Page images
PDF
EPUB

Dan. Mast. What then? the trocanny, the tricotez, the rigadon? Come, choose, choose.

Sour. No, no, no, I like none of these.

Dan. Mast. You would have a grave, serious dance perhaps? Sour. Yes, a serious one, if there be any-but a very serious dance.

Dan. Mast. Well, the courante, the hornpipe, the brocane, the saraband ?

Sour. No, no, no.

Dan. Mast. What the devil then will you have? But make haste, or death!

Sour. Come on then, since it must be so; I'll learn a few steps of the-the

Dan. Mast. What of the-the

Sour. I know not what.

Dan. Mast. You mock me, Sir; you shall dance the Allemande, since Clarissa will have it so, or—

[He leads him about, the fiddle playing the Allemanda. Sour. I shall be laughed at by the whole town if it should be known. I am determined, for this frolic, to deprive Clarissa of that invaluable blessing, the possession of my person.

Dan. Mast. Come, come, Sir, move, move. (Teaching him.)
Sour. Cockatrice!

Dan. Mast. One, two, three! (Teaching.)

Sour. A d-d, infernal

Enter WENTWORTH.

Oh! brother, you are come in good time to free me from this cursed bondage.

Went. How! for shame, brother, at your age to be thus foolish. Sour. As I hope for mercy

Went. For shame, for shame-practising at sixty what should have been finished at six.

Dan. Mast. He's not the only grown gentleman I have had in hand.

Went. Brother, brother, you'll be the mockery of the whole city.

Sour. Eternal babbler! hear me; this curs'd confounded villain will make me dance perforce.

Went. Perforce !

Sour. Yes; by order, he says, of Clarissa; but since I now find she is unworthy, I give her up-renounce her for ever.

[The young couple enter immediately after this declaration, and finding no farther obstruction to their union, the piece finishes with the consent of the Grumbler, "in the hope," as he says, "that they are possessed of mutual requisites to be the plague of each other."]

THE

VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.

A TALE.

SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

Sperate miseri, cavete felices.

Salisbury:

Printed by B. Collins,

For F. Newbery, in Pater-Noster-Row, London.

MDCCLXVI.

2 vols. 12mo.

"The Vicar of Wakefield" was published on the 27th of March, 1766, in two volumes 12mo, price five shillings. A second edition appeared on the 5th of June; a third on the 25th of August of the same year; a fifth in 1773, and it reached a sixth edition in the year of its writer's death.

All that Goldsmith received for this admirable story was sixty guineas. See Forster's "Life of Goldsmith," vol. ii. p. 1-20.

The text of this reprint is that of the fifth edition, 1773, the last which Goldsmith lived to see published.

« PreviousContinue »