watch over the girls. Sir Tunbelly comes up with his people, armed with guns, pitchforks, scythes, and clubs, in no amiable mood, and wants to know the name of his visitor. "Till I know your name, I shall not ask you to come into my house; and when I know you name 'tis six to four I don't ask you neither."1 He is like a watchdog growling and looking at the calves of an intruder. But he presently learns that this intruder is his future son-in-law; he utters some exclamations, and makes his excuses. "Cod's my life! I ask your lordship's pardon ten thousand times. (To a servant.) Here, run in a-doors quickly. Get a Scotch-coal fire in the great parlour; set all the Turkeywork chairs in their places; get the great brass candlesticks out, and be sure stick the sockets full of laurel. Run! . . . And do you hear, run away to nurse, bid her let Miss Hoyden loose again, and if it was not shifting-day, let her put on a clean tucker, quick!" The pretended son-in-law wants to marry Hoyden straight off. "Not so soon neither that's shooting my girl before you bid her stand. . . . Besides, my wench's wedding-gown is not come home yet." The other suggests that a speedy marriage will save money. Spare money? says the father, " Udswoons, I'll give my wench a wedding dinner, though I go to grass with the king of Assyria for't. Ah! poor girl, she'll be scared out of her wits on her wedding-night; for, honestly speaking, she does not know a man from a woman but by his beard and his breeches." Foppington, the real son-in-law, arrives. Sir Tunbelly, taking Hoyden proposes

him for an impostor, calls him a dog;

Vanbrugh's Relapse, iii. 3.

8 lbid. iii. 5.

2 Ibid. ▲ Ibid.

to drag him in the horse-pond; they bind him hand and foot, and thrust him into the dog-kennel; Sir Tunbelly puts his fist under his nose, and threatens to knock his teeth down his throat. Afterwards, having discovered the impostor, he says, "My lord, will you cut his throat? or shall I? . . . Here, give me my dog-whip. . . . Here, here, here, let me beat out his brains, and that will decide all." He raves, and wants to fall upon Tom Fashion with his fists. Such

is the country gentleman, of high birth and a farmer, boxer and drinker, brawler and beast. There steams up from all these scenes a smell of cooking, the noise of riot, the odour of a dunghill.

Like father like child. What a candid creature is Miss Hoyden! She grumbles to herself, "It's well I have a husband a-coming, or, ecod, I'd marry the baker; I would so! Nobody can knock at the gate, but presently I must be locked up; and here's the young greyhound bitch can run loose about the house all the day long, she can; 'tis very well." 2 When the nurse tells her her future husband has arrived, she leaps for joy, and kisses the old woman. "O Lord! I'll go put on my laced smock, though I'm whipped till the blood run down my heels for't."" Tom comes himself, and asks her if she will be his wife. "Sir, I never disobey my father in anything but eating of green gooseberries. But your father wants to wait . . . "a whole week." "A week!-Why I shall be an old woman by that time." 4 I cannot give all her answers. There is the spirit of a goat behind her kitchen-talk. She marries Tom secretly on the spot, and the chaplain

"2

wishes them many children. Ecod," she says, “with all my heart! the more the merrier, I say; ha! nurse!"1 But Lord Foppington, her real intended, turns up, and Tom makes off. Instantly her plan is formed. She bids the nurse and chaplain hold their tongues. "If you two will be sure to hold your tongues, and not say a word of what's past, I'll e'en marry this lord too." What," says nurse, "two husbands, my dear?" "Why, you had three, good nurse, you may hold your tongue." She nevertheless takes a dislike to the lord, and very soon; he is not well made, he hardly gives her any pocket-money; she hesitates between the two. "If I leave my lord, I must leave my lady too; and when I rattle about the streets in my coach, they'll only say, There goes mistress-mistress-mistress what? What's this man's name I have married, nurse?" Squire Fashion." "Squire Fashion is it?-Well, 'Squire, that's better than nothing.3. . . Love him! why do you think I love him, nurse? ecod, I would not care if he were hanged, so I were but once married to him!-Nothat which pleases me, is to think what work I'll make when I get to London; for when I am a wife and a lady both, nurse, ecod, I'll flaunt it with the best of 'em." But she is cautious all the same. She knows that her father has his dog's whip handy, and that he

"4

1 Vanbrugh's Relapse, iv. 4. The character of the nurse is excellent. Tom Fashion thanks her for the training she has given Hoyden: "Alas, all I can boast of is, I gave her pure good milk, and so your honour would have said, an you had seen how the poor thing sucked it. -Eh! God's blessing on the sweet face on't! how it used to hang at this poor teat, and suck and squeeze, and kick and sprawl it would, till the belly on't was so full, it would drop off like a leech." This is good, even after Juliet's nurse in Shakspeare.

2 Ibid. iv. 6.

3 Ibid. v. 5.

4 Ibid. iv. 1.