ing is meat, drink, and clothes to him. But, Back, this gentleman is one of the best friends I have in the world, and saved my life last night. You know I told you.

Bluff. Ay, then I honour him again. Sir, may I crave your name?

Sharper. Ay, sir; my name's Sharper.

Sir Jos. Pray, Mr Sharper, embrace my Back; very well. By the Lord Harry, Mr Sharper, he is as brave a fellow as Cannibal; are you not, Bully-Back?

Sharper. Hannibal, I believe you mean, Sir Joseph? Bluff. Undoubtedly he did, sir. Faith, Hannibal was a very pretty fellow; but, Sir Joseph, comparisons are odious. Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in those days, it must be granted. But alas, sir, were he alive now, he would be nothing, nothing in the earth.

Sharper. How, sir? I make a doubt if there be at this day a greater general breathing.

Bluff. Oh, excuse me, sir; have you served abroad, sir?

Sharper. Not I, really, sir.

Bluff. Oh, I thought so. Why, then, you can know nothing, sir. I am afraid you scarce know the his

Sir Jos. Good Mr Sharper, speak to him; I dare not look that way.

Sharper. Captain, Sir Joseph is penitent.

Bluff. Oh, I am calm, sir; calm as a discharged culverin. But 'twas indiscreet, when you know what will provoke me. Nay, come, Sir Joseph; you know my heat's soon over.

Sir Jos. Well, I am a fool sometimes, but I'm sorry. Bluff. Enough.

Sir Jos. Come, we'll go take a glass to drown animosities.

[Scandal and Literature in High Life.]
[From The Double-Dealer.'"]
CYNTHIA-LORD and LADY FROTH-BRISK.

Lady F. Then you think that episode between Susan the dairy-maid and our coachman is not amiss. You know, I may suppose the dairy in town, as well as in the country.

Brisk. Incomparable, let me perish! But, then, being an heroic poem, had not you better call him a charioteer. Charioteer sounds great. Besides, your ladyship's coachman having a red face, and you com

Sharper. Not I, wir; no more than public letters or Gazette tell us.

Bluff. Gazette! Why, there again now. Why, sir, there are not three words of truth, the year round, put into the Gazette. I'll tell you a strange thing now as to that. You must know, sir, I was resident in Flanders the last campaign, had a small post there; but no matter for that. Perhaps, sir, there was scarce anything of moment done but a humble servant of yours that shall be nameless was an eye-witness of. I wont say had the greatest share in't though I might say that too, since I name nobody, you know. Well, Mr Sharper, would you think it? In all this time, as I hope for a truncheon, that rascally Gazettewriter never so much as once mentioned me. Not once, by the wars! Took no more notice than as if Noll Bluff had not been in the land of the living.

Sharper. Strange!

Sir Jos. Yet, by the Lord Harry, 'tis true, Mr Sharper; for I went every day to coffee-houses to read the Gazette myself.

Bluff. Ay, ay; no matter. You see, Mr Sharper, after all, I am content to retire-live a private person. Scipio and others have done so.

Sharper. Impudent rogue.

[Aside.

Sir Jos. Ay, this modesty of yours. Egad, if he put in for't, he might be made general himself yet. Bluff. Oh, fie no, Sir Joseph; you know I hate this. Sir Jos. Let me but tell Mr Sharper a little, how you ate fire once out of the mouth of a cannon; egad he did; those impenetrable whiskers of his have confronted flames.

Bluff. Death! What do you mean, Sir Joseph ?
Sir Jos. Look you now, I tell he is so modest, he'll

own nothing.

Bluff. This sword I think I was telling you of, Mr Sharper. This sword I'll maintain to be the best divine, anatomist, lawyer, or casuist in Europe; it shall decide a controversy, or split a cause.

Sir Jos. Nay, now, I must speak; it will split a hair; by the Lord Harry, I have seen it!

Bluff. Zounds! sir, it is a lie; you have not seen it, nor sha'nt see it: sir, I say you can't see. What d'ye say to that, now?

Sir Jos. I am blind.

Bluff. Death! had any other man interrupted me.

heaven's chariotzer.'

Lady F. Oh! infinitely better; I am extremely beholden to you for the hint. Stay we'll read over those half a score lines again. [Pulls out a paper.] Let me see here; you know what goes before the comparison, you know. [Reads]

For as the sun shines every day,
So of our coachman I may say.

Brisk. I am afraid that simile won't do in wet weather, because you say the sun shines every day.

Lady F. No; for the sun it wont, but it will do for the coachman; for you know there's most occasion for a coach in wet weather.

Brisk. Right, right; that saves all.

Lady F. Then I don't say the sun shines all the day, but that he peeps now and then; yet he does shine all the day, too, you know, though we don't see him.

Brisk. Right; but the vulgar will never comprehend that.

