Col. I bring repentance, Sir?

Cap. If't be too much

To say, repentance; call it what you please, Sir;
Choose your own word, I know you 're sorry for it,
And that's as good.

Col. I sorry? by fame's honor, I am wrong'd:
Do you seek for peace and draw the quarrel larger ?
Cap. Then 'tis I'm sorry that I thought you so.
1. Friend. A Captain! I could gnaw his title off.
Cap. Nor is it any misbecoming virtue, Sir,
In the best manliness, to repent a wrong:

Which made me bold with you.

1. Friend. I could cuff his head off.

2. Friend. Nay, pish.

Col. So once again take thou thy peaceful rest then;

But as

I

put thee up, I must proclaim

This Captain here, both to his friends and mine,

That only came to see fair valor righted,

A base submissive Coward: so I leave him.

[To his sword.

Cap. Oh, heaven has pitied my excessive patience,

And sent me a Cause: now I have a Cause:

A Coward I was never.

Col. How!

-Come you back, Sir.

Cap. You left a Coward here.

Col. Yes, Sir, with you.

Cap. 'Tis such base metal, Sir, 't will not be taken,

It must home again with you.

2. Friend. Should this be true now

1. Friend. Impossible! Coward do more than Bastard!

Col. I prithee mock me not, take heed you do not,

For if I draw once more I shall grow terrible,

And rage will force me do what will grieve honor.
Cap. Ha, ha, ha.

ye,

Col. He smiles, dare it be he? what think Your judgments; shall I not be cozen'd in him? This cannot be the man; why he was bookish, Made an invective lately against fighting,

Gentlemen ?

A thing in truth that mov'd a little with me;

Put up a fouler contumely far

Than thousand Cowards came to, and grew thankful.
Cap. Blessed remembrance in time of need;
I'd lost my honor else.

2. Friend. Do you note his joy?

Cap. I never felt a more severe necessity:
Then came thy excellent pity. Not yet ready!
Have you such confidence in my just manhood
That you dare so long trust me, and yet tempt me
Beyond the toleration of man's virtue?

Why, would you be more cruel than your injury?
Do

you first take pride to wrong me, and then think me
Not worth your fury? do not use me so:
I shall deceive you then: Sir, either draw,
And that not slightingly, but with the care
Of your best preservation, with that watchfulness
As you'd defend yourself from circular fire,
Your sin's rage, or her Lord (this will require it)
Or you'll be too soon lost for I've an anger,
Has gather'd mighty strength against you: mighty,
Yet you shall find it honest to the last,

Noble and fair.

Col. I'll venture it once again,

And if't be but as true as it is wondrous

I shall have that I come for. Your leave, Gentlemen.

[They fight.

1. Friend. If he should do 't indeed, and deceive us all

now

Stay, by this hand he offers; fights i'faith;

Fights by this light, he fights, Sir.

2. Friend. So methinks, Sir.

1. Friend. An absolute Punto, ha ?

2. Friend. 'Twas a Passado, Sir.

1. Friend. Why, let it pass, and 'twas: I'm sure 'twas some

what.

What's that now ?

2. Friend. That's a Punto.

1. Friend. O go to then,

I knew 'twas not far off: What a world's this!
Is Coward a more stirring meat than Bastard?
-ho! I honor thee:

"Tis right and fair, and he that breathes against it,
He breathes against the justice of a man;
And man to cut him off, 'tis no injustice.

Thanks, thanks, for this most unexpected nobleness.

[The Colonel is disarmed.

Cap. Truth never fails her servant, Sir, nor leaves him With the day's shame upon him.

1. Friend. Thou 'st redeemed

Thy worth to the same height, 'twas first esteemed.

