+True.+ Have a care what you call me: old is a word of disgrace among the ladies; to be honest is to be poor and foolish (as some think); and cavalier is a word as much out of fashion as any of 'em. +Love.+ The more's the pity. But what said the fortune-teller in Ben Jonson's "Masque of Gipsies," to the then Lord Privy Seal?-- _Honest and old! In those the good part of a fortune is told._ +True.+ Ben Jonson! how dare you name Ben Jonson in these times, when we have such a crowd of poets of a quite different genius, the least of which thinks himself as well able to correct Ben Jonson as he could a country schoolmistress that taught to spell! +Love.+ We have, indeed, poets of a different genius, so are the plays; but, in my opinion, they are all of 'em (some few excepted) as much inferior to those of former times, as the actors now in being (generally speaking) are, compared to Hart, Mohun, Burt, Lacy, Clun, and Shatterel; for I can reach no farther backward. +True.+ I can, and dare assure you, if my fancy and memory are not partial (for men of my age are apt to be over-indulgent to the thoughts of their youthful days), I say the actors that I have seen before the wars--Lowin, Taylor, Pollard, and some others--were almost as far beyond Hart and his company as those were beyond these now in being. +Love.+ I am willing to believe it, but cannot readily; because I have been told that those whom I mentioned were bred up under the others of your acquaintance, and followed their manner of action, which is now lost: so far that, when the question has been asked why these players do not revive the "Silent Woman" and some other of Jonson's plays (once of highest esteem), they have answered, "Truly, because there are none now living who can rightly humour those parts; for all who related to the Blackfriars (where they were acted in perfection) are now dead and almost forgotten." +True.+ 'Tis very true, Hart and Clun were bred up boys at the Blackfriars, and acted women's parts. Hart was Robinson's boy or apprentice; he acted the Duchess in the tragedy of the "Cardinal," which was the first part that gave him reputation. Cartwright and Wintershal belonged to the Private House in Salisbury Court; Burt was a boy, first under Shank at the Blackfriars, then under Beeston at the Cockpit; and Mohun and Shatterel were in the same condition with him at the last place. There Burt used to play the principal women's parts, in particular Clariana, in "Love's Cruelty;" and at the same time Mohun acted Bellamente, which part he retained after the Restoration.