SCAN. Yes; mine are most in black and white. And yet there are some set out in their true colours, both men and women. I can shew you pride, folly, affectation, wantonness, inconstancy, covetousness, dissimulation, malice and ignorance, all in one piece. Then I can shew you lying, foppery, vanity, cowardice, bragging, lechery, impotence, and ugliness in another piece; and yet one of these is a celebrated beauty, and t’other a professed beau. I have paintings too, some pleasant enough.
SCAN. Why, I have a beau in a _bagnio_, cupping for a complexion, and sweating for a shape.
SCAN. Then I have a lady burning brandy in a cellar with a hackney coachman.
MRS. FRAIL. O devil! Well, but that story is not true.
SCAN. I have some hieroglyphics too; I have a lawyer with a hundred hands, two heads, and but one face; a divine with two faces, and one head; and I have a soldier with his brains in his belly, and his heart where his head should be.
MRS. FRAIL. Pooh, this is all invention. Have you never a poet?
SCAN. Yes, I have a poet weighing words, and selling praise for praise, and a critic picking his pocket. I have another large piece too, representing a school, where there are huge proportioned critics, with long wigs, laced coats, Steinkirk cravats, and terrible faces; with cat-calls in their hands, and horn-books about their necks. I have many more of this kind, very well painted, as you shall see.
MRS. FRAIL. Well, I’ll come, if it be but to disprove you.
JERE. Sir, here’s the steward again from your father.
VAL. I’ll come to him—will you give me leave? I’ll wait on you again presently.
MRS. FRAIL. No; I’ll be gone. Come, who squires me to the Exchange? I must call my sister Foresight there.
SCAN. I will: I have a mind to your sister.
TATT. I will: because I have a tendre for your ladyship.
MRS. FRAIL. That’s somewhat the better reason, to my opinion.
SCAN. Well, if Tattle entertains you, I have the better opportunity to engage your sister.
VAL. Tell Angelica I am about making hard conditions to come abroad, and be at liberty to see her.
SCAN. I’ll give an account of you and your proceedings. If indiscretion be a sign of love, you are the most a lover of anybody that I know: you fancy that parting with your estate will help you to your mistress. In my mind he is a thoughtless adventurer