upon love of her; and, I am afraid, will never be cured | Sir Per. Oho! oho! vary weel! vary weel! fine without a little of your assistance. slander ministers! fine sedition against governSid. Of my assistance! pray, sir, in what manner? ment !-O, ye villain! you-you-you are a black Sir Per. In what manner?-Lord, Maister Sidney, sheep; and I'll mark you I am glad you show how can you be so dull? Why, how is any man cured yourself. Yes, yes, you have taken off the mask of his love till a wench, but by ganging to bed till at last; you have been in my service for many years, her? Now do you understand me? and I never knew your principles before. Sid. Perfectly, sir-perfectly. Sid. Sir, you never affronted them before: if you had, you should have known them sooner. Sir Per. It is vary weel.-I have done with you. Sir Per. Vary weel.--Now then, my vary guid friend, gin you wou'd but give him that hint, and take an opportunity to speak a good word for him till-Ay, ay; now I can account for my son's conduct the wench;-and guin you wou'd likewise cast about a little now, and contrive to bring them together once; why, in a few days after, he wou'd nai care a pinch of snuff for her. [Sidney starts up.] What is the matter with you, mon? What the devil gars you start and look so astounded? Sid. Sir, you amaze me.—— -In what part of my mind or conduct have you found that baseness which entitles you to treat me with this indignity? Sir Per. Indignity! What indignity do you mean, sir? Is asking you to serve a friend with a wench, an indignity? Sir, am I not your patron and benefactor? Ha? Sid. You are, sir, and I feel your bounty at my heart; but the virtuous gratitude, that sowed the deep sense of it there, does not inform me that, in return, the tutor's sacred function, or the social virtue of the man, must be debased into the pupil's pander, or the patron's prostitute. Sir Per. How! what, sir! do you dispute? Are you nai my dependent! ha? And do you hesitate about an ordinary civility, which is practised every day by men and women of the first fashion? Sir, let me tell you, however nice you may be, there is nai a client about the court that wou'd nai jump at sic an opportunity to oblige his patron. Sid. Indeed, sir, I believe the doctrine of pimping for patrons, as well as that of prostituting eloquence and public trust for private lucre, may be learned in your party schools for where faction and public venality are taught as measures necessary to good government and general prosperity-there every vice! is to be expected. : his aversion till courts, till ministers, levees, public business, and his disobedience till my commands.Ah! you are a Judas-a perfidious fellow ;-you have ruined the morals of my son, you villain.-But I have done with you. However, this I will prophesy at our parting, for your comfort-that guin you are so very squeamish about bringing a lad and a lass together, or about doing sic an harmless innocent job for your patron, you will never rise in the church. Sid. Though my conduct, sir, should not make me rise in her power, I am sure it will in her favour, in the favour of my own conscience too, and in the esteem of all worthy men; and that, sir, is a power and dignity beyond what patrons, or any minister, can bestow. [Exit. Sir Per. What a rigorous, saucy, stiff-necked rascal it is! I see my folly now. I am undone by mine ain policy. This Sidney is the last man that shou'd have been about my son. The fellow, indeed, hath given him principles, that might have done vary weel among the ancient Romans, but are damn'd unfit for the modern Britons. Weel, guin I had a thousand sons, I never wou'd suffer one of these English university-bred fellows to be about a son of mine again; for they have sic an a pride of literature and character, and sic saucy English notions of liberty continually fermenting in their thoughts, that a man is never sure of them. Now, if I had had a Frenchman, or a foreigner of any kind, about my son, I cou'd have pressed him at once into my purpose, or have kicked the rascal out of my house in a twinkling. [Man of the World. FEMALE INFLUENCE. MIRABELL and FAINALL. Mir. I wonder, Fainall, that you who are married, and of consequence should be discreet, will suffer your wife to be of a scandalous party. Fain. Faith, I am not jealous. Besides, most who are engag'd are women and relations; and for the men, they are of a kind too contemptible to give scandal. Mir. I am of another opinion. The greater the coxcomb, always the more the scandal: for a woman, who is not a fool, can have but one reason for associating with a man who is one. Fain. Are you jealous as often as you see Witwoud entertain'd by Millamant ? Mir. Of her understanding I am, if not of her person. Fain. You do her wrong; for, to give her her due, she has wit. Mir. She has beauty enough to make any man think so; and complaisance enough not to contradict him who shall tell her so. Fain. For a passionate lover, methinks you are a man somewhat too discerning in the failings of your mistress. Mir. And for a discerning man, somewhat too passionate a lover; for I like her with all her faults; nay, like her for her faults. Her follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become her; and those affections which in another woman would be odious, serve but to make her more agreeable. I'll tell thee, Fainall, she once us'd me with that insolence, that in revenge I took