Dr. Stag——s, is greatly improved since he arrived in these parts, and has more crotches flow thro’ his brains in one minute, than he can digest into musick in a whole week; he had not been here a month, but his bandylegs stepp’d into a very good place, and his business is to compose Scotch tunes for Lucifer’s bag-piper. Honest Tom Farmer has taken such an antipathy against musick, upon hearing a French barber play Banister’s ground in Bmi, upon a jews-trump, that he swears that the hooping of a tub, and filing of a saw, makes the sweetest harmony in christendom; Robin Smith, is still as love-mad as ever he was; hangs half a dozen fiddles at his girdle, as the fellow does coney-skins, and scours up and down hell, crying a Reevs, a Reevs, as is the devil was in him. Poor Val Redding too, is quite tired with his lyre-way-fiddle, and has betaken himself to be a merry-andrew to a Dutch mountebank; and the reason he gave for it was this, That he was got into a country where he found fools were more respected than fiddlers. Dancing-masters are also as numerous in every street, as posts in Cheapside, there is no walking but we must stumble upon them; they are held here but in very slight esteem, for the gentry call them leg-livers, and the mob from their mighty number, and their nimbleness, call them the devil’s grass-hoppers. Players run up and down muttering of old speeches, like so many madmen in their own soliloquies; and if any beau wants a bridge to bear him over a dirty channel, a player lies down instead of a plank, for him to walk over upon; the reason why they were doom’d to that piece of scandalous servitude, was, because they were as proud upon the stage as the very princes they represented; and as humble in a brandy-shop, as a scold in a ducking-stool; therefore were fit for nothing when they had done playing, but to be trampled upon. I have nothing further at present to impart to you, so begging you to excuse this trouble, I rest,
Your Humble Servant,
Henry Purcel.
Dr. Blow’s Answer to Henry Purcel.
Dear Friend,
YOUR letter was one of the greatest surprises to me, I ever met with; for after giving credit to that fulsome piece of flattery, stuck up by some of your friends upon a pillar behind the organ, which you once were master of, I remain’d satisfi’d you were gone to that happy place, where your own harmony could only be exceeded, and had left order with some of your friends to put up that epitaph only as a direction where your acquaintance upon occasion might be sure to meet with you; but since you have favour’d me with a letter from your own hand, wherein you assure me ’twas your fortune to travel a quite contrary road, I will always be of opinion for the future, that when a man takes a step in the dark, those that he leaves behind him can no more guess where he is gone, than I can tell what’s become of the saddle which Balaam rid upon when his ass spoke; for I find just as people please or displease us in this world, we accordingly assign them a place of happiness or unhappiness in the next, virtue shall be rewarded, and vice punished hereafter, ’tis true, but when or how, I believe every man knows as well as the pope; therefore, many people have blam’d the inscription of your marble, and think it a presumption in the pen-man to be so very positive in matters, which the wisest of mankind, without death, can come to no true knowledge of. The fanaticks especially are very highly offended at it, and say, It looks as if a man could toot himself to heaven upon the whore of Babylon’s bag-pipes, and that religion consists only in the true setting of a catch, or composing of a madrigal. I have had many a bitter squabble with them in defence of your epitaph, upon which they scoffingly advis’d me to get Monsieur d’Urfey to tag it with rhime, then myself to garnish it with a tune, and so make it a catch in imitation of Under this stone lies Gabriel John, &c. which unlucky saying, so dum-founded me, that I was forc’d silently to submit, because you had serv’d another person’s epitaph after the same manner.
I have no novelties to entertain you with relating to either the Abbey or St. Paul’s, for both the choirs continue just as wicked as they were when you left them; some of them daily come reeking hot out of the bawdy-house into the church; and others stagger out of a tavern to afternoon prayers, and hick up over a little of the Litany, and so back again. Old Claret-face beats time still upon his cushion stoutly, and sits growling under his purple canopy, a hearty old-fashion’d base that deafens all about him. Beau Bushy-whig preserves his voice to a miracle, charmes all the ladies over against him with his handsome face; and all over head with his singing. Parson Punch make a very good shift still, and lyricks over his part in an anthem very handsomly. So much for the church, and now for the play-houses, which are grown so abominably wicked since the pious society have undertook to reform them, that not a member of the fraternity will sit down to his dinner, till he has repeated over a catalogue of curses upon the crew of sin-sucking hypocrites, as long as a presbyterian grace, then falls to with a good appetite, and damns them as heartily after dinner; nor will they bring a play upon the stage, unless larded with half a dozen of luscious bawdy songs in contempt of the reforming authority, some writ by Mr. C—— and set by your friend Dr. B——; others writ by Mr. D——, and set by your friend Mr. E——: you know men of our profession hang between the church and the play-house, as Mahomet’s tomb does between the two load-stones, and must equally incline to both, because by both we are equally supported.
Religion is grown a stalking-horse to every bodies interest, and every man chuses to be of that faith which he finds to be most profitable. Our parochial-churches this hot weather are but indifferently fill’d, but our cathedrals are still crowded as they us’d to be, because to one that comes thither truly to serve God, fifty come purely to hear the musick; the blessing of peace has again quite forsaken us, and the people tired with being happy, have drawn the curse of war upon their own heads; and the clergy, like true christians, confound their enemies heartily. Money begins already to be as scarce as truth, honour and honesty; and a man may walk from Ludgate to Aldgate, near high change-time, and not meet a citizen with a full bag under his arm, or jot of plain-dealing in his conscience. The ready specie lies all in the Bank and Exchequer, and most traders estates lie in their pocket-books and their comb-cases: paper goes current instead of cash, and pen and ink does us more service than the mines in the Indies. I am very much in arrears upon the account of my business, as well as the brethren of my quality; but whether we shall be paid in this world or the next, we are none of us yet certain. You made a timely step out of a troublesome world, could I imagine you were got into a worse, I could easily pin my faith upon impossibilities; but fare as you will, it cannot be long e’er I shall give you my company, and discover the truth of that which our priests talk so much of, and know so little:
Till then I rest yours,
Blow.
From worthy Mrs. Behn the Poetress, to the famous Virgin Actress.
Madam,