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nutes of perishing, before I could prevail on an unconscionable dog of a labourer, who happened to be within hearing of my cries, to help me out for half-acrown. The fellow was so rapacious as to insist upon a crown for above a quarter of an hour; and I verily believe he would not have abated me a single farthing, if he had not seen me at the last gasp, and determined to die rather than submit to his extortion.'

But to return to my subject. If there are objections to general satire, something may also be said against personal abuse; which, though it is a kind of writing that requires a smaller portion of parts, and is sure of having almost as many admirers as readers, is nevertheless subject to great difficulties; it being absolutely necessary, that the author who undertakes it should have no feeling of certain evils, common to humanity, which are known by the names of pain and shame. In other words, he must be insensible to a good kicking, and have no memory of it afterward. Now though a great many authors have found it an easy matter to arrive at this excellence, with me the task would be attended with great labour and difficulty; as it is my misfortune to have contracted, either by the prejudice of education, or by some other means, an invincible aversion to pain and dishonour. I am very sensible that I may hurt myself as a writer by this confession; but it was never any pleasure of mine to raise expectations with a design to disappoint them: and though it should lose me the major part of my readers, I hereby declare, that I never will indulge them with any personal abuse; nor will I so much as attack any of those fine gentlemen, or fine ladies, who have the honour of being single in any one character, be it ever so ridiculous.

But if I had every requisite for this kind of writing, there are certain people in town, whom it would

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be ingratitude in me to attack. The masters of both the theatres are my good friends; for which reason I forbear to say, that half the comedies in their catalogue ought to be damned for wickedness and indecency. But I not only keep this to myself, but have also been at great trouble and pains to suppress a passage bearing very hard against them, in a book, which will speedily be published, called the Progress of Wit. The author of this book, who, luckily for the theatres, happens to be a particular friend of mine, is a very great joker; and, as I often tell him does a vast deal of mischief, without seeming to intend it. The passage which I prevailed with him to suppress, stood at the beginning of the thirteenth chapter of his book, and was exactly as follows:

'As it was now clear to all people of fashion that men had no souls, the business of life was pleasure and amusement; and he that could best administer to these two, was the most useful member of society. From hence arose those numerous places of resort and recreation which men of narrow and splenetic minds have called the pests of the public. The most considerable of which places, and which are at this day in the highest reputation, were the bagnios and the theatres. The bagnios were constantly under the direction of discreet and venerable matrons, who had passed their youth in the practice of those exercises which they were now teaching to their daughters: while the management of the theatres was the province of the men.-The natural connexion between these houses made it convenient that they should be erected in the neighbourhood of each other; and indeed the harmony subsisting between them has inclined many people to think that the profits of both were divided equally by each. But I have always considered them as only playing

into one another's hands, without any nearer affinity than that of the schools of Westminster and Eton, to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. At the playhouse young gentlemen and ladies were instructed by an Etheridge, a Wycherley, a Congreve, and a Vanbrugh, in the rudiments of that science, which they were to perfect at the bagnio, under a Needham, a Haywood, a Haddock, and a Roberts.'

Thus much had my friend, in his Progress of Wit, thought proper to observe upon the looseness of the stage. But as the whole passage is suppressed, the managers will have nothing to fear from the publication of that performance.

It were to be wished, indeed, that those gentlemen would have done entirely both with tragedy and comedy, and resolve at once to entertain the town only with pantomime. That great advantages would accrue from it, is beyond dispute; people of taste and fashion have already given sufficient proof that they think it the highest entertainment the stage is capable of affording: the most innocent, we are sure it is; for where nothing is said, and nothing meant, very little harm can be done. Mr. Garrick, perhaps, may start a few objections to this proposal; but with those universal talents, which he so happily possesses, it is not to be doubted but he will, in time, be able to handle the wooden sword with as much dignity and dexterity as his brother Lun. He will also reap another advantage from this kind of acting; as he will have fewer enemies by being the finest Harlequin of the age, than he has at present, by being the greatest Actor of any age or country.

'TO THE PUBLIC.

'Whereas some gentlemen have doubted whether

the subscription for the use of King Theodore was really intended to be carried on, I am ordered to acquaint the public, that Mr. Fitz-Adam was not only in earnest in promoting such a contribution, but has already received some noble benefactions for that purpose; and he will take care to apply the subsidy in the most uncorrupt manner to the uses for which it was designed, and to the honour and dignity of the crown of Corsica.

ROBERT DODSLEY.'

N° 10. THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 1753.

THE great men, who introduced the reformation into these kingdoms, were so sensible of the necessity of maintaining devotion in the minds of the vulgar by some external objects, by somewhat of ceremony and form, that they refrained from entirely ripping off all ornament from the drapery of religion. When they were purging the calendar of legions of visionary saints, they took due care to defend the niches of real martyrs from profanation. They preserved the holy festivals, which had been consecrated for many ages to the great luminaries of the church, and at once paid proper observance to the memory of the good, and fell in with the popular humour, which loves to rejoice and mourn`at the discretion of the almanack.

In so enlightened an age as the present, I shall perhaps be ridiculed if I hint, as my opinion, that the observation of certain festivals is something more than a mere political institution. I cannot, however, help thinking that even nature itself concurs

to confirm my sentiment. Philosophers and freethinkers tell us that a general system was laid down at first, and that no deviations have been made to accommodate it to any subsequent events, or to favour and authorize any human institutions. When the reformation of the calendar was in agitation, to the great disgust of many worthy persons, who urged how great the harmony was, in the old establishment, between the holidays and their attributes (if I may call them so), and what a confusion would follow if Michaelmas-day, for instance, was not to be celebrated when stubble geese are in their highest perfection; it was replied, that such a propriety was merely imaginary, and would be lost of itself, even without any alteration of the calendar by authority: for if the errors in it were suffered to go on, they would in a certain number of years produce such a variation, that we should be mourning for good King Charles on a false thirtieth of January, at a time of year when our ancestors used to be tumbling over head and heels in Greenwich-park, in honour of Whitsuntide; and at length be choosing king and queen for Twelfth-night, when we ought to be admiring the London Prentice at Bartholomew-fair.

Cogent as these reasons may seem, yet I think I can confute them from the testimony of a standing miracle, which not having submitted to the fallible authority of an act of parliament, may well be said to put a supernatural negative on the wisdom of this world. My readers, no doubt, are already aware that I have in my eye the wonderful thorn of Glastonbury, which, though hitherto regarded as a trunk of Popish imposture, has notably exerted itself as the most Protestant plant in the universe. It is well known that the correction of the calendar was enacted by Pope Gregory the Thirteenth, and that the reformed churches have with a proper spirit of op

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