her to pieces; sifted her, and separated her failings; I studied 'em, and got 'em by rote. The catalogue was so large, that I was not without hopes one day or other to hate her heartily: to which end I so us'd myself to think of 'em, that at length, contrary to my design and expectation, they gave me every hour less and less disturbance; 'till in a few days it became habitual to me to remember 'em without being displeas'd. They are now grown as familiar to me as my own frailties: and in all Fain. You may allow him to win of you at play; -for you are sure to be too hard for him at repartee; since you monopolize the wit that is between you, the fortune must be his of course. Mir. I don't find that Petulant confesses the superiority of wit to be your talent, Witwoud. a Wit. Come, come, you are malicious now, and wou'd breed debates-Petulant's my friend, and a very honest fellow, and a very pretty fellow, and has smattering-faith and troth a pretty deal of an odd sort of a small wit: nay, I'll do him justice. I'm his friend, I won't wrong him. -And if he had any judgment in the world,-he wou'd not be altogether contemptible. Come, come, don't detract from the merit of my friend. Fain. You don't take your friend to be over-nicely bred? Wit. No, no, hang him, the rogue has no manners at all, that I must own-no more breeding than a bum baily, that I can grant you-'tis pity; the fellow has fire and life. Mir. What courage? Wit. Hum, faith I don't know as to that, I can't say as to that.- -Yes, faith, in a controversy, he'll contradict any body. Mir. Tho' 'twere a man whom he fear'd, or a woman whom he lov'd. Wit. Well, well, he does not always think before he speaks ;-we have all our failings: you are too hard upon him, you are, faith. Let me excuse him -I can defend most of his faults, except one or two: one he has, that's the truth on't; if he were my brother, I cou'd not acquit him-that indeed I in your nature; your true vanity is in the power of cou'd wish were otherwise. Mir. Ay, marry, what's that, Witwoud? Wit. O pardon me- -expose the infirmities of my friend?-No, my dear, excuse me there. Fain. What, I warrant he's unsincere, or 'tis some such trifle. Wit. No, no, what if he be? 'tis no matter for that, his wit will excuse that a wit shou'd no more be sincere, than a woman constant; one argues a decay of parts, as t'other of beauty. Mir. May be you think him too positive? pleasing. Mil. OI ask your pardon for thatone's cruelty is in one's power; and when one parts with one's cruelty, one parts with one's power; and when one has parted with that, I fancy one's old and ugly. Mir. Ay, ay, suffer your cruelty to ruin the object of your power, to destroy your lover-and then how vain, how lost a thing you'll be! nay, 'tis true: you are no longer handsome when you've lost your lover; your beauty dies upon the instant; for beauty is the lover's gift; 'tis he bestows your charms--your Wit. No, no, his being positive is an incentive to glass is all a cheat. The ugly and the old, whom argument, and keeps up conversation. Fain. Too illiterate? Wit. Truths! ha, ha, ha! no, no; since you will have it.- -I mean, he never speaks truth at all, -that's all. He will lie like a chambermaid, or a woman of quality's porter. Now that is a fault. [Way of the World. BEAUTY DEPENDENT ON A LOVER'S FANCY. MIRABELL, MILLAMANT, and WITWOUD. Mil. Mirabell, did you take exceptions last night? O ay, and went away-now I think on't, I'm angryno, now I think on't I'm pleas'd-for I believe I gave you some pain. Mir. Does that please you? Mir. You wou'd affect a cruelty which is not the looking-glass mortifies, yet after commendation can be flatter'd by it, and discover beauties in it; for that reflects cur praises, rather than our face. Mil. O the vanity of these men! Fainall, d'ye hear him? If they did not commend us, we were not handsome! now you must know they cou'd not commend one, if one was not handsome. Beauty the lover's gift-Lord, what is a lover, that give? Why, one makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one pleases; and then if one pleases, one makes more. can Wit. Very pretty. Why, you make no more of making of lovers, Madam, than of making so many card-matches. Mil. One no more owes one's beauty to a lover, than one's wit to an echo; they can but reflect what we look and say; vain empty things if we are silent or unseen, and want a being. Mir. Yet to those two vain empty things, you owe two the greatest pleasures of your life. Mil. How so? Mir. To your lover you owe the pleasure of hearing yourselves prais'd; and to an echo the pleasure of hearing yourselves talk. Wit. But I know a lady that loves talking so incessantly, she won't give an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue, that an echo must wait 'till she dies, before it can catch her last words. Mil. O fiction; Fainall, let us leave these men. [Way of the World. PRISON SCENE. [Torrento, with his dress torn, from the last night's riot, is dragged in by the turnkeys-he resists, clamouring outside as he comes.] Tor. Why, you scoundrels, you renegadoes, you dogs in office, what's this for! To be dragged out of my first sleep in my dungeon, to look in the faces of such a confoundedly ugly set of cannibals. Gabler. Bring him along. [He is forced in. Tor. [Continuing to struggle]-Cannot 1 sleep or starve as I like? I'll blow up the prison.