res who are desirous to please them! Heaven be pleased to
make the teeth rot out of them all, therefore! Make them a reproach, and
all that pass by them to loll out their tongue at them! Blind mouths! as
Milton somewhere calls them."

If his farce had been--what "Gentleman Lewis," who was present on the
night of its performance, said, if he had had it, he would have made it,
by a few judicious curtailments--"the most popular little thing that
had been brought out for some time," Lamb would not have written the
following article.

"ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A CLUB
OF DAMNED AUTHORS.

"Mr. Reflector,--I am one of those persons whom the world has thought
proper to designate by the title of Damned Authors. In that memorable
season of dramatic failures, 1806-7, in which no fewer, I think, than
two tragedies, four comedies, one opera, and three farces suffered at
Drury-Lane Theatre, I was found guilty of constructing an afterpiece,
and was _damned_.

"Against the decision of the public in such instances there can be no
appeal. The Clerk of Chatham might as well have protested against the
decision of Cade and his followers, who were then _the public_. Like
him, I was condemned because I could write.

"Not but it did appear to some of us that the measures of the popular
tribunal at that period savored a little of harshness and of the
_summum jus_. The public mouth was early in the season fleshed upon
the 'Vindictive Man,' and some pieces of that nature, and it retained
through the remainder of it a relish of blood. As Dr. Johnson would have
said: Sir, there was a habit of sibilation in the house.

"Still less am I disposed to inquire into the reason of the comparative
lenity, on the other hand, with which some pieces were treated, which,
to indifferent judges, seemed at least as much deserving of condemnation
as some of those which met with it. I am willing to put, a favorable
construction upon the votes that were given against us; I believe that
there was no bribery or designed partiality in the case;--only 'our
nonsense did not happen to suit their nonsense'; that was all.

"But against the _manner_ in which the public on these occasions think
fit to deliver their disapprobation I must and ever will protest.

"Sir, imagine--but you have been present at the damning of a
piece,--those who never had that felicity, I beg them to imagine--a vast
theatre, like that which Drury Lane was,