Page:Complete budget of wit.pdf/7

7 bald pate, from which the sweat flowed in streams!-his sagacious mastiff no doubt eager to joy, as well as his master, the admirable performance of the Prince of Tragedians, bad placed his fore feet upon the front of the butcher's box, and was looking eagerly down upon the stage, with his grave phiz dignified by his master's full-bottom'd wig! The audience found it impossible to restrain their gravity at his ludicrous sight:-The loudest peals of laughter burst from the pit, the boxes, and the galleries; and it was a great while ere the performers could again resume the gravity necessary for performing a tragedy so deeply interesting.

Soon after Dr. Johnson's return from Scotland to London, a Scottish lady, at whose house he was, as a compliment, ordered some hotch-potch for his dinner After the doctor had tasted it, she asked him. if it was good?- To which he replied, very good for hogs!"-Then, pray, said the lady, let me help you to a little more.

The clergyman of a village, a few miles south from Edinburgh, (which is almost entirely surrounded by colliers) being one day engaged in examining his parishioners on the principles of the Christian religion, and finding them extremely deficient in their knowledge of these divine truths, felt it his duty to display, in pretty strong terms, the punishment that awaited the wicked in a future world; observing, that they would be cast into a place of utter; darkness, where there would be weeping, and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Let them gnash that have teeth, cries an old woman from a corner of the church: for my part, I have had none these thirty years.

Donald M'Gregor, a notorious sheep lifter (alias