thor kind of wit which consists partly in the resemblance of ideas, and partly in the resemblance of words, which for distinction fake I shall call mixt wit. This kind of wit is that which abounds in Cowley, more than in any author that ever wrote. Mr. Waller has likewise a great deal of it. Mr. Dryden is very sparing in it. Milton had a genious much above it. Spensfer is in the fame class with Milton. The Italians, even in their epic poetry, are full of it. Monfieur Boileau, who formed himself upon the ancient poets, has every where rejected it with scorn. If we look after mixt wit among the Greek writers, we shall find it no where but in the epigrammatists. There are indeed some strokes of it in the little poem ascribed to Musæus, which by that, as well as many other marks, betrays itself to be a modern composition. If we look into the Latin writers, we find none of this mixt wit in Virgil, Lucretius, or Catullus: very little in Horace; but a great deal of it in Ovid; and scarce any thing else in Martial. Out of the innumerable branches of mixt wit, I shall choose one instance which may be met with in all the writers of this class. The passion of love in its nature has been thought to resemble fire; for which reason the words fire and flame are made use of to fignify Love. The witty poets therefore have taken an advantage from the doubt ful meaning of the word fire, to make an infinite number of witticisms. Cowley observing the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and at the fame time their power of producing love in him, confiders them as burning-glasses made of ice; and finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, concludes the Torrid Zone to be habitable, When his mistress had read his letter written in juice of lemon by holding it to the fire, he desires her to read it over a second time by love's flames, When she weeps, he withes it were inward heat that distilled those drops from the limbec. When she is abfent, he is beyond eighty, that is, thirty degrees nearer the pole than when the is with him. His ambitious love is a fire that naturally mounts upwards; his happy love is the beams of heaven, and his unhappy love flames of hell. When it does not let him fleep, it is a flame that sends up no smoke; when it is opposed by counsel and advice, it is a fire that rages the more by the winds blowing upon it. Upon the dying of a tree in which he had cut his loves, he observes that his written flames had burnt up and withered the tree. When he resolves to give over his paffion, he tells us that one burnt like him for ever dreads the fire. His heart is an Etna, that instead of Vulcan's shop, incloses Cupid's forge in it. His endeavouring to drown his love in wine, is throwing oil upon the fire. He would infinuate to his mistress, that the fire of love, like that of the fun, which produces so many living creatures, should not only warm but beget. Love in as the resemblance lies in the ideas orin the words: its foundations are laid partly in falshood, and partly in truth: reason puts in her claim for one half of it, and extravagance for the other. The only province therefore for this kind of wit, is epigram, or those little occasional poems that in their own nature are nothing else but a tissue of epigrams. I cannot conclude this head of mixt wit, without owning that the admirable poet, out of whom I have taken the examples of it, had as much true wit as any author that ever writ; and indeed all other talents of an extraordinary genius, It may be expected, since I am upon this subject, that I should take notice of Mr. Dryden's definition of wit? which with all the deference that is due to the judgment of fo great a man, is not fo properly a definition of wit, as of good writing in general. Wit, as he defines it, is a propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the subject.' If this be a true definition of wit, I am apt to think that Euclid was the greatest wit that ever set pen to paper: it is certain that never was a greater propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the subject, than what that author has made use of in his Elements. I shall only appeal to my reader, if this definition agrees with any notion he has of wit; if it be a true one, I am fure Mr. Dryden was not only a better poet, but a greater wit, than Mr. Cowley; and Virgil a much more facetious man than either Ovid or Martial. Bouhours, whom I look upon to be the most penetrating of all the French critics, has taken pains to shew, that it is impoffible for any thought to be beautiful which is not just, and has not its foundation in the nature of things; that the basis of all wit is truth; and that no thought can be valuable, of which good fenfe is not the groundwork. Boileau has endeavoured to inculcate the same notion in several parts of his writings, both in prose and verse. This is that natural way of writing, that beautiful fimplicity, which we fo much admire in the compositions of the ancients : and which nobody deviates from, but those who want strength of genius to make a thought shine in its own natural beauties. Poets, who want this strength of genius to give that majestic simplicity to nature, which we so much admire in the works of the ancients, are forced to hunt after foreign ornaments, and not to let any piece of wit of what kind foever escape them. I look upon these writers as Goths in poetry, who, like those in architecture, nor being able to come up to the beautiful fimplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have endeavoured to fupply its place with all the extravagances of an irregular fancy. Mr. Dryden makes a very handsome observation, on Ovid's writing a letter from Dido to Æneas, in the following words. Ovid.' says he, speaking of Virgil's fiction of Dido and Æneas, takes it up af another place cooks pleasure at his fire. Some-ter him, even in the same age, and makes an antimes the poet's heart is frozen in every breast, 'cient heroine of Virgil's new-created Dido; dicand fometimes scorched in every eye. Sometimes 'tates a letter for her just before her death to the he is drowned in tears, and burnt in love, like a ' ungrateful fugitive; and, very unluckily for ship set on fire in the middle of the fea. 'himself, is, for measuring a sword with a man • so much fuperior in force to him on the same 'subject. I think I may be judge of this, because 'I have translated both. The famous author of The reader may observe, in every one of these in. stances, that the poet mixes the qualities of fire with those of love; and in the same sentence speaking of it both as a paffion and as real fire, surprises the Art of Love has nothing of his own: he borthe reader with those seeming resemblances or con- ' rows all from a greater master in his own protradictions that make up all the wit in this kind 'feffion, and, which is worse, improves nothing 'which he finds: nature fails him, and being of writing. Mixt wit therefore is a compofition of pun and true wit, and is more or less perfect 'forced to his old shift, he has recourse to witti La cifm. *cism. This passes indeed with his sost admirers, ployed. The thoughts will be rifing of themselves and gives him the preference to Virgil in their * esteem.' Were not I fupported by so great an authority as that of Mr. Dryden, I should not venture to ob"serve, that the taste of most of our English poets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic. He quotes Monfieur Segrais for a threefold distinction of the readers of poetry in the first of which he comprehends the rabble of readers, whom he does not treat 'as fuch with regard to their quality, but to their numbers and the coarseness of their taste. His words are as follows: Segrais has diftinguished the readers of poetry, according to their capacity of judging, into three classes. [He might have faid the fame of writers too, if he had pleased.] In the lowest form he places those whom he calls Les Petits Esprits, fuch things as our upper-gallery audience in a playhoufe; wholike nothing but the husk and rhind of wit, prefer a quibble, a conceit, an epigram, < before folid sense and elegant expression: these are mob-readers. If Virgil and Martial stood *for parliament-men, we know already who would carryit. But though they make the great* est appearance in the field, and cry the loudest, the best on't is they are but a fort of French huguenots, or Dutch boors, brought over in herds, but not naturalized; who have not lands of two pounds per annum in Parnaffus, and therefore are not privileged to poll. Their authors are of the same level, fit to represent them on a mountebank's stage, or to be masters of the ceremonies in a bear-garden: yet these are they who have the most admirers, But it often happens, to their mortification, that as their readers improve their stock of fenfe, as they may by reading better books, and by conversation with men of judgment, they foon forsake ' them." from time to time, though we give them no encouragement; as the toflings and fluctuations of the fea continue feveral hours after the winds are laid. It is to this that I impute my last night's dream or vifion, which formed into one continued allegory the feveral fchemes of wit, whether false, mixed, or tree, that have been the fubject of my late papers. Methought I was transported into a country that was filled with prodigies and enchantments, governed by the goddess of Faithood, and intitled The Region of false Wit. There was nothing in the fields, the woods, and the rivers that appeared natural. Several of the trees bloffomed in leaf-gold, fome of them produced bone-lace, and some of them precious stones. The fountains bubbled in an opera-tune, and were filled with stags, wild-boars, and mermaids, that lived ameng the waters; at the fame time that dolphins and several kinds of fish played upon the banks or took their pastime in the meadows. The birds had many of them golden beaks, and human voices, The flowers perfumed the air with smells of incense, amber-grease, and pulvillios; and were fo interwoven with one another, that they grow up in pieces of embroidery. The winds were filled with fighs and messages of distant lovers. As I was walking to and fro in this enchanted wildernefs, I could not forbear breaking out into foliloquies upon the several wonders which lay before me, when to my great furprise I found there were artificial echoes in every walk, that, by repetitions of certain words which I spoke, agreed with me, or contradicted me, in every thing I faid. In the midit of my conversation with these invisible companions, I discovered in the centre of a very dark grove a monstrous fabric built after the Gothic manner, and covered with innumerable devices in that barbarous kind of fculpture. I immediately went up to it, and found it to be a kind of heathen temple confecrated to the god of Dulness. Upon my entrance, I saw the deity of the place droffed in the habit of a monk, with a book in one hand, and a rattle in the other. Upon his right hand was Industry, with a lamp burning before her; and on his left Caprice, with a monkey fitting on her shoulder. Before his feet there Cstood an altar of a very odd make, which, as I afterwards found, was shaped in that manner to comply with the infcription that furrounded it. Upon the altar there lay several offerings of axes, wings, and eggs, cut in paper, and inscribed with verses. The temple was filled with votaries, who applied themselves to different diversions, as their fancies directed them. In one part of it I saw a regiment of Anagrams, who were continually in motion, turning to the right or to the left, facing about, doubling their ranks, shifting their stations, and throwing themselves into all the figures and countermarches of the moit changeable and perplexed exercise. 'I must not disiniss this subject without observing, that as Mr. Locke, in the paffage abovementioned, has difcovered the most fruitful fource of wit, fo there is another of a quite contrary nature to it, which does likewife branch itseif out into feveral kinds. For not only the resemblance, but the oppofition of ideas, does very often produce wit; as I could thew in several little points, turns, and antithefes, that I may possibly enlarge upon in some future speculation. Perfimilem, cujus, velut ægri fomnia, vang Finguntur fpecies If in a picture, Pifo, you should fee A handfome woman with a fisn's tail, Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds, Wou'd you not laugh, and think the painter mad? Not far from these was a body of Acrostics, made up of very disproportioned persons. It was difpofed into three columns, the officers planting themselves in a line on the left-hand of each column. The officers were all of them at least fix feet high, and made three rows of very proper men; but the common foldiers, who filled up the spaces between the officers, were such dwarfs, cripples, and scarecrows, that one could hardly look upon them without laughing. "There were - behind the Acrostics two or three files of Chronograms, which differed only from the former, as their officers were equipped, like the figure of time, with an hour-glass in one hand, and a fcythe in the other, and took their posts promiscuoufly among the private men whom they commanded. In the body of the temple, and before the very face of the deity, methought I saw the phantom of Tryphiodorus the Lipogrammatist, engaged in a ball with four-and-twenty persons, who pursued him by turns through all the intricacies and labyrinths of a country dance, without being able to overtake him. Observing feveral to be very bufy at the western end of the Temple, I inquired into what they were doing, and found there was in that quarter the great magazine of Rebus's. There were several things of the most different natures tied up in bundles, and thrown upon one another in heaps like faggots, You might behold an anchor, a night-rail, and a hobby-horse, bound up together, One of the workmen seeing me very much furprized, told me, there was an infinite deal of wit in feveral of those bundles, and that he would explain them to me if I pleased. I thanked him for his civility, but told him I was in very great hafte at that time. As I was going out of the Temple, I obferved in one corner of it a cluster of men and women laughing very heartily, and diverting themselves at a game of Crambo. I heard several Double Rhymes as I passed by them, which raised a great deal of mirth. Not far from these was another set of merry people engaged at a diversion, in which the whole jest was to mistake one perfon for another. To give occafion for these ludicrous mistakes, they were divided into pairs, every pair being covered from head to foot with the fame kind of dress, though perhaps there was not the least resemblance in their faces. By this means an old man was sometimes mistaken for a boy, a woman for a man, and a black-a-moor for an European, which very often produced great peals of laughter. These I guessed to be a party of Puns. But being very defirous to get out of this world of magic, which had almost turned my brain, I left the temple; and crossed over the fields that lay about it with all the fpeed I could make. I was not gone far before I heard the found of trumpets and alarms, which feemed to proclaim the march of an enemy; and, as I afterwards found, was in reality what I apprehended it. There appeared at a great distance a very shining light, and, in the midst of it, a person of a most beautiful aspect; her name was Truth. On her righthand there marched a male deity, who bore several quivers on his shoulder, and grasped feveral arrows in his hand. His name was Wit. The approach of these two enemies filled all the territories of False Wit with an unspeakable consternation, infomuch that the goddess of those regions appeared in person upon her frontiers, with the several inferior deities, and the different bodies of forces which I had before seen in the temple, who were now drawn up in array, and prepared to give their foes a warm reception. As the march of the enemy was very flow, it gave time to the several inhabitants who bor dered upon the regions of Falfhood to draw their forces into a