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 as if he could suffer too much, after being guilty of so barbarous an action. Indeed, I am not at all surprised at anything that Lady True-wit says; for I have heard her assert the most preposterous things in the world: nay, she affirms, a man may be very fond of a woman, notwithstanding he is jealous of her, and dares suspect her virtue. That lady once said, that one of the most beautiful incidents in all King Lear, was that the impertinence of his daughter's servant, was the first thing that made him uneasy; and after that, I think one can wonder at nothing: for certainly it was a great oversight in the poet, when he was writing the character of a king, to take notice of the behaviour of such vulgar wretches; as if what they did was anything to the purpose. But some people are very fond of turning the greatest faults into beauties, that they may be thought to have found out something extraordinary; and then they must admire everything in Shakespeare, as they think, to prove their own judgment; but, for my part, I am not afraid to give my opinion freely of the greatest men that ever wrote.

There is nothing so surprising to me as the absurdity of almost everybody I meet with; they can't even laugh or cry in the right place. Perhaps it will be hardly believed, but I really saw people in the boxes last night, at the tragedy of Cato, sit with dry eyes, and show no kind of emotion, when that great man fell on his sword; nor was it at all owing to any firmness of mind, that made them incapable of crying neither, for that I should have admired; but I have known those very people shed tears at George Barnwell.

Oh, intolerable! cry for an odious apprentice-boy, who murdered his uncle, at the instigation too of a