Page:A Series of Plays on the Passions Volume 3.pdf/208

176

Walt. Nay, you who have met with so many goddesses and creatures of perfection in the world, why did not you marry, Brother? I who could light upon nothing better than women—mere women; every one of them too with some fault or failing belonging to her, as obvious as those white hairs that now look from under your peruke, was it any marvel that I did not marry?

Bar. Had your wife possessed as many faults as you do wrinkles on your forehead, you would have been the better for her; she would have saved thee, as I said before, from brutification.

Walt. And yours would have saved you from dupification, dotification, and as many 'fications besides, as an old sentimental, hypocritical, greedy Dulcinea, can fasten on a rhyme-writing beau, who is stepping most unwillingly, with his lace-cloaked hose, over that ungracious line of division, that marks out his grand climacteric.

Bar. Hypocritical! greedy! you don't know the delicacy of her mind: nothing can be more tender, more refined, more disinterested than her attachment to me. You don't understand her.

Walt. Perhaps I don't understand the attachments of the fair sex now-a-days. An old rich neighbour of mine informed me the other night that he is going to marry his poor friend Spendall's youngest daughter, who has actually fallen in love with him; and nothing, as he tells me, almost in your own words, can be more tender,