itself when it can for me, let it lift up its towering head once
more, and take in poor authors to write for it; _hic coestus artemque
repono_,)--a theatre like that, filled with all sorts of disgusting
sounds,--shrieks, groans, hisses, but chiefly the last, like the noise
of many waters, or that which Don Quixote heard from the fulling-mills,
or that wilder combination of devilish sounds which Saint Anthony
listened to in the wilderness.

"Oh, Mr. Reflector, is it not a pity, that the sweet human voice, which
was given man to speak with, to sing with, to whisper tones of love in,
to express compliance, to convey a favor, or to grant a suit,--that
voice, which in a Siddons or a Braham rouses us, in a Siren Catalani
charms and captivates us,--that the musical, expressive human voice
should be converted into a rival of the noises of silly geese, and
irrational, venomous snakes?

"I never shall forget the sounds on _my night_; I never before that time
fully felt the reception which the Author of All Ill in the 'Paradise
Lost' meets with from the critics in the _pit_, at the final close of
his Tragedy upon the Human Race,--though that, alas! met with too much
success:--

"'from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal _hiss_, the sound
Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din
Of _hissing_ through the hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbaena dire,
Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear,
And Dipsas.'