The fourth act very luckily begun before I had time to give the old gentleman an answer. "Well," says the knight, sitting down with great satisfaction, "I suppose (20) we are now to see Hector's ghost." He then renewed his attention, and, from time to time, fell a praising the widow. He made, indeed, a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom at his first entering he took for Astyanax; but he quickly set himself right in that particular, (25) though at the same time he owned he should have been very glad to have seen the little boy, "who," says he, "must needs be a very fine child by the account that is given of him." Upon Hermione's going off with a menace to Pyrrhus, the audience gave a loud clap, to which Sir Roger added, "On my word, a notable young baggage!" (199: 5) As there was a very remarkable silence and stillness in the audience during the whole action, it was natural for them to take the opportunity of these intervals between the acts to express their opinion of the players and of their respective parts. Sir Roger, hearing a cluster of (10) them praise Orestes, struck in with them, and told them that he thought his friend Pylades was a very sensible man; as they were afterwards applauding Pyrrhus, Sir Roger put in a second time: "And let me tell you," says he, "though he speaks but little, I like the old fellow (15) in whiskers as well as any of them." Captain Sentry, seeing two or three wags who sat near us lean with an attentive ear towards Sir Roger, and fearing lest they should smoke[149] the knight, plucked him by the elbow, and whispered something in his ear that lasted till the (20) opening of the fifth act. The knight was wonderfully attentive to the account which Orestes gives of Pyrrhus his death, and, at the conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody piece of work that he was glad it was not done upon the stage. Seeing afterwards Orestes in his raving (25) fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and took occasion to moralize, in his way, upon an evil conscience, adding that Orestes in his madness looked as if he saw something. [149] Ridicule, chaff. As we were the first that came into the house, so we were the last that went out of it; being resolved to have a clear passage for our old friend, whom we did not care to venture among the justling of the crowd. Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his entertainment, and we (200: 5) guarded him to his lodgings in the same manner that we brought him to the playhouse; being highly pleased, for my own part, not only with the performance of the excellent piece which had been presented, but with the satisfaction which it had given to the good old man. (10) L. XXX. WILL HONEYCOMB'S EXPERIENCES [No. 359. Tuesday, April 22, 1712. BUDGELL.]