Audiences amused themselves by hissing the permitted plays, sometimes with the additional luxury of personal feeling against the author,--as in the case of the Rev. Mr. Miller's "Coffee House," "Art and Nature," and "Hospital for Fools." Thomson was fortunate in saving his "Agamemnon" from the censors, for it is not unworthy of ranking with the "Iphigenia" of Racine; and its merit saved it. Mallet was still more lucky with his "Mustapha;" and the audience were too pleased to hiss a piece, the licensers of which were too dull to perceive that Sultan Solyman and his vizier, Rustan, were but stage portraits of George II. and Sir Robert Walpole. They had no such tenderness for the "Parricide" of William Shirley,--a gentleman who understood the laws of trade better than those of the drama. A French company, at the Haymarket, were of course hissed out of the country. There was no ill-will against them, personally. It was sufficient that the Licensing Act authorised them to play, and the public would not tolerate them, accordingly! If they bore with Lillo's "Marina," it was, perhaps, because it was a re-cast of "Pericles;" and if they applauded his licensed "Elmeric," the reason may have been, that the old dissenting jeweller, who set so brave an example in writing "moral" pieces, was then dead; and the "author's nights" might be of advantage to his impoverished family. But there were licensed dramas at which the public laughed too heartily, to have cared to hiss, or which so entranced them that they never thought of it. Thus, Dodsley's merry pieces, "Sir John Cockle," and the "Blind Beggar;" Carey and Lampe's hilarious burlesque-opera, the "Dragon of Wantley," and its sequel, "Margery;" with "Orpheus and Eurydice," one of Rich's burlesques and pantomimes--the comic operatic scenes not preceding, but alternating with those of the harlequinade--in which, by the way, the name of Grimaldi occurs as pantaloon,--rode riotously triumphant through the seasons, which were otherwise especially remarkable, by numerous revivals of Shakspeare's plays, according to the original text; and not less so by that of Milton's "Comus," in which graceful Mrs. Cibber played and sang the Lady, and sunny Kitty Clive gladdened every heart, as Euphrosyne.