“Of the ostentatious world a swelling stage With empty actions and vain passions stuffed.” When both Swift and Bolingbroke had closed the tenth lustre of their years, his cynical lordship wrote from Brussels to the cynical dean, that he thought it high time to determine how they should “play the last act of the farce. Might not my life,” adds accomplished St. John, “be entitled much more properly a what-d’ye-call-it than a farce? Some comedy, a great deal of tragedy, and the whole interspersed with scenes of Harlequin, Scaramouch, and Dr. Baloardo.” Accomplished St. John was always, and to the last an accomplished actor. As for Dr. Swift, he expanded the histrionic similitude of life into some eighteen stanzas on the puppet show—which record how wit, “the life of man to represent, and turn it all to ridicule, did once a puppet show invent, where the chief actor is a fool”—and of which, perhaps, the gravest runs thus: “This fleeting scene is but a stage Where various images appear; In different parts of youth and age, Alike the prince and peasant share.” Don Quixote tells Sancho Panza how like human life is to a play. One takes the part of a ruffian, another of a liar, a third of a merchant, a fourth of a soldier. This man is for the occasion the lover; that man is the judicious friend. At last the play is ended. Each takes off the clothes which belong to his part, and the players remain equal. So it is in the comedy of this world, says Don Quixote. There are emperors and popes, and all the characters that can be introduced into a play; but it is played out, death takes away the outward trappings which made them seem to differ, and they remain equal in the tomb. Where, is the author of the Complaint’s complaining query, or querulous plaint, “Where, the prime actors of the last year’s scene; Their port so proud, their buskin, and their plume?” It is a trite topic, indeed, with Dr. Young,—that of “Life’s gay stage, one inch above the grave,” whereon those strut and fret their hour, that shall soon be seen no more for ever. All, merely players. “Each, in his turn, some tragic story tells, With now and then a wretched farce between.” Dr. Maginn takes note of the frequency with which Lucian compares life to a theatrical procession, in which magnificent parts are assigned to some, who pass before the eyes of the spectators clothed in costly garments, and bedecked with glittering jewels; but, the moment the show is over, are reduced to their original nothingness, no longer kings and heroes, but poor players whose hour has been strutted out. No wonder that the master Showman of Vanity Fair should pen an _envoi_ after this fashion: