sh out our feasts,
While you, the founders, make yourselves the guests."--Vol. x.

[17]
"Some have expected, from our bills to-day,
To find a satire in our poet's ploy.
The zealous route from Coleman street did run.
To see the story of the Friar and Nun;
Or tales yet more ridiculous to hear,
Vouched by their vicar often pounds a-year,--
Nuns who did against temptation pray,
And discipline laid on the pleasant way:
Or that, to please the malice of the town,
Our poet should in some close cell have shown
Some sister, playing at content alone.
This they did hope; the other side did fear;
And both, you see, alike are cozened here."

[18]
"_Bayes._ I remember once, in a play of mine, I set off a scene,
i'gad, beyond expectation, only with a petticoat and the belly-ache.

_Smith_. Pray, how was that, sir?

_Bayes_. Why, sir, I contrived a petticoat to be brought in upon
a chair (nobody knew how), into a prince's chamber, whose father was
now to see it, that came in by chance.

_Johns_. God's-my-life, that was a notable contrivance indeed!

_Smith_. Ay, but, Mr. Bayes, how could you contrive the
belly-ache?

_Bayes._ The easiest i' the world, i'gad: I'll tell you how; I
made the prince sit down upon the petticoat, no more than so, and
pretended to his father that he had just then got the belly-ache;
whereupon his father went out to call a physician, and his man ran
away with the petticoat."--_Rehearsal_.

[19] Not Matthew, but Martin, as it is correctly printed before.--Ed.

[20] "To begin with your character of Almanzor, which you avow to have
taken from the Achilles in Homer; pray hear what Famianus Strada says of
such talkers as Mr. Dryden: _Ridere soleo, cum video homines ab Homeri
virtibus strenue declinates, si quid vero irrepsi vitii, id avide
arripientes._ But I might have spared this quotation, and you your
avowing; for this character might as well have been borrowed from some
of the stalls in Bedlam, or any of your own hair-brained cox-combs which
you call heroes, and persons of honour. I remember just such another
fuming Achilles in Shakespeare, one ancient Pistol, whom he avows to be
a man of so fiery a temper, and so impatient of an injury, even from Sir
John Falstaff his captain, and a knight, that he not only disobeyed his
commands about carrying a letter to Mrs. Page, but returned him an
answer as full of contumely, and in as opprobrious ter