...I must not omit to inform you of one thing that carries with it the appearance of gaiety and pleasure, which is, an humble imitation of a concert here once a fortnight; a laughable, burlesque affair, I assure you; something inferior to the orchestra of a set of barn-playing comedians, where two or three infamous tormentors of catgut (particularly from the neighbourhood of Dedham) meet together to amuse and entertain “ Our dotard C---r; mankind’s disgrace! “ Whose wife late Shot him, of plebeian race; “ His gold the only merit he could claim; “ The only thing expected by the dame. “ To censure others’ conduct, basely prone, “ Nor casts one spare reflexion on his own. “ Product of oil, pomatum, powder, soap, “ Begot, conceiv’d, born, bred up without hope:" Who, if he had ever travelled beyond the smoak of his own chimney, I should have thought had been bit by a Tarantula; as it is not the quality, but the quantity, of music, that principally pleases him; sound, not harmony, that he is in any degree capable of relishing. And I own I wish some of his friends, (if he has any) would persuade him to be as frugal of his joints of meat and puddings, as he, and the other great light of this town, are of their lamp-oil; who never suffer their lamps to be lighted above one quarter of the year, and then not on moon-light nights, (for they are all lunatics) and only from dusk to bed-time, eleven o’clock. I wish, I say, some one would persuade him to a cheaper method of entertaining himself, by procuring two or three young pigs, which might be dragged into his room by their tails, there to squeak with a book of concertos before them, till his musical fit was over. This, I am convinced, would not only answer every purpose, with respect to his ear, but, as there might be some got to squeak in unison, so would it be far preferable than that jargon of founds produced by an unskilful draw of a harsh-rosin’d bow across a base fiddle. Thus much for our Colchester amusements. << less