FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[E]Johnson's dislike of Mr. Wilkes was so great that it extended even to his connections. He happened to dine one day at Sir Joshua Reynolds's with a large and distinguished company, amongst whom were Mr. Wilkes's brother, Israel, and his lady. In the course of conversation, Mr. Israel Wilkes was about to make some remark, when Johnson suddenly stopped him with, "I hope, sir, what you are going to say may be better worth hearing than what you have already said." This rudeness shocked and spread a gloom over the whole party, particularly as Mr. Israel Wilkes was a gentleman of a very amiable character and of refined taste, and, what Dr. Johnson little suspected, a very loyal subject. Johnson afterwards owned to me that he was very sorry that he had "snubbedWilkes, as his wife was present." I replied, that he should be sorry for many reasons. "No," said Johnson, who was very reluctant to apologize for offences of this nature; "no, I only regret it because his wife was by." I believe that he had no kind of motive for this incivility to Mr. Israel Wilkes but disgust at his brother's political principles.Miss Reynolds's Recollections

[E]Johnson's dislike of Mr. Wilkes was so great that it extended even to his connections. He happened to dine one day at Sir Joshua Reynolds's with a large and distinguished company, amongst whom were Mr. Wilkes's brother, Israel, and his lady. In the course of conversation, Mr. Israel Wilkes was about to make some remark, when Johnson suddenly stopped him with, "I hope, sir, what you are going to say may be better worth hearing than what you have already said." This rudeness shocked and spread a gloom over the whole party, particularly as Mr. Israel Wilkes was a gentleman of a very amiable character and of refined taste, and, what Dr. Johnson little suspected, a very loyal subject. Johnson afterwards owned to me that he was very sorry that he had "snubbedWilkes, as his wife was present." I replied, that he should be sorry for many reasons. "No," said Johnson, who was very reluctant to apologize for offences of this nature; "no, I only regret it because his wife was by." I believe that he had no kind of motive for this incivility to Mr. Israel Wilkes but disgust at his brother's political principles.

Miss Reynolds's Recollections

Inthe second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitantsenjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines.The principal conquests of the Romans were achieved under the republic; and the emperors, for the most part, were satisfied with preserving those dominions which had been acquired by the policy of the senate, the active emulation of the consuls, and the martial enthusiasm of the people. The seven first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was reserved for Augustus to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils. Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for him to discover that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious and less beneficial. The experience of Augustus added weight to these salutary reflections, and effectually convinced him that, by the prudent vigor of his counsels, it would be easy to secure every concession which the safety or the dignity of Rome might require from the most formidable barbarians. Instead of exposing his person and his legions to the arrows of the Parthians, he obtained, by an honorable treaty, the restitution of the standards and prisoners which had been taken in the defeat of Crassus.His generals, in the early part of his reign, attempted the reduction ofÆthiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousand miles to the south of the tropic; but the heat of the climate soon repelled the invaders, and protected the unwarlike natives of those sequestered regions. The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the expense and labor of conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune. On the death of that emperor, his testament was publicly read in the senate. He bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits which nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries: on the west the Atlantic Ocean; the Rhine and Danube on the north; the Euphrates on the east; and towards the south, the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa.Happily for the repose of mankind, the moderate system recommended by the wisdom of Augustus was adopted by the fears and vices of his immediate successors. Engaged in the pursuit of pleasure, or in the exercise of tyranny, the first Cæsars seldom showed themselves to the armies or to the provinces; nor were they disposed to suffer that those triumphs whichtheirindolence neglected should be usurped by the conduct and valor of their lieutenants. The military fame of a subject was considered as an insolent invasion of the imperial prerogative; and it became the duty, as well as interest, of every Roman general to guard the frontiers intrustedto his care, without aspiring to conquests which might have proved no less fatal to himself than to the vanquished barbarians.The only accession which the Roman empire received during the first century of the Christian era was the province of Britain. In this single instance the successors of Cæsar and Augustus were persuaded to follow the example of the former, rather than the precept of the latter. The proximity of its situation to the coast of Gaul seemed to invite their arms; the pleasing, though doubtful, intelligence of a pearl-fishery attracted their avarice; and as Britain was viewed in the light of a distinct and insulated world, the conquest scarcely formed any exception to the general system of continental measures. After a war of about forty years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most dissolute, and terminated by the most timid of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island submitted to the Roman yoke. The various tribes of Britons possessed valor without conduct, and the love of freedom without the spirit of union. They took up arms with savage fierceness; they laid them down, or turned them against each other, with wild inconstancy; and while they fought singly, they were successively subdued. Neither the fortitude of Caractacus, nor the despair of Boadicea, nor the fanaticism of the Druids, could avert the slavery of their country, or resist the steady progress of the imperial generals, who maintained the national glory, when the throne was disgraced by the weakest or the most vicious of mankind. At the very time when Domitian, confined to his palace, felt the terrors which he inspired, his legions, under the command of the virtuous Agricola, defeated the collected force of the Caledonians at the foot of the Grampian hills; and his fleets, venturing to explore an unknown and dangerous navigation, displayed the Roman arms round every part of the island. The conquest of Britain was considered as already achieved; and it was the design of Agricola to complete and insure his success by the easy reduction of Ireland, for which, in his opinion, one legion and a few auxiliaries were sufficient. The western isle might be improved into a valuable possession, and the Britons would wear their chains with the less reluctance, if the prospect and example of freedom was on every side removed from before their eyes.But the superior merit of Agricola soon occasioned his removal from the government of Britain; and forever disappointed this rational, though extensive, scheme of conquest. Before his departure the prudent general had provided for security as well as for dominion. He had observed that the island is almost divided into two unequal parts by the opposite gulfs, or, as they are now called, the Friths of Scotland. Across the narrow interval of about forty miles he had drawn a line of military stations, which was afterwards fortified, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, by a turf rampart, erected on foundations of stone. This wall of Antoninus, at a small distance beyond the modern cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, was fixed as the limit of the Roman province. The native Caledonians preserved, in the northern extremity of the island, their wild independence, for which they were not less indebted to their poverty than to their valor. Their incursions were frequently repelled and chastised, but their country was never subdued. The masters of the fairest and most wealthy climates of the globe turned with contempt from gloomy hills assailed by the wintertempest, from lakes concealed in a blue mist, and from cold and lonely heaths, over which the deer of the forest were chased by a troop of naked barbarians.Such was the state of the Roman frontiers, and such the maxims of imperial policy, from the death of Augustus to the accession of Trajan.

Inthe second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitantsenjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines.

The principal conquests of the Romans were achieved under the republic; and the emperors, for the most part, were satisfied with preserving those dominions which had been acquired by the policy of the senate, the active emulation of the consuls, and the martial enthusiasm of the people. The seven first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was reserved for Augustus to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils. Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for him to discover that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious and less beneficial. The experience of Augustus added weight to these salutary reflections, and effectually convinced him that, by the prudent vigor of his counsels, it would be easy to secure every concession which the safety or the dignity of Rome might require from the most formidable barbarians. Instead of exposing his person and his legions to the arrows of the Parthians, he obtained, by an honorable treaty, the restitution of the standards and prisoners which had been taken in the defeat of Crassus.

His generals, in the early part of his reign, attempted the reduction ofÆthiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousand miles to the south of the tropic; but the heat of the climate soon repelled the invaders, and protected the unwarlike natives of those sequestered regions. The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the expense and labor of conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune. On the death of that emperor, his testament was publicly read in the senate. He bequeathed, as a valuable legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those limits which nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and boundaries: on the west the Atlantic Ocean; the Rhine and Danube on the north; the Euphrates on the east; and towards the south, the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa.

Happily for the repose of mankind, the moderate system recommended by the wisdom of Augustus was adopted by the fears and vices of his immediate successors. Engaged in the pursuit of pleasure, or in the exercise of tyranny, the first Cæsars seldom showed themselves to the armies or to the provinces; nor were they disposed to suffer that those triumphs whichtheirindolence neglected should be usurped by the conduct and valor of their lieutenants. The military fame of a subject was considered as an insolent invasion of the imperial prerogative; and it became the duty, as well as interest, of every Roman general to guard the frontiers intrustedto his care, without aspiring to conquests which might have proved no less fatal to himself than to the vanquished barbarians.

