Then jogs his neighbour, as the wonder strike him, In this night's various and enchanted cup The five long acts, from which our three are taken, CALAMITIES OF AUTHORSHIP. A woman, that is like a German clock, ASTROLOGY. This is the excellent foppery of the world! that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour,) we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moou, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, GARRICK. thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: Au admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with mother under the dragon's tail; and my nativity was under ursa major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous.-Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled at my bastardizing. There are three difficulties in authorship;-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it--and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game; in which the booksellers are the kings; the critics, the knaves; the public, the pack; and the poor author, the mere table, or thing played upon. DESCRIPTION OF LOVE. O! And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip; A very beadle to a humorous sigh: A critic; nay, a night-watch constable ; A domineering pedant o'er the boy. This wimpled, wining, purblind, wayward boy; my VARIOUS KINDS OF GOODNESS. Whatever diversity of opinions may prevail respecting goodness in general, few people disallow the marks of this valuable quality, as they are found to exist in particular bodies of men, or in certain individuals; and, perhaps, an enumeration of these traits may include every thing new that can be well said on the subject. A good king, for example, is one who has the gift of pleasing both the ins and the outs; and who, not being permitted to do any thing, is able to do every thing. A good minister is one who is capable of conducting the affairs of a great nation, without levying any taxes on the public. A good patriot is one who possesses excellent lungs, and is not afraid of availing himself of the freedom of speech allowed in parliament, to abuse every person, and oppose every measure, till he makes The action of the Winter's Tale, as written by Shakspeare, the situation of an upright minister sufficiently un comprehends sixteen years. comfortable to force him to a resignation; when he | their servants gratis, till he has fully established seizes on his place, and actually performs himself the himself in snug practice; after which, he soon leaves very part which he had impudently and wrongfully accused his predecessor of acting. A good magistrate is one who takes care to keep the price of bread as low as possible without regarding any advance in that of flour, for the sake of establishing his character among the vulgar, whom he is wise enough to know are the bulk of mankind. This knowledge, and these motives, lead him also to make an example, once or twice in his life, of some honest butcher, baker, or publican, if any such beings should chance to reside in his district, for accidentally selling short weight or measure: and he seldom or never commits any one to prison; except, to please his patron, some poor fellow who has killed a hare, a pheasant, or a partridge. A good divine is one who preaches short sermons remarkably loud, and who not only permits his parishioners to pursue, at their pleasure, whoring, drinking, feasting, gambling, and swearing, without receiving the smallest intimation of the impropriety of their conduct; but who himself actually joins them, on every convenient occasion, in the practice of these innocent amusements. off all gratis prescriptions, and resigns in favour of some pupil who is capable of complimenting him with a few hundreds for so excellent an opportunity of following his steps, and obtaining both the character and emoluments of a good physician. A good man, generally speaking, is one who now and then gives his poor neighbours and dependents a very small portion of what he has previously obtained from their labour, for which he paid them so scantily that they might well became proper objects in the eye of real benevolence. A very good man usually subscribes about twenty guineas a year to a dozen or more different hospitals and charity-schools; to which he contrives to send necessitous relations, who might otherwise be more burdensome. With respect to the general conduct in life of a good man, it is only necessary that he has never been publicly known to have committed any action remarkably bad. A good man, in the commercial world, is one who has money enough to answer all demands; and who, knowing he must pay bills when due, or be liable to personal inconveniencies, and particularly to pay lawyers' and bailiffs' fees, takes care to discharge in time A good lawyer is one who knows how to brow-all pecuniary obligations. N. B. It is of no sort of beat timid witnesses, and to rouse the feelings, and enlarge on the vast cousequence of silly jurymen, (who always look wisest when they are in reality the greatest fools,) so as to procure a verdict for his client, though honesty and integrity are in consequence doomed to starve in prison. importance by what means he acquires the ability to effect this solely necessary purpose; and though he be a grinder of the poor, a defrauder of the rich, a base guardian of orphans, a Jew usurer, or a christian miser, still he is a good man in the city, as long as he can pay every one twenty shillings in the pound of what they can prove to be their due. A good physician is one who, having no real business to employ him, generously begins life with givA good citizen is one who jogs on quietly through ing his advice to the poor gratis: at the same time life, pays scot and lot without ever inquiring for taking care to direct all his prescriptions to some what, and never attends common halls, or ward or honest apothecary, who allows him thirty per cent. vestry meetings, but submits quietly to have his on the price of the medicines. If this fails to procure pocket picked by those who do; always thinking that him better practice, he engages his friends to institute the presence of one more, and him clearly of little a public dispensary, and appoint him the physician; weight or consequence, whatever natural rectitude when, to ingratiate himself with the principal sub-be may possess, would make no material difference. scribers, by great apparent humanity, and of course to secure their own private custom, he engages to attend A good friend is one who procures a man some comfortable post under government, to assist him in THE LAUGHING PHILOSOPHER. making provision for the large family he has provided him, by debauching his wife, daughter, or sister. A good fellow is one who borrows money of all those persons who are weak enough to trust him, without ever giving himself the smallest concern about repayment, which he spends freely, or gives away, during the