derest and most unfeigned concern; and I lay hold of this opportunity most earnestly to recommend to them the strictest observance of this decorum. I will admit that a fine woman of a certain rank cannot have too many real vices; but, at the same time, I do insist upon it, that it is essentially her interest, not to have the appearance of any one. This decorum, I

confess, will conceal her conquests, and prevent her triumphs; but, on the other hand, if she will be pleased to reflect that those conquests are known, sooner or later, always to end in her total defeat, she will not upon an average find herself a loser. There are, indeed, some husbands of such humane and hospitable dispositions, that they seem determined to share all their happiness with their friends and acquaintance: so that, with regard to such husbands singly, this decorum were useless: but the far greater number are of a churlish and uncommunicative disposition, troublesome upon bare suspicions, and brutal upon proofs.

These are

capable of inflicting upon the fair delinquent the pains and penalties of exile and imprisonment at the dreadful mansion-seat, notwithstanding the most solemn protestations and oaths, backed with the most moving tears, that nothing really criminal has passed. But it must be owned that, of all negatives, that is much the hardest to be proved.

Though deep play be a very innocent and even commendable amusement in itself, it is,

however, as things are yet constituted, a great breach, nay, perhaps the highest violation possible, of the decorum in the fair sex. If generally fortunate, it induces some suspicion of dexterity; if unfortunate, of debt; and in this latter case, the ways and means for raising the supplies necessary for the current year are sometimes supposed to be unwarrantable. But what is still more important is, that the agonies of an ill run will disfigure the finest face in the world, and cause most ungraceful emotions. I have known a bad game suddenly produced upon a good game, for a deep stake at bragg or commerce, almost make the vermilion turn pále, and elicit from lips where the sweets of Hybla dwelt, and where the loves and graces played, some murmured oaths, which, though minced and mitigated a little in their termination, seemed to me, upon the whole, to be rather unbecoming.

Another singular advantage, which will arise to my fair countrywomen of distinction, from the observance of this decorum, is, that they will never want some creditable led-captain to attend them, at a minute's warning, to operas, plays, Ranelagh, and Vauxhall; whereas I have known some women of extreme condition, who, by neglecting the decorum, had slatterned away their characters to such a degree, as to be obliged, upon those emergencies, to take up with mere toad eaters of very equivocal rank

and character, who by no means graced their entry into public places.

To the young, unmarried ladies, I beg leave to represent, that this decorum will make a difference of at least five-and-twenty, if not fifty per cent. in their fortunes. The pretty men, who have commonly the honour of attending them, are not in general the marrying kind of men; they love them too much, or too little, know them too well, or not well enough, to think of marrying them. The husband-like men are a set of awkward fellows with good estates, and who, not having got the better of vulgar prejudices, lay some stress upon the characters of their wives, and the legitimacy of the heirs to their estates and titles. These are to be caught only by les mœurs; the hook must be baited with the decorum; the naked one will not do.

I must own that it seems too severe to deny young ladies the innocent amusements of the present times, but I beg of them to recollect that I mean only with regard to outward appearances; and I shall presume that tête à tétes with the pretty men might be contrived and brought about in places less public than Kensington gardens, the two parks, the high mads, or the streets of London.

Having thus combined, as I flatter myself I have, the solid enjoyments of vice with the useful appearances of virtue, I think myself entitled to the thanks of my country in general,

and to that just praise which Horace gives to the author, qui miscuit utile dulci, or, in English, who joins the useful with the agreeable.

THE DRAMA.

I could wish there were a treaty made between the French and the English theatres, in which both parties should make considerable concessions. The English ought to give up their notorious violations of all the unities; and all their massacres, racks, dead bodies, and mangled carcasses, which they so frequently exhibit upon their stage. The French should engage to have more action, and less declamation; and not to cram and crowd things together to almost a degree of impossibility, from a too scrupulous adherence to the unities. The English should restrain the licentiousness of their poets, and the French enlarge the liberties of theirs: their poets are the greatest slaves in their country, and that is a bold word; ours are the most tumultuous subjects in England, and that is saying a good deal. Under such regulations, one might hope to see a play, in which one should not be lulled to sleep by the length of a monotonical declamation, nor frightened and shocked by the barbarity of the action; The unity of time extended occasionally to three or four days, and the unity of place broken into, as far as the same street, or sometimes the same town: both which, I will

affirm, are as probable as four-and-twenty hours and the same room.

More indulgence too, in my mind, should be shown, than the French are willing to allow, to bright thoughts, and to shining images; for though, I confess, it is not very natural for a Hero or a Princess to say fine things in all the violence of grief, love, rage, &c. yet I can as well suppose that, as I can that they should talk to themselves for half an hour; which they must necessarily do, or no tragedy could be carried on, unless they had recourse to a much greater absurdity, the choruses of the ancients. Tragedy is of a nature, that one must see it with a degree of self-deception; we must lend ourselves, a little, to the delusican; and I am very willing to carry that complaisance a little farther than the French do.

Tragedy must be something bigger than life, or it would not affect us. In Nature the most violent passions are silent; in Tragedy they must speak, and speak with dignity too. Hence the necessity of their being written in verse, and, unfortunately for the French, from the weakness of their language, in rhymes. And for the same reason, Cato, the Stoic, expiring at Utica, rhymes masculine and feminine at Paris; and fetches his last breath at London, in most harmonious and correct blank verse.

It is quite otherwise with Comedy, which should be mere common life, and not one jot bigger. Every character should speak upon