“Here’s come I, the Turkish knight, Come from the Soldan’s land to fight, And be the foe’s blood _hot_ and bold With my sword I’ll make it _cold_.” A vile _Saracenic_ pun in the very minute of deadly strife. But they fight--the cross is victorious, the crescent o’erthrown, and, as a matter of course, even in our pieces of mock valour, _duels_ we have therein--the doctor is sent for; and he is addressed, paralleling again our players of “Scotia’s wild domain,” with “Doctor, doctor, can you tell What will make a sick man well?” and thereupon he enumerates cures which would have puzzled Galen, and put Hippocrates to a “non-plus;” and he finally agrees, as in the _more classical_ drama of your correspondent, to cure our unbeliever for a certain sum. The “last scene of all that ends this strange eventful history” consists in the entrance of the most diminutive of these Thespians, bearing, as did Æneas of old, his parent upon his shoulders, and reciting this bit of good truth and joculation (permitting the word) by way of epilogue: “Here comes I, little Johnny Jack, With my wife and family at my back, Yet, though my _body is but small_, I’m the _greatest rogue amongst ye all_; This is my scrip--so for Christmas cheer If _you’ve any thing to give throw it in here_.” This may be but an uninteresting tail-piece to your correspondent’s clever communication, but still it is one, and makes the picture he so well began of certain usages more full of point. I doat upon old customs, and I love hearty commemorations, and hence those mimics of whom I have written--I mean the mummers--are my delight, and in the laughter and merriment they create I forget to be a critic, and cannot choose but laugh in the fashion of a Democritus, rather than weep worlds away in the style of a Diogenes. I am, &c. &c. J. S. jun. _Little Chelsea,_ _Jan. 4, 1826._ * * * * * In the preface to Mr. Davies Gilbert’s work on “Ancient Christmas Carols,” there is an account of Cornish sports, with a description of a “metrical play,” which seems to be the same with which is the subject of the preceding letter. * * * * * Being on the _popular_ drama, and as the topic arose in Mr. Reddock’s communication from Scotland, a whimsical dramatic anecdote, with another of like kin from that part of the kingdom, is here subjoined from a Scottish journal of this month in the year 1823. _New Readings of Burns._ We were lately favoured with the perusal of a Perth play-bill, in which _Tam O’Shanter_, dramatized, is announced for performance as the afterpiece. A ludicrous mistake has occurred, however, in the classification of the _Dramatis Personæ_. The sapient playwright, it would appear, in reading the lines “Tam had got planted unco richt, Fast by an ingle bleezin’ finely, Wi’ _reaman’ swats_ that drank divinely,”