The only accession which the Roman empire received during the first century of the Christian era was the province of Britain. In this single instance the successors of Cæsar and Augustus were persuaded to follow the example of the former, rather than the precept of the latter. The proximity of its situation to the coast of Gaul seemed to invite their arms; the pleasing, though doubtful, intelligence of a pearl-fishery attracted their avarice; and as Britain was viewed in the light of a distinct and insulated world, the conquest scarcely formed any exception to the general system of continental measures. After a war of about forty years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most dissolute, and terminated by the most timid of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island submitted to the Roman yoke. The various tribes of Britons possessed valor without conduct, and the love of freedom without the spirit of union. They took up arms with savage fierceness; they laid them down, or turned them against each other, with wild inconstancy; and while they fought singly, they were successively subdued. Neither the fortitude of Caractacus, nor the despair of Boadicea, nor the fanaticism of the Druids, could avert the slavery of their country, or resist the steady progress of the imperial generals, who maintained the national glory, when the throne was disgraced by the weakest or the most vicious of mankind. At the very time when Domitian, confined to his palace, felt the terrors which he inspired, his legions, under the command of the virtuous Agricola, defeated the collected force of the Caledonians at the foot of the Grampian hills; and his fleets, venturing to explore an unknown and dangerous navigation, displayed the Roman arms round every part of the island. The conquest of Britain was considered as already achieved; and it was the design of Agricola to complete and insure his success by the easy reduction of Ireland, for which, in his opinion, one legion and a few auxiliaries were sufficient. The western isle might be improved into a valuable possession, and the Britons would wear their chains with the less reluctance, if the prospect and example of freedom was on every side removed from before their eyes.

But the superior merit of Agricola soon occasioned his removal from the government of Britain; and forever disappointed this rational, though extensive, scheme of conquest. Before his departure the prudent general had provided for security as well as for dominion. He had observed that the island is almost divided into two unequal parts by the opposite gulfs, or, as they are now called, the Friths of Scotland. Across the narrow interval of about forty miles he had drawn a line of military stations, which was afterwards fortified, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, by a turf rampart, erected on foundations of stone. This wall of Antoninus, at a small distance beyond the modern cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, was fixed as the limit of the Roman province. The native Caledonians preserved, in the northern extremity of the island, their wild independence, for which they were not less indebted to their poverty than to their valor. Their incursions were frequently repelled and chastised, but their country was never subdued. The masters of the fairest and most wealthy climates of the globe turned with contempt from gloomy hills assailed by the wintertempest, from lakes concealed in a blue mist, and from cold and lonely heaths, over which the deer of the forest were chased by a troop of naked barbarians.

Such was the state of the Roman frontiers, and such the maxims of imperial policy, from the death of Augustus to the accession of Trajan.

Inone thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack upon me and my mortuary pension: He cannot readily comprehend the transaction he condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no bargain, the production of no intrigue, the result of no compromise, the effect of no solicitation. The first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately or immediately, to his Majesty or any of his ministers. It was long known that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the heaviest of all calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity and sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had executed that design. I was entirely out of the way of serving or of hurting any statesman or any party, when the ministers so generously and so nobly carried into effect the spontaneous bounty of the crown. Both descriptions have acted as became them. When Icould no longer serve them, the ministers have considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me, indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fault in the royal donor, or in his ministers, who were pleased, in acknowledging the merits of an invalid servant of the public, to assuage the sorrows of a desolate old man....I was not like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into a legislator: "Nitor in adversum" is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend men to the favor and protection of the great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by imposing on the understandings of the people. At every step of my progress in life—for in every step was I traversed and opposed—and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to shew my passport, and again and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not wholly unacquainted with its laws, and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home. Otherwise, no rank, no toleration even, for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and, please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand....The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to call the attention of the House of Peers to his Majesty's grant to me, which he considers as excessive and out of all bounds.I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, whilst his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as dreams—even his golden dreams—are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach tome, but took the subject-matter from the crown grants tohis own family. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way of putting things together, his Grace is perfectly in the right. The grants to the house of Russell were so enormous, as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers me all over with the spray—everything of him and about him is from the throne. Is it forhimto question the dispensation of the royal favor?I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds, and these services of mine, on the favorable construction of which I have obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In private life I have not at all the honor of acquaintance with the noble Duke; but I ought to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly deserves the esteem and love of all who live with him. But as to public service, why, truly, it would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself, in rank, in fortune, in splendid descent,in youth, strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his own to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast landed pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and personal: his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit, which makes his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the merit of all other grantees of the crown. Had he permitted me to remain in quiet, I should have said: "'Tis his estate; that's enough. It is his by law; what have I to do with it or its history?" He would naturally have said on his side: "'Tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old pensions: he is an old man with very young pensions—that's all."Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare my little merit with that which obtained from the crown those prodigies of profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals?... Since the new grantees have war made on them by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic origin of their house.The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, raised by being a minion of Henry the Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance ofcharacter to create these relations, the favorite was in all likelihood much such another as his master. The first of those immoderate grants was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown, but from the recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion, having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favorites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favorite's first grant was from the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of the first, was from the plunder of the church. In truth, his Grace is somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its quantity, but in its kind, so different from his own.Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign: his, from Henry the Eighth. Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of illustrious rank, or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men: his grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door.The merit of the grantee whom he derives from, was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling tyrant, who oppressed all descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on everything that was great and noble. Mine has been in endeavoring to screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in defending the high and eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscating princes, confiscating chief-governors, or confiscating demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy.The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in giving his hand to the work, and partaking the spoil with a prince who plundered a part of the national church of his time and country. Mine was in defending the whole of the national church of my own time and my own country, and the whole of the national churches of all countries, from the principles and the examples which lead to ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt ofallprescriptive titles, thence to the pillage ofallproperty, and thence to universal desolation.The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favorite and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to his native country. My endeavor was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine was to support, with unrelaxing vigilance, every right, every privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive country; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language, and religion, in the vast domain that still is under the protection, and the larger that was once under the protection, of the British crown.His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom.His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised by the arts of a court and the protection of a Wolsey to the eminence of a great and potent lord. His merit in that eminence was, by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a people to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken the sober part of the country, that theymight put themselves on their guard against any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent lords, or any combination of great leading men of any sort, if ever they should attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the reverse order,—that is, by instigating a corrupted populace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion, introducing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which he profited in the manner we behold in the despotism of Henry the Eighth.The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's house was that of being concerned as a counsellor of state in advising, and in his person executing, the conditions of a dishonorable peace with France,—the surrendering of the fortress of Boulogne, then our outguard on the Continent. By that surrender, Calais, the key of France, and the bridle in the mouth of that power, was not many years afterwards finally lost. My merit has been in resisting the power and pride of France, under any form of its rule; but in opposing it with the greatest zeal and earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could assume,—the worst, indeed, which the prime cause and principle of all evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavor by every means to excite a spirit in the House, where I had the honor of a seat, for carrying on with early vigor and decision the most clearly just and necessary war that this or any nation ever carried on, in order to save my country from the iron yoke of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its principles,—to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good-nature, and good-humor of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence which,beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole moral and in a great degree the whole physical world, having done both in the focus of its most intense malignity.The labors of his Grace's founder merited the "curses, not loud, but deep," of the Commons of England, on whomheand his master had effected acomplete Parliamentary Reform, by making them, in their slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives of a debased, degraded, and undone people. My merits were in having had an active, though not always an ostentatious share, in every one act, without exception, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and in having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency, and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain. I ended my services by a recorded and fully reasoned assertion on their own journals of their constitutional rights, and a vindication of their constitutional conduct. I labored in all things to merit their inward approbation, and (along with the assistants of the largest, the greatest, and best of my endeavors) I received their free, unbiased, public, and solemn thanks.Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the crown grants which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune, as balanced against mine.

