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hardly used in not having the part of the lion in "Hydaspes" given to me. It would have been but a natural step for me to have personated that noble creature, after having behaved myself to satisfaction in the part above-mentioned; but that of a lion is too great a character for one that never trod the stage before but upon two legs. As for the little resistance which I made, I hope it may be excused, when it is considered that the dart was thrown at me by so fair a hand. I must confess I had but just put on my brutality; and Camilla's charms were such, that beholding her erect mien, hearing her charming voice, and astonished with her graceful motion, I could not keep up to my assumed fierceness, but died like a man.

I am, SIR,

Your most humble Servant,

THOMAS PRONE.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,

"THIS is to let you understand, that the playhouse is a representation of the world in nothing so much as in this particular, that no one rises in it according to his merit. I have acted several parts of household stuff with great applause for many years: I am one of the men in the hang

disordered. Having recovered, she married Mr. Joseph Smith, a patron of art, who became consul at Venice; but afterwards insanity returned. She lived in seclusion, imagining herself to be one or other of the princesses whom she had represented on the stage, until her death in 1760. (See Sir John Hawkins's History of Music,' i. 153.) In 1709, in the Tatler (No. 20), Addison spoke of the distresses of the unfortunate Camilla, who has had the ill-luck to break before her voice, and to disappear at a time when her beauty was in the height of its bloom.'

1 See No. 13.

VOL. I.

H

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ings in the "Emperor of the Moon"; I have twice performed the third chair in an English opera, and have rehearsed the pump in the "Fortune Hunters." I am now grown old, and hope you will recommend me so effectually, as that I may say something before I go off the stage in which you will do a great act of charity to

Your most humble Servant,

WILLIAM SCRENE.'

1 The Emperor of the Moon' is a farce from the French, by Mrs. Aphra Behn, first acted in London in 1687. It was originally Italian, and had run eighty nights in Paris as Harlequin l'Empereur dans le Monde de la Lune.' In Act ii. sc. 3, the front of the scene is only a curtain or hangings to be drawn up at pleasure.' Various gay masqueraders, interrupted by return of the Doctor, are carried by Scaramouch behind the curtain. The Doctor enters in wrath, vowing he has heard fiddles. Presently the curtain is drawn up and discovers where Scaramouch has placed them all in the hanging, in which they make the figures, where they stand without motion in postures.' Scaramouch professes that the noise was made by putting up this piece of tapestry, the best in Italy for the rareness of the figures, sir.' While the Doctor is admiring the new tapestry, said to have been sent him as a gift, Harlequin, who is placed on a tree in the hangings, hits him on the head with his truncheon.' The place of a particular figure in the picture, with a hand on a tree, is that supposed to be aspired to by the Spectator's next correspondent (Morley).

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2 The Fortune Hunters; or, Two Fools well met,' a comedy first produced in 1685, was the only work of James Carlile, a player who quitted the stage to serve King William III. in the Irish wars, and was killed at the battle of Aghrim. The crowning joke of the second act of 'The Fortune Hunters' is the return at night of Mr. Spruce, an Exchange man, drunk and musical, to the garden door of his house, when Mrs. Spruce is just taking leave of young Wealthy. Wealthy hides behind the pump. The drunken husband, who has been in a gutter, goes to the pump to clean himself, and seizes a man's arm instead of a pump-handle. He works it as a pump-handle, and complains that the pump's dry'; upon which young Wealthy empties a bottle of orange-flower water into his face (Morley).

'MR. SPECTATOR,

"UNDERSTANDING that Mr. Screne has writ to you, and desired to be raised from dumb and still parts; I desire, if you give him motion or speech, that you would advance me in my way, and let me keep on in what I humbly presume I am a master, to wit, in representing human and still life together. I have several times acted one of the finest flower-pots in the same opera wherein Mr. Screne is a chair; therefore, upon his promotion, request that I may succeed him in the hangings, with my hand in the orange trees. Your humble Servant,

RALPH SIMPLE.'

'SIR,

DRURY LANE, March 24, 1710.

I SAW your friend the templar this evening in the pit, and thought he looked very little pleased with the representation of the mad scene of the "Pilgrim."1 ." I wish, sir, you would do us the favour to animadvert frequently upon the false taste the town is in, with relation to plays as well as operas. It certainly requires a degree of understanding to play justly; but such is our condition, that we are to suspend our reason to perform our parts. As to scenes of madness, you know, sir, there are noble instances of this kind in Shakespeare; but then it is the disturbance of a noble mind from generous and human resentments; it is like that grief which we have for the decease of our friends; it is no

1 A comedy by Fletcher. In Act iii. there is a scene in a Spanish madhouse. One madman, an Englishman, cries, 'Give some drink, . . . fill me a thousand pots and froth 'em, froth 'em!'

me

diminution, but a recommendation of human nature, that in such incidents passion gets the better of reason, and all we can think to comfort ourselves is impotent against half what we feel. I will not mention that we had an idiot in the scene, and all the sense it is represented to have is that of lust. As for myself, who have long taken pains in personating the passions, I have to-night acted only an appetite. The part I played is "Thrift," but it is represented as written rather by a drayman than a poet. I come in with a tub about me, that tub hung with quart pots, with a full gallon at my mouth. I am ashamed to tell you that I pleased very much, and this was introduced as a madness; but sure it was not human madness, for a mule or an ass1 may have been as dry as ever I was in my life. I am, SIR,

Your most obedient

'MR. SPECTATOR,

and humble Servant.'

'FROM THE SAVOY IN THE Strand.

IF you can read it with dry eyes, I give you this trouble to acquaint you that I am the unfortunate King Latinus, and believe I am the first prince that dated from this palace since John of Gaunt. Such is the uncertainty of all human greatness, that I, who lately never moved without a guard, am now pressed as a common soldier, and am to sail with the first fair wind against my brother Lewis of France. It is a very hard thing to put off a character which one has appeared in with applause. This I 1 Horse' (folio).

2 In the opera of Camilla,' the King of Latium has a part (recitativo) of about sixty lines.

experienced since the loss of my diadem; for upon quarrelling with another recruit, I spoke my indignation out of my part in recitativo

Most audacious slave,

Dar'st thou an angry monarch's fury brave? 1

The words were no sooner out of my mouth, when a sergeant knocked me down, and asked me if I had a mind to mutiny, in talking things nobody understood. You see, sir, my unhappy circumstances, and if by your mediation you can procure a subsidy for a prince who never failed to make all that beheld him merry at his appearance, you will merit the Your friend,

thanks of

THE KING OF LATIUM.'

ADVERTISEMENT.

FOR THE GOOD OF THE PUBLIC.

WITHIN two doors of the Masquerade, lives an eminent Italian Chirurgeon, arrived from the Carnival at Venice, of great experience in private cures. Accommodations are provided, and persons admitted in their masquing habits.

He has cured since his coming thither, in less than a fortnight, four scaramouches, a mountebank doctor, two Turkish bassas, three nuns, and a morrisdancer.

Venienti occurrite morbo.

N.B.-Any person may agree by the great, and be kept in repair by the year. The Doctor draws teeth without pulling off your mask.

1 Camilla,' Act ii. sc. 10.

R.