THE humours and characters of a populous county town at a distance from the capital, furnish matter of much amusement to a curious observer. I have now been some weeks resident in a place of this description, where I have been continually treated with the private lives and little scandalizing anecdotes of almost every person of any note in it. Having passed most of my days in the capital, I could not but remark the striking difference between it and these subordinate capitals in this particular : in London we are in the habit of looking to our own affairs, and caring little about those, with whom we have no dealings: here every body's business seems to be no less his neighbour's concerns than his own: a set of tattling gossips (including all the idlers in the place, male as well as female) seem to have no other employment for their time or tongue, but to run from house to house, and circulate their silly storics up and down. A few of these contemptible impertinents I shall now describe. Miss Penelope Tabby is an antiquated maiden of at least forty years standing, a great observer of decorum, and particularly hurt by the behaviour of VOL. XL. tillions, and the dean and chapter dance to them. The doctor is a mighty admirer of those ingenious publications, which are intitled The Flowers of the several authors they are selected from: this short cut to Parnassus not only saves him a great deal of round-about riding, but supplies him with many an apt couplet for off-hand quotations, in which he is very expert, and has besides a clever knack of wearing them into his pulpit essays (for I will not call them sermons) in much the same way as Tiddy. Doll stuck plums on his short pigs and his long pigs and his pigs with a curley tail.' By a proper sprinkling of these spiritual nosegays, and the re commendation of a soft insinuating address, doctor Pyeball is universally cried up as a very pretty gen teel preacher, one who understands the politeness of the pulpit, and does not surfeit well-bred people with more religion than they have stomachs for. Amiable Miss Pen Tabby is one of the warmest admirers, and declares Doctor Pyeball in his gown and cassock is quite the man of fashion: the ill-natured world will have it she has contemplated him in other situations with equal approbation. Elegant Mrs. Dainty is another ornament of this charming coterie: she is separated from her hus band, but the eye of malice never spied a speck upon her virtue; his manners were insupportable, she, good lady, never gave him the least provocation, for she was always sick and mostly confined to her chamber in nursing a delicate constitution: noises racked her head, company shook her nerves all to pieces; in the country she could not live, for coun try doctors and apothecaries knew nothing of her case: in London she could not sleep, unless the whole street was littered with straw. Her husband was a man of no refinement; all the fine feeling of the human heart' were heathen Greek to him; h loved his friend, had no quarrel with his bottle, and, coming from his club one night a little flustered, his horrid dalliances threw Mrs. Dainty into strong hysterics, and the covenanted truce being now broken, she kept no further terms with him, and they separated. It was a step of absolute necessity, for she declares her life could no otherwise have been saved; his boisterous familiarities would have been her death. She now leads an uncontaminated life, supporting a feeble frame by medicine, sipping her tea with her dear quiet friends, every evening, chatting over the little news of the day, sighing charitably when she hears any evil of her kind neighbours, turning off her femme-de-chambre once a week or thereabouts, fondling her lap-dog, who is a dear sweet pretty creature, and so sensible, and taking the air now and then on a pillion behind faithful John, who is so careful of her and so handy, and at the same time one of the stoutest, handsomest, best-limbed lads in all England. Sir Hugo Fitz-Hugo is a decayed baronet of a family so very ancient, that they have long since worn out the estate that supported them: Sir Hugo knows his own dignity none the less, and keeps a little snivelling boy, who can scarce move under the load of worsted lace, that is plaistered down the edges and seams of his livery: he leaves a visiting card at your door, stuck as full of emblems as an American paper dollar. Sir Hugo abominates a tradesman; his olfactory nerves are tortured with the scent of a grocer, or a butcher quite across the way, and as for a tallow-chandler he can wind him to the very end of the street; these are people, whose visits he cannot endure; their very bills turn his stomach upside down. Sir Hugo inveighs against modern manners as severely as Cato would against French cookery; he notes down omissions 125. Fragment of Hermesianax of Colophon, addressed to his mistress Leontium, describing the amours of the Greek poets. Of the seven wise men. Of the ca- lendar of the Greeks and other nations. Of Thales. Thespis's pretensions to be considered as the father Of the nature and character of the first drama. Athenian history resumed, and continued from the death of Pisistratus to that of Hipparchus. 129. The same continued, to the expulsion of Hippias. 130. Concluded with the battle of Marathon. 134. Of the tragedies of Eschylus. 135. Of the Greek comedy. Of Aristotle's definition and chronology of the first comedy. Of Epicharmus, considered as the first writer of comedy. 136. Fragments of Epicharmus. Account of Phormis, Of Cratinas and his comedy in reply to the satire of Aristophanes. Of Eupolis; his fragments compared with certain passages in Ben Jonson. 138. Of Aristophanes; his history, character, and works. 139. Aristophanes defended from the criticisms of Plutarch, also from the account which Ælian gives of his 140. The motives and grounds for Aristophanes's attack upon Socrates more fully considered, with some anecdotes of that philosopher's school and private Of the remaining writers of the old comedy; viz. Amipsias, Plato, Crates, Phrynichus, Pherecrates. Amphis, Hermippus, Hipparchus, Philonides, and Theopompus, with their fragments translated. 142. Of the middle comedy of the Greeks. Anecdotes of Alexis: fragments of that dramatic poet collected. |