When I first read your letter, as merry as the world thinks me, I was struck with such a terrible tremulation, that it was as much as three gulps of my brandy-bottle could do to put my chill’d blood into its regular motion; I had no sooner recover’d myself, but thinking of death and the devil, which I had scarce done in sixty years before, I fell into such an extravagant fit of praying, that if any body had heard me, they would sooner have guess’d me, by the length of my devotion, to have been a _Presbyterian_ parson than duke _Trinculo_ the comedian; it was the first time that ever I found myself in earnest in my life, and I was suddenly sensible of so vast a difference betwixt that and jesting, that I believe for a whole hour together I was chang’d from an old comical merry-andrew, into a new sorrowful penitent and was I to con over your letter but once in a day, I believe it would go near to fright me into abundance of religion, which we players, you are sensible, seldom or never think on, except we are put in mind on’t by some extraordinary accident; and the main reason I believe why we are not over-burthen’d with zeal, is our drolling upon the clergy, by representing Mr. _Spintext_ the preacher, or Mr. _Lovelady_ the chaplain, after a ridiculous manner for the loose audience to laugh at; which we repeat so often, till at last we are apt to fancy religion as well as the teachers of it, to be really no more than what we make them, that is, a meer jest, and worthy only to be smil’d at and not to be listen’d to. Certainly you have a very good intelligence in your world, of the circumstances of us who dwell above you, or else you are the devil of a guesser, for you seem in your letter, to have as true a sense of my condition as if you were an eye-witness of it; for to tell you the truth on it, I find all the members of my body in such a fumbling condition, that I begin to think of a leap in the dark, and to wonder what in a little time will become of me; the people are still pleas’d to see me crawl upon the stage; indeed the shuffling pace that age and decay hath brought me to, makes the audience as merry as if it were a counterfeit gesture to provoke laughter; but, i’faith, brother _Tony_, that which makes them glad makes me sad, insomuch, that my heart has aked every time these five years, when I have play’d the sexton in _Hamlet_, for fear when I am once got into the grave, the grim tyrant should give me a turn over the perch, and keep me there for jesting with mortality.