er that serves, the bar-girl that
waits, the bailiff on the prowl, the chairmen trudging through the black
lampless streets, and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords
are clashing in the garden within. "Help there! a gentleman is hurt": the
chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gentleman over the railings, and
carry him, ghastly and bleeding, to the bagnio in Long Acre, where they
knock up the surgeon--a pretty tall gentleman--but that wound under the
short ribs has done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen,
and gentleman gaoler with your axe, where be you now? The gentleman
axeman's head is off his own shoulders; the lords and judges can wag
theirs no longer; the bailiff's writs have ceased to run; the honest
chairmen's pipes are put out, and with their brawny calves they have
walked away into Hades--all as irrecoverably done for as Will Mountford or
Captain Coote. The subject of our night's lecture saw all these
people--rode in Captain Coote's company of the Guards very probably--wrote
and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy in many a chair, after many a
bottle, in many a tavern--fled from many a bailiff.

In 1709, when the publication of the _Tatler_ began, our
great-great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and delightful
paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light literature in a later
day exhibited when the Waverley novels appeared, upon which the public
rushed, forsaking that feeble entertainment of which the Miss Porters, the
Anne of Swanseas, and worthy Mrs. Radcliffe herself, with her dreary
castles and exploded old ghosts, had had pretty much the monopoly. I have
looked over many of the comic books with which our ancestors amused
themselves, from the novels of Swift's coadjutrix, Mrs. Manley, the
delectable author of the _New Atlantis_, to the facetious productions of
Tom Durfey, and Tom Brown, and Ned Ward, writer of the _London Spy_ and
several other volumes of ribaldry. The slang of the taverns and
ordinaries, the wit of the bagnios, form the strongest part of the farrago
of which these libels are composed. In the excellent newspaper collection
at the British Museum, you may see, besides the _Craftsman_ and _Post
Boy_, specimens, and queer specimens they are, of the higher literature of
Queen Anne's time. Here is an abstract from a notable journal bearing
date, Wednesday, October 13th, 1708, and entitled _The British Apollo; or,
Curious Amusements for the