ent on the last day of his acting, who, if he does
not happen to please them, will have it even then to say, that it is his
first offence.

But there is a gentleman here, who says he has it from good hands, that
there is actually a subscription made by many persons of wit and
quality, for the encouragement of new comedies. This design will very
much contribute to the improvement and diversion of the town: but as
every man is most concerned for himself, I, who am of a saturnine and
melancholy complexion, cannot but murmur, that there is not an equal
invitation to write tragedies, having by me, in my book of commonplaces,
enough to enable me to finish a very sad one by the 5th of next month. I
have the farewell of a general, with a truncheon in his hand, dying for
love, in six lines. I have the principles of a politician (who does all
the mischief in the play) together with his declaration on the vanity of
ambition in his last moments, expressed in a page and a half. I have all
my oaths ready, and my similes want nothing but application. I won't
pretend to give you an account of the plot, it being the same design
upon which all tragedies have been writ for several years last past; and
from the beginning of the first scene, the frequenters of the house may
know, as well as the author, when the battle is to be fought, the lady
to yield, and the hero to proceed to his wedding and coronation. Besides
these advantages which I have in readiness, I have an eminent tragedian
very much my friend, who shall come in, and go through the whole five
acts, without troubling me for one sentence, whether he is to kill or be
killed, love or be loved, win battles or lose them, or whatever other
tragical performance I shall please to assign him.

From my own Apartment, May 30.

I have this day received a letter subscribed "Fidelia," that gives me an
account of an enchantment under which a young lady suffers, and desires
my help to exorcise her from the power of the sorcerer. Her lover is a
rake of sixty; the lady a virtuous woman of twenty-five: her relations
are to the last degree afflicted, and amazed at this irregular passion:
their sorrow I know not how to remove, but can their astonishment; for
there is no spirit in woman half so prevalent as that of contradiction,
which is the sole cause of her perseverance. Let the whole family go
dressed in a body, and call the bride to-morrow morning to her nuptials,
and I'll undertake, the inco