Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/65

Rh agreeable writer, whose plays supply truer and happier illustrations of the manners and customs of the time than any other contemporary dramatist, has left us a comedy called "Epsom Wells," in which, notwithstanding the sneer of Dryden about his "hungry Epsom-prose," he has contrived to interest us by peopling the place with the usual frequenters out of term-time; men of wit and pleasure; young ladies of wit, beauty, and fortune; with a parson and a country justice; with two cheating, sharking cowardly bullies; with two rich citizens of London and their wives, one a comfit-maker, the other a haberdasher, and both cuckolds ("Epsom water-drinking" with other ladies of pleasure); with hectors from Covent Garden, a constable, a Dogberry-like watch, and two country fiddlers—in short, by picturing "the freedom of Epsom" as it existed in an age of easy virtue.

The Derby and the Oaks, the races which have rendered Epsom so famous, and our not less celebrated Tattenham Corner, were then unknown; but the King's Head and the New Inn, Clay Hill and Mawse's Garden, were favourite names, full of attractions to London apprentices, sighing to see their indentures at an end, and Epsom no longer excluded from their places of resort. The waters