homes with too dismal and melancholy thoughts about them:  for who knows the consequence of this?  We are much obliged indeed to poets for the great tenderness they express for the safety of our persons, and heartily thank them for it.  But if that be all, pray, good Sir, assure them, that we are none of us like to come to any great harm; and that, let them do their best, we shall, in all probability, live out the length of our days, and frequent the theatres more than ever.  What makes me more desirous to have some reformation of this matter is, because of an ill consequence or two attending it:  for a great many of our church musicians being related to the theatre, they have, in imitation of these epilogues, introduced in their farewell voluntaries, a sort of music quite foreign to the design of church-services, to the great prejudice of well-disposed people.  Those fingering gentlemen should be informed, that they ought to suit their airs to the place and business; and that the musician is obliged to keep to the text as much as the preacher.  For want of this, I have found by experience a great deal of mischief.  For when the preacher has often, with great piety, and art enough, handled his subject, and the judicious clerk has with the utmost diligence called out two staves proper to the discourse, and I have found in myself, and in the rest of the pew, good thoughts and dispositions, they have been all in a moment dissipated by a merry jig from the organ loft.  One knows not what further ill effects the epilogues I have been speaking of may in time produce:  but this I am credibly informed of, that Paul Lorrain[A] has resolved upon a very sudden reformation in his tragical dramas; and that, at the next monthly performance, he designs, instead of a penitential psalm, to dismiss his audience with an excellent new ballad of his own composing.  Pray, Sir, do what you can to put a stop to these growing evils, and you will very much oblige your humble servant,

“PHYSIBULUS.”

[Footnote A:  At that time ordinary of Newgate; and who, in his accounts of the convicts executed at Tyburn, generally represented them as true penitents, and dying very well.]

No. 341.  TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 1712.

  “—­Revocate animos, maestumque timorem
  Mittite—­”
  VIRG.  AEN.I. 206.

  “Resume your courage, and dismiss your care.” 
  DRYDEN.

Having, to oblige my correspondent Physibulus, printed his letter last Friday, in relation to the new epilogue, he cannot take it amiss, if I now publish another, which I have just received from a gentleman who does not agree with him in his sentiments upon that matter.

“Sir,—­I am amazed to find an epilogue attacked in your last Friday’s paper, which has been so generally applauded by the town, and received such honours as were never before given to any in an English theatre.

“The audience would not permit Mrs. Oldfield to go off the stage the first night till she had repeated it twice; the second night the noise of ancora was as loud as before, and she was again obliged to speak it twice; the third night it was called for a second time; and, in short, contrary to all other epilogues, which are dropped after the third representation of the play, this has already been repeated nine times.