Those fingering gentlemen should be informed, that they ought to suit their airs to the place and business; and that the musician is obliged to keep to the text as much as the preacher.

For want of this, I have found by experience a great deal of mischief.

For when the preacher has often, with great piety, and art enough, handled his subject, and the judicious clerk has with the utmost diligence called out two staves proper to the discourse, and I have found in myself, and in the rest of the pew, good thoughts and dispositions, they have been all in a moment dissipated by a merry jig from the organ loft.
One knows not what further ill effects the epilogues I have been speaking of may in time produce: but this I am credibly informed of, that Paul Lorrain[A] has resolved upon a very sudden reformation in his tragical dramas; and that, at the next monthly performance, he designs, instead of a penitential psalm, to dismiss his audience with an excellent new ballad of his own composing.

Pray, Sir, do what you can to put a stop to these growing evils, and you will very much oblige your humble servant, "PHYSIBULUS." [Footnote A: At that time ordinary of Newgate; and who, in his accounts of the convicts executed at Tyburn, generally represented them as true penitents, and dying very well.] No.341.TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 1712.
"-- Revocate animos, maestumque timorem Mittite--" VIRG.

AEN.I.