The Good Natur'd Man

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE, An Apartment in Young Honeywood's
House.

Enter Sir William Honeywood, 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 distin- 5 heriting so good, so worthy a young gentleman as your nephew, my master. All the world loves him.

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

Farv. I'm sure there is no part of it more dear to him than you are, tho' he has not seen you since he was a child.

IO

Sir Will. What signifies his affection to me, or how can I be proud of a place in a heart where 15 every sharper and coxcomb find an easy entrance?

Jarv. I grant you that he's rather too good natur'd; 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 20 he thank for all this?

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

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Jarv. Faith, begging your honour's pardon, I'm sorry they taught him any philosophy at all; it has only serv'd to spoil him. This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an errant jade on a journey. For my own part, whenever 30 I hear him mention the name on't, I'm always sure he's going to play the fool.

Sir Will. 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 35 the importunate, than his desire of making the deserving happy.

Jarv. What it rises from, I don't know. But, to be sure, everybody has it that asks it.

Sir Will. Ay, or that does not ask it. I have 40 been now for some time a concealed spectator of his follies, and find them as boundless as his dissipation.

Jarv. And yet, faith, he has some fine name or other for them all. He calls his extravagance, 45 generosity; and his trusting everybody, universal

it.

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benevolence. It was but last week he went security for a fellow whose face he scarce knew, and that he call'd an act of exalted mu-mu-munificence; ay, that was the name he gave Sir Will. And upon that I proceed, as my last effort, tho' 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 55 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.

Jarv. Well, if I could but any way see him 60 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 65 his hair-dresser.

Sir Will. 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 70 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 correction. Yet,