passes for an argument to prove the existence of such a place. If there be no one image which rises to the height of the sublime, yet the confluence and assemblage of them all produces an effect equal to the grandest poetry. Xerxes' army that drank up whole rivers from their numbers may stand for single Achilles. Epicure Mammon is the most determined offspring of the author. It has the whole matter and copy of the father, eye, nose, lip, the trick of his frown: It is just such a swaggerer as contemporaries have described old Ben to be. Meercraft, Bobadil, the Host of the New Inn, have all his “image and superscription : " but Mammon is arrogant pretension personified. Sir Sampson Legend, in Love for Love, is such another lying overbearing character, but he does not come up to Epicure Mammon. What a “tow'ring bravery " there is in his sensuality! He affects no pleasure under a Sultan. It is as if “Egypt with Assyria strove in luxury.")

XXXIX.

THE NEW INN; OR, THE LIGHT HEART:

A COMEDY.

BY THE SAME.

Lovel discovers to the Host of the New Inn his Love for

the LADY FRANCES, und his reasons for concealing

his Passion from her.
Lov. There is no life on earth, but being in love !
There are no studies, no delights, no business,
No intercourse, or trade of sense, or soul,
But what is love! I was the laziest creature,
The most unprofitable sign of nothing,
The veriest drone, and slept away my life
Beyond the dormouse, till I was in love !
And now I can out-wake the nightingale,
Out-watch an usurer, and out-walk him too,
Stalk like a ghost that haunted 'bout a treasure ; 10
And all that fancied treasure, it is love!

Host. But is your name Love-ill, sir, or Love-well?
I would know that.

Lov. I do not know it myself,
Whether it is. But it is love hath been
The hereditary passion of our house,
My gentle host, and, as I guess, my friend ;
The truth is, I have loved this lady long,
And impotently, with desire enough,
But no success : for I have still forborne
To express it in my person to her.

Host. How then I

Lov. I have sent her toys, verses, and anagrams, 10 Trials of wit, mere trifles, she has commended, But knew not whence they came, nor could she guess.

Host. This was a pretty riddling way of wooing !

Lov. I oft have been too in her company,
And look'd upon her a whole day, admir'd her,
Loved her, and did not tell her so; loved still,
Look'd still, and loved ; and loved, and look'd, and

sigh'd ;
But, as a man neglected, I came off,
And unregarded.
Host. Could you blame her, sir,

20 When you were silent and not said a word ? Lov. O but I loved the more ; and she might

read it Best in my silence, had she been Host.

as melancholic, As you are. Pray you, why would you stand mute, sir ?

Lov. Othereon hangs a history, mine host. Did you ever know or hear of the Lord Beaufort, Who serv'd so bravely in France ? I was his page, And, ere he died, his friend! I follow'd him First in the wars, and in the times of peace 30 I waited on his studies ; which were right. He had no Arthurs, nor no Rosicleers, No Knights of the Sun, nor Amadis de Gauls, Primalions, and Pantagruels, public nothings ; Abortives of the fabulous dark cloister, Sent out to poison courts, and infest manners : But great Achilles', Agamemnon's acts, Sage Nestor's counsels, and Ulysses' sleights, Tydides' fortitude, as Homer wrought them In his immortal fancy, for examples

40 Of the heroic virtue. Or, as Virgil,

ܪ

That master of the Epic Poem, limn'd
Pious Æneas, his religious prince,
Bearing his aged parent on his shoulders,
Rapt from the flames of Troy, with his young son.
And these he brought to practise and to use.
He gave me first my breeding, I acknowledge,
Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,
That open-handed sit upon the clouds,
And press the liberality of heaven
Down to the laps of thankful men ! But then, 10
The trust committed to me at his death
Was above all, and left so strong a tie
On all my powers as time shall not dissolve,
Till it dissolve itself, and bury all :
The care of his brave heir and only son !
Who being a virtuous, sweet, young, hopeful lord,
Hath cast his first affections on this lady.
And though I know, and may presume

her such,
As, out of humour, will return no love,
And therefore might indifferently be made 20
The courting-stock for all to practise on,
As she doth practise on us all to scorn :
Yet, out of a religion to my charge,
And debt profess'd, I have made a self-decree,
Ne'er to express my person though my passion
Burn me to cinders.
LOVEL, in the presence of the LADY FRANCES, the young

LORD BEAUFORT, and other Guests of the New Inn, defines what Love is. Lov. What else Is love, but the most noble, pure affection Of what is truly beautiful and fair, Desire of union with the thing beloved ?

30 Beau. I have read somewhere, that man and woman Were, in the first creation, both one piece, And being cleft asunder, ever since Love was an appetite to be rejoin'd.

Lov. It is a fable of Plato's, in his banquet, And utter'd there by Aristophanes.

Host. 'Twas well remember'd here, and to good

use.

But on with your description what love is.