en the fountain of talk was stopt by deficiencies, and
the little stream of prattle ceased to murmur for want of a few pebbles
to break its course.

We are going to Venice by the way of Cremona, and hope for amusement
from external objects: let us at least not deserve or invite
disappointment by seeking for pleasure beyond the limits of innocence.

FROM MILAN TO PADUA.

The first evening's drive carried us no farther than Lodi, a place
renowned through all Europe for its excellent cheese, as out well-known
ballad bears testimony:

Let Lodi or Parmesan bring up the rear.

Those verses were imitated, I fancy, from a French song written by
Monsieur des Yveteaux, of whose extraordinary life and death much has
been said by his cotemporary wits, particularly how some of them found
him playing at shepherd and shepherdess in his own garden with a pretty
Savoyard wench, at seventy-eight years old, _en habit de berger, avec un
chapeau couleur de rose_[Footnote: In a pastoral habit, and a hat turned
up with pink], &c. when he shewed them the famous lines, _Avoir peu de
parens, moins de train que de rente_, &c. which do certainly bear a very
near affinity to our Old Man's Wish, published in Dryden's
Miscellanies; who, among other luxuries, resolves to eat Lodi cheese, I
remember.

The town, however, bringing no other ideas either new or old to our
minds, we went to the opera, and heard Morichelli sing: after which they
gave us a new dramatic dance, made upon the story of Don John, or the
Libertine; a tale which, whether true or false, fact or fable, has
furnished every Christian country in the world, I believe, with some
subject of representation. It makes me no sport, however; the idea of an
impenitent sinner going to hell is too seriously terrifying to make
amusement out of. Let mythology, which is now grown good for little
else, be danced upon the stage; where Mr. Vestris may bounce and
struggle in the character of Alcides on his funeral pile, with no very
glaring impropriety; and such baubles serve beside to keep old classical
stories in the heads of our young people; who, if they _must_ have
torches to blaze in their eyes, may divert themselves with Pluto
catching up Ceres's daughter, and driving her away to Tartarus; but let
Don John alone. I have at least _half a notion_ that the horrible
history is _half true_; if so, it is surely very gross to represent it
by dancing. Should such false foolish taste prevai