ted the sullens in dignified retirement--but it would not do:
murder will out, and so will manuscripts. I resolved to make one more
effort. But were I to bring to your recollection all the mortifying
repulses I endured, I should quite destroy that patience of which you
stand so much in need, to listen to the debates at the next meeting of
your common council. At one time, naked from the waist upwards, you were
waging war with Belcher, the _Hittite_: at another, you had taken an
invisible girl into keeping: your cash was drained by lotteries,
missionaries, and mountebanks of all sorts and sizes: boys, even the
deaf, the dumb, and the blind, quitted their asylum in St. George's
Fields, for a more lucrative one on the boards of your theatres. Your
comic operas were, like Muzio Clementi's carts, mere vehicles for music,
and vehicles withal of such a clumsy fabric, that poor Euterpe, when she
took her nightly airings, reminded the spectator of Punch's wife in a
wheelbarrow; every expense was incurred, and every scribbler taken into
pay, except poor Shakspeare and his poorer commentator.

One morning, about eleven o'clock, as I was indulging myself in a
solitary ramble over Blackfriars-bridge, I espied your well-known
barouche, which I followed, and observed to stop at the Elephant and
Castle! Heighday! said I, this is a metamorphosis indeed! John Bull has
returned to nature at last. He prefers "the sanded floor that grits
beneath the tread," to a Persian carpet, and a pot of porter to the
"wines of France and milk of Burgundy." I'll go and smoke a pipe with
him! here again I was in error, your carriage having passed the
public-house, and stopped at a methodist meeting adjoining. It seems
your worship had, with religious abhorrence, passed by the Elephant and
Castle, but borrowing in part the imagery of that sign, had converted
your half-reasoning self into a clumsy Christian pedler, with a bundle
of contraband goods at your back. One Joanna, it seems, was the
priestess of this temple, and your worship had commenced so strong a
flirtation with the Lambeth sybil, that all the world looked upon
wedlock as inevitable. As I stood in the porch, I overheard your amatory
sighs and groans which sounded in my ears like Boreas wooing Vulcan
through a cranny in a chimney-corner. On approaching your pew, how was I
struck with the change in your physiognomy! Your face heretofore as red
and round as the full moon, had, by the joint influenc