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The Leodiensian.

Exit.

Jaques. I'll tarry no longer with you:-farewell
good signior love.

Orlando.-I am glad of your departure:-adieu
good Monsieur Melancholy.

Exit Jaques

AS YOU LIKE IT.

In retiring from this amateur stage on which, for the last ten months, I have had my exits and my entrances, I cannot refrain from making my most courteous devoirs to such as have received the performance favourably, a goodhumoured nod to the gallery, who have neither understood nor criticised, and even a distant deferential bend to those sour looking gentlemen in the far corner of the pit, who would fain have had me "speak the speech trippingly on the tongue as they pronounced it to me,"-and, because I have not allowed them to be my prompters, swear by their beards, that I have "o'erstept the modesty of nature.”

I have no complaint to make. I will not be like those French organ grinders, who, disappointed of their expected halfpence, abuse you at leaving your door.

For though I have thought the last mentioned part of the audience rather uncharitable, I have no more right to be uncivil, and depreciate their intellects, than I have to cudgel a man for not liking pickled walnuts to his fish. And I have to thank many for receiving me with an indulgence that I wish I had deserved.

Many things which it would be very egotistic to detail, induce me to retire. But, principally, I anı tired of this playing at being an author:-it is little better than our gentlemen of the army here playing at coachmen :-(some of them, by the way, lead me to suspect they are fitting themselves much better for coachmen than guards).

I was honoured, a day or two ago, with an acrostic, the conclusion of which was—

Leave, leave thy motley on the shelf,
Doff thy cap, and be thyself.

-But who myself is, I'll be hang'd if I know. Yet as the advice was from one I most esteem, and as, moreover it tallys with my present humour, (good obedient child!) I'll follow it in some degree.-But if I put my coat any where within reach, I shall be sure to try it on again;—I will, therefore, utterly cast it away.

Here goes-Whuu oop-there it flies-it is not worth catching, Sir,-they tell me it is out at elbows,— yet, as it has fallen upon your back-may it be Elijah's mantle to you!

-My dear cap I cannot part with:-But I'll only keep it to look at.

An author is but,

"A walking shadow ;-a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more :

I shall soon, therefore, get comfortably fixed in the tomb of oblivion;-that happy repose for writers and their writings, where if they are inaccessible to praise, they are at least beyond the reach of ignorance and malice.

To that blessed rest too, Leodia, and my fellow candidates for her favour, are hastening, though they linger a little behind me. There Ephraim shall forget his companions at Woodhouse feast, and there he shall be forgotten by them. There sleeping by my side, he shall involuntarily kiss the cheek, he would once have spat upon. There J. oblivious of his select band of admirers, and of his dear Living Poets, aye, oblivious of himself, shall slumber cheek by jowl with our Editor. There shall

-Upon my word I am writing so prettily I'll just mend my pen and take pains.

Ptshsh-Zounds! I've cut my thumb!-such a deplorable gash,—I can't even write my name, can't hold my pen.-I have no amanuensis but Atticus, who is so fidgetty to go out to dinner that I must conclude.- It is truly vexatious when one was winding up matters so nicely for the thread to be broken.

My ancestor told us

All the world's a stage,
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.

I make my exit in the third.-In which of them I may ever appear again-Heaven knows.—

-There is one to whom I have often drank at the Castalian stream:-In offering the following lines—I drain my stirrup cup.

His

Nich: + Jaques

Ardennes Lodge, 30 June.

Mark.