Ben. Mess, here's the wind changed again !— Father, you and I may make a voyage together now!

Ang Well, Sir Sampson, since I have played you a trick, I'll advise you how you may avoid such another. Learn to be a good father, or you'll never get a second wife. I always loved your son, and hated your unforgiving nature. I was resolved to try him to the utmost; I have tried you too, and how you both. You have not more faults than he has virtues; and it is hardly more pleasure to me, that I can make him and myself happy, than that I can punish you.

Val. If my happiness could receive addition, this kind surprise would make it double. Sir S. Oons, you're a crocodile !

For. Really, Sir Sampson, this is a sudden eclipse.

Sir S. You're an illiterate old fool; and I'm another.

ness.

Tat. If the gentleman is in disorder for want of a wife, I can spare him mine. Oh, are you there, sir? I am indebted to you for my happi [To JEREMY. Jer. Sir, I ask you ten thousand pardons: it was an arrant mistake. You see, sir, my master was never mad, nor any thing like it.-Then how can it be otherwise?

Val. Tattle, I thank you; you would have interposed between me and heaven; but Providence laid purgatory in your way. You have but jus

tice.

Scan. I hear the fiddies that Sir Sampson provided for his own wedding; methinks it is pity they should not be employed when the match is so much mended. Valentine, though it be morning, we may have a dance.

Val. Any thing, my friend; every thing that looks like joy and transport.

Scan. Call them, Jeremy.

Ang. I have done dissembling now, Valentine; and if that coldness which I have always worn before you should turn to an extreme fondness, you must not suspect it.

Val. I'll prevent that suspicion-for I intend to dote to that immoderate degree, that your fondness shall never distinguish itself enough to be taken notice of. If ever you seem to love too much, it must be only when I cann't love enough.

Ang. Have a care of promises: you know you are apt to run more in debt than you are able to

pay.

Val. Therefore I yield my body as your prisoner, and make your best on't.

Scan. The music stays for you. [A Dance. [To ANG.] Well, madam, you have done exemplary justice, in punishing an inhuman father, and rewarding a faithful lover: but there is a third good work, which I, in particular, must thank you for: I was an infidel to your sex, and you have converted me for now I am convinced that all women are not, like fortune, blind in bestowing favours, either on those who do not merit, or who do not want them.

Ang. It is an unreasonable accusation, that you lay upon our sex. You tax us with injustice, only to cover your own want of merit. You would all have the reward of love; but few have the constancy to stay till it becomes your due. Men are generally hypocrites and infidels; they pretend to worship, but have neither zeal nor faith. How few, like Valentine, would persevere, even to martyrdom, and sacrifice their interest to their constancy! In admiring me, you misplace the novelty. The miracle to-day is, that we find A lover true; not that a woman's kind. [Exeunt omnes,

SURE Providence at first design'd this place
To be the player's refuge in distress;
For still, in every storm, they all run hither,
As to a shed, that shields them from the weather.
But, thinking of this change which last befel us,
It's like what I have heard our poets tell us:
For when behind our scenes their suits are plead-
ing,

To help their love, sometimes they shew their reading;

And, wanting ready cash to pay for hearts,
They top their learning on us and their parts.

Thus Aristotle's soul, of old that was,
May now be damn'd to animate an ass ;
Or in this very house, for aught we know,
Is doing painful penance in some beau:
And thus our audience, which did once resort
To shining theatres, to see our sport,
Now find us toss'd into a tennis court.
These walls but t'other day were fill'd with noise
Of roaring gamesters, and your damme boys;
Then bounding balls and rackets they encompast;
And now they're fill'd with jests, and flights, and

bombast!

I vow, I don't much like this transmigration,

Strolling from place to place, by circulation; Grant Heav'n, we don't return to our first station !

I know not what these think; but, for my part,
I cann't reflect without an aching heart,

How we should end in our original-a cart.
But we cann't fear, since you're so good to save us,
That you have only set us up to leave us.
Thus, from the past, we hope for future grace,
I beg it-

And some here know I have a begging face.
Then pray continue this your kind behaviour;
For a clear stage won't do, without your favour.

No portion for her own she has to spare,
So much she dotes on her adopted care.

