theatres erected in an English metropolis. As to terms, they may omit that article altogether, since the pleasurable world is resolved, to keep no terms; and instead of Saints' days, it would be a great improvement to decorate the kalendar with ladies' nights.

THE PROJECTOR. No 14.

"The soldier's witty on the sailor,
The barber drolls upon the taylor:
And he who makes the nation's wills,
Laughs at the doctor and his pills."

CAWTHORN.

January 1803.

It is observable that while we are on many occasions complaining of the scarcity of some articles, either of necessity or luxury, and of the degeneracy of others, the topics of ridicule seem to be always on the increase. Whether things in themselves are become more ridiculous, or whether mankind in general are now endowed with an extraordinary portion of wit,

are questions which I shall not pretend to determine. But I may assert with safety, that amidst all our difficulties or calamities of a public or private nature, we have not been induced to forget or lay aside any of those incentives to laughter which have been handed down to us from father to son, and which we seem disposed to convey to our posterity, not only without injury or dilapidation, but with very considerable additions and improvements. Indeed, if the state of ridicule goes on in its present progressive flow and swell, we may expect that, at some future and perhaps not very distant period, every object will be a joke, and every man a wit.

But, besides that new fund for ridicule which the various and ever-changing manners of the age present, there are, it may be observed, a set of standing topics, which some hundreds of years have not been able to wear out, and which will probably last as long as laughter itself, that is, as long as man can be defined animal risibile; for, if I mistake not, Naturalists have determined that no other animal laughs. And this is a doctrine which I am least inclined to call in question when I observe the treatment bestowed upon the most

useful of the brute creation in this metropolis,

and which would certainly have no tendency to excite the risible faculties, if the hackney or dray horse, or the cattle in Smithfield, had the happiness to such powers possess of ex

pression.

escapes

Among these standing topics of ridicule, we are, it must be allowed, good-humoured enough not to spare ourselves. Man is a perpetual fund of ridicule; first in his single state, when he has a certain number of jokes to bear, long before he arrives at that general subject of ridicule, an old bachelor; an old, fusty, useless fellow, that drones and sleeps away his time, does no good in his generation, and leaves his fortune to his bed-maker, or his milk-woman. Secondly, if he this series of provocatives of laughter, he only exchanges it for one more fertile and copious, the married man, the hen-pecked husband, one who dares not say his soul is his own, married to "a creature of a wife, and every body wonders what he could see in her;" with a parcel of squalling brats, and a thousand stories and bon mots from Joe Miller and Ben Jonson, on cuckolds and horns, and Doctors Commons; for, while marriage is reckoned a very good joke, a divorce is the best joke of all, and will supply clubs of wits and columns of newspapers for a month. The

fair sex, too, come in for a plentiful share of the ridicule bestowed on the species, and there is one state peculiar to them of which they exclusively enjoy all the produce of laughter; for, besides the common sarcasms on old maids and wives, when they come to be widows they are universally accounted fair game. In this state, especially if they happen to be rich and young (although age or poverty is not always a serious matter), they are be-rhimed and beprosed with no great degree of delicacy. To the species in general also belongs a vast fund of wit, at the expense of natural defects, lameness, blindness, deformity; and persons above six feet, or under four, are butts for many a thread-bare jest.

If we next look to the Learned Professions, we shall find that they have always been fertile in topics of ridicule. The Divine has certain probationary jokes to go through when only a poor parson, a word that once had a serious meaning, but is generally now applied as a humorous epithet. As he advances, he is honoured with a fresh set of allusions to fatness. and sleep, which seem to be either the qualifications or the consequences of a good benefice; and now we hear much of Dean Drowsy, Dr. Paunch, Archdeacon Spintext, &c. &c.;

until we arrive at the Bishops' bench, wher we must encounter another string of quibbles and puns upon mitres, lawn-sleeves, &c. Perhaps these might be tolerated by the Dignitaries of the Church; and perhaps, indeed, no man ought to hold a living who cannot take a joke; but our wit does not always end in personalities; and whoever considers the present state of ridicule as applied to the Clergy, will perceive that the design of many wits lies deeper than the merely raising a laugh at the tenant of a pulpit, or the thumper of a cushion.

As to the Law, which we generally rank as

pany

the second of the learned professions, we may observe a crowd of jokes following the Lawyer, from the Attorney's desk to the Chancellor's woolsack. It may not perhaps be quite safe to detail these jokes in this place; but it is no secret that frequent bursts of laughter accomthe names of Attorney and Barrister when the epithet honest" happens to be joined with them; and that fees, briefs, parchments, gowns, and wigs, have been never-failing sources of mirth to our forefathers. These jokes also are likely to be perpetuated to the latest posterity by frequent repetition and traditionary animosity, heightened perhaps by some degree of experience. But truth obliges