(thought I) look when they are dead.

My third play followed in quick succession. It was the Way of the
World. I think I must have sat at it as grave as a judge; for, I
remember, the hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected me
like some solemn tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe followed; in which
Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic as in
the story.--The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have
clean passed out of my head. I believe, I no more laughed at them,
than at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the
grotesque Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout
meaning) that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old
Round Church (my church) of the Templars.

I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was from six to seven
years old. After the intervention of six or seven other years (for
at school all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors
of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in
my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same
occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen,
than the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost!
At the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated
nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all--

Was nourished, I could not tell how--

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The
same things were there materially; but the emblem, the reference,
was gone!--The green curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between two
worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages, to present