Dr. _Stag----s_, is greatly improved since he arrived in these parts, and has more crotches flow thro’ his brains in one minute, than he can digest into musick in a whole week; he had not been here a month, but his bandylegs stepp’d into a very good place, and his business is to compose _Scotch_ tunes for _Lucifer_’s bag-piper. Honest _Tom Farmer_ has taken such an antipathy against musick, upon hearing a _French_ barber play _Banister_’s ground in _Bmi_, upon a jews-trump, that he swears that the hooping of a tub, and filing of a saw, makes the sweetest harmony in christendom; _Robin Smith_, is still as love-mad as ever he was; hangs half a dozen fiddles at his girdle, as the fellow does coney-skins, and scours up and down hell, crying a _Reevs_, a _Reevs_, as is the devil was in him. Poor _Val Redding_ too, is quite tired with his lyre-way-fiddle, and has betaken himself to be a merry-andrew to a _Dutch_ mountebank; and the reason he gave for it was this, That he was got into a country where he found fools were more respected than fiddlers. Dancing-masters are also as numerous in every street, as posts in _Cheapside_, there is no walking but we must stumble upon them; they are held here but in very slight esteem, for the gentry call them leg-livers, and the mob from their mighty number, and their nimbleness, call them the devil’s grass-hoppers. Players run up and down muttering of old speeches, like so many madmen in their own soliloquies; and if any beau wants a bridge to bear him over a dirty channel, a player lies down instead of a plank, for him to walk over upon; the reason why they were doom’d to that piece of scandalous servitude, was, because they were as proud upon the stage as the very princes they represented; and as humble in a brandy-shop, as a scold in a ducking-stool; therefore were fit for nothing when they had done playing, but to be trampled upon. I have nothing further at present to impart to you, so begging you to excuse this trouble, _I rest_, _Your Humble Servant_, HENRY PURCEL. _Dr._ BLOW’_s Answer to_ HENRY PURCEL. _Dear Friend_,