to hear the famous new author
whose piece was being played at Covent Garden?

At this time a star of genius had arisen, and was blazing with quite a
dazzling brilliancy. The great Mr. John Home, of Scotland, had produced
a tragedy, than which, since the days of the ancients, there had been
nothing more classic and elegant. What had Mr. Garrick meant by refusing
such a masterpiece for his theatre? Say what you will about Shakspeare;
in the works of that undoubted great poet (who had begun to grow vastly
more popular in England since Monsieur Voltaire attacked him) there were
many barbarisms that could not but shock a polite auditory; whereas,
Mr. Home, the modern author, knew how to be refined in the very midst of
grief and passion; to represent death, not merely as awful, but graceful
and pathetic; and never condescended to degrade the majesty of the
Tragic Muse by the ludicrous apposition of buffoonery and familiar
punning, such as the elder playwright certainly had resort to. Besides,
Mr. Home's performance had been admired in quarters so high, and by
personages whose taste was known to be as elevated as their rank, that
all Britons could not but join in the plaudits for which august hands
had given the signal. Such, it was said, was the opinion of the very
best company, in the coffee-houses, and amongst the wits about town.
Why, the famous Mr. Gray, of Cambridge, said there had not been for a
hundred years any dramatic dialogue of such a true style; and as for the
poet's native capital of Edinburgh, where the piece was first brought
out, it was even said that the triumphant Scots called out from the pit
(in their dialect), "Where's Wully Shakspeare noo?"

"I should like to see the man who could beat Willy Shakspeare?" says the
General, laughing.

"Mere national prejudice," says Mr. Warrington.

"Beat Shakspeare, indeed!" cries Mrs. Lambert.

"Pooh, pooh! you have cried more over Mr. Sam Richardson than ever you
did over Mr. Shakspeare, Molly!" remarks the General. "I think few women
love to read Shakspeare: they say they love it, but they don't."

"Oh, papa!" cry three ladies, throwing up three pair of hands.

"Well, then, why do you all three prefer Douglas? And you, boys, who are
such Tories, will you go see a play which is wrote by a Whig Scotchman,
who was actually made prisoner at Falkirk?"

"Relicta non bene parmula," says Mr. Jack the scholar.

"Nay; it was relicta bene parmula," cried the General. "