little time it lasts; and who ruins more girls, drinks more liquor, sings more songs, gives inore toasts, belongs to more drunken societies, and sits up more nights, than any other person whatever. N. B. When he happens to have in possession a good deal of property of his own, he is, while it lasts, usually and emphatically called, a good fellow: but when his money and credit are both exhausted, so that he is obliged to sing, drink and tell stories, for the entertainment of those who pay his shot, he degenerates into a good companion. A good husband is one who never opposes his wife's inclinations, or arraigns her conduct, however absurd or unreasonable. A good wife is one who never opposes her husband's inclinations, or arraigns his conduct, however absurd or unreasonable. There are, besides these, a variety of other good folks, the characteristics of whom will readily occur to most readers, though no extraordinary quantity of living models have perhaps lately appeared: such as good generals, good admirals, good authors, good But players, good critics, and a variety of others. the specimens already produced will abundantly prove that the world is not so destitute of goodness as some pretended moralists have dared to insinuate. RELIGION. Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; any thing but-live for it. ANCESTRAL ENORMITIES. Three thousand years, if I count right, Have heard the critics Homer cite, (His poem's good 'tis true;) But what can hide the poet's shame,No one can tell from whence he cameThe son of lord-knows-who! Virgil, who sang of war and farming, Though Cæsar spoke him well: Such wondrous tales to tell. I'm really puzzled to proceed ;- So with the ancients let's have done, One more-that Esop-was there ever!- But with the moderns shall we gain? A mere upholsterer got Moliere, And What's-his-name made jugs. Rousseau (not Jacques, but Jean Baptiste) Whose odes to read are quite a feast His ancestor made shoes : And is not Jaques himself as bad, At home, if curious to know We'll find the bad turn'd worse; Some folks affirm the proof is full, For, though one scorns in fleece to deal, From what trunk Chaucer was a sprout; But whispers go, that Chaucer's father Hence his French name-Chaucier. Nought then remains, but hope-which still Close to the box's bottom: And, after all, the hazard runs, EXTRACT FROM THE WILL OF AN EARL OF Imprimis. For my soul, I confess, I have heard very much of souls, but what they are, or who they are, or what they are for, God knows, I know not; they tell me now of another world, where I never was, nor do I know one foot of the way thither. While the king stood, I was of his religion, made my son wear a cassock, and thought to make him a bishop ; but then came the Scots and made me a presbyterian; and since Cromwell entered I have been an independent. These, I believe, are the kingdom's three estates, and if any of these can save a soul, I may claim one; therefore if my executors do find I have a soul, I give it to him who gave it to me. Item.I give my body, for I cannot keep it, to be * Some give it for the wool-merchant, others for the butcher. buried. Do not lay me in the church porch, for} was a lord, and would not be buried where Colone Pride was born. Item.-My will is, that I have no monument, fo then I must have epitaphs and verses, and all my liflong I had too much of them. Item.-I give all my deer to the Earl of Salisbury who I know will preserve them, because he denied the king a buck out of one of his own parks. Item.-I give nothing to Lord Say; which legacy I give him because I know he will bestow it on the poor. Liem.-To Tom May I give 5s. I intended him more; but whoever has seen his History of the Parliament, thinks 5s. too much. Item.-I give Lieutenant-Colonel Cromwell one word of mine, because hitherto he never kept his own. Item.-I give up the ghost.-Concordet cum Originali. EGAN AND CURRAN. In the election for the borough of Tallagh, John Egan was an unsuccessful candidate-he, however, appealed from the decision, and the appeal came of course before a committee of the House of Commons It was in the heat of a very warm summer, Egan was struggling through the crowd, his handkerchief in one hand, his wig in the other, and his whole countenance raging like the dogstar, when he met Curran-" I'm sorry for you, my dear fellow," said Curran.-" Sorry! why so, Jack-why so?-I'm perfectly at my ease." Alas, Egan, it's but too visible to every one that you're losing tallow (Tallagh) fast." SIC VITA. Like to the falling of a star, The wind blows out; the bubble dies; The spring entomb'd in autumn lies; The dew dries up; the star is shot : The flight is past, and man forgot. ON A FAT MAN. If fat men ride, they tire the horse, VOYAGE TO TARTARUS. I do remember-not a 'pothecary But one warm evening when well fill'd with And having found my wine too hot to carry, That to conceal them were a grievous sin; Whether they issued from the iron gate, Or gate of horn, I stop not to inquire, And full of learned notes fili quire on quire. Of which my gentle reader need not doubt, Which was, that as I snor'd and lay compact, Good drink within, and puddle all without, The muse, descending from Parnassian station, Inspir'd my soul with heavenly contemplation. [We are obliged to leave out some verses on the voyage, and come to where they get in sight of the coast.] The joyful sailor, from the mast-head high, Shouted aloud "Hell, we're in sight of Hell!" "Hell," says the helmsman, turning up his Cheerly, my lads, a pleasant breeze, all's well." 66 eye, "Hell," says the captain, “keep an eye a-head, Clew up the topsails, 'tis a steady gale, Watch well your soundings-damn you, heave the lead- Jack, north north-east ;-Jem, yonder pilot hail, And Jack, I say, hide the run brandy well, Gaugers are devils on earth-what must they be in Hell?" [Three or four stanzas are omitted here, describing the coast in the manner of the voyage to Loo Choo.] There was Azazel, drunk as any lord, His mast-high standard flagging in his hand; Belphegor, too, like him of Perigord, Limp'd nimbly up and down along the strand, And there was Beelzebub and Lucifer, And many other gentlemen beside, As decent people as I ever spied. Glad was my soul, and straight I cock'd my ear. The style of modern Hell was most absurd; And then to write a learn'd convincing letter, To prove their ancient music was much better. But I shall speak the truth and shame the devil, Although from Hell I've only made a sortieFor I must say their playing was not evil, And savoured more of accent than of forte. Such as of yore they play'd in ancient Greece, When old Timotheus tickled Alexander, And I was much delighted with a piece, Droned on the bag-pipes by a Salamander. Besides when asked which concord had most worth The fourth or fifth? they all sung out the fourth! [The remaining stanzas contain remarks on the Literature and State of the Fine Arts in Hell, Stage |