Sentences at the Head of my Speculations; I do not know whether I ought not to indulge them with Translations of each of them: However, I have to-day taken down from the Top of the Stage in
Drury-Lane
a bit of Latin which often stands in their View, and signifies that the whole World acts the Player. It is certain that if we look all round us, and behold the different Employments of Mankind, you hardly see one who is not, as the Player is, in an assumed Character. The Lawyer, who is vehement and loud in a Cause wherein he knows he has not the Truth of the Question on his Side, is a Player as to the personated Part, but incomparably meaner than he as to the Prostitution of himself for Hire; because the Pleader's Falshood introduces Injustice, the Player feigns for no other end but to divert or instruct you. The Divine, whose Passions transport him to say any thing with any View but promoting the Interests of true Piety and Religion, is a Player with a still greater Imputation of Guilt, in proportion to his depreciating a Character more sacred. Consider all the different Pursuits and Employments of Men, and you will find half their Actions tend to nothing else but Disguise and Imposture; and all that is done which proceeds not from a Man's very self, is the Action of a Player. For this Reason it is that I make so frequent mention of the Stage: It is, with me, a Matter of the highest Consideration what Parts are well or ill performed, what Passions or Sentiments are indulged or cultivated, and consequently what Manners and Customs are transfused from the Stage to the World, which reciprocally imitate each other. As the Writers of Epick Poems introduce shadowy Persons, and represent Vices and Virtues under the Characters of Men and Women; so I, who am a
Spectator
in the World, may perhaps sometimes make use of the Names of the Actors on the Stage, to represent or admonish those who transact Affairs in the World. When I am commending Wilks for representing the Tenderness of a Husband and a Father in
Mackbeth
, the Contrition of a reformed Prodigal in
Harry the Fourth
, the winning Emptiness