"SQUIRE BICKERSTAFF,
"Finding your advice and censure to have a good effect, I
desire your admonition to our vicar and schoolmaster, who in
his preaching to his auditors, stretches his jaws so wide, that
instead of instructing youth, it rather frightens them: likewise
in reading prayers, he has such a careless loll, that people
are justly offended at his irreverent posture; besides the
extraordinary charge they are put to in sending their children
to dance, to bring them off of those ill gestures. Another evil
faculty he has, in making the bowling-green his daily residence,
instead of his church, where his curate reads prayers every day.
If the weather is fair, his time is spent in visiting; if cold or
wet, in bed, or at least at home, though within a hundred yards
of the church. These, out of many such irregular practices, I
write for his reclamation: but two or three things more before I
conclude; to wit, that generally when his curate preaches in the
afternoon, he sleeps sitting in the desk on a hassock. With all
this, he is so extremely proud, that he will go but once to the
sick, except they return his visit."
I was going on in reading my letter, when I was interrupted by Mr.
Greenhat, who has been this evening at the play of "Hamlet." "Mr.
Bickerstaff," said he, "had you been to-night at the play-house,
you had seen the force of action in perfection: your admired Mr.
Betterton[172] behaved himself so well, that, though now about seventy,
he acted youth; and by the prevalent power of proper manner, gesture
and voice, appeared through the whole drama a young man of great
expectation, vivacity, and enterprise. The soliloquy, where he began
the celebrated sentence of, 'To be, or not to be;' the expostulation
where he explains with his mother in her closet; the noble ardour,
after seeing his father's ghost, and his generous distress for the
death of Ophelia, are each of them circumstances which dwell strongly
upon the minds of the audience, and would certainly affect their
behaviour on any parallel occasions in their own lives. Pray, Mr.
Bickerstaff, let us have virtue thus represented on the stage with its
proper ornaments, or let these ornaments be added to her in places more
sacred. As for my part," said he, "I carried my cousin Jerry, this
little boy, with me, and shall always love the child for his partiality
in all that concerned the fortune of Hamlet. This is entering youth
into the affections and passions of manhood beforehand, and as it were
antedating the effects we hope from a long and liberal education."
I cannot in the midst of many other things which press, hide the
comfort that this letter from my ingenious kinsman gives me.
"_To my Honoured Kinsman_, ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq.
"DEAR COUSIN,
_Oxford, Sept. 18._
"I am sorry, though not surprised, to find that you have rallied
the men of dress in vain; that the amber-headed cane still
maintains its unstable post; that pockets are but a few inches
shortened; and a beau is still a beau, from the crown of his
nightcap to the heels of his shoes. For your comfort, I can
assure you, that your endeavours succeed better in this famous
seat of learning. By them, the manners of our young gentlemen are
in a fair way of amendment, and their very language is mightily
refined. To them it is owing, that not a servitor will sing a
catch, not a senior fellow make a pun, not a determining bachelor
drink a bumper; and I believe a gentleman commoner would as soon
have the heels of his shoes red as his stockings. When a witling
stands at a coffee-house door, and sneers at those who pass by,
to the great improvement of his hopeful audience, he is no longer
surnamed a slicer, but a man of fire is the word. A beauty, whose
health is drunk from Heddington to Hinksey,[173] who has been the
theme of the Muses (her cheeks painted with roses, and her bosom
planted with orange boughs), has no more the title of lady, but
reigns an undisputed toast. When to the plain garb of gown and
band a spark adds an inconsistent long wig, we do not say now
he boshes, but there goes a smart fellow. If a virgin blushes,
we no longer cry the blues. He that drinks till he stares, is
no more tow-row, but honest. A youngster in a scrape, is a word
out of date; and what bright man says, I was Joabed by the dean:
bamboozling is exploded; a shat is a tattler; and if the muscular
motion of a man's face be violent, no mortal says, he raises a
horse, but he is a merry fellow.
"I congratulate you, my dear kinsman, upon these conquests; such
as Roman emperors lamented they could not gain; and in which you
rival your correspondent Lewis le Grand, and his dictating academy.
"Be yours the glory to perform, mine to record (as Mr. Dryden
has said before me to his kinsman);[174] and while you enter
triumphant into the temple of the Muses, I, as my office requires,
will, with my staff on my shoulder, attend and conduct you. I am,
Dear cousin,
"Your most affectionate Kinsman,
BENJAMIN BEADLESTAFF."[175]
Upon the humble application of certain persons who have made heroic
figures in Mr. Bickerstaff's narrations, notice is hereby given, that
no such shall ever be mentioned for the future, except those who have
sent menaces, and not submitted to admonition.