to obtain a character, returned to the occupation in which he had been bred, and became journeyman to a barber in the city, who, upon seeing a specimen of his skill to dress hair a-la-mode de la cour, was willing to receive him without a scrupulous examination of his morals.

This change in the situation of my patron was of great advantage to me; for I began to have more company and less disturbance. But among other persons whom he attended every morning to shave, was an elderly gentleman of great repute for natural knowledge, a fellow of many foreign societies, and a profound adept in experimental philosophy. This gentleman, having conceived a design to repeat Leuenhoek's experiments upon the increase of our species, inquired of the proprietor of my dwelling if he could help him to a subject. The man was at first startled at the question; but it was no sooner comprehended than he pulled out an ivory comb, and produced myself and two associates, one of whom died soon after of the hurt he received.

The sage received us with thanks, and very carefully conveyed us into his stocking, where, though it was not a situation perfectly agreeable to our nature, we produced a numerous progeny. Here, however, I suffered new calamity, and was exposed to new danger. The philosopher, whom a sedentary and recluse life had rendered extremely susceptible of cold, would often sit with his shins so near the fire, that we were almost scorched to death before we could get round to the calf for shelter. He was also

subject to frequent abstractions of mind; and at these times many of us have been miserably destroyed by his broth or his tea, which he would hold so much on one side that it would run over the vessel, and overflow us with a scalding deluge from his knee to his ancle: nor was this all; for when he felt the

smart he would rub the part with his hand, without reflecting upon his nursery, till he had crushed great part of those who had escaped. Still, however, it was my fortune to survive for new adventures.

The philosopher, among other visitants whose curiosity he was pleased to gratify, was sometimes favoured with the company of ladies: for the entertainment of a lady it was my misfortune to be one morning taken from my family when I least suspected it, and secured in the apparatus of a solar microscope. After I had contributed to their astonishment and diversion near an hour, I was left with the utmost inhumanity and ingratitude to perish of hunger, immured between the two pieces of isinglass through which I had been exhibited. In this condition I remained three days and three nights; and should certainly have perished in the fourth, if a boy about seven years old, who was carelessly left alone in the room, had not poked his finger through the hole in which I was confined, and once more set me at liberty. I was, however, extremely weak, and the window being open I was blown into the street, and fell on the uncovered perriwig of a doctor of physic, who had just alighted to visit a patient. This was the first time I had ever entered a perriwig, a situation which I scarce less deprecate than the microscope : I found it a desolate wilderness, without inhabitants and without bounds. I continued to traverse it with incredible labour, but I knew not in what direction, and despaired of being ever restored either to food or rest. My spirits were at length exhausted, my gripe relaxed, and I fell almost in a state of insensibility from the verge of the labyrinth in which I had been bewildered, into the head of a patient in the hospital, over whom, after my fall, I could just perceive the doctor leaning to look at his tongue.

By the warmth and nourishment which this place

afforded me I soon revived. I rejoiced at my deliverance, and thought I had nothing to fear but the death of the patient in whose head I had taken shelter.

e;

I was, however, soon convinced of my mistake for among other patients in the same ward was a child about six years old, who having been put in for a rupture, had fallen into the jaundice: for this disease the nurse in the absence of the physician, prescribed a certain number of my species to be administered alive in a spoonful of milk. A collection was

immediately made, and I was numbered among the unhappy victims which ignorance and inhumanity had thus devoted to destruction: I was immerged in the potion, and saw myself approach the horrid jaws that I expected would the next moment close over me; not but that, in this dreadful moment, I had some languid hope of passing the gulf unhurt, and finding a settlement at the bottom. My fate, however, was otherwise determined: for the child, in a fit of frowardness and anger, dashed the spoon out of the hand of the nurse; and after incredible fatigue, I recovered the station to which I had descended from the doctor's wig.

I was once more congratulating myself on an escape almost miraculous, when I was alarmed by the appearance of a barber, with all the dreadful apparatus of his trade. I soon found that the person whose head I had chosen for an asylum was become delirious, and that the hair was by the physician's order to be removed for a blister.

Here my courage totally failed, and all my hopes forsook me. It happened, however, that though I was entangled in the suds, yet I was deposited unhurt upon the operator's shaving cloth; from whence, as he was shaving you this night, I gained your shoulder, and have this moment crawled out from the plaits

of your stock, which you have just taken off and laid upon this table. Whether this event be fortunate or unfortunate, time only can discover: but I still hope to find some dwelling, where no comb shall ever enter, and no nails shall ever scratch; which neither pincers nor razors shall approach; where I shall pass the remainder of life in perfect security and repose, amidst the smiles of society and the profusion of plenty.

At this hope, so extravagant and ridiculous, uttered with such solemnity of diction and manner, I burst into a fit of immoderate laughter that awaked me: but my mirth was instantly repressed by reflecting, that the Life of Man is not less exposed to Evil; and that all his expectations of security and happiness in Temporal Possessions are equally chimerical and absurd.

I am, Sir,

Your humble servant,
DORMITOR.

N° 122. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1754.

Telephus Peleus, cùm pauper & exul uterque,
Projicit ampullas & sesquipedalia verba,
Si curat cor spectantis tetigisse quèrelâ.

Tragedians too lay by their state to grieve:
Peleus and Telephus, exil'd and poor,
Forget their swelling and gigantic words:
He that would have spectators share his grief,
Must write not only well but movingly.

HOR.

ROSCOMMON.

MADNESS being occasioned by a close and continued attention of the mind to a single object, Shakspeare judiciously represents the resignation of his crown to daughters so cruel and unnatural, as the particular idea which has brought on the distraction of Lear, and which perpetually recurs to his imagination, and mixes itself with all his ramblings. Full of this idea, therefore, he breaks out abruptly in the Fourth Act: No, they cannot touch me for coining: I am the king himself.' He believes himself to be raising recruits, and censures the inability and unskilfulness of some of his soldiers: There's your press money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper: draw me a clothier's yard. Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace this piece of toasted cheese will do it.' The art of our poet is transcendant in thus making a passage, that even borders on burlesque, strongly expressive of the madness he is painting.

Lear