body, with a design to stand upon their guard as neuters, and attend the issue of the combat. I must here inform my reader, that the fron tiers of the enchanted region, which I have before described, were inhabited by the species of Mixed Wit, who made a very odd appearance when they were mustered together in an army. There were men whose bodies were stuck full of darts, and women whose eyes were burningglasses; men that had hearts of fire, and women that had breasts of snow. It would be endless to describe several monsters of the like nature, that composed this great army; which immediately fell asunder and divided itself into two parts, the one half throwing themselves behind the banners of Truth, and the others behind those of Falfhood. The goddess of Falshood was of gigantic stature, and advanced fome paces before the front of her army; but as the dazzling light, which flowed from Truth, began to shine upon her, she faded insensibly; insomuch, that in a little space she looked rather like an huge phantom than a real substance. At length, as the goddess of Truth approached still nearer to her, she fell away intirely, and vanished amidst the brightness of her prefence; so that there did not remain the leaft trace or impreffion of her figure in the place where the had been seen. As at the rifing of the fun the constellations grow thin, and the stars go out one after another, till the whole hemifphere is extinguished; such was the vanishing of the goddess: and not only of the goddess herself, but of the whole army that attended her, which sympathized with their leader, and shrunk into nothing, in proportion as the goddess disappeared. At the same time the whole temple funk, the fish berook themselves to the streams, and the wild beasts to the woods, the fountains recovered their murmurs, the birds their voices, the trees their leaves, the flowers their scents, and the whole face of nature its true and genuine appearance. Though I still continued asleep, I fancied myself as it were awakened out of a dream, when I saw this region of prodigies restored to woods and rivers, fields and meadows. Upon the removal of that wild scene of wonders, which had very much disturbed my imagination, I took a full furvey of the perfons of Wit and Truth; for indeed it was impoffible to look upon the first, without feeing the other at the fame time. There was behind them a strong and compact body of figures. The genius of Heroic Poetry appeared with the fword in her hand, and a laurel on her head. Tragedy was crowned with cypress, and covered with robes dipped in blood. Satire had smiles in her look, and a dagger under her garment. Rhetoric was known by her thunderbolt; and Comedy by her mask. After feveral other figures, Epigram marched up in the rear, who had been posted there at the beginning of the expedition, that he might not revolt to the enemy, whom he was suspected to favour in his heart. I was very much awed and delighted with the appearance of the God of Wit; there was fomething so amiable, and yet so piercing in his looks, as inspired me at once with love and terror. As I was gazing on him, to my unspeakable joy, he took a quiver of arrows from his shoulder, in order to make me a present of it'; but as I was reaching out my hand to receive it of him, I knocked it against a chair, and by that means awaked, C No 1 T THE most improper things we commit in the conduct of our lives, we are led into by the force of fashion. Instances might be given, in which a prevailing custom makes us act against the rules of nature, law, and common sense; but at present I small confine my confideration of the cffect it has upon men's minds, by looking into our behaviour when it is the fashion to go into mourning. The custom of representing the grief we have for the lofs of the dead by our habits, certainly had its rife from the real forrow of fuch as were too much distressed to take the proper care they ought of their drefs. By degrees it prevailed, that fuch as had this inward oppreffion upon their minds, made an apology for not joining with the reft of the world in their ordinary diversions by dress fuited to their condition. This therefore was at first assumed by fuch only as were under real distress; to whom it was a relief that they had nothing about them so light and gay as to be irksome to the gloom and melancholy of their inward reflections, or that might misrepresent them to others. In process of time this laudable diftinction of the forrowful was lost, and mourning is now worn by heirs and widows. You fee nothing but magnificence and folemnity in the equipage of the relict, and an air of release from fervitude in the pomp of a fon who has lost a wealthy father. This fashion of forrow is now become a generous part of the ceremonial between princes and fovereigns, who in the language of all nations are stiled brothers to each other, and put on the purple upon the death of any potentate with whom they live in amity. Courtiers, and all who with themselves fuch, are immediately seized with grief from head to foot upon this disaster to their prince; fo that one may know, by the very buckles of a gentleman-usher, what degree of friendship any deceased monarch maintained with the court to which he belongs. A good courtier's habit and behaviour is hieroglyphical on these occafions; he deals much in whispers, and you may fee he dresses according to the best intelligence. The general affectation among men, of appearing greater than they are, makes the whole world run into the habit of the court. You fee the lady, who the day before was as various as a rainbow, upon the time appointed for beginning to mourn, as dark as a cloud. This humour does not prevail only on those whose fortunes can fupport any change in their equipage, not on those only whose incomes demand the wantonnefs of new appearances; but on fuch also who have just enough to clothe them. An old acquaintance of mine, of ninety pounds a year, who has naturally the vanity of being a man of fashion deep at his heart, is very much put to it to bear the mortality of princes. He made a new black fuit upon the death of the King of Spain, he turned it for the King of Portugal, and he now keeps his chamber while it is scouring for the emperor. He is a good economist in his extravagance, and makes only a fresh Ilack button upon his iron-gray fuit for any potentate of small territories; he indeed adds his crape hatband for a prince whofse exploits he has admired in the Gazette. But whatever compli. ments may be made on these occafions, the true mourners are the mercers, filkmen, lacemen, and milliners. A prince of a merciful and royal difposition would reflect with great anxiety upon the profpect of his death, if he considered what numbers would be reduced to misery by that accident only; who would think it of moment enough to direct, that in the notification of his departure, the honour done to him might be restrained to those of the houshold of the prince to whom it should be signified. He would think a general mourning to be in a less degree the same ceremony which is practised in barbarous nations, of killing their slaves to attend the obfequies of their kings. I had been wonderfully at a loss for many months together, to guess at the character of a man who came now and then to our coffee-house; he ever ended a news-paper with this reflection, • Well, I see all the foreign princes are in good health.' If you asked, Pray Sir, what fays the Postman from Vienna? he ant anfwered, • Make us thankful, the German princes are all well." What does he say from Barcelona? He does not speak but that the country agrees very well with ' the new queen.' After very much inquiry, I found this man of universal loyalty was a wholefale dealer in filks and ribbons; his way is, it feems, if he hires a weaver, or workman, to have it inserted in his articles, 'That all this shall be ' well and truly performed, provided no foreign ' potentate shall depart this life within the time abovementioned. It happens in all public mournings, that the many trades which depend upon our habits, are during that folly either pinched with present want, or terrified with the apparent approach of it. All the atonement which men can make for wanton expences, which is a fort of insulting the scarcity under which others labour, is, that the superfluities of the wealthy give supplies to the necessities of the poor; but, instead of any other good arifing from the affec. tation of being in courtly habits of mourning, all order seems to be destroyed by it; and the true honour, which one court does to another on that occafion, loses its force and efficacy. When a foreign minister beholds the court of a nation, which flourishes in riches and plenty, lay aside, upon the loss of his master, all marks of splendor and magnificence, though the head of such a joyful people, he will conceive a greater idea of the honour done his master, than when he sees the generality of the people in the fame habit. When one is afraid to ask the wife of a tradesman whom the has lost of her family; and after some preparation endeavours to know whom the mourns for; how ridiculous is it to hear her explain herself, that we have lost one of the house of Austria? Princes are elevated so highly above the rest of mankind, that it is a presumptuous distinction to take a part in honours done to their memories, except we have authority for it, by being related in a particular manner to the court which pays that veneration to their friendship, and feems to express on such an occafion the sense of the uncertainty of human life in general, by affuming the habit of forrow, though in the full possession of triumph and royalty. R No. N° 65. TUESDAY, MAY 15. Now for Mrs. Harriot; she laughs at obedience to an absent mother, whose tenderness Busy describes to be very exquifite, for "that the is fo "pleased with finding Harriot again, that the cannot chide her for being out of the way." Hor. Sat. I. x. 90. This witty daughter, and fine lady, has so little Difcipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras. Demetrius and Tigellius, know your place; A FTER having at large explained what wit is, and described the falfe appearances of it, all that labour seems but an useless inquiry, without some time be spent in confidering the application of it. The seat of wit, when one speaks as a man of the town and the world, is the playhouse; I shall therefore fill this paper with reflections upon the use of it in that place. The application of wit in the theatre has as strong an affect upon the manners of our gentlemen, as the taste of it has upon the writings of our authors. It may, perhaps, look like a very presumptuous work, though not foreign from the duty of a Spectator, to tax the writings of such as have long had the