Poets are bubbles, by the town drawn in,
Suffer'd at first some trifling stakes to win:
But what unequal hazards do they run!
Each time they write, they venture all they've won:
The squire that's butter'd still, is sure to be undone.
This author, heretofore, has found your favour;
But pleads no merit from his past behaviour.
To build on that might prove a vain presumption,
Should grants, to poets made, admit resumption:
And in Parnassus he must lose his seat,
If that be found a forfeited estate.

He owns with toil he wrote the following scenes; But, if they're naught, ne'er spare him for his pains.

Damn him the more; have no commiseration
For dulness on mature deliberation.
He swears he'll not resent one hiss'd-off scene,
Nor, like those peevish wits, his play maintain,
Who, to assert their sense, your taste arraign.
Some plot we think he has, and some new thought:
Some humour too, no farce; but that's a fault.
Satire, he thinks, you ought not to expect;
For so reform'd a town, who dares correct?
To please, this time, has been his sole pretence,
He'll not instruct, lest it should give offence.
Should he by chance a knave or fool expose,
That hurts none here, sure here are none of those.
In short, our play shall (with your leave to shew
it)

Give you one instance of a passive poet,
Who to your judgments yields all resignation,
To save, or damn, after your own discretion.

SCENE I-A Chocolate-House. MIRABELL and FAINALL rising from Cards. BETTY waiting. Mira. You are a fortunate man, Mr Fainall. Fain. Have we done?

Mira. What you please. I'll play on to entertain you.

:

Fain. No; I'll give you your revenge another time, when you are not so indifferent; you are thinking of something else now, and play too negligently the coldness of a losing gamester lessens the pleasure of the winner. I'd no more play with a man that slighted his ill-fortune, than I'd make love to a woman who undervalued the loss of her reputation.

Mira..You have a taste extremely delicate, and are for refining on your pleasures.

Fain. Pr'ythee, why so reserved? Something has put you out of humour.

Mira. Not at all; I happen to be grave to-day, and you are gay, that's all.

Fain. Confess, Millamant and you quarrell'd last night, after I left you: my fair cousin has some humours that would tempt the patience of a stoic.-What, some coxcomb came in, and was well received by her, while you were by?

Mira. Witwould and Petulant; and, what was worse, her aunt, your wife's mother, my evil genius; or, to sum up all in her own name, my old Lady Wishfort came in.

Fain. O, there it is then-She has a lasting passion for you, and with reason.--What, then my wife was there?

Mira. Yes; and Mrs Marwood, and three or four more whom I never saw before: seeing me, they all put on their grave faces, whisper'd one to another; then complain'd aloud of the vapours, and after fell into a profound silence.

Fain. They had a mind to be rid of you. Mira. For which reason I resolved not to stir. At last the good old lady broke through her painful taciturnity, with an invective against long visits. I would not have understood her; but Millamant joining in the argument, I rose, and, with a constrain❜d smile, told her, I thought nothing was so easy as to know when a visit began to be troublesome: she redden'd, and I withdrew, without expecting her reply.

Fain. You were to blame, to resent what she spoke only in compliance with her aunt.

Mira. She is more mistress of herself than to be under the necessity of such resignation.

Fain. What, though half her fortune depends upon her marrying with my lady's approbation? Mira. I was then in such a humour, that I should have been better pleased if she had been less discreet.

Fain. Now I remember, I wonder not they were

weary of you; last night was one of their cabal nights they have 'em three times a-week, and meet by turns at one another's apartments, where they come together, like the coroner's inquest, to sit upon the murder'd reputations of the week. You and I are excluded; and it was once proposed that all the male sex should be excepted; but somebody moved, that, to avoid scandal, there might be one man of the community; upon which motion Witwould and Petulant were enroll'd members.

Mira. And who may have been the foundress of this sect? My Lady Wishfort, I warrant, who publishes her detestation of mankind; and, full of the vigour of fifty-five, declares for a friend and ratafia; and let posterity shift for itself, she'll breed no more.

Fain. The discovery of your sham addresses to her, to conceal your love to her niece, has provoked this separation: had you dissembled better, things might have continued in the state of

nature.

