"_Firebrand._ Ha! do you doubt it? nay, if you doubt that, I will prove nothing--But my zeal inspires me, And I will tell you, Madam, you yourself Are a most deadly Enemy to the Sun, And all his Priests have greatest Cause to wish You had been never born. _Q. C. S._ Ha! say'st thou, Priest? Then know I honour and adore the Sun! And when I see his Light, and feel his Warmth, I glow with naming Gratitude toward him; But know, I never will adore a Priest, Who wears Pride's Face beneath Religion's Mask. And makes a Pick-Lock of his Piety, To steal away the Liberty of Mankind. But while I live, I'll never give thee Power. _Firebrand._ Madam, our Power is not deriv'd from you, Nor any one: 'Twas sent us in a Box From the great Sun himself, and Carriage paid; _Phaeton_ brought it when he overturn'd The Chariot of the Sun into the Sea. _Q. C. S._ Shew me the Instrument, and let me read it. _Fireb._ Madam, you cannot read it, for being thrown Into the Sea, the Water has so damag'd it, That none but Priests could ever read it since." In the end, Firebrand stabs Common-Sense, but her Ghost frightens Ignorance off the Stage, upon which Sneerwell says--"I am glad you make _Common-Sense_ get the better at last; I was under terrible Apprehensions for your Moral." "Faith, Sir," says Fustian, "this is almost the only Play where she has got the better lately." And so the piece closes. But it would be wrong to quit it without some reference to the numberless little touches by which, throughout the whole, the humours of dramatic life behind the scenes are ironically depicted. The Comic Poet is arrested on his way from "_King's Coffee-House,_" and the claim being "for upwards of Four Pound," it is at first supposed that "he will hardly get Bail." He is subsequently inquired after by a Gentlewoman in a Riding-Hood, whom he passes off as a Lady of Quality, but who, in reality, is bringing him a clean shirt. There are difficulties with one of the Ghosts, who has a "Church-yard Cough," and "is so Lame he can hardly walk the Stage;" while another comes to rehearsal without being properly floured, because the stage barber has gone to Drury Lane "to shave the Sultan in the New Entertainment." On the other hand, the Ghost of Queen Common-Sense appears before she is killed, and is with some difficulty persuaded that her action is premature. Part of "the Mob" play truant to see a show in the park; Law, straying without the playhouse passage is snapped up by a Lord Chief- Justice's Warrant; and a Jew carries off one of the Maids of Honour. These little incidents, together with the unblushing realism of the Pots of Porter that are made to do duty for wine, and the extra two-penny worth of Lightning that is ordered against the first night, are all in the spirit of that inimitable picture of the _Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn_, which Hogarth gave to the world two years later,