Y. Book. The name of soldier bids you better welcome. 'Tis valour and feats done in the field a man should be cried up for; nor is't so hard to achieve.
Lat. The fame of it, you mean?
Y. Book. Yes; and that will serve. 'Tis but looking big, bragging with an easy grace, and confidently mustering up an hundred hard names they understand not: Thunder out Villeroy, Catinat, and Boufflers; speak of strange towns and castles, whose barbarous names, the harsher they're to the ear, the rarer and more taking; still running over lines, trenches, outworks, counterscarps, and forts, citadels, mines, countermines, pickeering, pioneers, sentinels, patrols, and others, without sense or order; that matters not, the women are amazed, they admire to hear you rap 'em out so readily; and many a one that went no farther for it, retailing handsomely some warlike terms, passes for a brave fellow. Don't stand gaping, but live and learn, my lad. I can tell thee ten thousand arts to make thee known and valued in these regions of wit and gallantry—the park, the playhouse.
Lat. Now you put me in mind where we are. What have we to do here thus early, now there's no company?
Y. Book. Oh! sir, I have put on so much of the soldier with my red coat, that I came here to observe the ground I am to engage upon. Here must I act, I know, some lover's part, and therefore came to view this pleasant walk. I privately rambled to town last November. Here, ay here, I stood and gazed at high Mall, till I forgot it was winter, so many pretty shes marched by me. Oh! to see the dear things trip, trip along, and breathe so short, nipt with the season! I saw the very air not without force leave their dear lips. Oh! they were intolerably handsome.
Lat. You'll see, perhaps, such to-day; but how to come at 'em?
Y. Book. Ay, there's it, how to come at 'em.
Lat.[44] Are you generous?
Y. Book. I think I am no niggard.