imes, taken
notice of a precise set of people with grave countenances,
short wigs, black cloaths, or dark camblet trimmed black,
with mourning gloves and hat-bands, who went on certain days
at each tavern successively, and keep a sort of moving club.
Having often met with their faces, and observed a certain
shrinking way in their dropping in one after another, I had
the unique curiosity to inquire into their characters, being
the rather moved to it by their agreeing in the singularity
of their dress; and I find upon due examination they are a
knot of parish clerks, who have taken a fancy to one another,
and perhaps settle the bills of mortality over their half
pints. I have so great a value and veneration for any who
have but even an assenting _Amen_ in the service of religion,
that I am afraid but these persons should incur some scandal
by this practice; and would therefore have them, without
raillery, advise to send the florence and pullets home to
their own homes, and not to pretend to live as well as the
overseers of the poor.

"HUMPHRY TRANSFER.

"_Spectator_, No. 338.

"A great many of our church-musicians being related to the
theatre, have in imitation of their epilogues introduced in
their favourite voluntaries a sort of music quite foreign to
the design of church services, to the great prejudice of
well-disposed people. These fingering gentlemen should be
informed that they ought to suit their airs to the place and
business; and that the musician is obliged to keep to the
text as much as the preacher. For want of this, I have found
by experience a great deal of mischief; for when the preacher
has often, with great piety and art enough, handled his
subject, and the judicious clerk has with utmost diligence
called out two staves proper to the discourse, and I have
found in myself and in the rest of the pew good thoughts and
dispositions, they have been all in a moment dissipated by a
merry jig from the organ loft."

Dr. Johnson's definition of a parish clerk in his Dictionary does not
convey the whole truth about him and his historic office. He is defined
as "the layman who reads the responses to the congregation in church, to
direct the rest." The great lexicographer had, however, a high
estimation of this official. Boswell tells us