Nevertheless, occasional eccentricity has been forthcoming, if only to incur rebuke.

We may cite an instance or two.
In December, 1738, the editor of _The London Evening Post_ was thus addressed by a correspondent assuming the character of Miss Townley: "I am a young woman of fashion who love plays, and should be glad to frequent them as an agreeable and instructive entertainment, but am debarred that diversion by my relations upon account of a sort of people who now fill or rather infest the boxes.

I went the other night to the play with an aunt of mine, a well-bred woman of the last age, though a little formal.
When we sat down in the front boxes we found ourselves surrounded by a parcel of the strangest fellows that ever I saw in my life; some of them had those loose kind of great-coats on which I have heard called _wrap-rascals_, with gold-laced hats, slouched in humble imitation of _stage-coachmen_; others aspired at being _grooms_, and had dirty boots and spurs, with black caps on, and long whips in their hands; a third sort wore scanty frocks, with little, shabby hats, put on one side, and clubs in their hands.

My aunt whispered me that she never saw such a set of slovenly, unmannerly footmen sent to keep places in her life, when, to her great surprise, she saw those fellows, at the end of the act, pay the box-keeper for their places." In 1730 the "Universal Spectator" notes: "The wearing of swords, at the Court end of the town, is, by many polite young gentlemen, laid aside; and instead thereof they carry large oak sticks, with great heads and ugly faces carved thereon." Elliston was, in 1827, lessee and manager of the Surrey Theatre.
"Quite an opera pit," he said to Charles Lamb, conducting him over the benches of that establishment, described by Lamb as "the last retreat of his every-day waning grandeur." The following letter--the authenticity of which seems to be vouched for by the actor's biographer--supplies a different view of the Surrey audience of that date: "_August 10th, 1827._ "SIR,--I really must beg to call your attention to a most abominable nuisance which exists in your house, and which is, in a great measure, the cause of the minor theatres not holding the rank they should amongst playhouses.

I mean the admission of _sweeps_ into the theatre in the very dress in which they climb chimneys.