Inone thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack upon me and my mortuary pension: He cannot readily comprehend the transaction he condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no bargain, the production of no intrigue, the result of no compromise, the effect of no solicitation. The first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately or immediately, to his Majesty or any of his ministers. It was long known that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the heaviest of all calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity and sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had executed that design. I was entirely out of the way of serving or of hurting any statesman or any party, when the ministers so generously and so nobly carried into effect the spontaneous bounty of the crown. Both descriptions have acted as became them. When Icould no longer serve them, the ministers have considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me, indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fault in the royal donor, or in his ministers, who were pleased, in acknowledging the merits of an invalid servant of the public, to assuage the sorrows of a desolate old man....

I was not like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into a legislator: "Nitor in adversum" is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend men to the favor and protection of the great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by imposing on the understandings of the people. At every step of my progress in life—for in every step was I traversed and opposed—and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to shew my passport, and again and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not wholly unacquainted with its laws, and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home. Otherwise, no rank, no toleration even, for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and, please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand....

The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to call the attention of the House of Peers to his Majesty's grant to me, which he considers as excessive and out of all bounds.

I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, whilst his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as dreams—even his golden dreams—are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach tome, but took the subject-matter from the crown grants tohis own family. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way of putting things together, his Grace is perfectly in the right. The grants to the house of Russell were so enormous, as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers me all over with the spray—everything of him and about him is from the throne. Is it forhimto question the dispensation of the royal favor?

I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds, and these services of mine, on the favorable construction of which I have obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In private life I have not at all the honor of acquaintance with the noble Duke; but I ought to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly deserves the esteem and love of all who live with him. But as to public service, why, truly, it would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself, in rank, in fortune, in splendid descent,in youth, strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his own to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast landed pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and personal: his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit, which makes his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the merit of all other grantees of the crown. Had he permitted me to remain in quiet, I should have said: "'Tis his estate; that's enough. It is his by law; what have I to do with it or its history?" He would naturally have said on his side: "'Tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old pensions: he is an old man with very young pensions—that's all."

Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare my little merit with that which obtained from the crown those prodigies of profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals?... Since the new grantees have war made on them by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic origin of their house.

The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, raised by being a minion of Henry the Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance ofcharacter to create these relations, the favorite was in all likelihood much such another as his master. The first of those immoderate grants was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown, but from the recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion, having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favorites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favorite's first grant was from the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of the first, was from the plunder of the church. In truth, his Grace is somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its quantity, but in its kind, so different from his own.

Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign: his, from Henry the Eighth. Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of illustrious rank, or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men: his grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door.

The merit of the grantee whom he derives from, was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling tyrant, who oppressed all descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on everything that was great and noble. Mine has been in endeavoring to screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in defending the high and eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscating princes, confiscating chief-governors, or confiscating demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy.

The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in giving his hand to the work, and partaking the spoil with a prince who plundered a part of the national church of his time and country. Mine was in defending the whole of the national church of my own time and my own country, and the whole of the national churches of all countries, from the principles and the examples which lead to ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt ofallprescriptive titles, thence to the pillage ofallproperty, and thence to universal desolation.

The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favorite and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to his native country. My endeavor was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine was to support, with unrelaxing vigilance, every right, every privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive country; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language, and religion, in the vast domain that still is under the protection, and the larger that was once under the protection, of the British crown.

His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom.

His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised by the arts of a court and the protection of a Wolsey to the eminence of a great and potent lord. His merit in that eminence was, by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a people to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken the sober part of the country, that theymight put themselves on their guard against any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent lords, or any combination of great leading men of any sort, if ever they should attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the reverse order,—that is, by instigating a corrupted populace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion, introducing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which he profited in the manner we behold in the despotism of Henry the Eighth.

The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's house was that of being concerned as a counsellor of state in advising, and in his person executing, the conditions of a dishonorable peace with France,—the surrendering of the fortress of Boulogne, then our outguard on the Continent. By that surrender, Calais, the key of France, and the bridle in the mouth of that power, was not many years afterwards finally lost. My merit has been in resisting the power and pride of France, under any form of its rule; but in opposing it with the greatest zeal and earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could assume,—the worst, indeed, which the prime cause and principle of all evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavor by every means to excite a spirit in the House, where I had the honor of a seat, for carrying on with early vigor and decision the most clearly just and necessary war that this or any nation ever carried on, in order to save my country from the iron yoke of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its principles,—to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good-nature, and good-humor of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence which,beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole moral and in a great degree the whole physical world, having done both in the focus of its most intense malignity.

The labors of his Grace's founder merited the "curses, not loud, but deep," of the Commons of England, on whomheand his master had effected acomplete Parliamentary Reform, by making them, in their slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives of a debased, degraded, and undone people. My merits were in having had an active, though not always an ostentatious share, in every one act, without exception, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and in having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency, and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain. I ended my services by a recorded and fully reasoned assertion on their own journals of their constitutional rights, and a vindication of their constitutional conduct. I labored in all things to merit their inward approbation, and (along with the assistants of the largest, the greatest, and best of my endeavors) I received their free, unbiased, public, and solemn thanks.

Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the crown grants which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune, as balanced against mine.

FOOTNOTES:[F]From"A Letter to a Noble Lord,on the attacks made upon Mr. Burke and his Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, early in the Present Session of Parliament." 1796.

[F]From"A Letter to a Noble Lord,on the attacks made upon Mr. Burke and his Pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, early in the Present Session of Parliament." 1796.

England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,My country! and, while yet a nook is leftWhere English minds and manners may be found,Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy climeBe fickle, and thy year, most part, deform'dWith dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,I would not yet exchange thy sullen skiesAnd fields without a flower, for warmer FranceWith all her vines.Cowper.—The Timepiece.

England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,My country! and, while yet a nook is leftWhere English minds and manners may be found,Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy climeBe fickle, and thy year, most part, deform'dWith dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,I would not yet exchange thy sullen skiesAnd fields without a flower, for warmer FranceWith all her vines.

Cowper.—The Timepiece.