Lady F. Well, you shall hear. Let me see

For as the sun shines every day,
So of our coachman I may say,
He shows his drunken fiery face
Just as the sun does, more or less.

Brisk. That's right; all's well, all's well. More or

less.

Lady F. [Reads]

And when at night his labour's done,

Then, too, like heaven's charioteer, the sun

Ay, charioteer does better

Into the dairy he descends,

And there his whipping and his driving ends;
There he's secure from danger of a bilk;

His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk.

For Susan, you know, is Thetis, and so

Brisk. Incomparable well and proper, egad! But I have one exception to make: don't you think bilk (I know it's a good rhyme)-but don't you think bilk and fare too like a hackney coachman?

Lady F. I swear and vow I'm afraid so. And yet our John was a hackney coachman when my lord took him.

Brisk. Was he? I'm answered, if John was a hackney coachman. You may put that in the marginal notes; though, to prevent criticism, only mark it with a small asterisk, and say, 'John was formerly a hackney coachman.'

Lady F. I will; you'd oblige me extremely to write notes to the whole poem.

Brisk. With all my heart and soul, and proud of the vast honour, let me perish!

Lord F. Hee, hee, hee! my dear, have you done? Wont you join with us? We were laughing at my Lady Whister and Mr Sneer.

Lady F. Ay, my dear, were you? Oh! filthy Mr Sneer; he's a nauseous figure, a most fulsamic fop. Foh! He spent two days together in going about Covent Garden to suit the lining of his coach with his complexion.

Lord F. O silly! Yet his aunt is as fond of him as if she had brought the ape into the world herself. Brisk. Who? my Lady Toothless? O, she's a mortifying spectacle; she's always chewing the cud like an old ewe.

Lord F. Foh!

Lady F. Then she's always ready to laugh when Sneer offers to speak; and sits in expectation of his no-jest, with her gums bare, and her mouth cpen.

Brisk. Like an oyster at low ebb, egad! Ha, ha, ha! Cynthia. [Aside.] Well, I find there are no fools so inconsiderable in themselves, but they can render other people contemptible by exposing their infirmities.

Lady F. Then that t'other great strapping lady; I can't hit of her name; the old fat fool that paints so exorbitantly.

But, deuce take Paints, d'ye say? Then she has a

Brisk. I know whom you mean. me, I can't hit of her name either. Why, she lays it on with a trowel. great beard that bristles through it, and makes her look as if she were plastered with lime and hair, let me perish!

Lady F. Oh! you made a song upon her, Mr Brisk? Brisk. Hee, egad! so I did. My lord can sing it. Cynthia. O good, my lord; let us hear it.

Brisk. 'Tis not a song neither. It's a sort of epigram, or rather an epigrammatic sonnet. I don't know what to call it, but it's satire. Sing it, my lord. Lord F. [Sings]

Ancient Phyllis has young graces;
'Tis a strange thing, but a true one;
Shall I tell you how?

She herself makes her own faces,

And each morning wears a new one;

Where's the wonder now?

Tattle. Sir, you are welcome ashore.

Ben. Thank you, thank you, friend.

Sir S. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I saw thee.

Ben. Ay, ay, been! been far enough, an that be all. Well, father, and how do you all at home? How does brother Dick and brother Val?

Sir S. Dick! body o'me, Dick has been dead these two years; I writ you word when you were at Leghorn.

Ben. Mess, that's true: marry, I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you say. Well, and how? I have a many questions to ask you. Well, you be not married again, father, be you?

Sir S. No, I intend you shall marry, Ben; I would not marry for thy sake.

Ben. Nay, what does that signify?-an you marry again, why, then, I'll go to sea again; so there's one for t'other, an that be all. Pray don't let me be your hindrance; e'en marry a God's name, an the wind sit that way. As for my part, mayhap I have no mind to marry.

Mrs Frail. That would be a pity; such a handsome young gentleman.

Ben. Handsome! he, he, he; nay, forsooth, an you be for joking, I'll joke with you, for I love my jest, an the ship were sinking, as we say at sea. But I'll tell you why I don't much stand towards matrimony. I love to roam about from port to port, and from land to land: I could never abide to be port-bound, as we call it. Now, a man that is married has, as it were, d'ye see, his feet in the bilboes, and mayhap mayn't get them out again when he would.

Sir S. Ben's a wag.

[From Love for Love.]

[Aside to Miss.

Sir S. I warrant thee, boy; come, come, we'll be gone; I'll venture that.

BEN and MISS PRUE.

Ben. Come, mistress, will you please to sit down? for an you stand astern a that'n, we shall never grapple together. Come, I'll haul a chair; there, an you please to sit, I'll sit beside you.

