_The Carnival of Venice_ opened on 13 December 1781 and played twenty-three times during the season but was never revived. It was written to suit what Tickell himself, in a letter to an aspiring playwright, called “the present taste for complicated plot and perplexed incidents” (unpublished letter to A. Becket, August 1781, in the Widener Collection, Harvard College Library); for the plot, see the review in _The Universal Magazine_, LXIX, 1781, 328. The music was provided by Linley, and the elaborate sets and costumes by De Loutherbourg. In particular the songs were admired: Tom Moore and Samuel Rogers remembered and quoted them in the next century (Moore, _Sheridan_, 2nd ed., 1825, II, 227; Rogers, _Table-Talk_, p. 72). Mary Young, in her _Memoirs of Mrs. Crouch_, 1806, said that “Many of the songs in this piece so perfectly resemble, in poetic beauty, those which adorn the Duenna [by Sheridan], that they declare themselves to be the offspring of the same Muse” (I, 127). Sheridan’s biographers have variously ascribed the songs, in part or entirely, to him and Mrs. Sheridan, but on what grounds save their excellence does not appear (Sichel, _Sheridan_, I, 443, and II, 459; Rae, article on Tickell in the _DNB_). xi [Prologue to] Variety; A Comedy, in Five Acts: as it is performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. London: Printed for T. Becket, Adelphi, Strand, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and Their Royal Highnesses the Princes. MDCCLXXXII. Copies: BM, C. 8vo. P. [i], half-title, verso blank; p. [iii], title, verso blank; pp. [v-vi], “Prologue, by Richard Tickell, Esq;”; p. [vii], “Epilogue”; p. [viii], “Epilogue,” continued, and “Dramatis Personæ”; pp. [1]-71, text; p. [72], publisher’s advertisements. Subsequent issues disregarded here. _Variety_ was written by Richard Griffith (d. 1788), and was first performed 25 February 1782. xii Remarks on the Commutation Act. Addressed to the People of England. London: Printed for T. Becket, in Pall-Mall. M DCC LXXXV. [Price One Shilling and Six-pence.] 8vo. P. [i], title, verso blank; pp. [1]-81, text; p. [82], blank. Copy: YU. Second, Third, and Fourth Editions, Becket, 1785. Assigned to Tickell by a MS. note on the title-page of a copy of the Fourth Edition in the New York Public Library. It is characteristically Tickell’s in substance and style. Intended as an attack on a proposed reduction of the tea-duty, it enlarges into a satire on Pitt’s administration, especially the ascendancy of the East India Company interest therein. While the Company continues its corrupt sway, Pitt directs the energies of Parliament to “Edicts against the Waste of Wafers in Public Offices, and Registrations of the Nett Consumption of Quills; together with Sworn Meters of Sand, and a Comptroller-General of Blotting-Paper.” xiii