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tentions. He is called away, and his friends discuss him. "He's handsome," says Dorimont, "well-bred, and by much the most tolerable of all the young men that do not abound in wit." "Ever well dressed," rejoins Medley, always complaisant, and seldom impertinent; you and he are grown very intimate, I see." "It is our mutual interest to be so: it makes the women think better of his understanding, and judge more favourably of my reputation: it makes him pass upon some for a man of very good sense, and I upon others for a very civil person,"

Thus we see that, in the society of the Restoration, it was accepted as a law of nature that wit and morality could not go together; that a rake must necessarily be a man of parts, and a clean-living man a fool.

Emilia, the lady-love of Bellair, is worthy of him in her virtue and discretion. Dorimont has vainly endeavoured to subdue her, but still hopes for success when she is married. Meanwhile, Dorimont is engaged to Belinda, whom he has met, masked, at the play, on condition that, in her presence, he insults her friend and his mistress, Mrs. Lovitt, as a proof of his love. To carry out this gentlemanly design, he has written a note to Mrs. Lovitt, appointing to call upon her in the afternoon; and while, preparatory to his visit, Belinda agrees to excite Mrs. Lovitt's jealousy, and thus afford him an excuse for his insults, and he undertakes to represent himself as resentful of her attentions to Sir Fopling Flutter, though he very well knows that she hates him.

Act II. We now find the elder Bellair in town, with the intention of marrying his son to the fair and wealthy Harriet Woodvil. By a strange contretemps, he has taken lodgings in the same house with Emilia, his son's lady

love, of whom he himself becomes enamoured. The elder Bellair is a country squire of fifty-five, and his suit to Emilia he presses in rustic fashion, applying rough names to her affectionately, and swearing, "a-dod," that she is a beauty and a rogue. So the plot thickens between the two Bellairs and Emilia, and an amusing game of crosspurposes is played. Meantime, Belinda, in pursuance of her compact, calls on Mrs. Lovitt, and stirs up her jealous wrath; Dorimont enters, and a coarse scene follows, in which this "man of mode" wins the hand of Belinda by his vulgar insolence to his discarded mistress.

Act III. From a conversation between Harriet and her woman, Bury, we learn that the former is by no means the pattern gentlewoman her aunt imagines; and that she has come to London from no desire to marry Bellair, but from a wish to indulge in its dissipations. She confesses to have seen the fascinating Dorimont, and to have been absolutely charmed by him. Young Bellair enters; and after some sparring they agree that they will not marry one another, but for the present will amuse their parents with a pretended engagement. The scene changes to a crush at Lady Townley's, where Sir Fopling Flutter appears, and Dorimont and Medley befool him to the great entertainment of the men and women of fashion present. Next we pass to the fashionable promenade of the Mall, where the gallants muster in great force; Dorimont attends sedulously upon Harriet, while Mrs. Lovitt and Sir Fopling Flutter indulge in a mild flirtation. In the evening there is to be a dance at Lady Townley's, at which Dorimont will be present under the name of Mr. Courtage -in order not to alarm Lady Woodvil-and intends to prosecute his suit to the wild, witty, lovesome, and beautiful Harriet.

Act IV. Country dance at Lady Townley's. The pretended Mr. Courtage produces a favourable impression on Lady Woodvil, while old Bellair dances attendance upon Emilia. Sir Fopling and masquers enter; and the scene is one of wild dissipation, which does not close until dawn of day. Old Bellair retires to his wine, and Dorimont steals away to keep an appointment with Belinda, who, with delightful modesty, has promised to visit him in his lodgings at five in the morning. We are introduced to his lodgings just as Belinda is leaving, having obtained Dorimont's promise that he will give up Mrs. Lovitt. Sir Fopling and a party of roysterers suddenly break in upon them; and with difficulty Belinda escapes by a back-stair into a sedan-chair, which, as she, in her confusion, forgets to give any instructions, is set down at the accustomed spot, near Mrs. Lovitt's door in the Mall. As Belinda is. seen by Mrs. Lovitt's maid, she must needs pretend that she has come to pay her a visit, and accounts for the early hour by saying that some Welsh cousins had pressed her to accompany them to buy flowers and fruit at Covent Garden. She has bribed the chairmen to say that they took her up in the Strand, near the well-known Market, which even then, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, had acquired a reputation.

Act V. Belinda's quick invention is accepted by her friend; but Dorimont suddenly makes his appearance, and, much agitated, she retires into another room. His object is to recover his influence over Mrs. Lovitt, so that she may compensate him for her studied neglect of him in the Mall by publicly insulting Sir Fopling before his friends. Belinda breaks in upon them, and hurls reproaches at Dorimont, of which Mrs. Lovitt partially

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guesses the meaning. We pass on to Lady Townley's house, and discover that Smirk, a domestic chaplain, has, with her Ladyship's sanction, married Emilia to Bellair the younger. When old Bellair and others enter, he is hurriedly concealed in a cupboard. Old Bellair has everything prepared for his marriage to Emilia, and Dorimont has contrived to bind his lofty self to nuptials with the witty and lovesome Harriet. But when Smirk, the chaplain, is released from his cupboard to perform the ceremony for the elder Bellair and Emilia, he refuses, on the ground that he has already married the young lady once that morning. The dénouement provokes much laughter; old Bellair comes in for a good deal of ridicule; and the young couple are duly forgiven.

As a picture of "high life," sub Carolo Secundo rege, "The Man of Mode" is not without its value; but the coarseness of its tone and the corruption of its atmosphere point to the unhealthy condition of Society which then obtained. Love is burlesqued and degraded; marriage laughed at; woman's virtue and man's honour are represented as the dreams of fastidious minds; and the dramatist seems wholly unable to perceive that the hero on whom he has lavished so much pains, whom he so triumphantly puts forward as the mirror of fashion and the ideal of a gentleman, is nothing after all but a libertine and a snob. If a man is to be judged by the company he seeks, we ought to judge a playwright by the heroes he invents.

APPENDIX.

CHAPTER III.

P. 143. Arrowsmith's comedy, "The Reformation," was published in 1673. It was originally produced at the Duke's Theatre. Downes, in his Roscius Anglicanus, says: "The Reformation in the play being the reverse to the laws of morality and virtue, it quickly made its exit to make way for a moral one," i.e., Davenant's alteration of "Macbeth." It seems to have been partly directed against Dryden.

P. 144. Sir Richard Steele's criticism of Banks's tragedy, "The Unhappy Favourite," is as follows: "There is in it not one good line, and yet it is a play which was never seen without drawing tears from some part of the audience: a remarkable instance that the soul is not to be moved by words, but things; for the incidents in this drama are laid together so happily that the spectator makes the play for himself, by the force which the circumstance has upon his imagination. Thus, in spite of the most dry discourses, and expressions almost ridiculous with respect to propriety, it is impossible for one unprejudiced to see it untouched with pity. I must confess this