The Two
Scenes Of The Quakers And Philosophers, Who, With Countenances Full
Of Imaginary Importance, Were Seated At A Green Table With Their
President At Their Head While The Secretary, With The Utmost Care,
Was Making An Inventory Of The Ridiculous Presents Of The Nabob,
Were Truly Laughable.
One of the last scenes was best received:
It
is that in which the Nabob's friend and school-fellow visit him, and
address him without ceremony by his Christian name; but to all their
questions of "Whether he does not recollect them? Whether he does
not remember such and such a play; or such and such a scrape into
which they had fallen in their youth?" he uniformly answers with a
look of ineffable contempt, only, "No sir!" Nothing can possibly be
more ludicrous, nor more comic.
The entertainment, "The Agreeable Surprise," is really a very
diverting farce. I observed that, in England also, they represent
school-masters in ridiculous characters on the stage, which, though
I am sorry for, I own I do not wonder at, as the pedantry of school-
masters in England, they tell me, is carried at least as far as it
is elsewhere. The same person who, in the play, performed the
school-fellow of the Nabob with a great deal of nature and original
humour, here acted the part of the school-master: his name is
Edwin, and he is, without doubt, one of the best actors of all that
I have seen.
This school-master is in love with a certain country girl, whose
name is Cowslip, to whom he makes a declaration of his passion in a
strange mythological, grammatical style and manner, and to whom,
among other fooleries, he sings, quite enraptured, the following
air, and seems to work himself at least up to such a transport of
passion as quite overpowers him.
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