A single critick will not frown, look big,
Harmless and pliant as a single twig,
But crouded _here_ they change, and 'tis not odd,
For twigs when bundled up, become a rod.

One of Mallet's duties, when he was janitor of the High School of
Edinburgh, had been to assist in the floggings, either by applying the
instrument of punishment himself (see LJ, p. 209) or by lifting the boys
up on his back at the command of _tollatur_ and exposing the proper
portion of their anatomy to the master's birch (John Ramsay, _Scotland
and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century_, Blackwood, Edinburgh and
London, 1888, i. 24 _n_.)]

[Footnote F: (Pp. 23-24) "... keen Distress of a _Belvidera_,... Dignity
of an _Elizabeth_;... wild Madness of a _Lear_." The authors are listing
what they conceive to be the most impressive tragic roles of Mrs. Cibber,
Mrs. Pritchard, and Garrick, who played respectively Elvira, the Queen,
and the King in _Elvira_. Belvidera in Otway's _Venice Preserved_
was by all accounts one of Mrs. Cibber's best parts. It had been
assigned to her in the majority of the Drury Lane performances since 1747,
and she had appeared in it as recently as 16 November 1762. Mrs. Pritchard
had played Queen Elizabeth in all the Drury Lane performances (1755-1760)
of _The Earl of Essex_ by Henry Jones and of the play of the same
name by Henry Brooke (1761-), but had appeared in neither role more
recently than 30 December 1761. A role of Elizabeth which she had
presented more recently (18 December 1762) and had been appearing
regularly in since 1748 was the Queen Elizabeth of Shakespeare's
_Richard III_ as altered by Cibber. It is probably this last named
Elizabeth that the authors of _Critical Strictures_ had in mind. The
choice is unusual, critics generally having considered Lady Macbeth to