Quin’s ‘Scipio’ inoculated the boys and masters too with a scenic furor; and the latter individuals consistently upheld the morals of the _alumni_ by permitting them to perform the most beastly of the beastly pieces of Terence,—the ‘Eunuchus.’ Thus Merchant Tailors’ sank or rose to the nasty practice of Westminster; and again I say, “See the consequence!” Garrick, who used to patronize the performances, enticed Silvester, who played in the epilogue to the ‘Phormio,’ to a wider stage; and Silvester’s readiness to play anything, from Hamlet to harlequin, was subsequently immortalized by Bannister, Junior, in the character of Sylvester Daggerwood. Nor can excuse be taken under the plea that the masters only patronized the classic drama in a tongue defunct. One of the masters, himself a clergyman, the Rev. P. Townley, wrote one of the most lively farces in the English language, namely, ‘High Life below Stairs.’ This, too, was long before the Terence period of the Merchant Tailor plays. It has had two very lively results. Mrs. Abington’s Lady Bab fired many a “tailor” youth, and the whole piece caused an insurrection among the liveried gentlemen in the free list who waited for their masters in the Edinburgh gallery. As for Dublin, when _the_ Abington went there and played Kitty, the fashion of her cap set the whole town in a fever; and nothing else was seen on fashionable heads but one made after that illustrious fashion. The matter was not mended at Merchant Tailors’ when musical performances were subsequently introduced, and the satires in Ruggles’s ‘Ignoramus’ were sung by the boys to sacred airs by Soper, by Hasse, and by Handel. The mothers of some of these lads had to regret, like Niobe, that the gods had made their children vocal. These operatic displays were ultimately suppressed.