"Sir, said the lady, make it the business of the audience first to be pleased with instruction, and then I shall allow you it to be the chief end of plays.
"But, suppose, madam, said he, that I grant what you lay down.
"Then sir, answered she, you must allow that whatever plays most exactly answer this aforesaid end are most exact plays. Now I can instance you many plays, as all those by Shakespeare and Johnson, and the most of Mr. Dryden's which you criticks quarrel at as irregular, which nevertheless still continue to please the audience and are a continual support to the Theatre. There is very little of your unity of time in any of them, yet they never fail to answer the proposed end very successfully.... Certainly, these rules are ill understood, or our nature has changed since they were made, for we find they have no such effects now as they had formerly. For instance, I am told the 'Double Dealer' and 'Plot and no Plot' are two very exact plays, as you call them, yet all their unity of time, place and action neither pleased the audience nor got the poets money. A late play called 'Beauty in distress,'[362] in which the author no doubt sweat as much in confining the whole play to one scene, as the scene-drawers should, were it to be changed a hundred times, this play had indeed a commendatory copy from Mr. Dryden, but I think he had better have altered the scene and pleased the audience; in short, had these plays been a little more exact as you call it, they had all been exactly damn'd."
Further, some traits of character almost worthy of Fielding are to be remarked in the course of the tale, though, it is true, it grows confused towards the end, and touches the melodramatic in the same way as Nash's novel. Thus the above conversation is interrupted by the entrance of the coquette Emilia, long before loved by Peregrine who had vainly asked for her hand. "Peregrine would have answered, but a pluck by the sleeve obliged him to turn from Selinda to entertain a lady mask'd who had given him the nudg. He presently knew her to be Emilia, who whispered him in the ear: I find sir, what Guyomar said just now is very true:
That love which first took root will first decay;
That of a fresher date will longer stay.
Peregrine tho surprised was pleased with her pretty reprimand, being delivered without any anger, but in murmuring, complaining accents, which never fail to move ..."
Thus again, Peregrine goes to the famous St. Bartholomew fair, which was still, as in Ben Jonson's time, a place of general meeting. "Lord C." is there discovered, who had a masked lady with him; she pulls off her mask and smiles at Peregrine, who again recognizes Emilia. The mixed impressions that this sight makes on the hero are analysed in these terms:
"He took a secret pride in rivalling so great a man, and it confirmed his great opinion of Emilia's beauty to see her admir'd by so accomplish't a person and absolute a courtier as my lord C. These considerations augmenting his love increased his jealousy also, and every little familiarity that my Lord us'd, heightened his love to her and hatred to his Lordship; he lov'd her for being admir'd by my Lord, yet hated my Lord for loving her."
The vain woman for her part is sufficiently interested in Peregrine to put a stop to a dawning passion which she discovers in him for another woman, and which might have ended in a marriage; but not at any rate enough to repay his sacrifice by true love. Emilia's artifices are studied with much skill, and the author seems, here too, to be imitating nature, and recounting personal experiences: "Quorum pars magna fui," as he says on the title-page of his book. At one time Emilia feels that Peregrine is escaping her; what does she conceive will keep him attached to her? At such a crisis she is shrewd enough not to resort to vulgar coquetries, feeling that they are no longer in season. With excellent instinct she guesses that the only means of recovering possession of honest Peregrine is to appeal to his good heart: instead of promising him her favours, she asks of him a service. Peregrine would have despised himself had he not rendered it, and it is only afterwards that he perceives his chain is by this means newly forged. Emilia has fixed ideas on the usefulness of men of this sort, and puts them very clearly before Lord C. Only unsubstantial favours must ever be granted them, in order that the favours by which they see their rivals profit, may not give them too gloomy suspicions. They are very useful for defending publicly their mistress' honour; they must if possible be men of a lofty and refined mind, for only such persons are simple enough to feed their passions on nothing.
The direct satire and caricature of heroical novels in the style of Scudéry and La Calprenède, which had been also practised in France, is to be found in a few English tales, of which the best, as entirely forgotten as the worst, is entitled "Zelinda, an excellent new romance, translated from the French of Monsieur de Scudéry."[363] With an amusing unconcern, and a very lively pen, the author hastens, on the first page, to give the lie to his title, and to inveigh against the impertinences of publishers in general. "Book-sellers too are grown such saucy masterly companions, they do even what they please; my friend Mr. Bentley calls this piece an excellent romance; there I confess his justice and ingenuity. But then he stiles it a translation, when (as Sancho Panca said in another case) 'tis no more so then the mother that bore me. Ingrateful to envy his friend's fame.... But I write not for glory, nor self-interest, nor to gratifie kindness nor revenge. Now the impertinent critical reader will be ready to ask, for what then? For that and all other questions to my prejudice, I will borrow Mr. Bays's answer and say, Because—I gad sir, I will not tell you—I desire to please but one person in the world, and, as one dedicates his labours and heroes to Calista, another to Urania, &c., at the feet of her my adored Celia, I lay all my giants and monsters."