Nov. 17th, 1783....Sinceour conflagration here, we have sent two women and a boy to the justice, for depredation; S. R. for stealing a piece of beef, which, in her excuse, she said she intended to take care of. This lady, whom you well remember, escaped for want of evidence; not that evidence was wanting, but our men of Gotham judged it unnecessary to send it. With her went the woman I mentioned before, who, it seems, has made some sort of profession, but upon this occasion allowed herself a latitude of conduct rather inconsistent with it, having filled her apron with wearing-apparel, which she likewise intended to take care of. She would have gone to the county gaol, had William Raban, the baker's son, who prosecuted, insisted upon it; but he, good-naturedly, though I think weakly, interposed in her favor, and begged her off. The young gentleman who accompanied these fair ones is the junior son of Molly Boswell. He had stolen some iron-work, the property of Griggs the butcher. Being convicted, he was ordered to be whipped, which operation he underwent at the cart's tail, from the stone-house to the high arch, and back again. He seemed to show great fortitude, but it was all an imposition upon the public. The beadle, who performed it, had filled his left hand with yellow ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash of his whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the skin, but in reality not hurting him at all.This being perceived by Mr. Constable H., who followed the beadle, he applied his cane, without any such management or precaution, to the shoulders of the too merciful executioner. The scene immediately became more interesting. The beadle could by no means be prevailed upon to strike hard, which provoked the constable to strike harder; and this double flogging continued, till a lass of Silver-End, pitying the pitiful beadle thus suffering under the hands of the pitiless constable, joined the procession, and placing herself immediately behind the latter, seized him by his capillary club, and pulling him backwards by the same, slapped his face with a most Amazon fury. This concatenation of events has taken up more of my paper than I intended it should, but I could not forbear to inform you how the beadle thrashed the thief, the constable the beadle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief was the only person concerned who suffered nothing.March 29th, 1784.It being his Majesty's pleasure, that I should yet have another opportunity to write before he dissolves the Parliament, I avail myself of it with all possible alacrity. I thank you for your last, which was not the less welcome for coming, like an extraordinary gazette, at a time when it was not expected.As when the sea is uncommonly agitated, the water finds its way into creeks and holes of rocks, which in its calmer state it never reaches, in like manner the effect of these turbulent times is felt even at Orchard Side, where in general we live as undisturbed by the political element as shrimps or cockles that have been accidentally deposited in some hollow beyond the water-mark, by theusual dashing of the waves. We were sitting yesterday after dinner, the two ladies and myself, very composedly, and without the least apprehension of any such intrusion in our snug parlor, one lady knitting, the other netting, and the gentleman winding worsted, when to our unspeakable surprise a mob appeared before the window; a smart rap was heard at the door, the boys bellowed, and the maid announced Mr. Grenville. Puss was unfortunately let out of her box, so that the candidate, with all his good friends at his heels, was refused admittance at the grand entry, and referred to the back door, as the only possible way of approach.Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, and would rather, I suppose, climb in at the window, than be absolutely excluded. In a minute, the yard, the kitchen, and the parlor were filled. Mr. Grenville, advancing toward me, shook me by the hand with a degree of cordiality that was extremely seducing. As soon as he, and as many more as could find chairs, were seated, he began to open the intent of his visit. I told him I had no vote, for which he readily gave me credit. I assured him I had no influence, which he was not equally inclined to believe, and the less, no doubt, because Mr. Ashburner, the draper, addressing himself to me at this moment, informed me that I had a great deal. Supposing that I could not be possessed of such a treasure without knowing it, I ventured to affirm my first assertion, by saying, that if I had any I was utterly at a loss to imagine where it could be, or wherein it consisted. Thus ended the conference. Mr. Grenville squeezed me by the hand again, kissed the ladies, and withdrew. He kissed likewise the maid in the kitchen, and seemed upon the whole a most loving, kissing, kind-heartedgentleman. He is very young, genteel, and handsome. He has a pair of very good eyes in his head, which not being sufficient, as it should seem, for the many nice and difficult purposes of a senator, he has a third also, which he suspended from his buttonhole. The boys halloo'd, the dogs barked, puss scampered, the hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, withdrew. We made ourselves very merry with the adventure, and in a short time settled into our former tranquillity, never probably to be thus interrupted more. I thought myself, however, happy in being able to affirm truly that I had not that influence for which he sued; and which, had I been possessed of it, with my present views of the dispute between the Crown and the Commons, I must have refused him, for he is on the side of the former. It is comfortable to be of no consequence in a world where one cannot exercise any without disobliging somebody. The town, however, seems to be much at his service, and if he be equally successful throughout the country, he will undoubtedly gain his election. Mr. Ashburner, perhaps, was a little mortified, because it was evident I owed the honor of this visit to his misrepresentation of my importance. But had he thought proper to assure Mr. Grenville that I had three heads, I should not, I suppose, have been bound to produce them....

Nov. 17th, 1783.

...Sinceour conflagration here, we have sent two women and a boy to the justice, for depredation; S. R. for stealing a piece of beef, which, in her excuse, she said she intended to take care of. This lady, whom you well remember, escaped for want of evidence; not that evidence was wanting, but our men of Gotham judged it unnecessary to send it. With her went the woman I mentioned before, who, it seems, has made some sort of profession, but upon this occasion allowed herself a latitude of conduct rather inconsistent with it, having filled her apron with wearing-apparel, which she likewise intended to take care of. She would have gone to the county gaol, had William Raban, the baker's son, who prosecuted, insisted upon it; but he, good-naturedly, though I think weakly, interposed in her favor, and begged her off. The young gentleman who accompanied these fair ones is the junior son of Molly Boswell. He had stolen some iron-work, the property of Griggs the butcher. Being convicted, he was ordered to be whipped, which operation he underwent at the cart's tail, from the stone-house to the high arch, and back again. He seemed to show great fortitude, but it was all an imposition upon the public. The beadle, who performed it, had filled his left hand with yellow ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash of his whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the skin, but in reality not hurting him at all.This being perceived by Mr. Constable H., who followed the beadle, he applied his cane, without any such management or precaution, to the shoulders of the too merciful executioner. The scene immediately became more interesting. The beadle could by no means be prevailed upon to strike hard, which provoked the constable to strike harder; and this double flogging continued, till a lass of Silver-End, pitying the pitiful beadle thus suffering under the hands of the pitiless constable, joined the procession, and placing herself immediately behind the latter, seized him by his capillary club, and pulling him backwards by the same, slapped his face with a most Amazon fury. This concatenation of events has taken up more of my paper than I intended it should, but I could not forbear to inform you how the beadle thrashed the thief, the constable the beadle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief was the only person concerned who suffered nothing.

March 29th, 1784.

It being his Majesty's pleasure, that I should yet have another opportunity to write before he dissolves the Parliament, I avail myself of it with all possible alacrity. I thank you for your last, which was not the less welcome for coming, like an extraordinary gazette, at a time when it was not expected.

As when the sea is uncommonly agitated, the water finds its way into creeks and holes of rocks, which in its calmer state it never reaches, in like manner the effect of these turbulent times is felt even at Orchard Side, where in general we live as undisturbed by the political element as shrimps or cockles that have been accidentally deposited in some hollow beyond the water-mark, by theusual dashing of the waves. We were sitting yesterday after dinner, the two ladies and myself, very composedly, and without the least apprehension of any such intrusion in our snug parlor, one lady knitting, the other netting, and the gentleman winding worsted, when to our unspeakable surprise a mob appeared before the window; a smart rap was heard at the door, the boys bellowed, and the maid announced Mr. Grenville. Puss was unfortunately let out of her box, so that the candidate, with all his good friends at his heels, was refused admittance at the grand entry, and referred to the back door, as the only possible way of approach.

Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, and would rather, I suppose, climb in at the window, than be absolutely excluded. In a minute, the yard, the kitchen, and the parlor were filled. Mr. Grenville, advancing toward me, shook me by the hand with a degree of cordiality that was extremely seducing. As soon as he, and as many more as could find chairs, were seated, he began to open the intent of his visit. I told him I had no vote, for which he readily gave me credit. I assured him I had no influence, which he was not equally inclined to believe, and the less, no doubt, because Mr. Ashburner, the draper, addressing himself to me at this moment, informed me that I had a great deal. Supposing that I could not be possessed of such a treasure without knowing it, I ventured to affirm my first assertion, by saying, that if I had any I was utterly at a loss to imagine where it could be, or wherein it consisted. Thus ended the conference. Mr. Grenville squeezed me by the hand again, kissed the ladies, and withdrew. He kissed likewise the maid in the kitchen, and seemed upon the whole a most loving, kissing, kind-heartedgentleman. He is very young, genteel, and handsome. He has a pair of very good eyes in his head, which not being sufficient, as it should seem, for the many nice and difficult purposes of a senator, he has a third also, which he suspended from his buttonhole. The boys halloo'd, the dogs barked, puss scampered, the hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, withdrew. We made ourselves very merry with the adventure, and in a short time settled into our former tranquillity, never probably to be thus interrupted more. I thought myself, however, happy in being able to affirm truly that I had not that influence for which he sued; and which, had I been possessed of it, with my present views of the dispute between the Crown and the Commons, I must have refused him, for he is on the side of the former. It is comfortable to be of no consequence in a world where one cannot exercise any without disobliging somebody. The town, however, seems to be much at his service, and if he be equally successful throughout the country, he will undoubtedly gain his election. Mr. Ashburner, perhaps, was a little mortified, because it was evident I owed the honor of this visit to his misrepresentation of my importance. But had he thought proper to assure Mr. Grenville that I had three heads, I should not, I suppose, have been bound to produce them....

