"Isaac. Oh, to be sure not, Ma'am—thirty years! no, no—it was thirty months he said, Ma'am—wasn't it, Moses?
"Moses. Yes, yes, Ma'am—thirty months ago, on her marriage with my father, she was, as I was saying, a great beauty;—but catching cold, the year afterwards, in child-bed of your humble servant—
"Duenna. Of you, Sir!—and married within these thirty months!
"Isaac. Oh the devil! he has made himself out but a year old!— Come, Moses, hold your tongue.—You must excuse him, Ma'am—he means to be civil—but he is a poor, simple fellow—an't you, Moses?
"Moses. 'Tis true, indeed, Ma'am," &c. &c. &c.
The greater part of the humor of Moses here was afterwards transferred to the character of Isaac, and it will be perceived that a few of the points are still retained by him.
The wit of the dialogue, except in one or two instances, is of that accessible kind which lies near the surface—which may be enjoyed without wonder, and rather plays than shines. He had not yet searched his fancy for those curious fossils of thought which make The School for Scandal such a rich museum of wit. Of this precious kind, however, is the description of Isaac's neutrality in religion—"like the blank leaf between the Old and New Testament." As an instance, too, of the occasional abuse of this research, which led him to mistake labored conceits for fancies, may be mentioned the far-fetched comparison of serenaders to Egyptian embalmers, "extracting the brain through the ears." For this, however, his taste, not his invention, is responsible, as we have already seen that the thought was borrowed from a letter of his friend Halhed.
In the speech of Lopez, the servant, with which the opera opens, there are, in the original copy, some humorous points, which appear to have fallen under the pruning knife, but which are not unworthy of being gathered up here:—
"A plague on these haughty damsels, say I:—when they play their airs on their whining gallants, they ought to consider that we are the chief sufferers,—we have all their ill-humors at second-hand. Donna Louisa's cruelty to my master usually converts itself into blows, by the time it gets to me:—she can frown me black and blue at any time, and I shall carry the marks of the last box on the ear she gave him to my grave. Nay, if she smiles on any one else, I am the sufferer for it:—if she says a civil word to a rival, I am a rogue and a scoundrel; and, if she sends him a letter, my back is sure to pay the postage."
In the scene between Ferdinand and Jerome (act ii. scene 3) the following lively speech of the latter was, I know not why, left out:—