them there; they helped me to spend my estate when I was young, and the rogues are grateful, and don't forsake me now I am grown poorish and old.— Almost twelve o'clock, Jack. Beau. I'll be sure to remember, sir. Father. Ah, you wicked-hearted rogue, I know what you will do then, that will be worse; though I think, not much worse neither. Would I were a young fellow again, but to keep him company for one week or a fortnight. A hundred guineas! eeee! Db'uy Jack, You'll remember? See thee again tomorrow, Jack,-Poor Jack! dainty canary-and a delicate black-eyed wench at the bar! Db'uy Jack. Beau. Adieu, father.-Fourbine. Enter FOURdine. Four. Did your honour call? Beau. Take a hundred guineas out of the cabinet, and carry them after the old gentleman to his place of rendezvous. This father of mine (Heaven be thanked) is a very ungodly father: He was in his youth just such another wicked fellow as his son John here; but he had no estate, there I have the better of him for out of mere opinion of my good husbandry, my uncle thought fit to disinherit the extravagant old gentleman, and leave all to me. Then he was married, there I have the better of him again; yet he married a fortune of ten thousand pounds, and before I was seven years old, had broke my mother's heart, and spent three parts of her portion: afterwards he was pleased to retain a certain familiar domestick, called a house-keeper, which I one day to shew my breeding, called whore; and was fairly turned a starving for it. Now he has no way to squeeze me out of contribution, but by taking up his fatherly authority, and offering to put the penal law called marriage in execution. I must e'en get him a governor, and send him with a pension into the country: aye, it must be so, for, wedlock, I deny thee; father, I'll supply thee; and pleasure, I will have thee. Who's there? Enter a SERVANT. Serv. Oh, sir, the most fortunate tidings! Serv. Captain Courtine! your old acquaintance, friend, and comrade, is just arrived out of the country, and desires to see you, sir. Beau. Courtine! Wait on him up, you dog, with reverence and honour. Enter COURTINE. Cour. Dear Beaugard! Beau. Ah, Friend!-from the very tenderest part of my heart I was just now wishing for thee. Why thou lookest as like a married man already, with as grave a fatherly family countenance, as ever I saw. Cour. Ay, Beaugard, I am married, that is my. comfort: But you, I hear, have had worse luck of late: an old uncle dropped into the grave, and two thousand pounds a-year into your pocket, Beaugard. Beau. A small conveniency, Ned, to make my happiness hereafter a little more of a piece than it has been hitherto, in the enjoyment of such hearty, sincere, honest friends, and good-natured fellows, as thou art. Cour. Sincere, honest friends! have a care there, Beaugard-I am, since I saw thee, in a few words, grown an errant rascal; and, for good-nature, it is the very thing I have solemnly forsworn: No, I am married, Jack, in the devil's name, I am married. Beau. Married! That is, thou callest a woman thou likest by the name of wife; wife and t'other thing begins with a letter. Thou liest with her when thy appetite calls thee, keepest the children thou begettest of her body; allowest her meat, drink, and garments, fit for her quality, and thy fortune; and when she grows heavy upon thy hands, what a pox, it is but a separate maintenance, kiss and part, and there is an end of the business. Cour. Alas, Beaugard, thou art utterly mistaken : Heaven knows it is quite on the contrary: For I am forced to call a woman I do not like, by the name of wife; and lie with her, for the most part, with no appetite at all; must keep the children that for aught I know, any body else may beget of her body; and for food and rayment, by her good will she would have them both fresh three times a-day: Then for kiss and part, I may kiss and kiss my heart out, but the devil a bit shall I ever get rid of her. Beau. Alas, poor husband! but art thou really in this miserable condition? Cour. Ten times worse, if possible; by the virtue of matrimony, and long cohabitation, we are grown so really one flesh, that I have no more inclination to hers, than to eat a piece of my own. Then her ladyship is so jealous, that she does me the honour to make me stallion-general to the whole parish, from the parson's importance, in paragon, to the cobler's scolding wife that drinks brandy and smokes loathsome tobacco. In short, Jack, she has so ordered the business, that I am half weary of the world, wish all mankind hanged, and have not laughed these six months. Beau. Ha, ha, ha! Cour. Why, thou canst laugh, I see, though. Beau. Ay, Ned, I have two thousand pounds per annum, Ned, old rents and well tenanted; have no wife, nor ever will have any, Ned; resolve to make my days of mortality all joyful, and nights pleasurable, with some dear, lovesome, young, beautiful, kind, generous she, that every night shall bring me all the joys of a new bride, and none of the vexations of a worn-out, insipid, troublesome, jealous wife; wife, Ned. Cour. But where lies this treasure? where is such a jewel to be found? Beau. Ah, rogue! Do you despise your own manna indeed, and long after quails? Why, thou unconscionable hobnail, thou country coulstaff, thou absolute piece of thy own dried dirt, wouldst thou have the impudence, with that hideous beard, and grisly countenance, to make thy appearance before the footstool of a bona roba that I delight in? For shame, get off that Smithfield horse-courser's equipage; appear once more like Courtine the gay, the witty, and unbounded, with joy in thy face, and love in thy blood, money in thy pockets, and good clothes on thy back, and then I'll try to give thee a recipe that may purge away those foul humours matrimony has bred in thee, and fit thee to relish the sins of thy youth again. Bless us! What a beard is there? It puts me in mind of the blazing star. Cour. Beard, Beaugard! Why, I wear it on purpose, man; I have wished it a furze-bush a thousand times, when I have been kissing my Beau. Whom? Cour. Wife.Let me never live to bury her, if the word wife does not stick in my throat. Beau. Then this peruke! Why, it makes thee shew like the sign of a head looking out at a barber's window. Cour. No more, no more; all shall be rectified: For, to deal with thee as honestly, as a fellow in my damned condition can do, e're I resolved absolutely to hang myself, I thought there might be some remedy left; and that was this dear town, and thy dear friendship: so that, in short, I am very fairly run away; pretended a short journey to visit a friend, but came to London; and if it be possible, will not see country, wife, nor children again these seven years. Therefore, pr'ythee, for my better encouragement, tell me a little what sins are stirring in this noble metropolis, that I may know my business the better, and fall to it as fast as I can. Beau. Why, faith, Ned, considering the plot, the danger of the times, and some other obstructions of trade and commerce, iniquity in general has not lost much ground. There is cheating and hypocrisy still in the city; riot and murder in the suburbs ; grinning, lying, fawning, flattery, and false promising at court; assignations at Covent-Garden church cuckolds, whores, pimps, panders, bawds, and their diseases, all over the town. ; Cour. But what choice spirits, what extraordinary rascals may a man oblige his curiosity withal? Beau. I'll tell thee. In the first place, we are over-run with a race of vermin they call wits, a generation of insects that are always making a noise, and buzzing about your ears, concerning poets, plays, lampoons, libels, songs, tunes, soft scenes, love, ladies, perukes, and cravat-strings, French conquests, duels, religion, snuff-boxes, points, garnitures, milled-stockings, Fourbet's academy, politics, parliament-speeches, and every thing else which they do not understand, or would have the world think they did. Cour. And are all these wits? Beau. Yes, and be hanged to them, these are the wits. Cour. I never knew one of these wits in my life, |