an overfull bottle of nectar, whose particles, in their contention for preference of escape, do mutually "choke their utterance." STANZAS TO PUNCHINELLO. THOU lignum-vita Roscius, who Thou grinning, giggling, laugh-extorting fellow! At other times mine ear is wrung Waking associations melancholic; But that which heralds thee recalls All childhood's joys and festivals, And makes the heart rebound with freak and frolic. Ere of thy face I get a snatch, O with what boyish glee I catch Thy twittering, cackling, bubbling, squeaking gibber— Sweeter than syren voices-fraught With richer merriment than aught That drops from witling mouths, though utter'd glibber! What wag was ever known before To keep the circle in a roar, Nor wound the feelings of a single hearer? Engrossing all the jibes and jokes, Unenvied by the duller folks, A harmless wit-an unmalignant jeerer. The upturn'd eyes I love to tracé I love those sounds to analyse, To age's chuckle with its coughing after ; To see the grave and the genteel Rein in awhile the mirth they feel, Then loose their muscles, and let out the laughter. Sometimes I note a hen-peck'd wight, To him a beatific beau idéal; He counts each crack on Judy's pate, Then homeward creeps to cogitate The difference 'twixt dramatic wives and real. But, Punch, thou 'rt ungallant and rude In plying thy persuasive wood; Remember that thy cudgel's girth is fuller Than that compassionate, thumb-thick, Establish'd wife-compelling stick, Made legal by the dictum of Judge Buller. When the officious doctor hies To cure thy spouse, there's no surprise Thou shouldst receive him with nose-tweaking grappling ; Nor can we wonder that the mob Encores each crack upon his nob, When thou art feeing him with oaken sapling. As for our common enemy Old Nick, we all rejoice to see The coup de grace that silences his wrangle; But, lo, Jack Ketch!-ah, welladay! Dramatic justice claims its prey, And thou in hempen handkerchief must dangle. Now helpless hang those arms which once Rattled such music on the sconce; Hush'd is that tongue which late out-jested Yorick ; That hunch behind is shrugg'd no more, No longer heaves that paunch before, Which swagg'd with such a pleasantry plethorick. But Thespian deaths are transient woes, Suffer'd by lignum-vitæ malefactors ; Thou wilt return, alert, alive, And long, oh long may'st thou survive, First of head-breaking and side-splitting actors! AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF BRITISH COMEDY. No. I. NOTHING is more common than to hear lamentable complaints of the downfal of the British Drama, and nothing is more rare than to find that the authors of these doleful exclamations have bestowed any pains in investigating the extent, causes, or consequences of the calamity they deplore. Like other ill news, the dictum flies apace from mouth to mouth, and its circulators are too busy in spreading the report to stop to analyze its truth. The assertion, however, is neither limited to the present time, nor to the stage itself; for men, in all ages, have been prone to speak in raptures of the ancient poets, dramatists, painters, and historians, while they bewailed the inferiority of their own days; to reason as if the progress of knowledge were retrograde, and to indulge in gloomy reveries, as if the world, instead of advancing in intellectual refinement, were relapsing into darkness and barbarism. "There are some prejudices," as Dr. Aikin justly observes,* "which; when once broken through, leave the mind in astonishment that it could ever have submitted to them. Such is that of annexing authority to antiquity. In consequence of a false analogy, we associate the idea of age and experience to the circumstance of having lived long ago; and thus we invert the proper notice of the wisdom of ages,' and look for it at the wrong end." He proceeds to remark, that, "in fact, all the authority which accumulated knowledge and experience can bestow, is on the side of a modern, when compared with an ancient."-Yet few old men will allow the operation of this principle upon their contemporaries; although they are very ready to admit the conjunctive progress of improvement with the march of time, so far as it respects themselves. To men of this sort every thing appears to be woefully altered for the worse, since the days of their youth they are sailing from the land of promise, and fancy it is receding from them; they are changed themselves, and imagine that the world is altered, as * Letters to his Son, vol. ii. page 89. the old beauty complained that the looking-glasses were not half so good as they used to be when she was young. This mental delusion must be attributed to the confused association of our ideas, in confounding our own aptitude to receive delight from certain objects with the power of those objects to impart it. Losing, with the buoyant susceptibility of youth, the novelty which supplied it with a constant round of pleasurable impressions, we eagerly attach to every thing rather than to ourselves the fault of this decay in our gratifications. Because the recoil of a few years carries us back to a period of keener enjoyment, we imagine that to recede still farther must be to improve still more the objects which contribute to the relish of existence; and, ascending the scale of retrogressive excellence, we at length habitually deplore the destitution of the present times, and invest antiquity with every species of perfection. This obliquity of view, combined with the paltry jealousy from which human nature is rarely exempt, and by which it is constantly prompted to exalt the dead that it may depress the living, has doubtless operated in rounding many a declamatory period upon the degradation of the modern drama. Another cause which contributes to its undue depreciation, is the erroneous standard by which we form our estimate. We judge of the old dramatists by the best of their productions; of moderns by the worst. When we talk of the former, we only think of Love for Love, The Beaux Stratagem, or those which, to our tastes, appear the most perfect speci |