clergy.  The Essay on the Fates of Clergymen is another study from the Contempt, while the fragment of the tract which he had begun, Concerning that Universal Hatred which prevails against the Clergy, brings us still more closely to Eachard.  The likeness between them cannot be traced further; they were both, it is true, humorists, but there is little in common between the austere and bitter, yet, at the same time, delicious flavour of the one, and the trenchant and graphic, but coarse and rollicking, humour of the other.

The essays reprinted from the Tatler give humorous expression to a grievance which not only wounded the pride of the clergy, but touched them on an equally sensitive part—­the stomach.  It was not usual for the chaplain in great houses to remain at table for the second course.  When the sweets were brought in, he was expected to retire.  As Macaulay puts it:  ’He might fill himself with the corned beef and carrots; but as soon as the tarts and cheese-cakes made their appearance, he quitted his seat and stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast, from a great part of which he had been excluded.’  Gay refers to this churlish custom in the second book of Trivia:—­

    ’Cheese that the table’s closing rites denies. 
    And bids me with th’ unwilling chaplain rise.’

Possibly the custom originally arose, not from any wish to mark the social inferiority of the chaplain, but because his presence was a check on conversation.  It must be owned, however, that this would have been more intelligible had he retired, not with the corned beef and carrots, but with the ladies.  The passage quoted by Steele from Oldham is from his Satire, addressed to a Friend that is about to Leave the University and come Abroad in the World, not the only poem in which Oldham has thrown light on the degraded profession of the clergy.  See the end of his Satire, spoken in the person of Spenser.

The last piece in this Miscellany has no connection with what precedes it, but it has an interest of its own.  Among the many services of one of the purest and most indefatigable of philanthropists to his fellow-citizens was the establishment of what is commonly known as Poor Richard’s Almanack.  Of this periodical, and of the particular number of it which is here reprinted, Franklin gives the following account in his autobiography:—­

’In 1732 I first published an Almanack, under the name of Richard Saunders; it was continued by me about twenty-five years, and commonly called Poor Richard’s Almanack.  I endeavoured to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such demand that I reaped considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten thousand.  And observing that it was generally read (scarce any neighbourhood in the province being without it), I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction