sworn, as soon set her foot in a pesthouse, as in a playhouse.

Enter Miss RUSPORT.

Miss R. Stop, stay a little, Charles; whither are you going in such haste?

Charles. Madam; Miss Rusport; what are your commands?

Miss R. Why so reserved? We had used to answer to no other names than those of Charles and Charlotte.

Charles. What ails you? You have been weeping.

Miss R. No, no; or, if I have, your eyes are full too; but I have a thousand things to say to you: before you go, tell me, I conjure you, where you are to be found here, give me your direction; write it upon the back of this visiting ticket-Have you a pencil?

Charles. I have: but why should you desire to find us out? 'tis a poor little inconvenient place; my sister has no apartment fit to receive you in.

ACT II. SCENE I-A Room in FULMER's house. FULMER discovered, seated; MRS. FULMER enters to him..

Mrs. Ful. Why, how you sit, musing and moping, sighing and desponding! I'm ashamed of you, Mr. Fulmer; is this the country you described to me, a second Eldorado, rivers of gold and rocks of diamonds? You found me in a pretty snug retired way of life at Boulogne, out of the noise and bustle of the world, and wholly at my ease: but, thank Heaven, our partnership is revocable; I am not your wedded wife, praised be my stars! for what have we got, whom have we gulled but ourselves? which of all your trains has taken fire? even this poor expedient of your bookseller's shop seems abandoned; for, if a chance customer drops in, who is there, pray, to help him to what he wants?

Ful. Patty, you know it is not upon slight grounds that I despair; there had used to be a livelihood to be picked up in this country, both for the honest and dishonest: I have tried each walk, and am likely to starve at last; there is not a point to which the wit and faculty of man can turn, that I have not set mine to, but in vain; I am beat through every quarter of the compass.

Mrs. Ful. Ah! common efforts all; strike me a master-stroke, Mr. Fulmer, if you wish to make any figure in this country.

Ful. But where, how, and what? I have blustered for prerogative; I have bellowed for freedom; I have offered to serve my country; I have engaged to betray it; a masterstroke, truly! why I have talked treason, writ treason, and, if a man can't live by that, he can live by nothing. Here I set up as a bookseller, why, men leave off reading; and if I was to turn butcher, I believe, o'my conscience, they'd leave off eating.

CAPTAIN DUDLEY crosses the stage. Mrs. Ful. Why, there now's your lodger, old Captain Dudley, as he calls himself; there's no flint without fire; something might be struck out of him, if you had the wit to find the way.

Ful. Hang him, an old dry-skinned curmudgeon; you may as well think to get truth out of a courtier, or candour out of a critic: I can make nothing of him; besides, he's poor and therefore not for our purpose.

Mrs. Ful. The more fool he! Would any man be poor, that had such a prodigy in his possession?

Ful. His daughter, you mean; she is, indeed, uncommonly beautiful.

Mrs. Ful. Beautiful! Why, she need only be seen, to have the first men in the kingdom at her feet. What would some of your young nabobs give?—

Ful. Hush! here comes the captain; good girl, leave us to ourselves, and let me try what I can make of him.

Mrs. Ful. Captain truly! i'faith I'd have a regiment, had I such a daughter, before I was three months older. [Exit.

Enter CAPTAIN DUDLEY

Ful. Captain Dudley, good morning to you. Dud. Mr. Fulmer, I have borrowed a book from your shop; 'tis the sixth volume of my deceased friend Tristram: he is a flattering writer to us poor soldiers; and the divine story of Le Fevre, which makes part of this book, in my opinion of it, does honour, not to its author only, but to human nature.

Ful. He's an author I keep in the way of trade, but one I never relished: he is much too loose and profligate for my taste.

Dud. That's being too severe : I hold him to be a moralist in the noblest sense; he plays, indeed, with the fancy, and sometimes, perhaps, too wantonly: but while he thus designedly masks his main attack, he comes at once upon the heart; refines, amends it, softens it; beats down each selfish barrier from about it, and opens every sluice of pity and benevolence,

Ful. Well, Sir, I shall not oppose your opinion; a favourite author is like a favourite mistress; and there, you know, captain, no man likes to have his taste arraigned.

Dud. Upon my word, Sir, I don't know what a man likes in that case; 'tis an experiment I never made.

Ful. Sir!-Are you serious?

Dud. 'Tis of little consequence whether you think so.

Ful. What a formal old prig it is! [Aside.] I apprehend you, Sir; you speak with caution; you are married?

Dud. I have been.

Lou. I am, indeed: coming from Miss Rusport's, I met a young gentleman in the streets, who has beset me in the strangest manner.

Dud. Familiar coxcomb! But I'll humour kim. [Aside. Ful. A close old fox! but I'll unkennel him. [Aside. Dud. Above thirty years I have been in the service, Mr. Fulmer.

Ful. I guessed as much; I laid it at no less: why, 'tis a wearisome time; 'tis an apprenticeship to a profession, fit only for a patriarch. But preferment must be closely followed: you never could have been so far behind-hand in the chase, unless you had palpably mistaken your way. You'll pardon me; but I begin to perceive you have lived in the world, not with it. Dud. It may be so; and you, perhaps, can give me better counsel. I am now soliciting a favour; an exchange to a company on full pay; nothing more; and yet 1 meet a thousand bars to that; though, without boasting, I should think the certificate of services which I sent in might have purchased that indulgence to me.

Ful. Who thinks or cares about them? Certificate of services, indeed! Send in a certificate of your fair daughter: carry her in your hand with you.

Dud. What! Who! My daughter! Carry my daughter! Well, and what then?

Ful. Why, then your fortune's made, that's all.

Dud. I understand you and this you call knowledge of the world! Despicable knowledge! but, sirrah, I will have you know[Threatens him. Ful. Help! Who's within? Would you strike me, Sir? would you lift up your hand against a man in his own house?

Dud. In a church, if he dare insult the poverty of a man of honour.

Ful. Have a care what you do; remember there is such a thing in law as an assault and battery; ay, and such trifling forms as warrants and indictments.

Dud. Go, Sir; you are too mean for my resentment: 'tis that, and not the law protects you. Hence!

Ful. An old, absurd, incorrigible blockhead! I'll be revenged of him. [Aside.

Enter CHARLES Dudley.

Charles. What is the matter, Sir? Sure I heard an outcry as I entered the house.

Dud. Not unlikely; our landlord and his wife are for ever wrangling. Did you find your aunt Dudley at home?

Charles. I did.

Dud. And what was your reception? Charles. Cold as our poverty and her pride could make it.

Dud. You told her the pressing occasion 1 bad for a small supply to equip me for this exchange; has she granted me the relief I asked?

Charles. Alas, Sir, she has peremptorily refused it.

Dud. That's hard; that's hard, indeed! My petition was for a small sum; she has refused it, you say: well, be it so; I must not complain. Did you see the broker, about the insurance on my life?

Charles. There again I am the messenger of ill news; I can raise no money, so fatal is the climate: alas! that ever my father should be sent to perish in such a place!

LOUISA DUDLEY enters hastily.

Charles. Insufferable! Was he rude to you? Lou. I cannot say he was absolutely rude to me, but he was very importunate to speak to me, and once or twice attempted to lift up my hat; he followed me to the corner of the street, and there I gave him the slip.

Dud. You must walk no more in the streets, child, without me, or your brother.

Lou. O Charles! Miss Rusport desires to see you directly; Lady Rusport is gone out, and she has something particular to say to you. Charles. Have you any commands for me, Sir?

Dud. None, my dear: by all means wait upon Miss Rusport. Come, Louisa; I must desire you to go up to your chamber, and compose yourself. [Exeunt.

Enter BELCOUR, after peeping in at the door.

Bel. Not a soul, as I'm alive. Why, what an odd sort of a house is this! Confound the little jilt, she has fairly given me the slip. A plague upon this London, I shall have no luck in it: such a crowd, and such a hurry, and such a number of shops, and one so like the other, that whether the wench turned into this house or the next, or whether she went up stairs or down stairs (for there's a world above and a world below, it seems,) I declare I know no more than if I was in the blue mountains. In the name of all the devils at once, why did she run away? If every handsome girl I meet in this town is to lead me such a wildgoose chase, I had better have stayed in the torrid zone: shall be wasted to the size of a sugar-cane: what shall I do? give the chase up? hang it, that's cowardly: shall I, a true-born son of Phoebus, suffer this little nimble-footed Daphne to escape me?- Forbid it, honour, and forbid it, love.' Hush! hush! here she comes! Oh! the devil! What tawdry thing have we got here?

ing for. Bel. I rather suspect it is the captain's wife. Mrs. Ful. The captain has no wife, Sir.

then she's his mistress; and that I take to be Bel. No wife! I'm heartily sorry for it; for the more desperate case of the two. Pray, Madam, wasn't there a lady just now turned into your house? 'Twas with her I wished to speak.

goddess.

