sent state of the country churches, their clergy and their congregations, in which many very common improprieties are censured with considerable humour: and No. 138, On Conversation. As these can be assigned from authority, there are others which we may venture to trace to Mr. COWPER'S pen, by inference. If he wrote No. 119, he must also have written No. 111, containing the Character of the delicate Billy Suckling, and No. 115, the Complaints of an Old Bachelor: for these papers are given to the author of No. 119, in the general acknowledgment of correspondence in the concluding paper, where the author of them is styled," a friend, a gentleman of the Temple." And this seems farther corroborated by No. 111, which is subscribed W. C. the initials of Mr. CowPER's name. It may also be remarked, that No. 134 is said to be written by Mr. Village, the cousin of Mr. Town, whose first communication appears in No. 13, and his others in Nos. 23, 41, 76, 81, 105, and 139. It would be too much, however, to argue from this circumstance that Mr. CowPER wrote all these the character of Mr. Village might be common to other writers, and occasionally assumed by any correspondent whose subject it might suit. Of the papers which can with certainty be ascribed to Mr. CowPER, it may be truly said that they are not inferior to any in the collection; that he always had a quick sense of the ludicrous in character and behaviour, is sufficiently evident from many passages in the TASK ; and his John Gilpin, had it appeared in the days of COLMAN, THORNTON, LLOYD, CHURCHILL,

&c. would have been considered as an acquisition of the first importance to the lovers of humour.

Since much of the above was prepared for the press, it has been suggested to me, that Mr. ROBERT LLOYD, the unfortunate poet, was a contributor to the CONNOISSEUR, which upon examination, appears to have been the case, although we cannot rank him among the ESSAYISTS. He He was "the friend, a member of Trinity College, Cambridge," who wrote the Song in No. 72, and the verses in No. 67, 90, 125, and 135. These were afterwards reprinted with his other works, in the second edition of Johnson's Poets, 1790, to which is prefixed KENRICK'S Life of the author, with additions. "There are still remaining," says the author of the concluding paper, two correspondents, who must stand by themselves; as they have wrote to us, not in an assumed character, but in propria perThe first is no less a personage than ORATOR HENLEY*, who obliged us with that truly original letter, printed in No. 37. The other, who favoured us with a letter, no less original,No. 70, we have reason to believe, is a Methodist teacher, and a mechanic: but we do not know either his name or his trade."

sona.

The CONNOISSEURS were collected after their original publication into four volumes 12mo. Some of the papers were corrected, and some passages transposed, but no material alterations were made, nor was much attention paid to the graces of style. The neuter verb to lie, and the

* See Preface to the Spectator, p. 64, 65.

active to lay are confounded wherever they occur, a vulgarism which remained in every edition until the present. The CONNOISSEUR, however, upon the whole, has always been esteemed an entertaining performance, and, although in an inferior degree, has contributed to the wise and good purposes for which periodical writing was first instituted.

THE

CONNOISSEUR.

BY MR. TOWN,

CRITIC AND CENSOR-GENERAL,

N° 1. THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 1754.

Ordine gentis

Mores, et studia, et populos, et prælia dicam.

VIRG.

Their studies and pursuits in order shown,
'Tis mine to mark the Manners of The Town.

As I have assumed the character of Censor-General, I shall follow the example of the old Roman Censor; the first part of whose duty was to review the people, and distribute them into their several divisions. I shall therefore enter upon my office, by taking a cursory survey of what is usually called The Town. In this I shall not confine myself to the exact method of a geographer, but carry the reader from one quarter to another, as it may suit my convenience, or best contribute to his entertainment.

When a comedian, celebrated for his excellence in the part of Shylock, first undertook that character, he made daily visits to the centre of business, the

VOL. XXX,

'Change and the adjacent coffee-houses; that by a frequent intercourse and conversation with "the unforeskinn'd race," he might habituate himself to their air and deportment. A like desire of penetrating into the most secret springs of action in these people has often led me there; but I was never more diverted than at Garraway's a few days before the drawing of the lottery. I not only could read hope, fear, and all the various passions excited by a love of gain, strongly pictured in the faces of those who came to buy; but I remarked with no less delight, the many little artifices made use of to allure adventurers, as well as the visible alterations in the looks of the sellers, according as the demand for tickets gave occasion to raise or lower their price. So deeply were the countenances of these bubble-brokers impressed with an attention to the main chance, and their minds seemed so dead to all other sensations, that one might almost doubt, where money is out of the case, whether a Jew" has eyes, "hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pas❝sions."

From Garraway's it is but a short step to a gloomy class of mortals, not less intent on gain than the stockjobber I mean the dispensers of life and death, who flock together, like birds of prey watching for carcases, at Batson's. I never enter this place, but it serves as a memento mori to me. What a formal assemblage of sable suits, and tremendous perukes! I have often met here a most intimate acquaintance, whom I have scarce known again; a sprightly young fellow, with whom I have spent many a jolly hour; but being just dubbed a graduate in physic, he has gained such an entire conquest over the risible muscles, that he hardly vouchsafes at any time to smile. I have heard him harangue, with all the oracular importance of a veteran, on the possibility of Canning's subsisting for a whole month on a few bits of bread;