if we would wish to have the benefit of it in our old age; time will make a generous wine more mellow; but it will turn that which is early on the fret, to vinegar.

WEAK AND STRONG.

We often injure our cause by calling in that which is weak, to support that which is strong. Thus the ancient schoolmen, who, in some instances, were more silly than schoolboys, were constantly lugging in the authority of Aristotle, to support the tenets of Christianity; and yet these very men would laugh at an engineer of the present day, who should make a similar blunder in artillery, that they have done in argument, and drag up an ancient battering-ram, to assist a modern cannon.

HONESTY.

If Diogenes used a lantern in broad day, solely and simply for the purpose of discovering an honest man, this proceeding was not consistent with his usual sagacity. A lantern

would have been a more appropriate appendage, if he had been in search of a rogue; for such characters skulk about in holes and corners, and hate the light, because their deeds are evil. But I suspect this philosopher's real motive for using a lantern in mid-day, was to provoke inquiry, that he might have the cynical satisfaction of telling all that asked him what he was searching for, that none of them at least were the men to his mind, and that his search had hitherto been fruitless. It is with honesty, in one particular, as with wealth, those that have the thing, care less about the credit of it, than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses, the less he can afford to be supposed to want it.

Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum, by means of it. I once heard a gentleman make a very witty reply, to one who asserted that he did not believe that there was a truly honest man in the whole world: "Sir," said he, "it is quite impossible that any one man should know all the world; but it is very possible that some one man-may know himself.”

(To be resumed')

17.

Væ qui dicitis malum bonum et bonum malum ponentes tenebras lucem et
Jucem teneberas ponentes amarum in dulce et dulce mamarum
Essai. 5.

From the motto to this print, the painter seems to have designed the representation of an hypocritical preacher. Death behind, with a stole round his neck, is lying in wait for him, and holds in his hand what is not very distinguishable in Hollar's print; in the original it is evidently a jawbone.

WILLIAM PEER.

Ir is no matter, say the moralists, whether you act a prince or a beggar; the business is to do your part well. Mr. William Peer, an actor at the time of the restoration, distinguished himself particularly in two characters, in which {no VOL. I.] [No IV.

L

man, perhaps, ever excelled him. One of them was the speaker of the prologue in the play, which is contrived in the tragedy of Hamlet to awaken the consciences of guilty princes. Mr. Peer spoke that preface to the play with such an air, as represented that he was only imitating an actor; so that the others on the stage appeared really great persons, and not representatives in comparison with him. This was a nicety that none but the most subtile player could conceive. In the words,

For us, and for our tragedy,

Here, stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently;

there is nothing of the least importance expressed, and yet the speaking of them procured Peer an extraordinary reputation. The other character in which Peer was pre-eminent, was the Apothecary in Caius Marius, as it is called by Otway; but Romeo and Juliet, as originally in Shakspeare. It will be necessary to recite more out of the play than he spoke, to have a right conception of what Peer did in it. Marius, weary of life, recollects means to get rid of it, after this

manner:

I do remember an apothecary

That dwelt about this rendezvous of death;
Meagre, and very rueful, were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones.

When this spectre of poverty appears, Marius addresses him thus:

I see thou art very poor;

Thou mayest do any thing: here's fifty drachms,

Give me a draught of what will soonest free

A wretch from all his cares.

When the Apothecary objects that it is unlawful, Marius

urges,

Art thou so base and full of wretchedness,
Yet fear'st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks;
Need and oppression stare in thy eyes;
Contempt and beggary hang on thy back;
The world is not thy mind, nor the world's law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich,
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

Without these quotations, the reader could not have a just idea of the visage and manner which Peer assumed, when in the most lamentable tone imaginable, he consents; and deli

vering the poison like a man reduced to the drinking it him self, if he did not hand it, says to Marius,

My poverty, but not my will, consents,

Take this, and drink it off; the work is done.

It was a singular circumstance, that Peer's whole success in life should depend upon speaking five lines better than any man else in the world; but though his eminence lay in so narrow a compass, the governors of the theatre saw in it certain knowledge of propriety, which induced them to enlarge his sphere of action, by the post of property-man. This officer has always ready, in a place appointed for him, behind the prompter, all such tools and implements as are necessary in the play, and it is his business never to want billet-doux, poison, false money, thunder-bolts, daggers, scrolls of parchment, wine, pomatum, truncheons, and wooden legs, ready at the call of the prompter. The addition of this officer, so important to the conduct of the whole affair of the stage, made Peer's subsistence very comfortable; but it frequently happens that men lose their virtue in prosperity, who were shining characters in adversity. Good fortune, indeed, had no effect upon the mind, but very much upon the body of Peer; for in the seventieth year of his age, he grew corpulent, which rendered his figure unfit for the utterance of the five lines before-mentioned. He had now unfortunately lost the wan distress necessary for the countenance of the Apothecary, and was too jolly to speak the prologue with proper humility. He appears to have taken this calamity to heart. It contributed not a little to the shortening his days; and as there is no state of real happiness in this life, Mr. Peer was undone by success, and lost all by arriving at what is the end of all other men's pursuits -his ease.

NAT LEE.

CIBBER says, that Lee “ was so pathetic a reader of his own scenes, that I have been informed by an actor who was present, that while Lee was reading to Major Mohun at a rehearsal, Mohun, in the warmth of his admiration, threw down his part, and said, unless I were able to play as well as you read it, to what purpose should I undertake it? And yet," continued Cibber, "this very author, whose elocu

tion raised such admiration in so capital an actor, when he attempted to be an actor himself, soon quitted the stage, in an honest despair of ever making any profitable figure there." The part which Lee attempted and failed in, was Duncan, in Sir William Davenant's alteration of Macbeth.

DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

In one of Dryden's plays there was this line, which the actress endeavoured to speak in as moving and affecting a tone as she could:

My wound is great, because it is so small;

then she paused, and looked very distressed. The Duke of Buckingham, who was in one of the boxes, rose immediately from his seat, and added in a loud ridiculing tone of voice,

Then 'twould be greater, were it none at all:

which had such an effect on the audience, who before were not very well pleased with the play, that they hissed the poor woman off the stage, would never bear her appearance in the rest of her part, and as this was the second night only of the play, it made Dryden lose his benefit night.

THE SUSPICIOUS HUSBAND.

It is pretty generally known, that George the First entertained a suspicion of the fidelity of his queen, and that he supposed the object of her affections was Count Koningsmark. So strongly did this opinion work on the monarch's mind, that he doomed her to be confined for life in a castle of his own, in Hanover. The reason which he gave for his suspicion was, that having occasion to enter her majesty's closet very late one night, he found her asleep on the sofa, and a man's hat (which he knew to belong to Count Koningsmark) lying by her; and as he thought the circumstance to amount to a full proof of her guilt, he took the barbarous resolution of confining her in the castle where she died.

Some time after this, Dr. Hoadly reflecting on the above circumstance, worked up the comedy of the "Suspicious Husband;" the principal plot of which is the causeless jealousy of Mr. Strictland, which the author artfully confirms, by introducing Ranger's hat in Mrs. Strictland's