Hence, pedant Nature! with thy Grecian rules! Centaurs (not fabulous) those rules efface; Back, sister Muses, to your native schools; Here booted grooms usurp Apollo’s place, Hoofs shame the boards that Garrick used to grace, The play of limbs succeeds the play of wit, Man yields the drama to the Hou’yn’m race, His prompter spurs, his licenser the bit, The stage a stable-yard, a jockey-club the pit. XII. Is it for these ye rear this proud abode? Is it for these your superstition seeks To build a temple worthy of a god, To laud a monkey, or to worship leeks? Then be the stage, to recompense your freaks, A motley chaos, jumbling age and ranks, Where Punch, the lignum-vitæ Roscius, squeaks, And Wisdom weeps, and Folly plays his pranks, And moody Madness laughs and hugs the chain he clanks. V. HAMPSHIRE FARMER’S ADDRESS. BY W. C. [WILLIAM CORBETT.] [Mr. Corbett died 18th June, 1835, aged 73.] * * * * * TO THE SECRETARY OF THE MANAGING COMMITTEE OF DRURY-LANE PLAYHOUSE. SIR, To the gewgaw fetters of _rhyme_ (invented by the monks to enslave the people) I have a rooted objection. I have therefore written an address for your Theatre in plain, homespun, yeoman’s prose; in the doing whereof I hope I am swayed by nothing but an _independent_ wish to open the eyes of this gulled people, to prevent a repetition of the dramatic _bamboozling_ they have hitherto laboured under. If you like what I have done, and mean to make use of it, I don’t want any such _aristocratic_ reward as a piece of plate with two griffins sprawling upon it, or a _dog_ and a _jackass_ fighting for a ha’p’worth of _gilt gingerbread_, or any such Bartholomew-fair nonsense. All I ask is that the door-keepers of your play-house may take all the _sets of my Register_ {20} now on hand, and _force_ every body who enters your doors to buy one, giving afterwards a debtor and creditor account of what they have received, _post-paid_, and in due course remitting me the money and unsold Registers, _carriage-paid_. I am, &c. W. C. * * * * * IN THE CHARACTER OF A HAMPSHIRE FARMER. —“Rabidâ qui concitus irâ Implevit pariter ternis latratibus auras, Et sparsit virides spumis albentibus agrot.”—OVID. MOST THINKING PEOPLE,