"Here you may read,
Here in beau-spelling—tru tel deth."
[1020] Character of the Beau, 1696.
[1021] Cibber, Careless Husband, Act I. Sc. 1.
[1022] Cibber, Love's last shift or the Fool in fashion. Sedley's Sir Charles Everyoung, Ned Estridge, and Harry Modish are all "most accomplished monsieurs," as are Clodis in Cibber's Love Makes a Man or the Fop's Fortune; Sir Harry Wildair in Farquhar's play of that name; Lord Foppington of Vanbrugh's Relapse or Virtue in Danger; Bull Junior in Dennis's A Plot and no Plot; Clencher, senior, the Prentice turned Beau in Farquhar's Constant Couple; Mrs. Behn's Sir Timothy Tawdry; Crowne's Sir Courtly Nice, etc. In 1697 appeared a work called The Compleat Beau.
[1023] Sir Fopling Flutter or the Man of Mode, 1676. Supposed to be a portrait of the then notorious Beau Hewitt.
[1024] Satire against the French, 1691.
[1025] Character of the Beau, 1691. Most of the accomplished "monsieurs" frequented the French houses (Sedley, Mulberry Garden). Act II. Sc. 2 of Wycherley's Love in a Wood, and Act II. Sc. 2 of his Gentleman Dancing Master, both take place in a French house. Cp. Character of the Town Gallant, 1675.
[1026] Vincent, Young Gallants' Academy, 1674, p. 44.
[1027] Flecknoe, Characters, 1673. The 1665 edition of his Aenigmatical Characters ..., 1665, contains a description in French of the Tour à la Mode: ". . . C'est une bataille bien rangée où l'on ne tire que des coups d'Œillades, et où les premiers ayant fait leur descharge, ilz s'en vont pour donner place aux autres" . . ., etc. (p. 21).
[1028] Charles II. openly avowed his preference for the French drama. Dryden wrote his Essay of Dramatic Poesy, "to vindicate the Honour of our English writers from the censure of those who unjustly prefer the French before them." Pepys saw many of the French plays acted in English. Cp. H. McAfee, Pepys on the Restoration Stage ..., Yale Univ. Press, 1916.