CHOOSING COMMON CONSTABLES.
For the Table Book.
It is annually the custom to hold a meeting, duly summoned, on Startley Common, Wilts, for the choice of new constables for the hundreds of the county. Lots are cast for those who are to serve for the ensuing year; and afterwards the parties present adjourn to a house for refreshment, which costs each individual about seventeen shillings. This may almost be regarded as an equivalent for serving the office—the lots mostly fall on the absentees.
P.
Garrick Plays.
No. XXXVI.
[From “Love’s Dominion, a Dramatic Pastoral,” by Richard Flecknoe, 1634.]
Invocation to Silence.
Still-born Silence, thou that art
Floodgate of the deeper heart;
Offspring of a heavenly kind;
Frost o’ th’ mouth and thaw o’ th’ mind;
Secresy’s Confident, and he
That makes religion Mystery;
Admiration’s speaking’st tongue,—
Leave thy desart shades, among
Reverend Hermits’ hallow’d cells,
Where retir’d’st Devotion dwells:
With thy Enthusiasms come;
Seize this Maid, and strike her dumb.
Fable.