general applause of a nation; but I shall always make reason, truth, and nature, the measures of praise and dispraise; if those are for me, the generality of opinion is of no consequence against me; if they are against me, the general opinion cannot long support me. L Without further preface, I am going to look into some of our most applauded plays, and fee whether they deserve the figure they at present bear in the imaginations of men, or not. In reflecting upon these works, I shall chiefly dwell upon that for which each respective play is most celebrated. The present paper shall be employed upon Sir Fopling Flutter. The received character of this play is, that it is the pattern of genteel comedy. Dorimant and Harriot are the characters of greatest consequence: and if these are low and mean, the reputation of the play is very unjust, I will take for granted, that a fine gentleman should be honest in his actions, and refined in his language. Instead of this, our hero in this piece is a direct knave in his designs, and a clown in his language, Bellair is his admirer and friend; in return of which, because he is forsooth a greater wit than his faid friend, he thinks it reasonable to perfuade him to marry a young lady, whose virtue, he thinks, will last no longer than till she is a wife, and then she cannot but fall to his share, as he is an irresistible fine gentleman. The falfhood to Mrs. Loveit, and the barbarity of triumphing over her anguish for losing him, is another instance of his honesty, as well as his goodnature. As to his fine language; he calls the orange-woman, who it seems is inclined to grow fat, "An over-grown jade, with a flasket of guts "before her;" and salutes her with a pretty phrafe of, How now, double tripe?" Upon the mention of a country gentlewoman, whom he knows nothing of, no one can imagine why, he "will lay his life the is some awkward ill"fashioned country toad, who, not having above " four dozen of hairs on her head, has adorned "her baldness with a large white fruz, that she " may look sparkishly in the fore-front of the " king's box at an old play." Unnatural mixture of senseless common-place! As to the generosity of his temper, he tells his poor footman. "If he did not wait better" he would turn him away, in the infolent phrafe of "I'll uncafe you." respect for this good woman, that the ridicules her air in taking leave, and cries, "In what "struggle is my poor mother yonder? See, sfee "her head tottering, her eyes staring, and her un"der-lip trembling." But all this is atoned for, because " the has more wit than is usual in her " sex, and as much malice, though she is as wild. "as you would with her, and has a demureners " in her looks that makes it so surprising!" Then to recommend her as a fit spouse for his hero, the poet makes her speak her sense of marriage very ingeniously; "I think," says she, "I might be brought to endure him, and that is all a reasonable woman should expect in an husband." It is, methinks, unnatural that we are not made to understand how the that was bred under a filly pious old mother, that would never trust her out of her fight, came to be so polite. It cannot be denied, but that the negligence of every thing, which engages the attention of the sober and valuable part of mankind, appears very well drawn in this piece; but it is denied, that it is necessary to the character of a fine gentleman, that he should in that manner trample upon all order and decency. As for the character of Dorimant, it is more of a coxcomb than that of Fopling. He says of one of his companions, that a good correspondence between them is their mutual interest. Speaking of that friend, he declares, their being much together" makes the "women think the better of his understanding, " and judge more favourably of my reputation. "It makes him pass upon fome for a man of very good sense, and me upon others for a very " civil person." This whole celebrated piece is a perfect contradiction to good manners, good sense, and common honesty; and as there is nothing in it but what is built upon the ruin of virtue and innocence, according to the notion of merit in this comedy, I take the shoemaker to be, in reality, the fine gentleman of the play; for it seems he is an Atheist, if we may depend upon his character as given by the orange-woman, who is herself far from being the lowest in the play. She says of a fine man, who is Dorimant's companion, there " is not fuch another heathen in the town, except "the shoemaker." His pretenfion to be the hero of the Drama appears still more in his own description of his way of living with his lady. "There is," says he, "never a man in town lives "more like a gentleman with his wife than I do; "I never mind her motions; she never inquires "into mine. We speak to one another civilly, "hate one another heartily; and because it is "vulgar to lie and foak together, we have each " of us our several fettle-bed." That of foaking together is as good as if Dorimant had spoken it himself; and, I think, since he puts human nature in as ugly a form as the circumstance will bear, and is a stanch unbeliever, he is very much wronged in having no part of the good fortune bestowed in the last act. To speak plainly of this whole work, I think nothing but being loft to a fenfe of innocence and virtue can make any one fee this comedy, without observing more frequent occafion to move fuirom |