Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

To give his enemies their wish, and end
Them in his anger, whom his anger saves
To punish endless? Wherefore cease we then?
Say they who counsel war, we are decreed,
Reserv'd and destin'd to eternal woe;
Whatever doing, what can suffer more,
What can we suffer worse? Is this then worst,
Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms?
What when we fled amain, pursued and struck
With heaven's afflicting thunder, and besought
The deep to shelter us? This hell then seem'd
A refuge from those wounds; or when we lay
Chain'd on the burninglake? That sure was worse.
What if the breath that kindled those grim fires,
Awak'd should blow them into sevenfold rage,
And plunge us in the flames? or from above
Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us? What if all
Her stores were open'd and this firmament
Of hell should spout her cataracts of fire.
Impendent horrors, threat'ning hideous fall
One day upon our heads; while we, perhaps,
Designing or exhorting glorious war,
Caught in a fiery tenpest, shall be hurl'd
Each on his rock transfix'd, the sport and prey
Of wrecking whirlwinds, or forever sunk
Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains;
There to converse with everlasting groans,
Unrespited, unpitied, unrepriev'd,

Ages of hopeless end! This would be worse,
War, therefore, open or conceal'd, alike
My voice dissuades.

DRAMATIC PIECES.

I. DIALOGUES.

1. Belcour and Stockwell.-WEST INDIAN.
R. BELCOUR, I am rejoiced to see you
you are welcome to England.

Stock.

[ocr errors]

Bel, I thank you heartily, good Mr. Stockwell. You and I have long conversed at a distance; now we are met; and the pleasure this meeting gives me, amply compensates for the perils I have run through in accom plishing it.

Stock. What perils, Mr. Belcour? I could not have thought you would have met with a bad passage at this time o'year.

Bel. Nor did we. Courier like, we came posting to your shores, upon the pinions of the swiftest gales that ever blew. It is upon English ground all my difficulties have arisen; it is the passage from the river side I complain of.

Stock. Indeed! What obstructions can you have met between this and the river side?

Bel Innumerable! Your town's as full of defiles as the island of Corsica; and I believe they are as obstinately defended. So much hurry, bustle and confusion on your quays; so many sugar casks, porter butts and common council men in your streets; that unless a man marched with artillery in his front, it is more than the labor of an Hercules can effect, to make any tolerable way through your town.

Stock. I am sorry you have been so incommoded. Bel. Why, truly it was all my own fault. Accustomed to a land of slaves, and out of patience with the whole tribe of customhouse extortioners, boatmen, tide waiters

and water bailiffs, that beset me on all sides, worse than a swarm of moschettoes, I proceeded a little too roughly to brush them away with my ratan. The sturdy rogues took this in dudgeon; and beginning to rebel, the mob chose different sides, and a furious scuffle ensued; in the course of which, my person and apparel suffered so much, that I was obliged to step into the first tavern to refit, before I could make my approaches in any decent trim.

Stock. Well, Mr. Belcour, it is a rough sample you have had of my countrymen's spirit; but I trust you will not think the worse of them for it.

Bel. Not at all, not at all; I like them the better.Were I only a visitor, I might perhaps wish them a little more tractable; but, as a fellow subject, and a sharer in their freedom, I applaud their spirit-though I feel the effects of it in every bone in my skin.- Well, Mr. Stockwell, for the first time in my life, here am I in England; at the fountain head of pleasure; in the land of beauty, of arts and elegancies. My happy stars have given me a good estate, and the conspiring winds have blown me hither to spend it.

Stock. To use it, not to waste it, I should hope; to treat it, Mr. Belcour, not as a vassal over whom you have a wanton despotic power, but as a subject whom you are bound to govern with a temperate and restrained authority.

Bel. True, Sir, most truly said; mine's a commission, not a right; I am the offspring of distress, and every child of sorrow is my brother. While I have hands to hold, therefore, I will hold them open to mankind. But, Sir, my passions are my masters; they take me where they will; and oftentimes they leave to reason and virtue, nothing but iny wishes and my sighs.

Stock. Come, come, the man who can accuse, corrects himself.

Bel. Ah! That is an office I am weary of. I wish a friend would take it up; I would to heaven you had leisure for the employ. But did you drive a trade to the four corners of the world, you would not find the task so toilsome as to keep me from faults.

Stock. Well, I am not discouraged.

This candor

tells me I should not have the fault of self-conceit to combat; that, at least, is not amongst the number.

Bel. No; if I knew that man on earth who thought more humbly of me than I do of myself, I would take his opinion, and forego my own.

Stock. And were I to choose a pupil, it should be one of your complexion: so if you will come along with me, we will agree upon your admission, and enter upon a course of lectures directly.

Bel. With all my heart.

II-Lady Townly and Lady Grace.

PROVOKED HUSBAND. Lady T. OH, my dear Lady Grace! How could you leave me so unmercifully alone all this while?

Lady G. I thought my Lord had been with you.

Lady T. Why yes-and therefore I wanted your relief: for he has been in such a fluster here

Lady G. Bless me! For what?

Lady T. Only our usual breakfast; we have each of us had our dish of matrimonial comfort this morningwe have been charming company.

Lady G. I am mighty glad of it; sure it must be a vast happiness, when man and wife can give themselves the same turn of conversation!

Lady T. Oh, the prettiest thing in the world!

Lady G. Now I should be afraid, that where two people are every day together so, they must be often in want of something to talk upon.

Lady T. Oh, my dear, you are the most mistaken in the world! Married people have things to talk of, child, that never enter into the imagination of others.

-Why, here's my lord and I, now; we have not been married above two short years, you know, and we have already eight or ten things constantly in bank, that whenever we want company, we can take up any one of them for two hours together, and the subject never the flatter; nay, if we have occasion for it, it will be as fresh next day too, as it was the first hour it entertained us.

Lady G. Certainly, that must be vastly pretty,

Lady T. Oh, there is no life like it! Why, t'other day, for example, when you dined abroad, my Lord and I, after a pretty cheerful tete a tete meal, sat us down by the fireside, in an easy, indolent, picktooth way, for about a quarter of hour, as if we had not thought of one another's being in the room.-At last, stretching himself and yawning-My dear, says heaw-you came home very late last night-'Twas but just turned of two, says II was in bed- aw -by eleven, says he-So you are every night, says I-Well, says he, I am amazed you can sit up so late. How can you be amazed, says I, at a thing that happens so often? -Upon which we entered into a conversation

and though this is a point that has entertained us above fifty times already, we always find so many pretty new things to say about it, that I believe in my soul it will last as long as I live.

Lady G. But pray, in such sort of family dialogues (though extremely well for passing the time) does n't there now and then enter some little witty sort of bitterness?

Lady T. Oh yes! Which does not do amiss at all. A smart repartee, with a zest of recrimination at the head of it, makes the prettiest sherbert. Aye, aye, if we did not mix a little of the acid with it, a matrimonial society would be so luscious, that nothing but an old liquorish prude would be able to bear it.

Lady G. Well, certainly you have the most elegant

taste

Lady T. Though to tell you the truth, my dear, I rather think we squeezed a little too much lemon into it this bout; for it grew so sour at last, that I think -I almost told him he was a fool- -and he again -talked something oddly-of turning me out of doors.

Lady G. Oh! Have a care of that.

Lady T. Nay, if he should, I may thank my own wise father for it.

Lady, G. How so?

Lady T. Why, when my good Lord first opened his honorable trenches before me, my uuaccountable

« VorigeDoorgaan »