-I'll massacre the gaoler, I'll do worse-I'll let the law loose on you-Villains. Gaoler. Poh! Master Torrento, you need not be in such a passion. You used to have no objection to good company-ha, ha, ha! He has been moulting his feathers a little last night. [To the hussars. Tor. Company-Banditti! Who are those fellows? Are they all hangmen ? [Looking at the hussars. Cor. Out of the orator's way! Muffs and meerschaums! [The prisoners lift Torrento on a bench, laughing and clamouring.] Tor. [Haranguing]-Are we to suffer ourselves to be molested in our domestic circle; in the loveliness of our private lives; in our otium cum dignitate? Gentlemen of the gaol! [cheering.]-Is not our residence here for our country's good? [cheering]Would it not be well for the country if ten times as many, that hold their heads high, outside these walls, were now inside them? [cheering.]—I scorn to appeal to your passions; but shall we suffer our honourable Major. A mighty handsome idea, by the glory of straw, our venerable bread and water, our virtuous he twentieth. [Laughing. slumbers, and our useful days, to be invaded, crushed, and calcitrated, by the iron boot-heel of arrogance and audacity? [cheering.]-No! freedom is like the air we breathe, without it we die!-No! every man's cell is his castle. By the law, we live here; and should not all that live by the law, die by the law? -Now gentlemen, a general cheer! here's liberty, property, and purity of principle! Gentlemen of the gaol! Col. Sirrah! you must see that we are officers. Take care. Tor. Officers!-aye, sheriff's officers. Honest ousekeepers, with very rascally countenances. Cor. Muffs and meerschaums!-Very impudently conjectured. Tor. Well then, parish officers! Hunters of brats, eggars, and light bread. Maj. [Laughing]-Another guess for your life. Col. Insolence! Sirrab, we are in his Majesty's ervice. Tor. Oh! I understand-Customhouse officers. Cubs, tobacco, aud thermometers. [They murmur. Cor. Cut off the scoundrel's head! [Half drawing his sabre. Tor. I knew it; ardent spirits, every soul of them -seizers. Maj. Cæsars! Well done. This is our manTo the hussars]-I like him-the freshest rascal! Tor. Gaoler, I will not be disturbed for any man. Why am I brought out before these,-fellows in very? This gaol is my house; my freehold; my [They carry him round the hall. Loud cheering. Gaol. Out with ye, ye dogs! No rioting! Turnkeys! [calls.]-The black-hole and double irons. [He drives them off, and follows them. Tor. Confound me if I care, if your head-quarters [Haughtily. Cor. Psha! every body's a gentleman now. Ld. F. O yes, sometimes, but I never laugh. Care. No? RIGHT HONOURARLE DIGNITY. PAUL PLYANT, Lord FROTH, BRISK, CARELESS. Sir Paul. When Mr. Brisk jokes, your lordship's laugh does so become you, he, he, he! Lord F. Ridiculous!--Sir Paul, you're strangely mistaken; I find champagne is powerful. I assure you, Sir Paul, I laugh at nobody's jest but my own, or a lady's, I assure you Sir Paul. Brisk. How how, my lord! What affront my wit! let me perish, do I never say any thing worthy to be laugh'd at? Ld. F. O foy, don't misapprehend me; I don't say so, for I often smile at your conceptions. But there is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality, than to laugh; 'tis such a vulgar expression of the passion! every body can laugh. Then, especially to laugh at the jest of an inferior person, or when any body else of the same quality does not laugh with one. Ridiculous! to be pleased with what pleases the crowd! now, when I laugh, I always laugh alone! Brisk. I suppose that's because you laugh at your own jests, 'egad, ha, ha, ha! Ld. F. He, he! I swear though, your raillery provokes me to smile. Brisk. Ay, my lord, it's a sign I hit you in the teeth, if you show 'em. Ld. F. He, he, he, I swear that's so very pretty, I can't forbear. Care. But does your lordship never see comedies? Ld. F. Oh, no, never laugh indeed, sir. Ld. F. To distinguish myself from the commonalty, and mortify the poets;-the fellows grow so conceited when any of their foolish wit prevails upon the side boxes.-I swear-he, he, he, I have often constrained my inclination to laugh-he, he, he, to avoid giving them encouragement. Care. You are cruel to yourself, my lord, as well as malicious to them. Ld. F. I confess I did myself some violence at first, but now I think I have conquered it. Brisk. Let me perish, my lord, but there is something very particular in the humour; 'tis true, it makes against wit, and I'm sorry for some friends of mine that write, but 'egad I love to be malicious.— Nay, deuce take me, there's wit in't too—and wit must be foiled by wit; cut a diamond with a diamond, no other way, 'egad. Ld. F. Oh, I thought you would not be long before you found out the wit. Care. Wit! in what? where the devil's the wit in not laughing when a man has a mind to't? [Double Dealer. A BLUE STOCKING LADY'S IDEA OF LOVE. Lady FROTH and CYNTHIA. Cyn. Indeed, madam! is it possible your ladyship could have been so much in love? Lady F. I could not sleep; I did not sleep one wink for three weeks together. Cyn. Prodigious! I wonder want of sleep, and so much love, and so much wit as your ladyship has, did not turn your braiz. Lady F. O my dear Cynthia, you must not rally your friend-but really, as you say, I wonder too-but then I had a way. For between you and I, I had whimsies and vapours, but I gave them vent. Cyn. How, pray, madam? Lady F. O, I writ, writ abundantly--Do you never write? |