PREFACE.
removed, the gain of five thousand pounds which he might have taken from his Niece by the rigour of a Forfeiture; And let the frankness of this latter generosity so expiate for the former frailty, as may make us not ashamed of his Company, for if his true Metal be but equal to his Allay, it will not indeed render him one of the Finest sorts of men, but it will make him Current, for ought I know, in any party that ever yet was in the World. If you be to choose parts for a Comedy out of any noble or elevated rank of persons, the most proper for that work are the worst of that kind. Comedy is humble of her Nature, and has alwayes been bred low, so that she knows not how to behave her self with the great or the accomplisht. She does not pretend to the brisk and bold Qualities of Wine, but to the Stomachal Acidity of Vinegar, and therefore is best placed among that sort of people which the Romans call The Lees of Romulus. If I had designed here the celebration of the Virtues of our Friends, I would have made the Scene nobler where I intended to erect their Statues. They should have stood in Odes, and Tragedies, and Epique Poems, (neither have I totally omitted those greater testimonies of my esteem of them) Sed nunc non erat his Locus, &c. And so much for this little spiny objection which a man cannot see without a Magnifying Glass. The next is enough to knock a man down, and accuses me of no less than Prophaness. Prophane, to deride the Hypocrisie of those men whose skuls are not yet bare upon the Gates since the publique and just punishment of it? But there is some imitation of Scripture Phrases; God forbid; There is no representation of the true face of Scripture, but only of that Vizard which these Hypocrites (that is, by interpretation Actors with a Vizard) draw upon it. It is Prophane to speak of Harrisons return to Life again, when some of his friends really profest their belief of it, and he himself had been said to promise it? A man may be so imprudently scrupulous as to find prophaness in any thing either said or written by applying it under some similitude or other to some expressions in Scripture. This nicety is both vain and endless. But I call God to witness, that rather than one tittleshould
