Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

O nefas! Chiefly I noted the coffin to have been without a pall, nothing but a few planks, of cheapest wood that could be had, naked, having none of the ordinary symptomata of a funerall, those locularii which bare the body having on diversely coloured coats, and none black: (one of these reported the deceased to have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper burying-ground he was now going for interment). All which when I behelde, hardly I refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man had been rich, a Crœsus, a Crassus, or as rich as Whittington, what pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure, of rich buriall, ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious ceremonies, had been thought too good for such an one; what store of panegyricks, elogies, funeral orations, &c. some beggarly poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, bountiful, polite, learned, a Mecenas, while as in very deede he was nothing lesse; what weeping, sighing, sorrowing, honing, complaining, kinsmen, friends, relatives, fourtieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for the deceased; hypocritical heirs, sobbing, striking their breasts, (they care not if he

had died a year ago); so many clients, dependants, flatterers, parasites, cunning Gnathoes, tramping on foot after the hearse, all their care is, who shall stand fairest with the successour; he mean time (like enough) spurns them from him, spits at them, treads them under his foot, will have nought to do with any such cattle. I think him in the right: Hac sunt majora gravitate Heracliti. These follies are enough to give crying Heraclitus a fit of the spleene.

MR. H.

A Farce,

IN TWO ACTS,

AS IT WAS PERFORMED AT DRURY-LANE THEATRE,

DECEMBER 1806.

"Mr. H, thou wert DAMNED. Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. H———, and answering that they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert DAMNED! Hadst thou been anonymous, thou haply mightst have lived. But thou didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for want of a better name to pass them off

[ocr errors]

Theatrical Examiner.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

Gentlemen, Ladies, Waiters, Servants, &c.

Scene-BATH.

PROLOGUE.

SPOKEN BY MR. ELLISTON.

Ir we have sinn'd in paring down a name,
All civil well-bred authors do the same.
Survey the columns of our daily writers-
You'll find that some Initials are great fighters.
How fierce the shock, how fatal is the jar,
When Ensign W. meets Lieutenant R.

With two stout seconds, just of their own gizard,
Cross Captain X. and rough old General Izzard!
Letter to Letter spreads the dire alarms,

Till half the Alphabet is up in arms.
Nor with less lustre have Initials shone,
To grace the gentler annals of Crim. Con.
Where the dispensers of the public lash
Soft penance give; a letter and a dash-
Where Vice reduced in size shrinks to a failing,

And loses half her grossness by curtailing.

Faux pas are told in such a modest way,—

The affair of Colonel B- with Mrs. A

You must forgive them-for what is there, say,

« НазадПродовжити »