MILLAMOUR. You was pleased, sir, this day to promise me, that on the recovery of your lady's senses you would give me whatever I should ask.

MR. STEDFAST. Ay, sir, you shall have her before you ask. There she is, she hath given you her inclinations, and so I give you the rest of her. Heaven be praised, I am rid of them both. Stay, here is another woman still. Will nobody have her, and clear my house of them? for it is impossible for a man to keep his resolutions while he hath one woman in it. MILLAMOUR. My Clarinda! Oh! transporting ecstasy! CLARINDA. My Millamour! my ever loved!

MILLAMOUR. Heartfort, your hand. I am now the happiest of mankind. I have, on the very point of losing it, recovered a jewel of inestimable value. Oh, Clarinda! my former follies may, through an excess of good fortune, prove advantageous to both in our future happiness. While I, from the reflection on the danger of losing you, to which the wildness of my desires betrayed me, shall enjoy the bliss with doubled sweetness: and you from thence may derive a tender and a constant husband.

From my example, let all rakes be taught

To shun loose pleasure's sweet but poisonous draught.
Vice, like a ready harlot, still allures;

Virtue gives slow, but what she gives secures.

PLAYS V-10

EPILOGUE

WRITTEN BY A FRIEND, AND SPOKEN BY MRS. WOFFINGTON

THE trial ended, and the sentence o'er,

The criminal stands mute, and pleads no more.
Sunk in despair, no distant hope he views,
Unless some friendly tongue for mercy sues.
So too our bard (whatever be his fate)
Hath sent me here compassion to create:
If damned, to blunt the edge of critic's laws;
If saved, to beg continuance of applause.
All this the frighted Author bid me say.

-But now for my own comments on his play.

This Millamour, for aught I could discover,
Was no such dangerous, forward, pushing lover:
Upon the bull I, like Europa, ventured,
Entered his closet-where he never entered;
But left me, after all my kindness shown,
In a most barbarous manner, quite alone:
Whilst I, with patience to our sex not common,
Heard him prescribing to another woman:
But, though quite languishing, and vastly ill
She was, I could not find she took one pill.
Though her disease was high, though fierce the attack,
You saw he was an unperforming quack:

But soon as marriage altered his condition,

He cured her as a regular physician.

My father Stedfast took it in his head.

To keep all resolutions which he made:

As the great point of life, this seemed to strike him:
His daughter Charlotte's very much unlike him:

The only joys (and let me freely speak them)
I know in resolutions is to break 'em.

I think without much flattery I may say
There's strict poetic justice through this play.
You heard the fool despised; the bawd's just sentence;
Heartfort's reward, and Millamour's repentance:
And such repentance must forgiveness carry;
Sure there's contrition with it when we marry.

THE FATHERS

OR

THE GOOD-NATURED MAN

A COMEDY

AS IT WAS ACTED AT THE

THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE