[ir. Yes, I think the good lady would marry any g that resembled a man, though 'twere no more what a butler could pinch out of a napkin. Irs. F. Female frailty! we must all come to it, if live to be old, and feel the craving of a false appewhen the true is decay'd.

lir. An old woman's appetite is depraved like that girl-'tis the green-sickness of a second childhood; like the faint offer of a latter spring, serves but to er in the fall, and withers in an affected bloom. Irs. F. Here's your mistress.

er MRS. MILLAMANT, WIT WOULD, and MINCING. Mir. Here she comes, i'faith, full sail, with her fan ead and streamers out, and a shoal of fools for tens-ha, no; I cry her mercy.

Ars. F. I see but one poor empty sculler; and he 's her woman after him.

Mir. You seem to be unattended, madam.-You d to have the beau-monde throng after you, and a k of gay fine perukes hovering round you.

Vit. Like moths about a candle-I had like to have my comparison for want of breath.

Mrs. Mill. O I have denied myself airs to-day. I e walk'd as fast through the crowd

Vit. As a favourite just disgraced; and with as few

owers.

Mrs. Mill. Dear Mr. Witwould, truce with your ilitudes; for I am as sick of 'em

Vit. As a physician of a good air-I cannot help it, dam, though 'tis against myself.

Mrs. Mill. Yet again! Mincing, stand between me 1 his wit.

Vit. Do, Mrs. Mincing, like a screen before a great I confess I do blaze to-day, I am too bright.

Mrs. F. But, dear Millamant, why were you so long? Mrs. Mill. Long! lud! have I not made violent te? I have ask'd every living thing I met for you; I 'e inquired after you, as after a new fashion.

Wit. Madam, truce with your similitudes-no, you met her husband, and did not ask him for her.

Mir. By your leave, Witwould, that were like inquiring after an old fashion, to ask a husband for his wife.

Wit. Hum, a hit, a bit, a palpable hit, I confess it. Min. You were dress'd before I came abroad. Mrs. Mill. Ay, that's true-O but then I hadMincing, what had I? why was I so long?

Min. O mem, your la'ship staid to peruse a pacquet

of letters.

Mrs. Mill. O ay, letters-I had letters-I am persecuted with letters-I hate letters-nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has 'em, one does not know why they serve one to pin up one's hair.

Wit. Is that the way? Pray, madam, do you pin op your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies.

Mrs. Mill. Only with those in verse, Mr. Witwould. I never pin up my hair with prose. I think, I tried once, Mincing.

Min. O mem, I shall never forget it.

Mrs. Mill. Ay, poor Mincing tift and tift all the morning.

Min. Till I had the cramp in my fingers, I'll vow, mem, and all to no purpose. But when your la'ship pins it up with poetry, it sits so pleasant the next day as any thing, and is so pure and so crips.

Wit. Indeed, so crips?

Min. You're such a critic, Mr. Witwould.

Mrs. Mill. Mirabell, did you take exceptions last night? O ay, and went away

-Now I think on't I'm

angry- -No, now I think on't I'm pleased-For I believe I gave you some pain.

Mir. Does that please you?

Mrs. Mill. Infinitely; I love to give pain.

Mir. You would affect a cruelty which is not in your nature; your true vanity is in the power of pleasing.

Mrs. Mill. O, I ask your pardon for that—One's cruelty is one's power, and when one parts with one's cruelty one parts with one's power; and when one has parted with that, I fancy one's old and ugly.

Mir. Ay, ay, suffer your cruelty to ruin the object of your power, to destroy your lover; and then how vain, how lost a thing you'll be! Nay, 'tis true: you are no longer handsome when you have lost your lover; your beauty dies upon the instant: for beauty is the lover's gift; 'tis he bestows your charms- -Your glass is all a cheat. The ugly and the old, whom the lookingglass mortifies, yet, after commendation, can be flatter'd by it, and discover beauties in it; for that reflects our praises, rather than your face.

Mrs. Mill. O the vanity of these men! Fainall, d'ye hear him? If they did not commend us, we were not handsome! Now you must know they could not commend one, if one was not handsome. Beauty the lover's gift! Dear me, what is a lover, that it can give? Why, one makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one pleases; and then, if one pleases, one makes more.