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,And while the bubbling and loud hissing urnThrows up a steamy column, and the cupsThat cheer but not inebriate wait on each,So let us welcome peaceful evening in.Cowper.—The Winter Evening.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,And while the bubbling and loud hissing urnThrows up a steamy column, and the cupsThat cheer but not inebriate wait on each,So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

Cowper.—The Winter Evening.

Scene.—A Room inSir Peter Teazle'sHouse.EnterSir Peter Teazle.Sir Pet.When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect? 'Tis now six months since Lady Teazle made me the happiest of men—and I have been the most miserable dog ever since. We tiffed a little going to church, and fairly quarrelled before the bells had done ringing. I was more than once nearly choked with gall during the honeymoon, and had lost all comfort in life before my friends had done wishing me joy. Yet I chose with caution—a girl bred wholly in the country, who never knew luxury beyond one silk gown, nor dissipation above the annual gala of a race ball. Yet she now plays her part in all the extravagant fopperies of fashion and the town with as ready a grace as if she never had seen a bush or a grass-plot out of Grosvenor Square! I am sneered at by all my acquaintance, and paragraphed in the newspapers. She dissipates my fortune, and contradicts all my humors; yet the worst of it is, I doubt I love her, or I should never bear all this. However, I'll never be weak enough to own it. But I meet with nothing but crosses and vexations—and the fault is entirely hers. I am, myself, the sweetest-tempered man alive, and hate a teasing temper; and so I tell her a hundred times a day.—Ay! and what is veryextraordinary, in all our disputes she is always in the wrong. But Lady Sneerwell, and the set she meets at her house, encourage the perverseness of her disposition. Then, to complete my vexation, Maria, my ward, whom I ought to have the power of a father over, is determined to turn rebel too, and absolutely refuses the man whom I have long resolved on for her husband—EnterLady Teazle.Lady Teazle, Lady Teazle, I'll not bear it!Lady Teaz.Sir Peter, Sir Peter, you may bear it or not, as you please; but I ought to have my own way in everything, and, what's more, I will too. What! though I was educated in the country, I know very well that women of fashion in London are accountable to nobody after they are married.Sir Pet.Very well, ma'am, very well; so a husband is to have no influence, no authority?Lady Teaz.Authority! No, to be sure. If you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me, and not married me: I am sure you were old enough.Sir Pet.Old enough!—ay, there it is. Well, well, Lady Teazle, though my life may be made unhappy by your temper, I'll not be ruined by your extravagance!Lady Teaz.My extravagance! I'm sure I'm not more extravagant than a woman of fashion ought to be.Sir Pet.No, no, madam, you shall throw away no more sums on such unmeaning luxury. Such wastefulness! to spend as much to furnish your dressing-room with flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon into a greenhouse, and give afête champêtreat Christmas.Lady Teaz.And am I to blame, Sir Peter, becauseflowers are dear in cold weather? You should find fault with the climate, and not with me. For my part, I'm sure I wish it was spring all the year round, and that roses grew under our feet.Sir Pet.Oons! madam—if you had been born to this, I shouldn't wonder at your talking thus; but you forget what your situation was when I married you.Lady Teaz.No, no, I don't; 'twas a very disagreeable one, or I should never have married you.Sir Pet.Yes, yes, madam, you were then in somewhat a humbler style—the daughter of a plain country squire. Recollect, Lady Teazle, when I saw you first sitting at your tambour, in a pretty figured linen gown, with a bunch of keys at your side, your hair combed smooth over a roll, and your apartment hung round with fruits in worsted, of your own working.Lady Teaz.Oh, yes! I remember it very well, and a curious life I led. My daily occupation—to inspect the dairy, superintend the poultry, make extracts from the family receipt-book, and comb my aunt Deborah's lap-dog.Sir Pet.Yes, yes, ma'am, 'twas so indeed.Lady Teaz.And then you know my evening amusements! To draw patterns for ruffles, which I had not materials to make up; to play Pope Joan with the curate; to read a sermon to my aunt; or to be stuck down to an old spinet to strum my father to sleep after a fox-chase.Sir Pet.I am glad you have so good a memory. Yes, madam, these were the recreations I took you from; but now you must have your coach—vis-à-vis—and three powdered footmen before your chair; and, in the summer, a pair of white cats to draw you to Kensington Gardens.No recollection, I suppose, when you were content to ride double, behind the butler, on a docked coach-horse.Lady Teaz.No—I vow I never did that: I deny the butler and the coach-horse.Sir Pet.This, madam, was your situation; and what have I done for you? I have made you a woman of fashion, of fortune, of rank—in short, I have made you my wife.Lady Teaz.Well, then, and there is but one thing more you can make me to add to the obligation, that is——Sir Pet.My widow, I suppose?Lady Teaz.Hem! hem!Sir Pet.I thank you, madam—but don't flatter yourself; for, though your ill conduct may disturb my peace of mind, it shall never break my heart, I promise you: however, I am equally obliged to you for the hint.Lady Teaz.Then why will you endeavor to make yourself so disagreeable to me, and thwart me in every little elegant expense?Sir Pet.Madam, I say, had you any of these little elegant expenses when you married me?Lady Teaz.Sir Peter! would you have me be out of the fashion?Sir Pet.The fashion, indeed! what had you to do with the fashion before you married me?Lady Teaz.For my part, I should think you would like to have your wife thought a woman of taste.Sir Pet.Ay—there again—taste! Zounds! madam, you had no taste when you married me!Lady Teaz.That's very true, indeed, Sir Peter! and after having married you, I should never pretend to taste again, I allow. But now, Sir Peter, since we havefinished our daily jangle, I presume I may go to my engagement at Lady Sneerwell's.Sir Pet.Ay, there's another precious circumstance—a charming set of acquaintances you have made there!Lady Teaz.Nay, Sir Peter, they are all people of rank and fortune, and remarkably tenacious of reputation.Sir Pet.Yes, they are tenacious of reputation with a vengeance; for they don't choose anybody should have a character but themselves! Such a crew! Ah! many a wretch has rid on a hurdle who has done less mischief than these utterers of forged tales; coiners of scandal, and clippers of reputation.Lady Teaz.What, would you restrain the freedom of speech?Sir Pet.Ah! they have made you just as bad as any one of the society.Lady Teaz.Why, I believe I do bear a part with a tolerable grace.Sir Pet.Grace, indeed!Lady Teaz.But I vow I bear no malice against the people I abuse; when I say an ill-natured thing, 'tis out of pure good humor; and I take it for granted they deal exactly in the same manner with me. But, Sir Peter, you know you promised to come to Lady Sneerwell's too.Sir Pet.Well, well, I'll call in, just to look after my own character.Lady Teaz.Then, indeed, you must make haste after me, or you'll be too late. So good-bye to ye.[Exit.Sir Pet.So—I have gained much by my intended expostulation! Yet with what a charming air she contradicts everything I say; and how pleasantly she shows her contempt for my authority! Well, though I can't make her love me; there is great satisfaction in quarrelling with her; and I think she never appears to such advantage as when she is doing everything in her power to plague me.[Exit.Scene.