Coach. The same good man that he ever was. Gard. Whurra!

Sir Geo. Vellum, thou hast done me much service to-day. I know thou lovest Abigail; but she's disappointed in a fortune. I'll make it up to both of you. I'll give thee a thousand pounds with her. It is not fit there should be one sad heart in my house to-night.

Abi. Mr Vellum, you are a well-spoken man: pray, do you thank my master and my lady.

SCENE I.-A tavern.

COLONEL FAINWELL and FREEMAN over
a bottle.

Free. COME, colonel, his majesty's health. You are as melancholy as if you were in love! I wish some of the beauties of Bath han't snapt your heart.

Col. Why, faith, Freeman, there is something in't; I have seen a lady at Bath, who has kindled such a flame in me, that all the waters there can't quench.

Free. Women, like some poisonous animals, carry their antidote about them-Is she not to be had, colonel?

Col. That's a difficult question to answer; however, I resolve to try: perhaps you may be able to serve me; you merchants know one another. The lady told me herself she was under the charge of four persons.

Free. Odso! 'tis Mrs Anne Lovely.
Col. The same-Do you know her?

Free. Know her! av-Faith, colonel, your condition is more desperate than you imagine:

why, she is the talk and pity of the whole town; and it is the opinion of the learned, that she must die a maid.

Col. Say you so? That's somewhat odd, in this charitable city. She's a woman, I hope?

Free. For aught I know-but it had been as well for her, had nature made her any other part of the creation. The man who keeps this house served her father; he is a very honest fellow, and may be of use to you; we'll send for him to take a glass with us: he'll give you her whole history, and 'tis worth your hearing. Col. But may one trust him?

Free. With your life: I have obligations enough upon him to make him do any thing: I serve him with wine. [Knocks.

Col. Nay, I know him very well myself. I once used to frequent a club that was kept here.

Col. Do you know any of this lady's guardians, Freeman?

Free. Yes, I know two of them very well.

Enter SACKBUT.

Here comes one will give you an account of them all. Mr Sackbut, we sent for you to take a glass with us. 'Tis a maxim among the friends of the bottle, that as long as the master is in company, one may be sure of good wine.

Sack. Sir, you shall be sure to have as good wine as you send in. Colonel, your most humble servant; you are welcome to town.

Col. I thank you, Mr Sackbut.

Sack. I am as glad to see you as I should a hundred tun of French claret, custom free. My service to you, sir. [Drinks.] You don't look so merry as you used to do; arn't you well, colonel?

Free. He has got a woman in his head, landlord; can you help him?

Sack. If 'tis in my power, I shan't scruple to serve my friend.

Col. Tis one perquisite of your calling. Sack. Aye, at t'other end of the town, where you officers use, women are good forcers of trade; a well-customed house, a handsome barkeeper, with clean, obliging drawers, soon get the master an estate; but our citizens seldom do any thing but cheat within the walls. But as to the lady, colonel; point you at particulars? or have you a good Champagne stomach? Are you in full pay, or reduced, colonel?

Col. Reduced, reduced, landlord.

Free. To the miserable condition of a lover! Sack. Pish! that's preferable to half-pay; a woman's resolution may break before the peace: push her home, colonel; there's no parlying with the fair sex.

Col. Were the lady her own mistress, I have some reasons to believe I should soon command in chief.

Free. You know Mrs Lovely, Mr Sackbut? Sack. Know her! Aye, poor Nancy: I have carried her to school many a frosty morning.Alas! if she's the woman, I pity you, colonel: her father, my old master, was the most whimsical, out-of-the-way tempered man I ever heard of, as you will guess by his last will and testament. This was his only child and I have heard him wish her dead a thousand times.

Col. Why so?

Sack. He hated posterity, you must know, and wished the world were to expire with himself. He used to swear, if she had been a boy, he would have qualified him for the opera.

Free. Twas a very unnatural resolution in a father.

Sack. He died worth thirty thousand pounds, which he left to his daughter, provided she married with the consent of her guardians; but that

she might be sure never to do so, he left her in the care of four men, as opposite to each other as the four elements; each has his quarterly rule, and three months in a year she is obliged to be subject to each of their humours, and they are pretty different, I assure you. She is just come from Bath.

Col. 'Twas there I saw her.

Sack. Aye, sir; the last quarter was her beau guardian's. She appears in all public places during his reign.

Col. She visited a lady who boarded in the same house with me: I liked her person, and found an opportunity to tell her so. She replied, she had no objection to mine; but if I could not reconcile contradictions, I must not think of her; for that she was condemned to the caprice of four persons, who never yet agreed in any one thing, and she was obliged to please them all.

Sack. 'Tis most true, sir; I'll give you a short description of the men, and leave you to judge of the poor lady's condition. One is a kind of virtuoso; a silly, half-witted fellow, but positive and surly, fond of every thing antique and foreign, and wears his clothes of the fashion of the last century; doats upon travellers, and believes more of sir John Mandeville than he does of the Bible.

Col. That must be a rare odd fellow!

Sack. Another is a 'Change-broker; a fellow that will out-lye the devil for the advantage of stock, and cheat his father that got him, in a bargain: he is a great stickler for trade, and hates every man that wears a sword.

Free. He is a great admirer of the Dutch management, and swears they understand trade better than any nation under the sun.

Sack. The third is an old beau, that has May in his fancy and dress, but December in his face and his heels: he admires all the new fashions, and those must be French; loves operas, balls, masquerades, and is always the most tawdry of the whole company on a birth-day.

Col. These are pretty opposite to one another, truly; and the fourth, what is he, landlord?

Sack. A very rigid quaker, whose quarter be gan this day. I saw Mrs Lovely go in, not above two hours ago-sir Philip set her down.— What think you now, colonel; is not the poor lady to be pitied?

Čol. Aye, and rescued too, landlord.

Free. In my opinion, that's impossible.

Col. There is nothing impossible to a lover.What would not a man attempt for a fine woman and thirty thousand pounds? Besides, my honour is at stake; I promised to deliver her, and she bid me win her and wear her.

Sack. That's fair, faith.

Free. If it depended upon knight-errantry, I should not doubt your setting free the damsel; but to have avarice, impertinence, hypocrisy, and pride, at once to deal with, requires more

cunning than generally attends a man of honour. Col. My fancy tells me I shall come off with glory. I am resolved to try, however. Do you know all the guardians, Mr Sack but? Suck. Very well, sir; they all use my house. Col. And will you assist me, if occasion requires?

Sack. In every thing I can, colonel.

Free. I'll answer for him; and whatever I can serve you in, you may depend on. I know Mr Periwinkle and Mr Tradelove; the latter has a very great opinion of my interest abroad. I happened to have a letter from a correspondent two hours before the news arrived of the French king's death I communicated it to him: upon which he bought all the stock he could, and what with that, and some wagers he laid, he told me he had got to the tune of five hundred pounds; so that I am much in his good graces.

:

Col. I don't know but you may be of service to me, Freeman.

Free. If I can, command me, colonel.

Col. Isn't it possible to find a suit of clothes ready made at some of these sale-shops fit to rig out a beau, think you, Mr Sack but?

Sack. O, hang them-No, colonel; they keep nothing ready made that a gentleman would be seen in: but I can fit you with a suit of clothes, if you'd make a figure-Velvet and gold brocade -They were pawned to me by a French count, who had been stript at play, and wanted money to carry him home; he promised to send for them, but I have not heard any thing of him.

Free. He has not fed upon frogs long enough yet to recover his loss; ha, ha!

Col. Ha, ha! Well, the clothes will do, Mr Sackbut; though we must have three or four fellows in tawdry liveries: they can be procured, I hope?

Free. Egad! I have a brother come from the West Indies that can match you; and, for expedition-sake, you shall have his servants: there's a black, a tawney-moor, and a Frenchman; they don't speak one word of English, so can make no mistake.

Col. Excellent! Egad! I shall look like an Indian prince. First, I'll attack my beau guardian; where lives he?

Enter MRS LOVELY, and her maid BETTY.

Bet. Bless me, madam! Why do you fret and tease yourself so? This is giving them the advantage, with a witness.

Mrs Love. Must I be condemned all my life to the preposterous humours of other people, and pointed at by every boy in town? Oh! I could tear my flesh, and curse the hour I was bornIsn't it monstrously ridiculous, that they should desire to impose their quaking dress upon me at these years? When I was a child, no matter what they made me wear; but now

Bet. I would resolve against it, madam; I'd see them hanged before I'd put on the pinched cap again.

Mrs Love. Then I must never expect one moment's ease: she has rung such a peal in my ears already, that I shan't have the right use of them this month. What can I do?

Bet. What can you not do, if you will but give your mind to it? Marry, madam.

Mrs Love. What! and have my fortune go to build churches and hospitals?

Bet. Why, let it go. If the colonel loves you, as he pretends, he'll marry you without a fortune, madam; and, I assure you, a colonel's lady is no despicable thing; a colonel's post will maintain you like a gentlewoman, madam.

