"The arrival of a merry-andrew in a town is more beneficial to the bealth of the inhabitants than twenty asses loaded with medicine. "Now, as I never invent a jest myself, so I make it a rule never to laugh at other people's."-SWIFT'S Dull Man. "Let the wits and humorists be consoled; they have the best of it-and the dull ones know it.”— R. H. HORNE. "He thirt will lose his friend for a jest deserves to die a beggar by the bargain."-FUller. "Act freely, carelessly, capriciously; as if our veins ran with quicksilver; and not utter a phrase but what shall come forth steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire." - BEN JONSON. INTRODUCTION. SAMUEL FOOTE. SOME writer of the time, with a turn for nick-names, dubbed Samuel Foote "the English Aristophanes," and every writer "echoes the conceit." As an author of satirical farce and broad comedy, as a mimetic actor, and as a ready wit, he stood alone during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Petted and admired for his fortunes --he ran through three-and for the life and spirit with which he made himself one of the gay world, he was feared, and more or less cordially detested, as a man of ready and unmeasured wit, and of powers of mimicry which have never been equalled. His qualities as a social wit, as a teller of good stories, an utterer of bon-mots when "i' the vein and among congenial company, are borne witness to by many of his friends and acquaintances. Even Doctor Johnson, "the Caliban of literature," |