Mrs. Ful. Well, Sir, I shall not contend for the honour of being noticed by you; I hope you think you wouldn't have been the first man that noticed me in the streets; however, this I'm positive of, that no living woman but myself has entered these doors this morning. Bel. Why, then, I'm mistaken in the house, that's all; for it is not humanly possible I can be so far out in the lady. [Going. Mrs. Ful. Coxcomb!-But hold-a thought occurs; as sure as can be, he has seen Miss Dudley. A word with you, young gentleman; come back.

Bel. Well, what's your pleasure?

Mrs. Ful. You seem greatly captivated with this young lady; are you apt to fall in love thus at first sight?

Bel. Oh, yes: 'tis the only way I can ever fall in love; any man may tumble into a pit by surprise; none but a fool would walk into one by choice.

Mrs. Ful. You are a hasty lover, it seems: have you spirit to be a generous one? They that will please the eye, mustn't spare the

Ful. A fine case, truly, in a free country; a pretty pass things are come to, if a man is to be assaulted in his own house.

Mrs. Ful. Who has assaulted you, my dear? Ful. Who! why this Captain Drawcansir, this old Dudley, my lodger; but I'll unlodge him; I'll unharbour him, I warrant.

Mrs. Ful. Hush! hush! Hold your tongue, man; pocket the affront, and be quiet; I've a scheme on foot will pay you a hundred beatings. Why you surprise me, Mr. Fulmer; Captain Dudley assault you! Impossible.

Ful. Nay, I can't call it an absolute assault; but he threatened me.

Mrs. Ful. Oh, was that all? I thought how

it would turn out-a likely thing, truly, for a person of his obliging, compassionate turn: no, no, poor Captain Dudley, he has sorrows and distresses enough of his own to employ his spirits, without setting them against other people. Make it up as fast as you can: watch this gentleman out; follow him wherever he goes, and bring me word who and what he is; be sure you don't lose sight of him; I've other business in hand. [Exit.

Bel. Pray, Sir, what sorrows and distresses have befallen this old gentleman you speak of?

Ful. Poverty, disappointment, and all the distresses attendant thereupon: sorrow enough, of all conscience: I soon found how it was with him, by his way of living, lowenough, of all reason; but what I overheard this morning put it out of all doubt.

Bel. What did you overhear this morning? Ful. Why, it seems he wants to join his regiment, and has been beating the town over to raise a little money for that purpose upon his pay; but the climate, I find, where he is going is so unhealthy, that nobody can be found to lend him any.

Bel. Why, then, your town is a damned good-for-nothing town: and I wish I had never come into it.

Ful. That's what I say, Sir; the hardheartedness of some folks is unaccountable. There's an old Lady Rusport, a near relation of this gentleman's; she lives hard by here, opposite to Stockwell's, the great merchant; he sent to her a-begging, but to no purpose though she is as rich as a Jew, she would not furnish him with a farthing.

Bel. Is the captain at home?
Ful. He is up stairs, Sir.

Bel. Will you take the trouble to desire him to step hither? I want to speak with him.

Ful. I'll send him to you directly. I don't know what to make of this young man; but, if I live, I will find him out, or know the reason why. [Exit.

Bel. I've lost the girl, it seems, that's clear: she was the first object of my pursuit; but the case of this poor officer touches me; and, after all, there may be as much true delight in rescuing a fellow-creature from distress, as there would be in plunging one into it-But let me see it's a point that must be managed with some delicacy-Apropos! there's pen and ink

I've struck upon a method that will do. [Writes.] Ay, ay, this is the very thing: 'twas devilish lucky I happened to have these bills about me. There, there, fare you well! I'm glad to be rid of you; you stood a chance of being worse applied, I can tell you.

[Encloses and seals the paper. FULMER brings in DUDLEY.

Ful. That's the gentleman, Sir. I shall make bold, however to lend an ear. [Exit.

Dud. Have you any commands for me, Sir?
Bel. Your name is Dudley, Sir ?—
Dud. It is.

Bel. You command a company, I think, Captain Dudley?

Dud. I did: I am now upon half-pay. Bel. You have served some time? Dud. A pretty many years; long enough to see some people, of more merit and better interest than myself, made general officers.

Bel. Their merit I may have some doubt of: their interest I can readily give credit to; there