In the press and shortly will be published
THE Students, a Comedy, altered from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour Lost, and adapted to the stage, with an original Prologue and Epilogue.
Printed for Thomas Hope, opposite the north gate of the Royal Exchange, Threadneedle St.
Deserters are plentiful about this period, our soldiers, however brave they may have been when put to it, having an evident objection to the pomp and circumstance of war. That was, perhaps, because their share of the latter was unduly large as compared with their participation in the former. The following is from Lloyd’s Evening Post of April 26-28, and is a fair specimen of the remainder:—
Deserted
FROM the 16th Regiment of Dragoons, Captain Walmesly’s troop,
WILLIAM BEVEN,
Aged 16 years, about five feet five inches high, stoops a good deal as he walks, and but very indifferently made; absented himself from his Quarters last Saturday night, the 17th instant; he says he was born in the parish of the Hays, in the County of Brecknockshire, and by trade a labourer; he went away with a light horse man’s cap, a coarse red frock faced with black, a striped flannel waistcoat, and a pair of leather breeches.
Whoever apprehends and secures the above Deserter, so as he may be committed to any of His Majesty’s gaols, shall, by applying to George Ross, Esq., Agent to the regiment, in Conduit Street, London, receive twenty Shillings, over and above the reward given by Act of Parliament.
Those who are in the habit of expressing themselves as to the decadence of the British soldier, and of the British human being generally, will do well to ponder over this advertisement, and judge from it the difference between the defenders of hearths and homes of then and now. Yet, with all his want of size and possession of awkwardness, this same youth, who would not nowadays be admitted into the worst regiment of militia fallbacks in existence, is deemed worthy of an extra reward. So much for “our army” in the middle of the eighteenth century.