ACT THE FIRST

SCENE-An Apartment in YOUNG HONEYWOOD'S House

Enter SIR WILLIAM HONEYWOOD, JARVIS

SIR WIL. Good Jarvis, make no apologies for this honest bluntness. Fidelity, like yours, is the best excuse for every freedom. JAR. I can't help being blunt, and being very angry too, when I hear you talk of disinheriting so good, so worthy a young gentleman as your nephew, my master. All the world loves

him. SIR WIL. Say rather, that he loves all the world; that is his fault. JAR. I'm sure there is no part of it more dear to him than you are, though he has not seen you since he was a child. SIR WIL. What signifies his affection to me; or how can I be proud of a place in a heart where every sharper and coxcomb find an easy entrance?

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JAR. I grant you that he is rather too good-natured; that he's too much every man's man; that he laughs this minute with one, and cries the next with another; but whose instructions may he thank for all this?

SIR WIL. Not mine, sure? My letters to him during my employment in Italy, taught him only that philosophy which might prevent, not defend his errors.

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JAR. Faith, begging your honour's pardon, I'm sorry they taught him any philosophy at all; it has only served to spoil him. This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey. For my own part, whenever I hear him mention the name on 't, I'm always sure he's going to play the fool.

SIR WIL. Don't let us ascribe his faults to his philosophy, I entreat you. No, Jarvis, his good-nature arises rather from his fears of offending the importunate, than his desire of making the deserving happy.

JAR. What it rises from, I don't know. body has it, that asks it.

But, to be sure, every

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I have been now for some

SIR WIL. Ay, or that does not ask it. time a concealed spectator of his follies, and find them as boundless as his dissipation.

JAR. And yet, faith, he has some fine name or other for them all. He calls his extravagance, generosity; and his trusting everybody, universal benevolence. It was but last week he went

security for a fellow whose face he scarce knew, and that he called an act of exalted mu-mu-munificence; ay, that was the name he gave it.

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SIR WIL. And upon that I proceed, as my last effort, though with very little hopes to reclaim him. That very fellow has just absconded, and I have taken up the security. Now, my intention is to involve him in fictitious distress, before he has plunged himself into real calamity: to arrest him for that very debt, to clap an officer upon him, and then let him see which of his friends will come to his relief.

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JAR. Well, if I could but any way see him thoroughly vexed, every groan of his would be music to me; yet, faith, I believe it impossible. I have tried to fret him myself every morning these three years; but, instead of being angry, he sits as calmly to hear me scold, as he does to his hair-dresser. SIR WIL. We must try him once more, however, and I'll go this instant to put my scheme into execution; and I don't despair of succeeding, as, by your means, I can have frequent opportunities of being about him without being known. What a pity it is, Jarvis, that any man's goodwill to others should produce so much neglect of himself, as to require correction. Yet, we must touch his weaknesses with a delicate hand. There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence, that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue. [Exit. JAR. Well, go thy ways, Sir William Honeywood. It is not without reason that the world allows thee to be the best of men. But here comes his hopeful nephew; the strange, good-natur'd, foolish, open-hearted-And yet, all his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them.

Enter HONEYWOOD

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HON. Well, Jarvis, what messages from my friends this morning? JAR. You have no friends.

HON. Well; from my acquaintance then?

JAR. [pulling out bills]. A few of our usual cards of compliment, that's all. This bill from your tailor; this from your mercer; and this from the little broker in Crooked-lane. He says he has been at a great deal of trouble to get back the money you borrowed.

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sending to the poor I believe that would

HON. That I don't know; but I'm sure we were at a great deal of trouble in getting him to lend it. JAR. He has lost all patience. HON. Then he has lost a very good thing. JAR. There's that ten guineas you were gentleman and his children in the Fleet. stop his mouth, for a while at least. HON. Ay, Jarvis, but what will fill their mouths in the meantime? Must I be cruel because he happens to be importunate; and, to relieve his avarice, leave them to insupportable distress?

JAR. 'Sdeath! Sir, the question now is how to relieve yourself; yourself. Haven't I reason to be out of my senses, when I see things going at sixes and sevens?

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HON. Whatever reason you may have for being out of your senses, I hope you'll allow that I'm not quite unreasonable for continuing in mine.

JAR. You're the only man alive in your present situation that could do so. Everything upon the waste. There's Miss Richland and her fine fortune gone already, and upon the point of being given to your rival.

HON. I'm no man's rival.

JAR. Your uncle in Italy preparing to disinherit you; your own fortune almost spent ; and nothing but pressing creditors, false friends, and a pack of drunken servants that your kindness has made unfit for any other family.

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HON. Then they have the more occasion for being in mine. JAR. Soh! What will you have done with him that I caught stealing your plate in the pantry? In the fact; I caught him in the fact.

HON. In the fact? If so, I really think that we should pay him his wages, and turn him off.

JAR. He shall be turn'd off at Tyburn, the dog; we'll hang him, if it be only to frighten the rest of the family.

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HON. No, Jarvis: it's enough that we have lost what he has stolen ; let us not add to it the loss of a fellow-creature! JAR. Very fine! well, here was the footman just now, to complain of the butler; he says he does most work, and ought to have most wages.