—A room inLady Sneerwell'sHouse.Lady Sneerwell, Mrs. Candour, Crabtree, Sir Benjamin Backbite,andJoseph Surface,discovered.EnterLady TeazleandMaria.Lady Sneer.Lady Teazle, I hope we shall see Sir Peter?Lady Teaz.I believe he'll wait on your ladyship presently.Lady Sneer.Maria, my love, you look grave. Come, you shall sit down to piquet with Mr. Surface.Mar.I take very little pleasure in cards—however, I'll do as your ladyship pleases.Mrs. Can.Now I'll die; but you are so scandalous, I'll forswear your society.Lady Teaz.What's the matter, Mrs. Candour?Mrs. Can.They'll not allow our friend Miss Vermillion to be handsome.Lady Sneer.Oh, surely she is a pretty woman.Crab.I am very glad you think so, ma'am.Mrs. Can.She has a charming fresh color.Lady Teaz.Yes, when it is fresh put on.Mrs. Can.Oh, fie! Her color is natural: I have seen it come and go!Lady Teaz.I dare say you have, ma'am: it goes off at night, and comes again in the morning.Sir Ben.True, ma'am, it not only comes and goes; but, what's more, her maid can fetch and carry it!Mrs. Can.Ha! ha! ha! how I hate to hear you talk so! But surely now, her sister is, or was, very handsome.Crab.Who? Mrs. Evergreen? Oh! she's six-and-fifty if she's an hour!Mrs. Can.Now positively you wrong her; fifty-two or fifty-three is the utmost—and I don't think she looks more.Sir Ben.Ah! there's no judging by her looks, unless one could see her face.Lady Sneer.Well, well, if Mrs. Evergreen does take some pains to repair the ravages of time, you must allow she effects it with great ingenuity; and surely that's better than the careless manner in which the widow Ochre caulks her wrinkles.Sir Ben.Nay, now, Lady Sneerwell, you are severe upon the widow. Come, come, 'tis not that she paints so ill—but, when she has finished her face, she joins it on so badly to her neck, that she looks like a mended statue, in which the connoisseur may see at once that the head is modern, though the trunk's antique.Crab.Ha! ha! ha! Well said, nephew!Mrs. Can.Ha! ha! ha! Well, you make me laugh; but I vow I hate you for it. What do you think of Miss Simper?Sir Ben.Why, she has very pretty teeth.Lady Teaz.Yes, and on that account, when she is neither speaking nor laughing (which very seldom happens), she never absolutely shuts her mouth, but leaves it always on a-jar, as it were—thus.[Shows her teeth.Mrs. Can.How can you be so ill-natured?Lady Teaz.Nay, I allow even that's better than the pains Mrs. Prim takes to conceal her losses in front.She draws her mouth till it positively resembles the aperture of a poor's-box, and all her words appear to slide out edgewise as it were—thus:How do you do, madam? Yes, madam.[Mimics.Lady Sneer.Very well, Lady Teazle; I see you can be a little severe.Lady Teaz.In defence of a friend it is but justice. But here comes Sir Peter to spoil our pleasantry.EnterSir Peter Teazle.Sir Pet.Ladies, your most obedient.—[Aside,] Mercy on me, here is the whole set! a character dead at every word, I suppose.Mrs. Can.I am rejoiced you are come, Sir Peter. They have been so censorious—and Lady Teazle as bad as any one.Sir Pet.That must be very distressing to you, indeed, Mrs. Candour.Mrs. Can.Oh, they will allow good qualities to nobody: not even good nature to our friend Mrs. Pursy.Lady Teaz.What, the fat dowager who was at Mrs. Quadrille's last night?Mrs. Can.Nay, her bulk is her misfortune; and, when she takes so much pains to get rid of it, you ought not to reflect on her.Lady Sneer.That's very true, indeed.Lady Teaz.Yes, I know she almost lives on acids and small whey; laces herself by pulleys; and often, in the hottest noon in summer, you may see her on a little squat pony, with her hair plaited up behind like a drummer's, and puffing round the ring on a full trot.Mrs. Can.I thank you, Lady Teazle, for defending her.Sir Pet.Yes, a good defence, truly.Mrs. Can.Truly, Lady Teazle is as censorious as Miss Sallow.Crab.Yes, and she is a curious being to pretend to be censorious—an awkward thing, without any one good point under the sun.Mrs. Can.Positively you shall not be so very severe. Miss Sallow is a near relation of mine by marriage, and, as for her person, great allowance is to be made; for, let me tell you, a woman labors under many disadvantages who tries to pass for a girl of six-and-thirty.Lady Sneer.Though, surely, she is handsome still—and for the weakness in her eyes, considering how much she reads by candlelight, it is not to be wondered at.Mrs. Can.True, and then as to her manner; upon my word I think it is particularly graceful, considering she never had the least education; for you know her mother was a Welsh milliner, and her father a sugar-baker at Bristol.Sir Ben.Ah! you are both of you too good-natured!Sir Pet.Yes, distressingly good-natured! This their own relation! Mercy on me![Aside.Mrs. Can.For my part, I own I cannot bear to hear a friend ill-spoken of.Sir Pet.No, to be sure!Sir Ben.Oh! you are of a moral turn. Mrs. Candour and I can sit for an hour and hear Lady Stucco talk sentiment.Lady Teas.Nay, I vow Lady Stucco is very well with the dessert after dinner; for she's just like the French fruit one cracks for mottoes—made up of paint and proverb.Mrs. Can.Well, I will never join in ridiculing a friend; and so I constantly tell my cousin Ogle, and you all know what pretensions she has to be critical on beauty.Crab.Oh, to be sure! she has herself the oddest countenance that ever was seen; 'tis a collection of features from all the different countries of the globe.Sir Ben.So she has, indeed—an Irish front——Crab.Caledonian locks——Sir Ben.Dutch nose——Crab.Austrian lips——Sir Ben.Complexion of a Spaniard——Crab.And teethàla Chinoise.Sir Ben.In short, her face resembles atable d'hôteat Spa—where no two guests are of a nation——Crab.Or a congress at the close of a general war—wherein all the members, even to her eyes, appear to have a different interest, and her nose and chin are the only parties likely to join issue.Mrs. Can.Ha! ha! ha!Sir Pet.Mercy on my life!—a person they dine with twice a week![Aside.Mrs. Can.Nay, but I vow you shall not carry the laugh off so—for give me leave to say that Mrs. Ogle——Sir Pet.Madam, madam, I beg your pardon—there's no stopping these good gentlemen's tongues. But when I tell you, Mrs. Candour, that the lady they are abusing is a particular friend of mine, I hope you'll not take her part.Lady Sneer.Ha! ha! ha! well said, Sir Peter! but you are a cruel creature—too phlegmatic yourself for a jest, and too peevish to allow wit in others.Sir Pet.Ah, madam, true wit is more nearly allied to good nature than your ladyship is aware of.Lady Teas.True, Sir Peter; I believe they are so near akin that they can never be united.Sir Ben.Or rather, suppose them man and wife, because one seldom sees them together.Lady Teaz.But Sir Peter is such an enemy to scandal, I believe he would have it put down by parliament.Sir Pet.Positively, madam, if they were to consider the sporting with reputation of as much importance as poaching on manors, and pass an act for the preservation of fame, as well as game, I believe many would thank them for the bill.Lady Sneer.Why! Sir Peter; would you deprive us of our privileges?Sir Pet.Ay, madam; and then no person should be permitted to kill characters and run down reputations but qualified old maids and disappointed widows.Lady Sneer.Go, you monster!Mrs. Can.But, surely, you would not be quite so severe on those who only report what they hear?Sir Pet.Yes, madam, I would have law merchant for them too; and in all cases of slander currency, whenever the drawer of the lie was not to be found, the injured parties should have a right to come on any of the indorsers.Crab.Well, for my part, I believe there never was a scandalous tale without some foundation.Lady Sneer.Come, ladies, shall we sit down to cards in the next room?EnterServant,who whispersSir Peter.Sir Pet.I'll be with them directly.—[ExitServant.] I'll get away unperceived.[Aside.Lady Sneer.Sir Peter, you are not going to leave us?Sir Pet.Your ladyship must excuse me; I'm called away by particular business. But I leave my character behind me.[Exit.Sir Ben.Well—certainly, Lady Teazle, that lord of yours is a strange being: I could tell you some stories of him would make you laugh heartily if he were not your husband.Lady Teaz.Oh, pray, don't mind that; come, do let's hear them.[Exeunt all butJoseph SurfaceandMaria.Jos. Surf.Maria, I see you have no satisfaction in this society.Mar.How is it possible I should? If to raise malicious smiles at the infirmities or misfortunes of those who have never injured us be the province of wit or humor, Heaven grant me a double portion of dulness!Jos. Surf.Yet they appear more ill-natured than they are; they have no malice at heart.Mar.Then is their conduct still more contemptible; for, in my opinion, nothing could excuse the intemperance of their tongues but a natural and uncontrollable bitterness of mind.

Scene.—A Room inSir Peter Teazle'sHouse.

