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Come hither, you dog you, and let me wring your neck round your fhoulders." We had a repetition of the fame eloquence at the cockpit and the turning into Palace Yard.

This gave me a perfect image of the infignificancy of the creatures who practise this enormity; and made me conclude, that it is ever want of fense makes a man guilty in this kind. It was excellently well faid, that this folly had no temptation to excuse it, no man being born of a fwearing constitution. In a word, a few rumbling words and confonants clapped together without any sense, will make an accomplished fwearer: and it is needless to dwell long upon this bluftering impertinence, which is already banished out of the fociety of well-bred men, and can be useful only to bullies and ill-tragick writers, who would have found and noise pass for courage and fense . . . .

There are two fpecies of men, notwithstanding anything that has been here faid, whom I would exempt . . . The first are those buffoons that have a talent of mimicking the speech and behaviour of other perfons, and turning all their patrons, friends, and acquaintance into ridicule. I look upon your pantomime as a legion in a man, or at least to be like Virgil's monster, "with a hundred mouths and as many tongues,"

Linguæ centum funt, oraque centum ;

and, therefore, would give him as much time to talk in, as would be allowed to the whole body of perfons he represents, were they actually in the company which they divert by proxy, -provided, however, that the faid pantomime do not, upon any pretence whatsoever, utter anything in his own particular opinion, language, or character.

I would likewife, in the fecond place, grant an exemption to any person who treats the company, and, by that means, may be fuppofed to pay for his audience. A guest cannot take it ill if he be not allowed to talk in his turn by a person who puts his mouth to a better employment, and stops it with good beef and mutton. In this cafe the guest is very agreeably filenced, and feems to hold his tongue under that kind of bribery which the ancients called bos in lingua.

If I can once extirpate the race of solid and substantial hum

drums, I hope by my wholesome and repeated advices, quickly to reduce the infignificant tittle-tattles and matter-of-fact-men, that abound in every quarter of this great city.

Epictetus in his little fyftem of morality, prescribes the following rule, with that beautiful fimplicity, which fhines through all his precepts: "Beware that thou never tell thy dreams in company; for, notwithstanding thou mayeft take a pleasure in telling thy dreams, the company will take no pleasure in hearing them."

This rule is conformable to a maxim which I have laid down in a late paper, and must always inculcate into those of my readers who find in themselves an inclination to be very talkative and impertinent, "that they should not speak to please themselves, but those that hear them."

It has been obferved by witty effay writers, that the deepest waters are always the most silent; that empty veffels make the greatest found, and tinkling cymbals the worst music. The Marquis of Halifax, in his admirable advice to a daughter, tells her "that good fenfe has always fomething fullen in it;" but as fullennefs does not imply filence, but an ill-natured filence, I wish his lordship had given a softer name to it. Since I am engaged unawares in quotations, I muft not omit the fatire which Horace has written against this impertinent talkative companion, and which I think is fuller of humour than any other fatire he has written. This great author, who had the nicest taste of converfation, and was himself a most agreeable companion, had fo ftrong an antipathy to a great talker, that he was afraid fome time or other it would be mortal to him, as he has very humourously defcribed it in his converfation with an impertinent fellow, who had like to have been the death of him :

Interpellandi locus hic erat! Eft tibi mater,

Cognati, quies te falvo eft opus? Haud mihi quifquam :
Omnes compofui. Felices! nunc ego refto;

Confice; namque inftat fatum mihi trifte, Sabella

Quod puero cecinit divina motá anus urnuâ.

Hunc neque dira venena, nec hofticus auferit enfis,

Nec laterum dolor, aut tuffis, nec tarda podagra.
Garrulus hunc quando confumet cumque; loquaces
Si fapiat, vitet, fimul atque adoleverit atas.

HOR. I. SAT. ix. 25.

Have you no mother, fifter, friends,
Whofe welfare on your health depends?
Not one; I faw them all by turns
Securely fettled in their urns.
Thrice happy they, fecure from pain!
And I thy victim now remain;
Defpatch me; for my good nurse
Early prefaged this heavy curfe.
She conned it by the fieve and shears
And now it falls upon my ears—
"No poifon fell with ruin ftor'd,
Nor horrid point of hoftile fword,
Nor pleurify, nor afthma cough,
Nor cripple gout fhall cut him off;
A noify tongue and battling breath
Shall teaze and talk my child to death.
Let him avoid, as he would hanging,

Your folks long-winded in haranging."-FRANCIS.

From the Trumpet, in Sheer Lane,

Ordered, That for the improvement of the pleasures of fociety, a member of this houfe, one of the moft wakeful of the foporifick affembly beyond Smithfield Bars, and one of the order of ftory-tellers in Holborn, may meet and exchange stale matter, and report the fame to their principals.

N.B.-No man is to tell above one story in the fame evening, but has liberty to tell the fame the night following.

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MR. BICKERSTAFF'S YOUTHFUL REMINISCENCES-HIS FIRST GRIEF-HIS FIRST LOVE- ENLARGES ON THE TENDER

PASSION IN GENERAL-ITS ALLEGORICAL HISTORY.

Dies, ni fallor, adeft, quem femper, acerbum,

Semper honoratum, fic Dii voluiftis, habebo.

The day's at hand, that mournful day fhall be
(So heav'n would have it) honour'd ftill by me.

Virg.

HERE are thofe among mankind who can enjoy on relish of their being, except the world is made acquainted with all that relates to them, and think everything loft that paffes unobferved; but others

find a folid delight in ftealing by the crowd, and modelling their life after fuch a manner as is as much above the approbation as the practice of the vulgar. Life being too fhort to give inftances great enough of true friendship or goodwill, fome fages have though it pious to preferve a certain reverence for the manes of their deceafed friends, and have withdrawn themselves from the rest of the world at certain seasons, to commemorate in their own thoughts fuch of their acquaintance who have gone before them out of this life. And, indeed, when we are advanced in years, there is not a more pleafing entertainment than to recollect, in a gloomy moment, the many we have parted with that have been dear and agreeable to us, and to caft a melancholy thought or two after

those with whom, perhaps, we have indulged ourselves in whole nights of mirth and jollity. With fuch inclinations in my heart, I went to my closet yesterday in the evening, and refolved to be forrowful; upon which occafion I could not but look with disdain upon myself, that though all the reasons which I had to lament, the lofs of many of my friends are now as forcible as at the moment of their departure, yet did not my heart fwell with the fame forrow which I felt at that time ; but I could, without tears, reflect upon many pleasing adventures I have had with fome who have long been blended with common earth. Though it is by the benefit of nature that length of time thus blots out the violence of afflictions, yet with tempers too much given to pleasure, it is almost neceffary to revive the old places of grief in our memory, and ponder step by step on past life, to lead the mind into that sobriety of thought which poises the heart, and makes it beat with due time, without being quickened with defire or retarded with defpair from its proper and equal motion. When we wind up a clock that is out of order, to make it go well for the future, we do not immediately fet the hand to the present instant, but we make it strike the round of all its hours before it can recover the regularity of its time. Such, thought I, shall be my method this evening; and fince it is that day of the year which I dedicate to the memory of fuch in another life as I much delighted in when living, an hour or two shall be facred to forrow and their memory, while I run over all the melancholy circumstances of this kind which have occurred to me in my whole life.

The first sense of forrow I ever knew was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at what all the house meant than poffeffed with a real understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother fat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and calling papa! for, I know not how, I had fome flight idea that he was locked up there. My mother caught me in her arms,

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