gns, instead of a penitential psalm, to dismiss his audience with
an excellent new ballad of his own composing. Pray, Sir, do what you
can to put a stop to these growing evils, and you will very much
oblige your humble servant,

"PHYSIBULUS."

[Footnote A: At that time ordinary of Newgate; and who, in his
accounts of the convicts executed at Tyburn, generally represented
them as true penitents, and dying very well.]

No. 341. TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 1712.

"--Revocate animos, maestumque timorem
Mittite--"
VIRG. AEN.I. 206.

"Resume your courage, and dismiss your care."
DRYDEN.

Having, to oblige my correspondent Physibulus, printed his letter last
Friday, in relation to the new epilogue, he cannot take it amiss, if I
now publish another, which I have just received from a gentleman who
does not agree with him in his sentiments upon that matter.

"Sir,--I am amazed to find an epilogue attacked in your last Friday's
paper, which has been so generally applauded by the town, and received
such honours as were never before given to any in an English theatre.

"The audience would not permit Mrs. Oldfield to go off the stage the
first night till she had repeated it twice; the second night the noise
of _ancora_ was as loud as before, and she was again obliged to speak
it twice; the third night it was called for a second time; and, in
short, contrary to all other epilogues, which are dropped after the
third representation of the play, this has already been repeated nine
times.

"I must own I am the more surprised to find this censure, in
opposition to the whole town, in a paper which has hitherto been
famous for the candour of its criticisms.

"I can by no means allow your melancholy correspondent, that the
new epilogue is unnatural, because it is gay. If I had a mind to be
learned, I could tell him that the prologue and epilogue were real
parts of the ancient tragedy; but every one knows, that on the British
stage, they are distinct performances by themselves, pieces entirely
detached from the play, and no way essential to it.

"The moment the play ends, Mrs. Oldfield is no more Andromache, but
Mrs. Oldfield; and though the poet had left Andromache stone-dead upon
the stage, as your ingenious correspondent phrases it, Mrs. Oldfield
might still have spoke a merry epilogue. We have an instance of this
in a tragedy where there is not only a death, but a martyrdom.[A] St.
Catherine was there personated by