Miss Prue. You need not sit so near one; if you have anything to say, I can hear you farther off; I an't deaf. Ben. Why, that's true as you say, nor I an't dumb; I can be heard as far as another. I'll heave off to please you. [Sits farther off.] An we were a league asunder, I'd undertake to hold discourse with you, an 'twere not a main high wind indeed, and full in my teeth. Look you, forsooth, I am as it were bound for the land of matrimony; 'tis a voyage, d'ye see, that was none of my seeking; I was commanded by father; and if you like of it, mayhap I may steer into your harbour. How say you, mistress? The short of the thing is, that if you like me, and I like you, we may chance to swing in a hammock together.

Miss P. I don't know what to say to you, nor I don't care to speak with you at all.

Ben. No? I'm sorry for that. But pray, why are you so scornful?

Miss P. As long as one must not speak one's mind, one had better not speak at all, I think; and truly

I wont tell a lie for the matter.

Ben. Nay, you say true in that; it's but a folly to lie; for to speak one thing, and to think just the contrary way, is, as it were, to look one way and to row another. Now, for my part, d'ye see, I'm for carrying things above-board; I'm not for keeping anything under hatches; so that if you ben't as willing as I, say so a God's name; there's no harm done. May hap you may be shame-faced; some maidens, thof they love a man well enough, yet they don't care to tell'n so to's face. If that's the case, why, silence gives consent.

Miss P. But I'm sure it is not so, for I'll speak speak sooner than you should believe that; and I'll speak truth, though one should always a lie to a man; and I don't care, let my father do what he will. I'm too big to be whipt; so I'll tell you plainly, I don't like you, nor love you at all, nor never will, that's So there's your answer for you, and don't trouble me no more, you ugly thing.

more.

SIR JOHN VANBRUGH.

SIR JOHN VANBRUGH united what Mr Leigh Hunt calls the 'apprently incompatible geniuses' of comic writer and architect. His Blenheim and Castle Howard have outlived the Provoked Wife or the Relapse; yet the latter were highly popular once; and even Pope, though he admits his want of grace, says that he never wanted wit. Vanbrugh was the son

Banbryh

Autograph and Seal of Vanbrugh.

of a successful sugar-baker, who rose to be an esquire, and comptroller of the treasury chamber, besides marrying the daughter of Sir Dudley Carlton. It is doubtful whether the dramatist was born in the French Bastile, or the parish of St Stephen's, Wal

brook. The time of his birth was about the vear 1666, when Louis XIV. declared war against England. It is certain he was in France at the age of nineteen, and remained there some years. In 695, he was appointed secretary to the commission for endow

ing Greenwich hospital; and two years afterwards appeared his play of the Relapse' and the 'Provoked Wife;' Æsop, the False Friend, the Confederacy, and other dramatic pieces followed. Vanbrugh was now highly popular. He made his design of Castle Howard' in 1702, and Lord Carlisle appointed him clarencieux king-at-arms, a heraldic office, which gratified Vanbrugh's vanity. In 1706, he was commissioned by Queen Anne to carry the habit and ensigns of the order of the garter to the elector of Hanover; and in the same year he commenced his design for the great national structure at Blenheim. He built various other mansions, was knighted by George I., and appointed comptroller of the royal works. He died, aged sixty, in 1726. At the time of his death, Vanbrugh was engaged on a comedy, the Provoked Husband, which Colley Cibber finished with equal talent. The architectural designs of Vanbrugh have been praised by Sir Joshua Reynolds for their display of imagination, and their originality of invention. Though ridiculed by Swift and other wits of the day for heaviness and incongruity of design, Castle Howard and Blenheim are noble structures, and do honour to the boldness of conception and picturesque taste of Vanbrugh.

As a dramatist, the first thing in his plays which strikes the reader is the lively ease of his dialogue. Congreve had more wit, but less nature, and less genuine unaffected humour and gaiety. Vanbrugh drew more from living originals, and depicted the manners of his times the coarse debauchery of the country knight, the gallantry of town-wits and fortune hunters, and the love of French intrigue and French manners in his female characters. Lord Foppington, in the 'Relapse,' is the original of most of those empty coxcombs who abound in modern comedy, intent only on dress and fashion. When he loses his mistress, he consoles himself with this reflection: 'Now, for my part, I think the wisest thing a man can do with an aching heart is to put on a serene countenance; for a philosophical air is the most becoming thing in the world to the face of

Look upon them sometimes, and think of him that was to the last moment of his life thine-GEORGE FARQUHAR. One of these daughters, it appears, married a 'low tradesman,' and the other became a servant, while their mother died in circumstances of the utmost indigence.

