THE

GOOD-NATURED MAN:

A COMEDY.

This admirable comedy was represented, for the first time, at Covent Garden, January 29, 1768. It kept possession of the stage for nine nights, but was considered by the author's friends not to have met with all the success it deserved. Dr. Johnson said it was the best comedy which had appeared since The Provoked Husband,' and Burke estímated its merits still higher.

PREFACE.

WHEN I undertook to write a comedy, I confess I was strongly prepossessed in favour of the poets of the last age, and strove to imitate them. The term genteel comedy was then unknown amongst us, and little more was desired by an audience than nature and humour, in whatever walks of life they were most conspicuous. The author of the following scenes never imagined that more would be expected of him, and therefore to delineate character has been his principal aim. Those who know any thing of composition, are sensible, that in pursuing humour, it will sometimes lead us into the recesses of the mean: I was even tempted to look for it in the master of a spunging-house; but, in deference to the public taste-grown of late, perhaps, too delicate-the scene of the bailiffs was retrenched in the representation. In deference also to the judgment of a few friends, who think in a particular way, the scene is here restored. The author submits it to the reader in his closet; and hopes that too much refinement will not banish humour and character from ours, as it has already done from the French theatre. Indeed, the French comedy is now become so very

elevated and sentimental, that it has not only banished humour and Moliere from the stage, but it has banished all spectators too.

Upon the whole, the author returns nis thanks to the public, for the favourable reception which the Good-Natured Man has met with; and to Mr. Colman

in particular, for his kindness to it. It may not also be improper to assure any who shall hereafter write for the theatre, that merit, or supposed merit, will ever be a sufficient passport to his protection.

98

THE

GOOD-NATURED MAN

PROLOGUE,

WRITTEN BY DR. JOHNSON, SPOKEN BY MR. BENSLEY.

PRESS'D by the load of life, the weary mind
Surveys the general toil of human kind,
With cool submission joins the labʼring train,
And social sorrow loses half its pain:

Our anxious bard, without complaint, may share
This bustling season's epidemic care,
Like Cæsar's pilot, dignified by fate,

Toss'd in one common storm with all the great;
Distress'd alike, the statesmen and the wit,
When one a Borough courts, and one the Pit.
The busy candidates for power and fame

Have hopes, and fears, and wishes, just the same: Disabled both to combat or to fly,

rail

;

Must hear all taunts, and hear without reply;
Uncheck'd, on both loud rabbles vent their rage,
As mongrels bay the lion in a cage.
Th' offended burgess hoards his angry tale,
For that blest year when all that vote may
Their schemes of spite the poet's foes dismiss,
Till that glad night when all that hate may hiss.
This day, the powder'd curls and golden coat,'
Says swelling Crispin, ‘begg❜d a cobbler's vote.'
This night our wit,' the pert apprentice cries,
'Lies at my feet-I hiss him, and he dies.'
The great, tis
true, can charm th' electing tribe:
The bard may supplicate, but cannot bribe.

Yet, judged by those whose voices ne'er were sold,
He feels no want of ill-persuading gold;
But confident of praise if praise be due,
Trusts without fear to merit and to you.

Scene

ACT FIRST.

-AN APARTMENT IN YOUNG HONEYWOOD'S HOUSE.
Enter Sir William Honeywood and Jarvis.

Sir William. Good Jarvis, make no apologies for this honest bluntness. Fidelity, like yours, is the best excuse for every freedom.

Jarvis. I can't help being blunt, and being very angry too, when I hear you talk of disinheriting so good, so worthy a young gentleman as your nephew, my master. All the world loves him.

Sir William. Say rather, that he loves all the world; that is his fault.

Jarvis. I am sure there is no part of it more dear to him than you are, though he has not seen you since he was a child.

Sir William. What signifies his affection to me? or how can I be proud of a place in a heart, where every sharper and coxcomb find an easy entrance?

Jarvis. I grant you that he is rather too goodnatured; that he's too much every man's man; that he laughs this minute with one, and cries the next with another: but whose instructions may he thank for all this?

Sir William. Not mine, sure. My letters to him during my employment in Italy, taught him only that philosophy which might prevent, not defend, his errors.

Jarvis. Faith, begging your honour's pardon, I'm sorry they taught him any philosophy at all: it has only served to spoil him. This same philosophy is a good horse in a stable, but an arrant jade on a journey. For my own part, whenever I hear him men

tion the name on't, I'm always sure he's going to play the fool.

Sir William. Don't let us ascribe his faults to his philosophy, I entreat you. No, Jarvis, his good. nature arises rather from his fears of offending the importunate, than his desire of making the deserving happy.

Jarvis. What it arises from, I don't know; but, to be sure, every body has it that asks it.

Sir William. Ay, or that does not ask it. I have been now for some time a concealed spectator of his follies, and find them as boundless as his dissipation.

Jurvis. And yet, faith, he has some fine name or other for them all. He calls his extravagance, generosity; and his trusting every body, universal benevolence. It was but last week he went security for a fellow whose face he scarce knew, and that he called an act of exalted mu-mu-munificence; ay, that was the name he gave it.

Sir William. And upon that I proceed, as my last effort, though with very little hopes, to reclaim him. That very fellow has just absconded, and I have taken up the security. Now, my intention is to involve him, in fictitious distress, before he has plunged himself into real calamity to arrest him for that very debt, to clap an officer upon him, and then let him see which of his friends will come to his relief.

Jarvis. Well, if I could but any way see him thoroughly vexed, every groan of his would be music to me; yet, faith, I believe it impossible. I have tried to fret him myself every morning these three years; but instead of being angry, he sits as calmly to hear me scold, as he does to his hair-dresser.

:

Sir William. We must try him once more, however, and I'll go this instant to put my scheme into execution and I don't despair of succeeding, as, by your means, I can have frequent opportunities of being about him without being known. What a pity it is, Jarvis, that any man's good-will to others should produce so much neglect of himself, as to require cor