viper-broth; stomachs of some of the company rising at SEMEL DAMNATUS. PREMATURE FRUIT. SPANISH PRIDE. A Spanish ambassador was one day vaunting to Henry IV. of France, the power of his master. The king, in order to take down the Spaniard's vanity, observed to him, with a lively air of raillery, that if he were to take it into his head to get on horseback, he could go and breakfast at Milan, hear mass at Rome, and dine at Naples. "Sire," replied the ambassador, "if your majesty travels so fast, you might also go and hear vespers at Sicily on the same day." THE TYBURN TRAGEDY. On the Murder of John Hays, by his wife Catherine, in 1726, for which she was burnt alive at Tyburn, May 9, in the same year. In Tyburn-road, a man there liv'd She oft defil'd his bed. Full twice a day to church he went, Sure never was a saint on earth, If that no saint was he! But then her heart began to relent, She cut him into four. All in the dark and dead of night, His marrow-bones she laid. But heav'n, whose power no limit knows Soon caus'd this head for to be thrown This head being found, the justices And all agreed there must have been But, since no body could be found, Next, that it no self-murder was, God prosper long our noble king, ON BURIAL SOCIETIES. "A favourable opportunity now offers to son, of either sex, who would wish to be buil genteel manner, by paying one shilling and two pence per week for the benefit of the Members to be free in six months. The a be paid at Mr. Middleton's, at the sign of the and the Last, Stonecutter's-street, Fleet-mark deceased to be furnished as follows: a stra coffin, covered with superfine black, and fi with two rows, all round, close drove, and japanned nails, and adorned with ornamenta a handsome plate of inscription, angel flower beneath, and four pair of handsome! with wrought gripes; the coffin to be well p had been more solicitous to defend it from dishonours at its dissolution, than careful to pamper it with good things in the time of its union. If Cæsar were chiefly anxious at his death how he might die most decently, every Burial Society may be considered as a club of Cæsars. ed, and ruffled with fine crape; a handsome crape roud, cap, and pillow. For use, a handsome velvet , three gentlemen's cloaks, three crape hatbands, ee hoods and scarfs, and six pair of gloves; two ters equipped to attend the funeral, a man to atd the same with band and gloves; also the burial paid, if not exceeding one guinea." Nothing tends to keep up in the imaginations of Man," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is a noble the poorer sort of people a generous horror of the nal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave." workhouse more than the manner in which pauper oever drew up this little advertisement, certainly funerals are conducted in this metropolis. The coffin erstood this appetite in the species, and has made nothing but a few naked planks, coarsely put together, adant provision for it. It really almost induces the want of a pall (that decent and well-imagined dium vitæ upon one to read it. Methinks I could veil, which, hiding the coffin that hides the body, willing to die, in death to be so attended. The keeps that which would shock us at two removes rows all round close-drove best black japanned from us), the coloured coats of the men that are how feelingly do they invite and almost hired, at cheap rates, to carry the body,-altogether, istibly persuade us to come and be fastened down. give the notion of the deceased having been some at aching head can resist the temptation to repose, person of an ill-life and conversation, some one who h the crape shroud, the cap, and the pillow, may not claim the entire rites of burial,-one by at? what sting is there in death, which the whom some parts of the sacred ceremony would be les with wrought gripes are not calculated to desecrated if they should be bestowed upon him. I t away? what victory in the grave, which the meet these meagre processions sometimes in the street. and the velvet pall do not render at least They are sure to make me out of humour and melanmely disputable? but above all, the pretty em- choly all the day after. They have a harsh and atic plate with angel above and flower beneath, ominous aspect. me mightily. If there is any thing in the prospectus issued from e notice goes on to inform us, that though the Mr. Middleton's, Stonecutter's-street, which pleases y has been established but a very few years, me less than the rest, it is to find, that the six pair rds of eleven hundred persons have put down of gloves are to be returned, that they are only lent, names. It is really an affecting consideration as the bill expresses it, for use, on the occasion. The nk of so many poor people, of the industrious hoods, scarfs, and hatbands, may properly enough be ard-working class (for none but such would be given up after the solemnity; the cloaks no gentlesed of such a generous forethought) clubbing man would think of keeping; but a pair of gloves, twopences to save the reproach of a parish once fitted on, ought not in courtesy to be re1. Many a poor fellow, I dare swear, has that demanded. The wearer should certainly have the and flower kept from the Angel and Punch-fee-simple of them. The cost would be but trifling, while, to provide himself a bier, he has curhimself of beer. Many a savoury morsel has ing body been deprived of, that the lifeless one be served up in a richer state to the worms. re, if the body could understand the actions soul, and entertained generous notions of it would thank its provident partner, that she and they would be a proper memorial of the day. This part of the proposals wants reconsidering. It is not conceived in the same liberal way of thinking as the rest. I am also a little doubtful whether the limit, within which the burial-fee is made payable, should not be extended to thirty shillings. Some provision too ought to be made in favour of THE LAUGHING PHILOSOPHER. THE DEJEUNE. A PINDABIC OUT. And was the sorrow so profound, those well-intentioned persons and well-wishers to part to make appear pretended, said to him in a the fund, who having all along paid their subscrip- low tone,-" So, you have the misfortune to be tions regularly, are so unfortunate as to die before deaf, sir?" "Yes, sir." "You have great difficulty the six months, which would entitle them to their in hearing ?"" freedom, are quite completed. Yes, sir, very." " And it verst One can hardly till I raised my voice thus (lowering it still more) imagine a more distressing case than that of a poor that you could hear what I said at all? «Na, ." fellow lingering on in a consumption till the period of his freedom is almost in sight, and then finding himself going with a velocity which makes it doubtful whether he shall be entitled to his funeral honours : his quota to which he nevertheless squeezes out, to the diminution of the comforts which sickness demands. I think, in such cases, some of the contribution-money ought to revert. With some such modifications, which might easily be introduced, I see nothing in these proposals of Mr. Middleton which is not strictly fair and genteel; and heartily recommend them to all persons of moderate incomes, in either sex, who are willing that this perishable part of them should quit the scene of its mortal activities with as handsome circumstances as possible. So deep the anguish of despair I Before I quit the subject, I must guard my readers against a scandal which they may be apt to take at (Though grief, my stomach's pride deleating, the place whence these proposals purport to be issued. Forbade me then to think of eating)From the sign of the First and the Last, they may I know-for I, with sorrow quelï'd, conclude that Mr. Middleton is some publican, who, Sat gazing sad, for many an hour, in assembling a club of this description at his house, know, how touch'd with hopes unknown bebe. The breakfast I might not devour,may have a sinister end of his own, altogether foreign to the solemn purpose for which the club is pretended That larder sent forth all his bosom'd store, His cold heart kindling high with amorous to be instituted. I must set them right by informing them, that the issuer of these proposals is no publican, Still, still I see it; nothing else I can see, His out-spread pride, and pomp of glans though he hangs out a sign, but an honest super-While that unparallel'd breakfast Blasts intendant of funerals, who, by the device of a cradle and coffin, connecting both ends of human existence together, has most ingeniously contrived to insinuate, that the framers of these first and last receptacles of mankind divide this our life betwixt them, and that all that passes from the midwife to the undertaker may, in strict propriety, go for nothing: an awful and instructive lesson to human vanity. ACCOMMODATING DEAFNESS. Mr. Garrow in examining a witness who happened to be deaf, and whose deafness it was Mr. G.'s fancy. I see him-yes, I recognise him; High 'mid the scene, in kingly state, Dark richness of deep glowing brown, |