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THE

SPIRIT

PUBLIC

OF THE

JOURNAL S.

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE.

(WRITTEN IN 1803.)

[From the General Evening Poft.]

REVOLVING in my mind lately the probable confequences of the prefent war, and the strange mixture of vanity, duplicity, perfidy, and cruelty, the complication of paffions and vices that diftinguish a certain confpicuous character, I began to regale my defponding imagination by reprefenting him to myfelf in an hiftorical point of view, confidering him as a player, exhibiting a variety of characters, and applying to him the words of Young:

The dreadful masquerader, thus equipt,

Out fallies on adventures,

In the middle of this reverie I fell asleep, and was foon tranfported in a dream, on the wings of fancy, to the days of the celebrated Stratford Jubilee. Methought I was carried by an invifible power to the doors of a vaft amphitheatre, filled by the inhabitants of different nations in all their variety of dreffes. By a large printed bill in red letters, I found that Shakspeare's Jubilee was to be preceded by a fort of pantomimical entertainment, intermixed with fome

VOL. VIII.

B

of

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