e before thrown him into a profound
melancholy, and on this occasion he was unfortunately "cast" for the
agitating part of "the Stranger." He appeared unusually moved on
uttering the words "there is another and a better world," in the third
act. In the first scene of the following act, when he was asked "Why did
you not keep your children with you? they would have amused you in many
a dreary hour," he turned to reply--and "for the space of about ten
seconds, he paused as if waiting for the prompter to give him the
word"--says Mr. Whitfield the actor, who was then with him upon the
stage--"then put out his right hand, as if going to take hold of mine.
It dropt, as if to support his fall, but it had no power; in that
instant he fell, but not at full length, he crouched in falling, so that
his head did not strike the stage with great violence. He never breathed
after. I think I may venture to say he died without a pang." It is one
of the most melancholy incidents connected with theatrical history.]

JOCULAR PREACHERS.

These preachers, whose works are excessively rare, form a race unknown
to the general reader. I shall sketch the characters of these pious
buffoons, before I introduce them to his acquaintance. They, as it has
been said of Sterne, seemed to have wished, every now and then, to have
thrown their wigs into the faces of their auditors.

These preachers flourished in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries; we are therefore to ascribe their extravagant mixture of
grave admonition with facetious illustration, comic tales which have
been occasionally adopted by the most licentious writers, and minute and
lively descriptions, to the great simplicity of the times, when the
grossest indecency was never concealed under a gentle periphrasis, but
everything was called by its name. All this was enforced by the most
daring personalities, and seasoned by those temporary allusions which
neither spared, nor feared even the throne. These ancient sermons
therefore are singularly precious, to those whose inquisitive pleasures
are gratified by tracing the _manners_ of former ages. When Henry
Stephens, in his apology for Herodotus, describes the irregularities of
the age, and the minutiae of national manners, he effects this chiefly by
extracts from these sermons. Their wit is not always the brightest, nor
their satire the most poignant; but there is always that prevailing
_naivete_ of the age running through