children, if he had any, for commonly the case stands thus, this poore man his son dies before him, he survives, poore, indigent, base, dejected, miserable, &c., or if he have any which survive him, sua negotia agunt, they mind their own business, forsooth, cannot, will not, find time, leisure, inclination, extremum munus perficere, to follow to the pit their old indulgent father, which loved them, stroked them, caressed them, cockering them up, quantum potuit, as farre as his means extended, while they were babes, chits, minims, hee may rot in his grave, lie stinking in the sun for them, have no buriall at all, they care not. O nefas! Chiefly I noted the coffin to have been without a pall, nothing but a few planks, of cheapest wood that could be had, naked, having none of the ordinary symptomata of a funerall, those locularii which bare the body having on diversely coloured coats, and none black: (one of these reported the deceased to have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper burying-ground he was now going for interment.) All which when I behelde, hardly I refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing:  “If this man had been rich, a Croesus, a Crassus, or as rich as Whittington, what pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure, of rich buriall, ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious ceremonies, had been thought too good for such an one; what store of panegyricks, elogies, funeral orations, &c., some beggarly poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, bountiful, polite, learned, a Maecenas, while as in very deede he was nothing lesse:  what weeping, sighing, sorrowing, honing, complaining, kinsmen, friends, relatives, fourtieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for the deceased; hypocriticall heirs, sobbing, striking their breasts (they care not if he had died a year ago); so many clients, dependants, flatterers, parasites, cunning Gnathoes, tramping on foot after the hearse, all their care is, who shall stand fairest with the successour; he mean time (like enough) spurns them from him, spits at them, treads them under his foot, will have nought to do with any such cattle.  I think him in the right:  Hoec sunt majora gravitate Heracliti.  These follies are enough to give crying Heraclitus a fit of the spleene.”

MR. H——.

A FARCE, IN TWO ACTS.

AS IT WAS PERFORMED AT DRURY LANE THEATRE,
DECEMBER, 1806.

* * * * *

“Mr. H——­, thou wert DAMNED. Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. H——­, and answering that they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert DAMNED!  Hadst thou been anonymous, thou haply mightst have lived.  Bet thou didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for want of a better name to pass them off—­” Theatrical Examiner.