The works of Mr. Thomas Brown, serious and comical : in prose and verse, with his remains in four volumes compleat; vol. IIBrown, Thomas
General
The works of Mr. Thomas Brown, serious and comical : in prose and verse, with his remains in four volumes compleat; vol. II
Brown, Thomas
English wit and humor -- Early works to 1800; Erotic literature -- Early works to 1800; Latin literature -- Translations into English
_Imprimis_, _Will_’s coffee-house, Mr. _Haines_, is much in the same
condition, as when you left it; and as a worthy gentleman has lately
distributed them into their proper classes, we have four sorts of
persons that resort hither; first, Such as are beaux and no wits, and
these are easy to be known by their full periwigs and empty sculls;
secondly, Such as are wits and no beaux, and these, not to talk of their
out-sides, are distinguish’d by censuring the ill taste of the age, and
railing at one another; thirdly, Such as are neither wits nor beaux, I
mean your grave plodding politicians that come to us every night piping
hot from the parliament-house, and finish treaties that were never
thought of, and end wars before they are begun; and fourthly, Such as
are both wits and beaux, to whose persons, as well as merits, you can be
no stranger.
In the next place, the Playhouse stands exactly where it did. Mr. _Rich_
finds some trouble in managing his mutinous subjects, but ’tis no more
than what princes must expect to find in a mixt monarchy, as we take the
Playhouse to be. The actors jog on after the old merry rate, and the
women drink and intrigue. Mr. _Clinch_ of _Barnet_, with his pack of
dogs and organ, comes now and then to their relief; and your friend Mr.
_Jevon_ would hang himself, to see how much the famous Mr. _Harvey_
exceeds him in the ladder-dance.
We have had an inundation of plays lately, and one of them, by a great
miracle, made shift to hold out a full fortnight. The generality are
either troubled with convulsion-fits, and die the first day of the
representation, or by meer dint of acting, hold out to the third; which
is like a consumptive man’s living by cordials, or else die a violent
death, and are interr’d with the solemnity of catcalls. A merry
virtuoso, who makes one of the congregation _de propagando ingenio_,
designs to publish a weekly bill for the use of the two theatres, in
imitation of that published by the parish clerks, and faithfully to set
down what distemper every new play dies of.
If the author of a play strains hard for wit, and it drivels drop by
drop from him, he says it is troubled with a strangury. If it is vicious
in the design and performance, and dull throughout, he intends to give
it out in his bill, that it died by a knock in the cradle; if it
miscarries for want of fine scenes, and due acting, why then he says,
’tis starv’d at nurse; if it expires the first or second day he reckons
it among the abortive; and lastly, if it is damn’d for the feebleness of
its satire, he says it dies in breeding of teeth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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