Lucr. Oh, they’re the greatest Babelards in Nature.
Isab. They call us easy and fond, and charge us with all weakness; but look into their Actions of Love, State or War, their roughest business, and you shall find ’em sway’d by some who have the luck to find their [Foibles]; witness my Father, a Man reasonable enough, till drawn away by doting Love and Religion: what a Monster my young Mother makes of him! flatter’d him first into Matrimony, and now into what sort of Fool or Beast she pleases to make him.
Lucr. I wonder she does not turn him to Christianity; methinks a Conventicle should ill agree with her Humour.
Isab. Oh, she finds it the only way to secure her from his Suspicion, which if she do not e’er long give him cause for, I am mistaken in her Humour.—
Enter L. Knowell and Leander.
But see your Mother and my Cousin Leander, who seems, poor man, under some great Consternation, for he looks as gravely as a Lay-Elder conducting his Spouse from a Sermon.
L. Kno. Oh, fy upon’t. See, Mr. Fancy, where your Cousin and my Lucretia are idling: Dii boni, what an insupportable loss of time’s this?
Lean. Which might be better imploy’d, if I might instruct ’em, Madam.
L. Kno. Ay, Mr. Fancy, in Consultation with the Antients.—Oh the delight of Books! when I was of their age, I always imploy’d my looser Hours in reading—if serious, ’twas Tacitus, Seneca, Plutarch’s Morals, or some such useful Author; if in an Humour gay, I was for Poetry, Virgil, Homer or Tasso. Oh that Love between Renaldo and [Armida], Mr. Fancy! Ah the Caresses that fair Corcereis gave, and received from the young Warrior, ah how soft, delicate and tender! Upon my Honour I cannot read them in the Excellence of their Original Language, without I know not what Emotions.
Lean. Methinks ’tis very well in our Mother Tongue, Madam.