l satire and whimsical fancy-piece, he thought proper to cancel
the "Epistle:" concluding that it was entirely wanting in that respect
with which the public ought to be addressed! This editor, of course, was
a Frenchman: we view him in the ridiculous attitude of making his
profound bow, and expressing all this "high consideration" for this same
"Public," while, with his opera-hat in his hand, he is sweeping away the
most poignant and delectable page of Acajou and Zirphile.

TOM O' BEDLAMS.

The history of a race of singular mendicants, known by the name of _Tom
o' Bedlams_, connects itself with that of our poetry. Not only will they
live with our language, since Shakspeare has perpetuated their
existence, but they themselves appear to have been the occasion of
creating a species of wild fantastic poetry, peculiar to our nation.

Bethlehem Hospital formed, in its original institution, a contracted and
penurious charity;[175] its governors soon discovered that the
metropolis furnished them with more lunatics than they had calculated
on; they also required from the friends of the patients a weekly
stipend, besides clothing. It is a melancholy fact to record in the
history of human nature, that when one of their original regulations
prescribed that persons who put in patients should provide their
clothes, it was soon observed that the poor lunatics were frequently
perishing by the omission of this slight duty from those former friends;
so soon forgotten were they whom none found an interest to recollect.
They were obliged to open contributions to provide a wardrobe.[176]

In consequence of the limited resources of the Hospital, they relieved
the establishment by frequently discharging patients whose cure might be
very equivocal. Harmless lunatics thrown thus into the world, often
without a single friend, wandered about the country, chanting wild
ditties, and wearing a fantastical dress to attract the notice of the
charitable, on whose alms they lived. They had a kind of _costume_,
which I find described by Randle Holme in a curious and extraordinary
work.[177]

"The Bedlam has a long staff, and a cow or ox-horn by his side; his
clothing fantastic and ridiculous; for being a madman, he is madly
decked and dressed all over with rubins (ribands), feathers, cuttings of
cloth, and what not, to make him seem a madman, or one distracted, when
he is no other than a wandering and dissembling knave." This writer here
poi