Mira. I did as much as man could, with any reasonable conscience; I proceeded to the very last act of flattery with her, and was guilty of a song in her commendation. Nay, I got a friend to put her into a lampoon, and compliment her with the addresses of an affair with a young fellow, which I carried so far, that I told her the malicious town took notice that she was grown fat of a sudden; and when she lay in of a dropsy, persuaded her she was reported to be in labour. -The devil's in't if an old woman is to be flatter'd farther, unless a man should endeavour downright personally to debauch her; and that my virtue forbade me.-But for the discovery of this amour, I am indebted to your friend, or your wife's friend, Mrs Marwood.

Fain. What should provoke her to be your enemy, unless she has made you advances which you have slighted? Women do not casily forgive omissions of that nature.

Mira. She was always civil to me till of late: I confess I am not one of those coxcombs who are apt to interpret a woman's good manners to her prejudice, and think that she who does not refuse 'em every thing can refuse 'em nothing.

Fain. You are a gallant man, Mirabell; and though you may have cruelty enough not to answer a lady's advances, you have too much generosity not to be tender of her honour. Yet you speak with an indifference which seems to be affected, and confesses you are conscious of a negligence.

Mira. You pursue the argument with a distrust that seems to be unaffected, and confesses you are conscious of a concern for which the lady is more indebted to you than is your wife.

Fain. Fie, fie, friend! if you grow censorious,

Well, is the grand affair over? You have been something tedious.

Foot. Sir, there's such coupling at Pancras, that they stand behind one another, as 'twere in a country dance. Ours was the last couple to lead up; and no hopes appearing of dispatch, besides the parson growing hoarse, we were afraid his lungs would have fail'd before it came to our turn; so we drove round to Duke's-Place, and there they were rivetted in a trice.

Mira. So, so; you are sure they are married?
Foot. Incontestibly, sir; I am witness.
Mira. Have you the certificate?
Foot. Here it is, sir.

Mira. Has the tailor brought Waitwell's clothes home, and the new liveries?

Foot. Yes, sir.

Mira. That's well.-Do you go home again, d'ye hear, and adjourn the consummation till farther order: bid Waitwell shake his ears, and dame Partlet rustle up her feathers, and meet me at one o'clock by Rosamond's pond, that I may see her before she returns to her lady; and as you tender your ears be secret. [Exit Footman.

FAINALL enters.

Fain. Joy of your success, Mirabell! You look pleased.

Mira. Ay; I have been engaged in a matter of some sort of mirth, which is not yet ripe for discovery. I am glad this is not a cabal-night. I wonder, Fainall, that you who are married, and of consequence should be discreet, will suffer your wife to be of such a party.

Fain. Faith, I am not jealous. Besides, most who are engaged are women and relations; and for the men, they are of a kind too contemptible to give scandal.

Mira. 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 Witwould entertain❜d by Millamant ?

Mira. Of her understanding I am, if not of her person.

Fain. You do her wrong; for, to give her her due, she has wit.

Mira. 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
VOL. III.

a man somewhat too discerning in the failings of your mistress.

Mira. 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 affectations, which in another woman would be odious, serve but to make her more agreeable.-I'll tell thee, Fainall, she once used 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 used myself to think of 'em, that at length, contrary to my design and expectation, they gave me every hour less disturbance; till in a few days it became habitual to me to remember 'em without being displeased. They are now grown as familiar to me as my own frailties; and, in all probability, in a little time longer I shall like 'em as well.

Fain. Marry her, marry her; be half as well acquainted with her charms as you are with her defects, and my life on't you are your own man again.

way.

Betty. He's in the next room, friend. That [Exit Messenger. Mira. What, is the chief of that noble family in town, Sir Wilful Witwould?

Fain. He is expected to-day.-Do you know him?

Mira. I have seen him; he promises to be an extraordinary person. I think you have the honour to be related to him.

Fain. Yes; he is half-brother to this Witwould, by a former wife, who was sister to my Lady Wishfort, my wife's mother. If f you marry Millamant, you must call cousins too.

Mird. I would rather be his relation than his acquaintance.

Fain. He comes to town in order to equip himself for travel.

Mira. For travel! Why, the man that I mean is above forty.

Fain. No matter for that; 'tis for the honour of England, that all Europe should know we have blockheads of all ages.

Mira. I wonder there is not an act of parliament to save the credit of the nation, and prohibit the exportation of fools.

Fain. By no means; 'tis better as 'tis : 'tis better to trade with little loss, than to be quite eaten up with being overstock'd.

2 C