Shakespeare again. A Doctor Whalley, who wrote a Tragedy for Mrs. Siddons (which she declined), proposed to her that she should read—‘But screw your Courage to the sticking place,’ with the appropriate action of using the Dagger. I think Mrs. Siddons good-naturedly admits there may be something in the suggestion. One reads this in the last memoir of Madame Piozzi, edited by Mr. Hayward.
Blackbird v. Nightingale. I have always loved the first best: as being so jolly, and the Note so proper from that golden Bill of his. But one does not like to go against received opinion. Your Oriole has been seen in these parts by old—very old—people: at least, a gay bird so named. But no one ever pretends to see him now.
Now have you perversely crossed the Address which you desire me to abide by: and I can’t be sure of your ‘Branchtown’? But I suppose that enough is clear to make my Letter reach you if it once gets across the Atlantic. And now this uncertainty about your writing recalls to me—very absurdly—an absurd Story told me by a pious, but humorous, man, which will please you if you don’t know it already.
Scene.—Country Church on Winter’s Evening. Congregation, with the Old Hundredth ready for the Parson to give out some Dismissal Words.
Good old Parson, not at all meaning rhyme, ‘The Light has grown so very dim, I scarce can see to read the Hymn.’
Congregation, taking it up: to the first half of the Old Hundredth—
‘The Light has grown so very dim,
I scarce can see to read the Hymn.’
(Pause, as usual: Parson, mildly impatient) ‘I did not mean to read a Hymn; I only meant my Eyes were dim.’
Congregation, to second part of Old Hundredth:—
‘I did not mean to read a Hymn;
I only meant my Eyes were dim.’