Wit. Very pretty. Why you make no more of making of lovers, madam, than of making so many card-matches.

Mrs. Mill. One no more owes one's beauty to a lover, than one's wit to an echo: they can but reflect what we look and say; vain, empty things, if we are silent or unseen, and want a being.

Mir. Yet, to those two vain empty things, you owe two of the greatest pleasures of your life.

Mrs. Mill. How so?

Mir. To your lover you owe the pleasure of hearing yourselves praised; and to an echo the pleasure of hearing yourselves talk.

Wit. But I know a lady that loves talking so incessantly, she won't give an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue, that an echo must wait till she dies, before it can catch her last words.

Mrs. Mill. O fiction! Fainall, let us leave these men.

C

Mir. Draw off Witwould. [Aside to Mrs. Fainall. Mrs. F. Immediately: I have a word or two for Mr. Witwould. [Exeunt Mrs. Fainall and Witwould. Mir. I would beg a little private audience tooYou had the tyranny to deny me last night; though you knew I came to impart a secret to you that concern'd my love.

Mrs. Mill. You saw I was engaged.

Mir. Unkind. You had the leisure to entertain a herd of fools; things who visit you from their excessive idleness; bestowing on your easiness that time, which is the incumbrance of their lives. How can you find delight in such society? It is impossible they should admire you, they are not capable; or if they were, it should be to you as a mortification; for sure to please a fool is some degree of folly. Mrs. Mill. I please myself--Besides, converse with fools is for my health.

sometimes to

Mir. Your health! Is there a worse disease than the conversation of fools?

Mrs. Mill. Yes, the vapours; fools are physic for it, next to asa-fætida.

Mir. You are not in a course of fools?

Mrs. Mill. Mirabell, if you persist in this offensive freedom, you'll displease me. I think I must resolve, after all, not to have you-We shan't agree. Mir. Not in our physic, it may be.

Mrs. Mill. And yet our distemper, iu all likelihood, will be the same; for we shall be sick of one another. I shan't endure to be reprimanded, nor instructed; 'tis so dull to act always by advice, and so tedious to be told of one's faults- -I can't bear it. Well, I won't have you, MirabellI'm resolved--I think- -You What would you give that

may go--Ha, ha, ha! could help loving me?

you

Mir. I would give something that you did not know I could not help it.

Mrs. Mill. Come, don't look grave then. Well, what do you say to me?

Mir. I say that a man may as soon make a friend by

his wit, or a fortune by his honesty, as win a woman with plain-dealing and sincerity.

Mrs. Mill. Sententious Mirabell! Pry'thee don't look with that violent and inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an old tapestry hanging. Mir. You are merry, madam; but I would persuade you for a moment to be serious.

Mrs. Mill. What, with that face? No, if you keep your countenance, 'tis impossible I should hold mine. Well, after all, there is something very moving in a love-sick face. Ha, ha, ha! Well, I won't laugh, don't be peevish Heigho! Now I'll be melancholy, as melancholy as a watch-light. Well, Mirabell, if ever you will win me, woo me now-Nay, if you are so tedious, fare you well: I see they are walking away.

Mir. Can you not find, in the variety of your disposition, one moment

Mrs. Mill. To hear you tell me Foible's married, and your plot like to speed?--No.

Mir. But how you came to know it

Mrs. Mill. Without the help of conjuration, you can't imagine; unless she should tell me herself. Which of the two it may have been, I will leave you to consider; and when you have done thinking of that, think of me. [Exeunt Millamant and Mincing.

Mir. I have something more-Gone--Think of you! to think of a whirlwind, though 'twere in a whirlwind, were a case of more steady contemplation; a very tranquillity of mind and mansion. A fellow that lives in a windmill, has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a man that is lodg'd in a woman. There is no point of the compass to which they cannot turn, and by which they are not turn'd; and by one as well as another; for motion, not method, is their occupation. To know this, and yet continue to be in love, is to be made wise from the dictates of reason, and yet persevere to play the fool by the force of instinct-O here comes my pair of turtles-What, billing so sweetly! is not Valentine's day over with you yet?