The 'Beaux' Stratagem' is Farquhar's best comedy. The plot is admirably managed, and the disguises of Archer and Aimwell form a ludicrous, yet natural series of incidents. Boniface, the landlord, is still one of our best representatives of the English innkeeper, and there is genius as well as truth in the delineation. Scrub, the servant, is equally true and amusing; and the female characters, though as free spoken, if not as frail as the fine-bred ladies of Congreve and Vanbrugh, are sufficiently discriminated. Sergeant Kite, in the 'Recruiting Officer,' is an original picture of low life and humour rarely surpassed. Farquhar has not the ripe wit of Congreve, or of our best comic writers. He was the Smollett, not the Fielding of the stage. His characters are lively; and there is a quick succession of incidents, so amusing and so happily contrived to interest the audience, that the spectator is charmed with the variety and vivacity of the scene.

Farquhar,' says Leigh Hunt, 'wa's a good-natured, sensitive, reflecting man, of so high an order of what may be called the town class of genius, as to sympathise with mankind at large upon the strength of what he saw of them in little, and to extract from a quintessence of good sense an inspiration just short of the romantic and imaginative; that is to say, he

could turn what he had experienced in common life to the best account, but required in all cases the support of its ordinary associations, and could not project his spirit beyond them. He felt the little

world too much, and the universal too little. He saw into all false pretensions, but not into all true ones; and if he had had a larger sphere of nature to fall

ale.

Aim. You're very exact, I find, in the age of your

Bon. As punctual, sir, as I am in the age of my children: I'll show you such ale. Here, tapster, broach number 1706, as the saying is. Sir, you shall taste my anno domini. I have lived in Litchfield, man and boy, above eight-and-fifty years, and I believe have not consumed eight-and-fifty ounces of meat.

Aim. At a meal, you mean, if one may guess by your bulk?

Bon. Not in my life, sir; I have fed purely upon ale: I have ate my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon my ale.

Enter Tapster with a Tankard.

Now, sir, you shall see Your worship's health: [Drinks]-Ha! delicious, delicious: fancy it Burgundy; only fancy it-and 'tis worth ten shillings a quart.

Aim. [Drinks] 'Tis confounded strong. Bon. Strong! it must be so, or how would we be strong that drink it?

Aim. And have you lived so long upon this ale, landlord?

Bon. Eight-and-fifty years, upon my credit, sir; but it killed my wife, poor woman, as the saying is. Aim. How came that to pass?

Bon. I don't know how, sir; she would not let the ale take its natural course, sir; she was for qualifying it every now and then with a dram, as the saving is; and an honest gentleman, that came this way from

Ireland, made her a present of a dozen bottles of usquebaugh but the poor woman was never well after; but, however, I was obliged to the gentleman, you know.

Aim. Why, was it the usquebaugh that killed her? Bon. My Lady Bountiful said so. She, good lady, did what could be done: she cured her of three

died of it. The wings of his fancy were too common, and grown in too artificial an air, to support him in the sudden gulfs and aching voids of that new region, and enable him to beat his way to their green islands. His genius was so entirely social, that notwithstanding what appeared to the contrary in his personal manners, and what he took for his own superiority to it, compelled him to assume in his writings all the airs of the most received town ascendency; and when it had once warmed itself in this way, it would seem that it had attained the healthiness natural to its best condition, and could have gone on for ever, increasing both in enjoyment and in power, had external circumstances been favourable. He was becoming gayer and gaver, when death, in the shape of a sore anxiety, called him away as if from a pleasant party, and left the house ringing with his jest.'

[Humorous Scene at an Inn.]
BONIFACE-AIXWELL.

Bon. This way, this way, sir.

Aim. You're my landlord, I suppose?

happy, and I'm contented, as the saying is.

Aim. Who's that Lady Bountiful you mentioned? Bon. Odds my life, sir, we'll drink her health: [Drinks]-My Lady Bountiful is one of the best of women. Her last husband, Sir Charles Bountiful, left her worth a thousand pounds a-year; and I believe she lays out one-half on't in charitable uses for the good of her neighbours.

Aim. Has the lady any children?

1

Bon. Yes, sir, she has a daughter by Sir Charles; the finest woman in all our county, and the greatest || fortune. She has a son, too, by her first husband, 'Squire Sullen, who married a fine lady from London t'other day; if you please, sir, we'll drink his health [Drinks.]

Aim. What sort of a man is he?

Bon. Why, sir, the man's well enough: says little, thinks less, and does nothing at all, faith; but he's a man of great estate, and values nobody.

Aim. A sportsman, I suppose?

Bon. Yes, he's a man of pleasure; he plays at whist, and smokes his pipe eight-and-forty hours together sometimes.

Aim. A fine sportsman, truly!-and married, you

Bon. Ay; and to a curious woman, sir. But he's my landlord, and so a man, you know, would not---Sir, my humble service [Drinks.] Though I value not a farthing what he can do to me; I pay him his rent at quarter-day; I have a good running trade; I have but one daughter, and I can give her but no matter for that.

Aim. You're very happy, Mr Boniface: pray, what other company have you in town?

Bon. A power of fine ladies; and then we have the French officers.