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214 WILLIAM CDNGREVE [ACT i<br />
there are some set out in their true colours, both men and<br />
women. I can show you pride, folly, affectation, wantonness,<br />
inconstancy, covetousncss, dissimulation, malice, and ignorance,<br />
all in one piece. Then I can show you lying, foppery,<br />
vanity, cowardice, bragging, lechery, impotence, and ugliness<br />
in another piece; and yet one of these is a celebrated<br />
beauty, and t'other a professed beau. I have paintings too,<br />
some pleasant enough.<br />
Mrs. Frail. Come, let's hear 'cm.<br />
Scan. Why, I have a beau in a bagnio, cupping for a<br />
complexion, and sweating for a shape.<br />
Mrs. Frail. So.<br />
Scan. Then I have a lady burning brandy in a cellar with<br />
a hackney coachman.<br />
Mrs. Frail. D devil! Well, but that story is not true.<br />
Scan. I have some hieroglyphics too; I have a lawyer with<br />
a hundred hands, two heads, and but one face; a divine<br />
with two faces, and one head; and I have a soldier with his<br />
brains in his belly, and his heart where his head should be.<br />
Mrs. Frail. And no head?<br />
Scan. No head.<br />
Mrs. Frail. Pooh, this is all invention. Have you ne'er a<br />
poet?<br />
Scan. Yes, I have a poet weighing words, and selling<br />
praise for praise, and a critic picking his pocket. I have<br />
another large piece too, representing a school; where there<br />
are hu^e-proportioned critics, with lonp wigs, laced coats,<br />
Steenkirk cravats, 4 and terrible faces; with catcalls in their<br />
hands, and horn-books about their necks. I have many more<br />
of this kind, very well painted as you shall see.<br />
Mrs. Frail. Well, I'll come, if it be but to disprove you.<br />
Re-enter JEREMY.<br />
Jer. Sir, here's the steward again from your father.<br />
Val. I'll come to him.—Will you give me leave? I'll wait<br />
on vou again presently.<br />
Mrs. Frail. No, I'll be gone. Come, who squires me to the<br />
Exchange? B I must call my sister Foresight there.<br />
4 The fashionable neckcloth of The day, so called frnrn the bartlr nf that name,<br />
which was fought August 3, 1692, when the English under William HI were<br />
defeated. It was arranged with graceful carelessness, pretending ID imiiate the<br />
haste with which the French generals rushed into battle, they not having had<br />
time In tie their neckcloths.<br />
5 Sec note ante, p. 83.
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