times have thought it an office of honour to be employed in the collection of them; none of these however have found their way into our language, and as I flatter myself these of the Middle Comedy have rifen upon their predeceffors, I hope what is next to follow will not baulk the climax; my best care and fidelity fhall be applied to the translations of fuch as I shall select for the purpose, and as I have generally found the fimplicity of their stile and fentiment accord beft to the eafy metre of our old English dramatifts, I fhall moftly endeavour to cloathe them in the dress of those days, when Jonfon, Fletcher and Maffinger fupported the ftage. To these I fhall probably add some selections from Aristophanes, which I would not infert in their place, being aware that extracts upon a large scale would comparatively have extinguished their contemporaries, when fet befide them upon a very contracted one.

Upon the whole it will be my ambition to give to the world what has never yet been attempted, a compleat collection of the beauties of the Greek stage in our own language from the remains of more than fifty comic poets.

All to the fame laft home are bound,
Time's never-weary wheel runs round;
And life at longest or at shortest date
Snaps like a thread betwixt the fhears of Fate.

REMEMBER to have been told of a certain huricurift, who fet up a very fingular doctrine upon the subject of death, asserting that he had difcovered it to be not a neceffary and inevitable event, but an act of choice and vo¬ lition; he maintained that he had certain powers and refources within himfelf fufficient to fupport him in his refolution of holding out against the fummons of death, till he became weary of life; and he pledged himself to his friends, that he would in his own perfon give experimental proof of his hypothesis.

What particular address death made use of, when this ingenious gentleman was prevailed pon to step out of the world, I cannot take

upon :

upon myself to fay; but certain it is, that in fome weak moment he was over-perfuaded to lay his head calmly, on the pillow and furrender. up his breath.

Though an event, fo contrary to the promise he had given, muft have been a staggering circumftance to many, who were interefted in the. fuccefs of his experiment, yet I fee good reafon to fufpect that his hypothefis is not totally dif credited, and that he has yet fome furviving difciples, who are acting fuch a part in this world as nobody would act but upon a strong prefumption, that they shall not be compelled to go out of it and enter upon another.

Mortality, it must be owned, hath means of providing for the event of death, though none have yet been discovered of preventing it: Religion and virtue are the great physicians of the foul; patience and refignation are the nurfingmothers of the human heart in fickness and in forrow; confcience can smooth the pillow under an aching head, and Chriftian hope adminifters a cordial even in our last moments, that lulls the agonies of death: But where is the need of thefe had this discovery been established? why call in phyficians and refort to cordials, if we can hold danger at a distance without their help? I am to prefume therefore, that every human

being, who makes his own will his master, and goes all lengths in gratifying his guilty paffions without reftraint, muft rely upon his own will for keeping him out of all danger of future trouble, or he would never commit himself fo confidentially and entirely to a mafter, which can give him no fecurity in return for his blind obedience and devotion: All persons of this defcription I accordingly fet down in the lump as converts to the doctrine of the learned gentleman, who advanced the interefting discovery above-mentioned, but who unluckily missed fome step in the proof, that was to have eftablished it.

To what lengths of credulity they may really go is hard to fay, but fome fuch hopes as these muft buoy them up, because I cannot think that any man would be wilfully wicked, fraudulent, perfidious, avaricious, cruel, or whatever elfe is deteftable in the eye of God, if he saw death, his meffenger, at the door; and I am even unwilling to believe, that he would be wantonly guilty, was he only convinced, that when death fhall come to the door, he must be obliged to admit him; for if this be fo, and if admiffion may not be denied, then hath death a kind of vifitatorial power over us, which makes him not a

gueft to be invited at our pleasure, but a lord

and

and master of the house, to enter in at his own, and (which is worst of all) without giving notice to us to provide for his entertainment. What man is fuch a fool in common life, as to take up his abode in a tenement, of which he is fure to be difpoffeffed, and yet neglect to prepare himself against a furprise, which he is fubject to every moment of the day and night? We are not apt to overlook our own interefts and safety in worldly concerns, and therefore when the foul is given up to fin, I must suspect some error in the brain.

What fhall I say to perfuade the inconfiderate that they exift upon the precarious fufferance of every moment, that pafles over them in fucceffion? how fhall I warn a giddy fool not to play his antick tricks and caper on the very utmost edge of a precipice? Who will guide the reeling drunkard in his path, and teach him to avoid the grave-ftones of his fellow-fots, fet up by death as marks and fignals to apprise him of his danger? If the voice of nature, depofing to the evidence of life's deceitful tenure from the beginning of things to the moment present, will neither gain audience nor belief, what can the moralist expect?

Which of all thofe headlong voluptuaries, who seem in fuch hafte to get to the end of life,