Cave Underhill’s Answer to Tony Lee.
Honest Friend Tony,
WHen I first read your letter, as merry as the world thinks me, I was struck with such a terrible tremulation, that it was as much as three gulps of my brandy-bottle could do to put my chill’d blood into its regular motion; I had no sooner recover’d myself, but thinking of death and the devil, which I had scarce done in sixty years before, I fell into such an extravagant fit of praying, that if any body had heard me, they would sooner have guess’d me, by the length of my devotion, to have been a Presbyterian parson than duke Trinculo the comedian; it was the first time that ever I found myself in earnest in my life, and I was suddenly sensible of so vast a difference betwixt that and jesting, that I believe for a whole hour together I was chang’d from an old comical merry-andrew, into a new sorrowful penitent and was I to con over your letter but once in a day, I believe it would go near to fright me into abundance of religion, which we players, you are sensible, seldom or never think on, except we are put in mind on’t by some extraordinary accident; and the main reason I believe why we are not over-burthen’d with zeal, is our drolling upon the clergy, by representing Mr. Spintext the preacher, or Mr. Lovelady the chaplain, after a ridiculous manner for the loose audience to laugh at; which we repeat so often, till at last we are apt to fancy religion as well as the teachers of it, to be really no more than what we make them, that is, a meer jest, and worthy only to be smil’d at and not to be listen’d to.
Certainly you have a very good intelligence in your world, of the circumstances of us who dwell above you, or else you are the devil of a guesser, for you seem in your letter, to have as true a sense of my condition as if you were an eye-witness of it; for to tell you the truth on it, I find all the members of my body in such a fumbling condition, that I begin to think of a leap in the dark, and to wonder what in a little time will become of me; the people are still pleas’d to see me crawl upon the stage; indeed the shuffling pace that age and decay hath brought me to, makes the audience as merry as if it were a counterfeit gesture to provoke laughter; but, i’faith, brother Tony, that which makes them glad makes me sad, insomuch, that my heart has aked every time these five years, when I have play’d the sexton in Hamlet, for fear when I am once got into the grave, the grim tyrant should give me a turn over the perch, and keep me there for jesting with mortality.
Nature, which finds herself declining in me, is so greedy of new breath, that I gape as I crawl for the benefit of the fresh air, as if I was jaw-fallen, and those humming insects that are a pestiferous calamity this hot weather to all cooks-shops and sugar-bakers, are so unmannerly, that they fly over those few palisadoes of my breathing-hole that are left, and dung t’other side the pails, as if they took my mouth for a house of office; nay, sometimes in creeping along the length of a street, I have had my tongue so fly-blown, that had I not gone into a tavern and wash’d them off with a pint of canary, I don’t know, but my whole head might have been as full of maggots in a little time, as a sheep’s arse at Midsummer.
I find the greatest curse of my old age is, my desire surviving my capacity, for I protest, my inclinations are as youthful as ever, tho’ my ability is quite superannuated.
I am just now entring into a fit of the gout, which so terrifies me, that I pray one half minute, and curse the other, like a true bred seaman in a storm, therefore am forc’d to break off, blood and wounds, abruptly.
So farewel,
Cave Underhill.
From Alderman Blackwell to Sir Charles Duncombe.
HEaring what a noisy reputation you have acquir’d within the walls of England’s metropolis, and what a popular rumble your politick generosity makes over the heads of us, out of whose ruins you have, true citizen like, erected your own welfare, I could no longer forbear putting you in mind of some of your former managements, left some rakehelly rhime-tagger or other, should flatter you to believe you have honesty and integrity enough to qualify you for a bishop; I took you a meer bumkin, and taught you your trade for a basket of turky-eggs, and therefore it highly concerns your prudence to consider the obligation you lie under of carrying yourself to the world with all humility, tho’ aspir’d to the very pinnacle of prosperity, since the first cause of your advancement dropp’d out of the fundament of a turkey: the eggs, as an argument of their being new laid, I remember were besmeared with excrementitious tokens of good luck, which make me fancy, when I received them, they were beshitten omens of your future fortune, in whose behalf they were presented me.