Page:Dramas 2.pdf/386

374

imagination in subjection to plain common sense—Ay, that, I think, is the phrase for the paramount virtue you now so decidedly profess—plain common sense.

A virtue, setting professions aside, of which there is mighty little in this garden at present, excepting some little scantlings that may, perhaps, belong to myself.—A truce with all this sparring! Cannot one person like poetry and another prose, as one likes moor-fowl and another mutton, without offence?

No, not even so, Lady Shrewdly, if the moor-fowl be cooked by one's neighbour, and the mutton by one's self.

And Mr. Clermont may add, that if the morsel of one's own cooking has been honoured by the approval of an epicurean palate, it were treason to dispute its superiority.

No more of this, foolish child!—Go into the house, I beseech you, and look for my pocket-book, which I have left upon some table or other.