Seeing how we were shoved about in the mob, how I the had my pocket picked of the last new almanack, and my steel tobacco-box; how my daughter lost half an eyebrow and her laced shoe in a gutter; my wife's lamentation upon this, with the adventures of the crumbled plum-cake, and broken brandy bottle, what need I relate all these? We suffered this and ten times more before we got to our places. At last, however, we were seated. My wife is certainly an heart of oak; I thought sitting up in the damp night-air would have killed her. I have known her for two months take possession of our easy chair, mobbed up in flannel nightcaps, and trembling at a breath of air; but she now bore the night as merrily as if she had sat up at a christening. My daughter and she did not seem to value it of a farthing. She told me two or three stories that she knows will always make me laugh, and my daughter sang me the Noontide air towards one o'clock in the morning. However, with all their endeavours I was as cold and as dismal as I ever remember. "If this be the pleasure of a coronation," cried I, to myself, "I had rather see the Court of King Solomon in all his glory at my ease in Bartholomew Fair." Towards morning, sleep began to come fast upon me; and the sun rising and warming the air still inclined me to rest a little. You must know, sir, that I am naturally of a sleepy constitution; I have often sat up at table with my eyes open, and have been asleep all the while. What will you have on't? just about eight Coronao'clock in the morning I fell fast asleep. I fell tion into the most pleasing dream in the world. I shall never forget it; I dreamed that I was at my Lord Mayor's feast, and had scaled the crust of a venison pasty. I kept eating and eating, in my sleep, and thought I could never have enough. After some time, the pasty, methought, was taken away, and the dessert was brought in its room. Thought I to myself, "If I have not got enough of the venison, I am resolved to make it up by the largest snap at the sweetmeats." Accordingly, I grasped a whole pyramid; the rest of the guests seeing me with so much, one gave me a snap, and the other gave me a snap; I was pulled this way by my neighbour on my right hand, and that by my neighbour on my left, but still kept my ground without flinching, and continued eating and pocketing as fast as I could. I never was so pulled and hauled in my whole life. At length, however, going to smell a lobster that lay before me, methought it caught me with its claws fast by the nose. The pain I felt upon this occasion is inexpressible, in fact it broke my dream; when, awaking, I found my wife and daughter applying a smelling-bottle to my nose; and telling me it was time to go home. They assured me every means had been tried to awake me while the procession was going forward; but that I still continued to sleep till the whole ceremony was over. Mr Printer, this a hard case, and as I read your most is Seeing ingenious work, it will be some comfort, the when I see this inserted, to find thatCorona- I write for it too. tion I am, Sir, Your distressed, Humble Servant, L. GROGAN. ESSAY IX. THE THEATRE; OR, A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE theatre, like all other amusements, has Senti Comedy its fashions and its prejudices: and when mental satiated with its excellence, mankind begin to mistake change for improvement. For some years tragedy was the reigning entertainment; but of late it has entirely given way to comedy, and our best efforts are now exerted in these lighter kinds of composition. The pompous train, the swelling phrase, and the unnatural rant, are displaced for that natural portrait of human folly and frailty, of which all are judges, because all have sat for the picture. But as in describing nature it is presented with a double face, either of mirth or sadness, our modern writers find themselves at a loss which chiefly to copy from; and it is now debated, whether the exhibition of human distress is likely to afford the mind more entertainment than that of human absurdity? Comedy is defined by Aristotle to be a picture Senti- of the frailties of the lower part of mankind, to mental distinguish it from tragedy, which is an exhibi tion of the misfortunes of the great. When comedy, therefore, ascends to produce the characters of princes or generals upon the stage, it is out of its walks, since low life and middle life are entirely its object. The principal question, therefore, is, whether, in describing low or middle life, an exhibition of its follies be not preferable to a detail of its calamities? Or, in other words, which deserves the preference,—the weeping sentimental comedy so much in fashion at present, or the laughing, and even low comedy, which seems to have been last exhibited by Vanbrugh and Cibber? If we apply to authorities, all the great masters in the dramatic art have but one opinion. Their rule is, that as tragedy displays the calamities of the great, so comedy should excite our laughter by ridiculously exhibiting the follies of the lower part of mankind. Boileau, one of the best modern critics, asserts, that comedy will not admit of tragic distress: "Le comique, ennemi des soupirs et des pleurs, N'admet point dans ses vers de tragiques douleurs." Nor is this rule without the strongest foundation in nature, as the distresses of the mean by no means affect us so strongly as the calamities of the great. When tragedy exhibits to us some great man fallen from his height, and struggling with want and adversity, we feel his situation in |