upon our sex: you tax us with injustice, only to cover your own want of merit. You would all have the reward of love; but few have the constancy to stay till it becomes your due. Men are generally hypocrites and infidels, they pretend to worship, but have neither zeal nor faith how few, like Valentine, would persevere even to martyrdom, and sacrifice their interest to their constancy! In admiring me you misplace the novelty : The miracle to-day is, that we find A lover true: not that a woman's kind. [Exeunt omnes. EPILOGUE. SPOKEN AT THE OPENING OF THE NEW HOUSE BY MRS. BRACEGIRDLE, SURE Providence at first designed this place To be the player's refuge in distress; For still in every storm they all run hither, Whom, as I think, they called-Py-Pythagories ;- But lived, I know not how, in beasts; and then, Now find us tossed into a tennis-court. These walls but t'other day were filled with noise I vow, I don't much like this transmigration, Strolling from place to place by circulation; Grant, Heaven, we don't return to our first station! I know not what these think, but, for my part, I can't reflect without an aching heart, How we should end in our original, a cart. And some here know I have a begging face. THE WAY OF THE WORLD. Audire est operæ pretium, procedere recte 1 "Ye that do not wish well to the proceedings of adulterers, it is worth your while to hear how they are hampered on all sides," 66 the World is the most finished of all Congreve's comedies. It is full of movement and of those little touches which give an insight into the manners of the day. Though not the most amusing," writes Leigh Hunt, "it is assuredly the most complete, piquant, and observant of all the works of Congreve; full as an egg of some kind of wit or sense in almost every sentence, and a rich treat for the lover of this sort of writing sitting in his easy chair. Millamant pushes the confident playfulness of a coquette to the verge of what is pleasing; but her animal spirits and good nature secure her. You feel that her airs will give way by-and-by to a genuine tenderness; and meanwhile some of them are exquisite in their affected superiority to circumstances." Mr. George Meredith commends the play for the remarkable brilliancy of the writing and the figure of Millamant. "Where Congreve excels all his English rivals," he remarks, "is in his literary force and a succinctness of style peculiar to him. He hits the mean of a fine style and a natural in dialogue. He is at once precise and voluble. If you have ever thought upon style you will acknowledge it to be a signal accomplishment. In this he is a classic, and worthy of treading a measure with Molière. Sheridan imitated but was far from surpassing him. The flow of boudoir Billingsgate in Lady Wishfort is unmatched for the vigour and pointedness of the tongue. It spins along with a final ring, like the voice of nature in a fury, and is, indeed, racy eloquence of the elevated fishwife. Millamant is an admirable, almost a lovable heroine. It is a piece of genius in a writer to make a woman's manner of speech portray her. You feel sensible of her presence in every line of her speaking. An air of bewitching whimsicality hovers over the graces of this comic heroine, like the lively conversational play of a beautiful mouth." The Way of the World was produced in 1700, but its reception was so indifferent that the author, in disgust, vowed that he would never again write for the stage-a promise which he rigidly kept. |