EnterSir Peter Teazle.

Sir Pet.When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect? 'Tis now six months since Lady Teazle made me the happiest of men—and I have been the most miserable dog ever since. We tiffed a little going to church, and fairly quarrelled before the bells had done ringing. I was more than once nearly choked with gall during the honeymoon, and had lost all comfort in life before my friends had done wishing me joy. Yet I chose with caution—a girl bred wholly in the country, who never knew luxury beyond one silk gown, nor dissipation above the annual gala of a race ball. Yet she now plays her part in all the extravagant fopperies of fashion and the town with as ready a grace as if she never had seen a bush or a grass-plot out of Grosvenor Square! I am sneered at by all my acquaintance, and paragraphed in the newspapers. She dissipates my fortune, and contradicts all my humors; yet the worst of it is, I doubt I love her, or I should never bear all this. However, I'll never be weak enough to own it. But I meet with nothing but crosses and vexations—and the fault is entirely hers. I am, myself, the sweetest-tempered man alive, and hate a teasing temper; and so I tell her a hundred times a day.—Ay! and what is veryextraordinary, in all our disputes she is always in the wrong. But Lady Sneerwell, and the set she meets at her house, encourage the perverseness of her disposition. Then, to complete my vexation, Maria, my ward, whom I ought to have the power of a father over, is determined to turn rebel too, and absolutely refuses the man whom I have long resolved on for her husband—

EnterLady Teazle.

Lady Teazle, Lady Teazle, I'll not bear it!

Lady Teaz.Sir Peter, Sir Peter, you may bear it or not, as you please; but I ought to have my own way in everything, and, what's more, I will too. What! though I was educated in the country, I know very well that women of fashion in London are accountable to nobody after they are married.

Sir Pet.Very well, ma'am, very well; so a husband is to have no influence, no authority?

Lady Teaz.Authority! No, to be sure. If you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me, and not married me: I am sure you were old enough.

Sir Pet.Old enough!—ay, there it is. Well, well, Lady Teazle, though my life may be made unhappy by your temper, I'll not be ruined by your extravagance!

Lady Teaz.My extravagance! I'm sure I'm not more extravagant than a woman of fashion ought to be.

Sir Pet.No, no, madam, you shall throw away no more sums on such unmeaning luxury. Such wastefulness! to spend as much to furnish your dressing-room with flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon into a greenhouse, and give afête champêtreat Christmas.

Lady Teaz.And am I to blame, Sir Peter, becauseflowers are dear in cold weather? You should find fault with the climate, and not with me. For my part, I'm sure I wish it was spring all the year round, and that roses grew under our feet.

Sir Pet.Oons! madam—if you had been born to this, I shouldn't wonder at your talking thus; but you forget what your situation was when I married you.

Lady Teaz.No, no, I don't; 'twas a very disagreeable one, or I should never have married you.

Sir Pet.Yes, yes, madam, you were then in somewhat a humbler style—the daughter of a plain country squire. Recollect, Lady Teazle, when I saw you first sitting at your tambour, in a pretty figured linen gown, with a bunch of keys at your side, your hair combed smooth over a roll, and your apartment hung round with fruits in worsted, of your own working.

Lady Teaz.Oh, yes! I remember it very well, and a curious life I led. My daily occupation—to inspect the dairy, superintend the poultry, make extracts from the family receipt-book, and comb my aunt Deborah's lap-dog.

Sir Pet.Yes, yes, ma'am, 'twas so indeed.

Lady Teaz.And then you know my evening amusements! To draw patterns for ruffles, which I had not materials to make up; to play Pope Joan with the curate; to read a sermon to my aunt; or to be stuck down to an old spinet to strum my father to sleep after a fox-chase.

Sir Pet.I am glad you have so good a memory. Yes, madam, these were the recreations I took you from; but now you must have your coach—vis-à-vis—and three powdered footmen before your chair; and, in the summer, a pair of white cats to draw you to Kensington Gardens.No recollection, I suppose, when you were content to ride double, behind the butler, on a docked coach-horse.

Lady Teaz.No—I vow I never did that: I deny the butler and the coach-horse.

Sir Pet.This, madam, was your situation; and what have I done for you? I have made you a woman of fashion, of fortune, of rank—in short, I have made you my wife.

Lady Teaz.Well, then, and there is but one thing more you can make me to add to the obligation, that is——

Sir Pet.My widow, I suppose?

Lady Teaz.Hem! hem!

Sir Pet.I thank you, madam—but don't flatter yourself; for, though your ill conduct may disturb my peace of mind, it shall never break my heart, I promise you: however, I am equally obliged to you for the hint.

Lady Teaz.Then why will you endeavor to make yourself so disagreeable to me, and thwart me in every little elegant expense?

Sir Pet.Madam, I say, had you any of these little elegant expenses when you married me?

Lady Teaz.Sir Peter! would you have me be out of the fashion?

Sir Pet.The fashion, indeed! what had you to do with the fashion before you married me?

Lady Teaz.For my part, I should think you would like to have your wife thought a woman of taste.

Sir Pet.Ay—there again—taste! Zounds! madam, you had no taste when you married me!

Lady Teaz.That's very true, indeed, Sir Peter! and after having married you, I should never pretend to taste again, I allow. But now, Sir Peter, since we havefinished our daily jangle, I presume I may go to my engagement at Lady Sneerwell's.

Sir Pet.Ay, there's another precious circumstance—a charming set of acquaintances you have made there!

Lady Teaz.Nay, Sir Peter, they are all people of rank and fortune, and remarkably tenacious of reputation.

Sir Pet.Yes, they are tenacious of reputation with a vengeance; for they don't choose anybody should have a character but themselves! Such a crew! Ah! many a wretch has rid on a hurdle who has done less mischief than these utterers of forged tales; coiners of scandal, and clippers of reputation.

Lady Teaz.What, would you restrain the freedom of speech?

Sir Pet.Ah! they have made you just as bad as any one of the society.

Lady Teaz.Why, I believe I do bear a part with a tolerable grace.

Sir Pet.Grace, indeed!

Lady Teaz.But I vow I bear no malice against the people I abuse; when I say an ill-natured thing, 'tis out of pure good humor; and I take it for granted they deal exactly in the same manner with me. But, Sir Peter, you know you promised to come to Lady Sneerwell's too.

Sir Pet.Well, well, I'll call in, just to look after my own character.

Lady Teaz.Then, indeed, you must make haste after me, or you'll be too late. So good-bye to ye.[Exit.

Sir Pet.So—I have gained much by my intended expostulation! Yet with what a charming air she contradicts everything I say; and how pleasantly she shows her contempt for my authority! Well, though I can't make her love me; there is great satisfaction in quarrelling with her; and I think she never appears to such advantage as when she is doing everything in her power to plague me.[Exit.

Scene.—A room inLady Sneerwell'sHouse.

Lady Sneerwell, Mrs. Candour, Crabtree, Sir Benjamin Backbite,andJoseph Surface,discovered.

EnterLady TeazleandMaria.

Lady Sneer.Lady Teazle, I hope we shall see Sir Peter?

Lady Teaz.I believe he'll wait on your ladyship presently.

Lady Sneer.Maria, my love, you look grave. Come, you shall sit down to piquet with Mr. Surface.

Mar.I take very little pleasure in cards—however, I'll do as your ladyship pleases.

Mrs. Can.Now I'll die; but you are so scandalous, I'll forswear your society.

Lady Teaz.What's the matter, Mrs. Candour?

Mrs. Can.They'll not allow our friend Miss Vermillion to be handsome.

Lady Sneer.Oh, surely she is a pretty woman.

Crab.I am very glad you think so, ma'am.

Mrs. Can.She has a charming fresh color.

Lady Teaz.Yes, when it is fresh put on.

Mrs. Can.Oh, fie! Her color is natural: I have seen it come and go!

Lady Teaz.I dare say you have, ma'am: it goes off at night, and comes again in the morning.

Sir Ben.True, ma'am, it not only comes and goes; but, what's more, her maid can fetch and carry it!

