You remember my dissatisfaction towards some engravings of hands and feet that were given you by the person who would have continued to instruct you, if I had not been dissatisfied. The hands in these prints were beautifully finished, but their form was incorrect; the feet were not representations of any thing in nature; and yet these deformities were placed before you to begin with. If I had not taught you from your infancy the value and use of sincerity, and the folly and mischief of falsehood, you might have been at this time a liar, and become a depraved and vicious character; instead of being, as you are, an upright and honest youth, and becoming, as I hope you will, a virtuous and honourable man. Had you continued the copying of engraved lies of the limbs, your drawings would have been misrepresentations of the human figure. You will discover my meaning if you consider an old precept, “Never begin any thing without considering the end thereof.”
Your affectionate father,
*
Garrick Plays.
No. XXVIII.
[From the “Devil’s Law Case,” a Tragi-Comedy, by John Webster, 1623.]
Clergy-comfort.
I must talk to you, like a Divine, of patience.—
I have heard some talk of it very much, and many
Times to their auditors’ impatience; but I pray,
What practice do they make on’t in their lives?
They are too full of choler with living honest,—
And some of them not only impatient
Of their own slightest injuries, but stark mad
At one another’s preferment.
Sepulture.
Two Bellmen, a Capuchin; Romelio, and others.