HON. That's but just; though perhaps here comes the butler to complain of the footman.

JAR. Ay, it's the way with them all, from the scullion to the privy-councillor. If they have a bad master, they keep quarrelling with him; if they have a good master, they keep quarrelling with one another.

Enter BUTLER, drunk

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BUT. Sir, I'll not stay in the family with Jonathan; you must part with him, or part with me; that's the ex-ex-exposition of the matter, sir.

HON. Full and explicit enough. But what's his fault, good Philip?

BUT. Sir, he's given to drinking, sir, and I shall have my morals corrupted, by keeping such company.

HON. Ha! ha! he has such a diverting way——

JAR. O quite amusing!

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But. I find my wine's a-going, sir; and liquors don't go without mouths, sir; I hate a drunkard, sir.

HON. Well, well, Philip, I'll hear you upon that another time; so go to bed now.

JAR. To bed! Let him go to the devil! BUT. Begging your honour's pardon, and begging your pardon master Jarvis, I'll not go to bed, nor to the devil neither. I have enough to do to mind my cellar. I forgot, your honour,

Mr. Croaker is below. I came on purpose to tell you. HON. Why didn't you show him up, blockhead?

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BUT. Show him up, sir? With all my heart, sir. Up or down, all's one to me. [Exit. JAR. Ay, we have one or other of that family in this house from morning till night. He comes on the old affair, I suppose. The match between his son that's just returned from Paris, and Miss Richland, the young lady he's guardian to.

HON. Perhaps so.

Mr. Croaker, knowing my friendship for the young lady, has got it into his head that I can persuade her to what I please.

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JAR. Ah! if you loved yourself but half as well as she loves you, we should soon see a marriage that would set all things to rights again.

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HON. Love me! Sure, Jarvis, you dream. No, no; her intimacy
with me never amounted to more than mere friendship—mere
friendship. That she is the most lovely woman that ever
warmed the human heart with desire, I own. But never let me
harbour a thought of making her unhappy, by a connection with
one so unworthy of her merits as I am. No, Jarvis, it shall
be my study to serve her, even in spite of my wishes; and to
secure her happiness, though it destroys my own.
JAR. Was ever the like! I want patience.
HON. Besides, Jarvis, though I could obtain Miss Richland's
consent, do you think I could succeed with her guardian, or
Mrs. Croaker, his wife; who, though both very fine in their
way, are yet a little opposite in their dispositions, you know?
JAR. Opposite enough, Heaven knows! the very reverse of each
other she all laugh and no joke; he always complaining, and
never sorrowful; a fretful poor soul that has a new distress for
every hour in the four and twenty-

HON. Hush, hush, he's coming up, he'll hear you
JAR. One whose voice is a passing-bell-

HON. Well, well; go, do.

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JAR. A raven that bodes nothing but mischief; a coffin and crossbones; a bundle of rue; a sprig of deadly nightshade; a [HONEYWOOD, stopping his mouth, at last pushes him off]

[Exit JARVIS.

HON. I must own my old monitor is not entirely wrong. There is something in my friend Croaker's conversation that quite depresses me. His very mirth is an antidote to all gaiety, and

his appearance has a stronger effect on my spirits than an undertaker's shop.-Mr. Croaker, this is such a satisfaction

Enter CROAKER

CRO. A pleasant morning to Mr. Honeywood, and many of them. How is this! you look most shockingly to-day, my dear friend. I hope this weather does not affect your spirits. To be sure, if this weather continues-I say nothing-But God send we be all better this day three months!

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HON. I heartily concur in the wish, though I own not in your apprehensions.

CRO. May be not. Indeed, what signifies what weather we have in a country going to ruin like ours? Taxes rising and trade falling. Money flying out of the kingdom and Jesuits swarming into it. I know at this time no less than a hundred and twenty-seven Jesuits between Charing Cross and Temple-Bar. HON. The Jesuits will scarce pervert you or me, I should hope. CRO. May be not. Indeed, what signifies whom they pervert in a country that has scarce any religion to lose? I'm only afraid for our wives and daughters.

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HON. I have no apprehensions for the ladies, I assure you. CRO. May be not. Indeed, what signifies whether they be perverted or no? The women in my time were good for something. I have seen a lady drest from top to toe in her own manufactures formerly. But nowadays the devil a thing of their own manufactures about them, except their faces. HON. But, however these faults may be practised abroad, you don't find them at home, either with Mrs. Croaker, Olivia, or Miss Richland.

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CRO. The best of them will never be canonised for a saint when she's dead. By the bye, my dear friend, I don't find this match between Miss Richland and my son much relish'd, either by one side or t'other.

HON. I thought otherwise.

CRO. Ah, Mr. Honeywood, a little of your fine serious advice to the young lady might go far: I know she has a very exalted opinion of your understanding.

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HON. But would not that be usurping an authority that more properly belongs to yourself? CRO. My dear friend, you know but little of my authority at home. People think, indeed, because they see me come out in a morning thus, with a pleasant face, and to make my friends merry, that all's well within. But I have cares that would break a heart of stone. My wife has so encroach'd upon every one of my privileges, that I'm now no more than a mere lodger in my own house.