Merc. Married to me! no, no, pretty lady; you will shortly be wedded to Quietus. Coq. Quietus! prithee, who is he? I do not remember to have heard of the gentleman; I am sure he is not list. upon my Merc. But you are most assuredly upon his. Coq. Prithee, who is he? what is his family? where does he come from? Only think to be called Mrs. Quietus, the thought is horrid! Mrs. Quietus! I positively will have nothing to say to him. Merc. But my master, Madam, is Coq. Master! mercy on me! What, are you nothing better than a serving man? Here, Thomas, Harry, turn this fellow out of doors. Merc. Softly, gentle lady; I am an ambassador: know you not that ambassadors, when speaking of their king, will call him master? Coq. Cry you mercy, good Sir; your master is then a king? Merc. He is, and a very powerful one. Coq. And he-he-(I shall positively expire with joy. Aside.) Spare my confusion, Sir; you understand me, no doubt? Merc. Perfectly; you mean that you are ready to depart. Coq. What a fortunate creature am I! A queen What will all my companions say? They will never be able to bear it; they will, undoubtedly, burst with envy and rage. But I must play off a few of my airs. (Aside.) Ready to depart! O dear, no! I am not so easily won; perhaps I am not willing to depart at all. Merc. A little force will then be requisite: ladies do not always know their own minds. Coq. What a delightful fellow he is! But your master is a very powerful prince, you say; pray, where does he reign? Merc. In hell! Coq. In! (Shrieks.) Merc. What's the matter, my little charmer? Why are you in so great a fright? Your reverend doctor, in his sermons, has surely brought you acquainted with the place? Coq. You are greatly mistaken, Sir; he is more of a gentleman. Merc. A captivating fellow, I dare engage. Coq. The prettiest preacher in the world; for When he speaks, what elocution flows! O, he is a dear, sweet creature, I assure you. Coq. It is really an abominable thing that one can never speak in praise of any one to any one, but one is immediately supposed to be in love. Love! I detest the very name. Mer. But, as your preacher is so very refined, you, I presume, are the same Devoutly thus Jehovah they depose, The pure! the just! and set up in his stead A deity that's perfectly well-bred. Such is the character and conduct of the woman of fashion, as described by the poets; you maintain that character, without a doubt? Coq. Assuredly, Sir: I maintain the character of a woman of spirit and taste! and as for beauty Mer. Hold! hold! you grow extravagant; these selfcommendations are not allowable: besides, you should remember what a celebrated poet of former days has observed on these matters:-"It is not powdering, perfuming, and every day smelling of the tailor, that converteth to a beautiful object; but a mind shining through any suit, which needs no false light, either of riches or honours, to help it."* Ben Jonson. Coq. Quote not your coxcombly poets, I entreat; they are nearly as insufferable as the crabbed philosophers themselves; wretches whom the world has long been wise enough to despise. Mer. I shall say no more. But come, fair lady, the die is cast, we must descend to Elysium without delay; we must hasten to the regions of bliss. Coq. To the regions of bliss! O, Mr. Mercury, with all my heart; quickly, instantly, lead the way. DIALOGUE VIII. SCENE-THE ELYSIAN FIELDS. SCARRON and LA FONTAINE. Scar. HA! Yonder is that strange, that incomprehensible, creature, La Fontaine. I must have a little conversation with him. What, ho! Monsieur le Faiseur d'Oreilles, for so I think I may call you, from the great attention you commanded by your writings. La Font. Scarron! good morrow ;-but this is a compliment I never expected from you. Scar. Prithee, why so? Do you suppose me insensible to the claims of genius and merit? . This is supposed to allude to the character of La Fontaine as drawn by M. de la Bruyère-“Quoi dans le monde de plus incompréhensible? Un homme paraît grossier, lourd, stupide; il ne sait pas parler, n'y raconter ce qu'il vient de voir; s'il se met à écrire, c'est le modèle des bons contes; il fait parler les animaux, les pierres, tout ce qui ne parle point: ce n'est que légèreté, qu'élegance, que beau naturel, et que délicatesse, dans ses ouvrages." See a tale of La Fontaine's, so entitled. La Font. No;-but were we not contemporaries? And, as we both affected the humorous in our writings, consequently rivals? It is, therefore, highly natural that we should regard each other with an envious and suspicious eye. Scar. True, it might be natural on earth, indeed. But you should consider, that we are now in the Elysian Fields. La Font. Here, then, you imagine, we are no longer tormented by evil passions. This, says the poet, is a place where Envy no more her snaky crest shall rear ; and so say you. But you were a good deal persecuted in the upper world. Your humour, if I remember right, which shone so conspicuously in most of your performances, was never thoroughly acknowledged till you had descended to the shades. Scar. I lost much of the reputation I had justly acquired in novel-writing, by attempting comedy, for which I was almost wholly unfit. La Font. Your comedy, no doubt, was ill adapted to the nice and delicate taste of our countrymen, the French. You imitated Molière, but it was in his most faulty and extravagant manner. Dans le sac, ridicule où Scapin s'envelope, Je ne reconnais plus l'auteur du Misanthrope, says the satirist. Yet performances resembling the Fourberies de Scapin were the favourites of Scarron: the models he closely and attentively studied. Scar. You, too, were a writer of comedy; and, though possessed of a truly comic genius, as is sufficiently discoverable in your fables and tales, had never, I think, the good fortune to succeed in the drama. La Font. I was equally unsuccessful with yourself. To speak, however, ingenuously, we met the fate we had well deserved. Our dramas are plat and fade in a remarkable degree. The faux plaisant, in the following lines, is I believe intended to point at us both : J'aime sur le théâtre un agréable auteur, Qui, sans se diffamer aux yeux du spectateur, Qu'il s'en aille, s'il veut, sur deux tréteaux monté, Aux laquais assemblés, jouer ses mascarades. Scar. Admirable ! The lines, I think, are from Boileau's Art of Poetry: a performance which I am inclined to consider, with a celebrated critic, as the best of the kind that has yet appeared. La Font. Yes, and the rules laid down in it have been strictly attended to by the French. The ears of our countrymen are no longer offended by the saletés, the équivoques grossières, so justly complained of: such expedients our authors have left entirely to the English farce-writer. Scar. Aye, and the English farce-writer has fully availed himself of them. He seems to consider them as admirable improvements in his art: capital embellishments to his work. La Font. He does; and I am truly sorry to find it so. There cannot be a greater proof of the degeneracy of the times than in the toleration of loose and immoral performances on the stage. The moral health of the people should be the primary consideration of the magistrate; and, if he is desirous of seeing that health prevail, he will be attentive to the means of preserving it. In a word,-nothing can be more ridiculous than to expect a nation to be virtuous, while you are formally presenting it with lessons in vice. Scar. Right. It is, however, a matter that the magistrate seems to be little solicitous about. But whether this arises from indolence or from the mistaken notion |