[The insipid levelling morality to which the modern stage is tied down would not admit of such admirable passions as these scenes are filled with. A puritanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid infantile goodness, is creeping among us, instead of the vigorous passions, and virtues clad in flesh and blood, with which the old dramatists present us. These noble and liberal casuists could discern in the differences, the quarrels, the animosities of man, a beauty and truth of moral feeling, no less than in the iterately inculcated duties of forgiveness and atonement. With us all is hypocritical meekness. A reconciliation scene (let the occasion be never so absurd or unnatural) is always sure of applause. Our audiences come to the theatre to be complimented on their goodness. They compare notes with the amiable characters in the play, and find a wonderful similarity of disposition between them. We have a common stock of dramatic morality out of which a writer may be supplied without the trouble of copying it from originals within his own breast. To know the boundaries of honor, to be judiciously valiant, to have a temperance which shall beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of youth, to esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a pious cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is found to be frail and tottering, to feel the true blows of a real disgrace blunting that sword which the imaginary strokes of a supposed false imputation had put so keen an edge upon but lately: to do, or to imagine this done in a feigned story, asks something more of a moral sense, somewhat a greater delicacy of perception in questions of right and wrong, than goes to the writing of two or three hackneyed sentences about the laws of honor as opposed to the laws of the land, or a common-place against duelling. Yet such things would stand a writer now a days in far better stead than Captain Ager and his conscientious honor; and he would be considered as a far better teacher of morality than old Rowley or Middleton if they were living.]

ALL'S LOST BY LUST. A TRAGEDY. BY WILLIAM ROWLEY.

Roderigo, King of Spain, takes the opportunity to violate the Daughter of Julianus, while that old General is fighting his battles against the Jacinta seeks her Father in the Camp, at the moment of

Moors.
Victory.

Ser. Sir, here's a Woman (forced by some tide of sorrow) With tears intreats your pity, and to see you.

Jul. If any Soldier has done violence to her, Beyond our military discipline,

Death shall divide him from us: fetch her in.

I have myself a Daughter, on whose face
But thinking, I must needs be pitiful:
And when I ha' told my conquest to my King,
My poor girl then shall know, how for her sake
I did one pious act:

Servant returns with JACINTA veiled.

Is this the creature?

Serv. Yes, my Lord, and a sad one.

Jul. Leave us. A sad one!

The down-cast look calls up compassion in me,

A corse going to the grave looks not more deadly.
Why kneel'st thou art thou wrong'd by any Soldier ?
Rise for this honor is not due to me.

Hast not a tongue to read thy sorrows out?

This book I understand not.

Jacin. O my dear father!

Jul. Thy father, who has wrong'd him?

Jacin. A great Commander.

Jul. Under me?

Jacin. Above you.

Jul. Above me! who's above a general?

None but the general of all Spain's armies;

And that's the king, king Roderick: he's all goodness,
He cannot wrong thy father.

Jacin. What was Tarquin?

Jul. A king, and yet a ravisher.

Jacin. Such a sin

Was in those days a monster; now 'tis common.

Jul. Prithee be plain.

Jacin. Have not you, Sir, a daughter?

Jul. If I have not, I am the wretched'st man

That this day lives; for all the wealth I have

Lives in that child.

Jacin. O for your daughter's sake then hear my woes. Jul. Rise then, and speak 'em.

Jacin. No, let me kneel still :

Such a resemblance of a daughter's duty
Will make you mindful of a father's love:

For such my injuries must exact from you,

For whilst I see thee kneeling, I think of my Jacinta.
Jacin. Say your Jacinta then, chaste as the rose
Coming on sweetly in the springing bud,

And ne'er felt heat, to spread the summer sweet;
But, to increase and multiply it more,

Did to itself keep in its own perfume;

Say that some rapine hand had pluck'd the bloom,*
Jacinta, like that flower, and ravish'd her,

Defiling her white lawn of chastity

With ugly blacks of lust: what would you do?
Jul. O'tis too hard a question to resolve,
Without a solemn council held within

Of man's best understanding faculties:

There must be love, and fatherhood, and grief,

And rage, and many passions: and they must all

Beget a thing call'd vengeance: but they must sit upon 't.
Jacin. Say this were done by him that carried

The fairest seeming face of friendship to yourself.
Jul. We should fall out.

Jacin. Would you in such a case respect degrees?
Jul. I know not that.