AC.  Pray, sir, a little:  I haven’t been in town these six years, till within this fortnight.

FRIEND.  It is now some years since several revolutions in the gay world had made the empire of the stage subject to very fatal convulsions, which were too dangerous to be cured by the skill of little King Oberon,[181] who then sat in the throne of it.  The laziness of this prince threw him upon the choice of a person who was fit to spend his life in contentions, an able and profound attorney, to whom he mortgaged his whole empire.  This Divito[182] is the most skilful of all politicians:  he has a perfect art in being unintelligible in discourse, and uncomeatable in business.  But he having no understanding in this polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money, ladder-dancers,[183] rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakespeare’s heroes, and Jonson’s humorists.  When the seat of wit was thus mortgaged, without equity of redemption, an architect[184] arose, who has built the muse a new palace, but secured her no retinue; so that instead of action there, we have been put off by song and dance.  This latter help of sound has also begun to fail for want of voices; therefore the palace has since been put into the hands of a surgeon,[185] who cuts any foreign fellow into an eunuch, and passes him upon us for a singer of Italy.

AC.  I’ll go out of town to-morrow.

FRIEND.[186] Things are come to this pass; and yet the world will not understand, that the theatre has much the same effect on the manners of the age, as the bank on the credit of the nation.  Wit and spirit, humour and good sense, can never be revived, but under the government of those who are judges of such talents, who know, that whatever is put up in their stead, is but a short and trifling expedient, to support the appearance of them for a season.  It is possible, a peace will give leisure to put these matters under new regulations; but at present, all the assistance we can see towards our recovery, is as far from giving us help, as a poultice is from performing what can be done only by the Grand Elixir.

Will’s Coffee-house, May 6.

According to our late design in the applauded verses on the Morning,[187] which you lately had from hence, we proceed to improve that just intention, and present you with other labours, made proper to the place in which they were written.  The following poem comes from Copenhagen, and is as fine a winter-piece as we have ever had from any of the schools of the most learned painters.  Such images as these give us a new pleasure in our sight, and fix upon our minds traces of reflection, which accompany us whenever the like objects occur.  In short, excellent poetry and description dwell upon us so agreeably, that all the readers of them are made to think, if not write, like men of wit.  But it would be injury to detain you longer from this excellent performance, which is addressed to the Earl of Dorset by Mr. Philips,[188] the author of several choice poems in Mr. Tonson’s new Miscellany.[189]