e of that planet
and the aforesaid Joanna, extended itself to a length, which Momus
forbid mine should ever attain, unless when reflected from a
table-spoon, at the Piazza coffee-house!

It was now confidently reported, that the days of Jeremy Collier had
returned: that the theatres were to be shut up, his majesty's servants
to receive their arrears of scarlet cloth, for regimentals to serve him
in the capacity of foot-soldiers: that the slayers of Syntax, who had
stuffed their mouths with melo-drames, and other pernicious compounds,
were to turn hewers of wood, and that your worship would license no
pantomimes, except those exhibited in the Blackfriars and
Tottenham-court roads.

This intelligence rather pleased than alarmed me. I believed it only to
a certain extent, conceiving the fact to be, that my respected patron
was sick of silk banners and Peruvian suns, exhausting more gold than
they engendered, and that a ray of true taste was hereafter to dawn upon
the dramatic horizon. "The theatre," exclaimed I, "is the school of
morality; and morality and religion are inseparable." Without stopping
to prove my syllogism, I seized my commentary, and with a head and a
great-coat pocket full of my immortal labours, called once more in
Portland-place. You received me with civility, desired me to take a
seat, and treated me with a cup of chocolate, declining to take any
yourself, on account of a nausea at your stomach, which I ascribed to a
certain sentimental pill you had lately swallowed, rolled up in the
shape of a comedy, and for which I undertook to prescribe. You requested
me with eagerness to do so, and I drew my manuscript from my pocket,
thinking the golden moment at hand. I conjured you to consider, that in
dramatic entertainments the love of show was like the love of money, and
increased by indulgences, beyond the power of a manager to gratify: I
proved by mathematical demonstration, that small theatres wanted nothing
but good dialogue to support them: I entreated you to send your gorgeous
trumpery to rag-fair, and to diminish your overgrown Drury, which no man
could now think of entering unaccompanied by a telescope and an
ear-trumpet. All the persuasions of a Tully, all the energy of a
Waithman, were enlisted into my harangue; which finished by exhorting
your worship to step back half a century in your dramatic career, to a
period when theatrical property was somewhat more than a mouthful of
moonshine;--when Sha