Mrs. Can.Ha! ha! ha! how I hate to hear you talk so! But surely now, her sister is, or was, very handsome.

Crab.Who? Mrs. Evergreen? Oh! she's six-and-fifty if she's an hour!

Mrs. Can.Now positively you wrong her; fifty-two or fifty-three is the utmost—and I don't think she looks more.

Sir Ben.Ah! there's no judging by her looks, unless one could see her face.

Lady Sneer.Well, well, if Mrs. Evergreen does take some pains to repair the ravages of time, you must allow she effects it with great ingenuity; and surely that's better than the careless manner in which the widow Ochre caulks her wrinkles.

Sir Ben.Nay, now, Lady Sneerwell, you are severe upon the widow. Come, come, 'tis not that she paints so ill—but, when she has finished her face, she joins it on so badly to her neck, that she looks like a mended statue, in which the connoisseur may see at once that the head is modern, though the trunk's antique.

Crab.Ha! ha! ha! Well said, nephew!

Mrs. Can.Ha! ha! ha! Well, you make me laugh; but I vow I hate you for it. What do you think of Miss Simper?

Sir Ben.Why, she has very pretty teeth.

Lady Teaz.Yes, and on that account, when she is neither speaking nor laughing (which very seldom happens), she never absolutely shuts her mouth, but leaves it always on a-jar, as it were—thus.[Shows her teeth.

Mrs. Can.How can you be so ill-natured?

Lady Teaz.Nay, I allow even that's better than the pains Mrs. Prim takes to conceal her losses in front.She draws her mouth till it positively resembles the aperture of a poor's-box, and all her words appear to slide out edgewise as it were—thus:How do you do, madam? Yes, madam.[Mimics.

Lady Sneer.Very well, Lady Teazle; I see you can be a little severe.

Lady Teaz.In defence of a friend it is but justice. But here comes Sir Peter to spoil our pleasantry.

EnterSir Peter Teazle.

Sir Pet.Ladies, your most obedient.—[Aside,] Mercy on me, here is the whole set! a character dead at every word, I suppose.

Mrs. Can.I am rejoiced you are come, Sir Peter. They have been so censorious—and Lady Teazle as bad as any one.

Sir Pet.That must be very distressing to you, indeed, Mrs. Candour.

Mrs. Can.Oh, they will allow good qualities to nobody: not even good nature to our friend Mrs. Pursy.

Lady Teaz.What, the fat dowager who was at Mrs. Quadrille's last night?

Mrs. Can.Nay, her bulk is her misfortune; and, when she takes so much pains to get rid of it, you ought not to reflect on her.

Lady Sneer.That's very true, indeed.

Lady Teaz.Yes, I know she almost lives on acids and small whey; laces herself by pulleys; and often, in the hottest noon in summer, you may see her on a little squat pony, with her hair plaited up behind like a drummer's, and puffing round the ring on a full trot.

Mrs. Can.I thank you, Lady Teazle, for defending her.

Sir Pet.Yes, a good defence, truly.

Mrs. Can.Truly, Lady Teazle is as censorious as Miss Sallow.

Crab.Yes, and she is a curious being to pretend to be censorious—an awkward thing, without any one good point under the sun.

Mrs. Can.Positively you shall not be so very severe. Miss Sallow is a near relation of mine by marriage, and, as for her person, great allowance is to be made; for, let me tell you, a woman labors under many disadvantages who tries to pass for a girl of six-and-thirty.

Lady Sneer.Though, surely, she is handsome still—and for the weakness in her eyes, considering how much she reads by candlelight, it is not to be wondered at.

Mrs. Can.True, and then as to her manner; upon my word I think it is particularly graceful, considering she never had the least education; for you know her mother was a Welsh milliner, and her father a sugar-baker at Bristol.

Sir Ben.Ah! you are both of you too good-natured!

Sir Pet.Yes, distressingly good-natured! This their own relation! Mercy on me![Aside.

Mrs. Can.For my part, I own I cannot bear to hear a friend ill-spoken of.

Sir Pet.No, to be sure!

Sir Ben.Oh! you are of a moral turn. Mrs. Candour and I can sit for an hour and hear Lady Stucco talk sentiment.

Lady Teas.Nay, I vow Lady Stucco is very well with the dessert after dinner; for she's just like the French fruit one cracks for mottoes—made up of paint and proverb.

Mrs. Can.Well, I will never join in ridiculing a friend; and so I constantly tell my cousin Ogle, and you all know what pretensions she has to be critical on beauty.

Crab.Oh, to be sure! she has herself the oddest countenance that ever was seen; 'tis a collection of features from all the different countries of the globe.

Sir Ben.So she has, indeed—an Irish front——

Crab.Caledonian locks——

Sir Ben.Dutch nose——

Crab.Austrian lips——

Sir Ben.Complexion of a Spaniard——

Crab.And teethàla Chinoise.

Sir Ben.In short, her face resembles atable d'hôteat Spa—where no two guests are of a nation——

Crab.Or a congress at the close of a general war—wherein all the members, even to her eyes, appear to have a different interest, and her nose and chin are the only parties likely to join issue.

Mrs. Can.Ha! ha! ha!

Sir Pet.Mercy on my life!—a person they dine with twice a week![Aside.

Mrs. Can.Nay, but I vow you shall not carry the laugh off so—for give me leave to say that Mrs. Ogle——

Sir Pet.Madam, madam, I beg your pardon—there's no stopping these good gentlemen's tongues. But when I tell you, Mrs. Candour, that the lady they are abusing is a particular friend of mine, I hope you'll not take her part.

Lady Sneer.Ha! ha! ha! well said, Sir Peter! but you are a cruel creature—too phlegmatic yourself for a jest, and too peevish to allow wit in others.

Sir Pet.Ah, madam, true wit is more nearly allied to good nature than your ladyship is aware of.

Lady Teas.True, Sir Peter; I believe they are so near akin that they can never be united.

Sir Ben.Or rather, suppose them man and wife, because one seldom sees them together.

Lady Teaz.But Sir Peter is such an enemy to scandal, I believe he would have it put down by parliament.

Sir Pet.Positively, madam, if they were to consider the sporting with reputation of as much importance as poaching on manors, and pass an act for the preservation of fame, as well as game, I believe many would thank them for the bill.

Lady Sneer.Why! Sir Peter; would you deprive us of our privileges?

Sir Pet.Ay, madam; and then no person should be permitted to kill characters and run down reputations but qualified old maids and disappointed widows.

Lady Sneer.Go, you monster!

Mrs. Can.But, surely, you would not be quite so severe on those who only report what they hear?

Sir Pet.Yes, madam, I would have law merchant for them too; and in all cases of slander currency, whenever the drawer of the lie was not to be found, the injured parties should have a right to come on any of the indorsers.

Crab.Well, for my part, I believe there never was a scandalous tale without some foundation.

Lady Sneer.Come, ladies, shall we sit down to cards in the next room?

EnterServant,who whispersSir Peter.

Sir Pet.I'll be with them directly.—[ExitServant.] I'll get away unperceived.[Aside.

Lady Sneer.Sir Peter, you are not going to leave us?

Sir Pet.Your ladyship must excuse me; I'm called away by particular business. But I leave my character behind me.[Exit.

Sir Ben.Well—certainly, Lady Teazle, that lord of yours is a strange being: I could tell you some stories of him would make you laugh heartily if he were not your husband.

Lady Teaz.Oh, pray, don't mind that; come, do let's hear them.

[Exeunt all butJoseph SurfaceandMaria.

Jos. Surf.Maria, I see you have no satisfaction in this society.

Mar.How is it possible I should? If to raise malicious smiles at the infirmities or misfortunes of those who have never injured us be the province of wit or humor, Heaven grant me a double portion of dulness!

Jos. Surf.Yet they appear more ill-natured than they are; they have no malice at heart.

Mar.Then is their conduct still more contemptible; for, in my opinion, nothing could excuse the intemperance of their tongues but a natural and uncontrollable bitterness of mind.

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