Free. Oh! you'll find him in the Park at eleven every day; at least, I never pass through at that hour without seeing him there. But what do you intend?

colonel's?

Bet. I would advise you to make yourself easy, madam.

Free. And what then?

Col. Nay, that I cannot tell; but I shall take my measures accordingly.

Sack. Well, 'us a mad undertaking, in my VOL. II.

well change for the worse as the better. When the woman has fortune enough to make the man happy, if he has either honour or good manners, he'll make her easy. Love makes but a slovenly figure in a house, where poverty keeps the door. 4 F

Bet. And so you resolve to die a maid, do you, madam?

Mrs Love. Or have it in my power to make the man I love master of my fortune.

Bet. Then you don't like the colonel so well as I thought you did, madam, or you would not take such a resolution.

Mrs Love. It is because I do like him, Betty, that I do take such a resolution.

ten times as much-For I'll ingenuously confess to thee, that I do like the colonel above all the men I ever saw: there's something so jantée in a soldier, a kind of je ne sçai quoi air, that makes them more agreeable than the rest of mankind. They command regard, as who shall say, We are your defenders. We preserve your beauties from the insults of rude and unpolished foes, and ought to be preferred before those lazy, indolent mortals, who, by dropping into their fa

Mrs Love. Or he must not marry me at all: and so I told him; and he did not seem displeased with the news. He promised to set me free; and I, on that condition, promised to make him master of that freedom.

Bet. Well! I have read of enchanted castles, ladies delivered from the chains of magic, giants killed, and monsters overcome; so that I shall be the less surprised if the colonel should conjure you out of the power of your four guardians; if he does, I am sure he deserves

tune.

your

for

Mrs Love. And shall have it, girl, if it were

rattle themselves into our affections.

Bet. Nay, madam, I confess that the army has engrossed all the prettiest fellows—a laced coat and a feather have irresistible charms.

Mrs Love. But the colonel has all the beauties of the mind, as well as the body. O all ye powers that favour happy lovers, grant that he may be mine! Thou god of love, if thou beʼst aught but name, assist my Fainwell!

Point all thy darts to aid his just design,
And make his plots as prevalent as thine.

[Exeunt

SCENE I.-The Park.

Enter COLONEL, finely drest, three Footmen af

ter him.

Col. So, now if I can but meet this beau! Egad! Methinks, I cut a smart figure, and have as much of the tawdry air as any Italian_count or French marquis of them all. Sure, I shall know this knight again-Ah! Yonder he sits, making love to a mask, i'faith! I'll walk up the Mall, and come down by him.

[Exit COLONEL. Scene draws, and discovers SIR PHILIP upon a bench, with a woman masked.

Sir Phi. Well, but, my dear, are you really constant to your keeper?

Wom. Yes, really, sir. Hey-day! Who comes yonder? He cuts a mighty figure.

Sir Phi. Ha! A stranger, by his equipage keeping so close at his heels. He has the appearance of a man of quality. Positively French, by his dancing air!

Wom. He crosses, as if he meant to sit down here.

Sir Phi. He has a mind to make love to thee, child.

Enter COLONEL, and seats himself upon the bench by SIR PHILIP.

Wom. It will be to no purpose, if he does. Sir Phi. Are you resolved to be cruel, then? Col. You must be very cruel indeed, if

you

can deny any thing to so fine a gentleman, madam. [Takes out his watch, Wom. I never mind the outside of a man. Col. And I'm afraid thou art no judge of the inside.

Sir Phi. I am positively of your mind, sir; for creatures of her function seldom penetrate beyond the pocket.

Wom. Creatures of your composition, have, indeed, generally more in their pockets, than in their heads. [Aside. Sir Phi. Pray, what says your watch? mine is down. [Pulling out his watch. Col. I want thirty-six minutes of twelve, sir. [Puts up his watch, and takes out his snuff

box.

Sir Phi. May I presume, sir?
Col. Sir, you honour me.

[Presenting the bor Sir Phi. He speaks good English—though he must be a foreigner.-[Aside.]—This snuff is extremely good-and the box prodigious fine; the work is French, I presume, sir?

Col. I bought it in Paris, sir-I do think the workmanship pretty neat.

Sir Phi. Neat! 'tis exquisitely fine, sir. Pray, sir, if I may take the liberty of inquiring-What finest gentleman in the universe? France, I precountry is so happy to claim the birth of the

sume

?

Col. Then you don't think me an Englishman?
Sir Phi. No, upon my soul, don't I.
Col. I'm sorry for't.