ces, he at last, vainly
promising himself success, commences author, and attempts, though
inadequate to the task, to write a play, which is lying on the table,
just returned with an answer from the manager of the theatre, to whom he
had offered it, that his piece would by no means do. Struck speechless
with this disastrous occurrence, all his hopes vanish, and his most
sanguine expectations are changed into dejection of spirit. To heighten
his distress, he is approached by his wife, and bitterly upbraided for
his perfidy in concealing from her his former connexions (with that
unhappy girl who is here present with her child, the innocent offspring
of her amours, fainting at the sight of his misfortunes, being unable to
relieve him farther), and plunging her into those difficulties she never
shall be able to surmount. To add to his misery, we see the
under-turnkey pressing him for his prison fees, or garnish-money, and
the boy refusing to leave the beer he ordered, without being first paid
for it. Among those assisting the fainting mother, one of whom we
observe clapping her hand, another applying the drops, is a man crusted
over, as it were, with the rust of a gaol, supposed to have started from
his dream, having been disturbed by the noise at a time when he was
settling some affairs of state; to have left his great plan unfinished,
and to have hurried to the assistance of distress. We are told, by the
papers falling from his lap, one of which contains a scheme for paying
the national debt, that his confinement is owing to that itch of
politics some persons are troubled with, who will neglect their own
affairs, in order to busy themselves in that which noways concerns
them, and which they in no respect understand, though their immediate
ruin shall follow it: nay, so infatuated do we find him, so taken up
with his beloved object, as not to bestow a few minutes on the decency
of his person. In the back of the room is one who owes his ruin to an
indefatigable search after the philosopher's stone. Strange and
unaccountable!--Hence we are taught by these characters, as well as by
the pair of human wings on the tester of the bed, that scheming is the
sure and certain road to beggary: and that more owe their misfortunes to
wild and romantic notions, than to any accident they meet with in life.

In this upset of his life, and aggravation of distress, we are to
suppose our prodigal almost driven to desperation. Now, for the first