Amelia. Nothing is amifs, nothing. Kneel not to me, young man; your humility, your tenderness oppreffes me. Neither thou, nor thy father, nor mother, nor any of you have ever offended me on the contrary, I owe you all (especially thee, Henry) my thanks for a thousand services, which are ten times more valuable, as I am fure they spring form your heart.

Henry. 'Tis enough: I fubmit. May heaven protect you wherever you go!

An apartment in Sir Anthony's boufe. Frederic and Maria meeting. Frederick. My dear fifter![Embracing her Maria. My dear brother! I am rejoiced to see you returned; why, what a ftranger you have been to us, Frederic!

Frederick. A ftranger indeed! not to you only, but to my felf, to peace of mind, and contentment.

Maria. Alackaday! poor melancholy lover! What, fallen out with the world before you are well got into it? How strangely love has transformed you! ftill fighing for Amelia Hartley ?

Frederick. Oh! name her not! did you but know what I daily fuffer for that lovely falfe one, you wou'd pity me.

Maria. Is it poffible you can be weak enough ftill to indulge a paffion for Amelia, who you know has actually given her hand to lord Wealthy?

Frederick. So I am informed by her brother-but, alas! Mária, you talk like a happy novice, like one a ftranger to the pains I feel; had you the least notion of love, or had ever feen her blooming youth and beauty; had you heard her lively innocent wit, or been a witnefs to her foft, fweet, engaging temper, you would own with me, that her charms were irre fiftible.

AIR XIII. [Count St. Germain.]

O fatal day to my repose,

When firft I faw the faithlefs fair;
No peace my wretched bofom knows,

I love, alas! and I defpair.

Maria. My dear Frederic, was I in a humour for mitth how I could laugh at you now! but alas! you are not the only unfortunate one of your family: though you think I have fo little notion of love, perhaps, brother, I may be able to give a guess at it; and o' my confcience, I think it a very forrowful matter for a girl of my age and fpirit, to be condemned to the arms of a man of thrreefcore.

Frederick. What do you mean? You to be married to g man of threescore?

Maria So my good prudent father has decreed it; and I have this moment received the fatal fentence from his lips. Judge therefore whofe fate is the hardeft; yours, in being deprived of the woman you admire, or mine, in being destined to the man I abhor?

Frederick. But to whom, for heav'n's fake, has he deftin'd thee?

Maria. One you never faw, lord Lovington.

Frederick. Fortune defend you from his embraces! I know his nephew, captain Bellafont, intimately, and have been many times entertained with his account of his uncle's ridiculous hu mours. Is it poffible my father can be serious?

Maria. Serious? why he is abfolute; and his lordship is expected this very day.

Frederick. Then Sir Anthony has not feen him?

Maria. Never.

Frederick. Fear nothing then; for the fight of him cannot fail to frighten away thefe abfurd refolutions in his favour. Why, child, he looks like, a courtier of Oliver Cromwell's; and is in every particular, both of manners, dress, and addrefs, a character of as different a caft from our finical father's as poffible.

Maria. I'm glad of it. But you faid you knew his nephew, captain Bellafont; what is he? of a piece with his uncle ?

Frederick. The very reverfe; I do not know a more honest, good-humour'd, fprightly fellow, and with a heart as full of courage as it can hold his failings are all either of the focial or the amorous fort; and I know no good thing he wants, but more difcretion, and a better fortune.

Maria. So fo.

Frederick. Well, but you do not intend to obey my father, if he fhould be so perverse.

Maria. Obey him, Frederick! no, I promise thee I shall not while there is a window in his house to jump out at, and a man in the world to catch me. If he was my father and mother bath, I should think my. happinefs rather too great a compliment to make him.

Frederick

Frederick. Well faid, Maria; your refolution gives me fpirits; but I will retire to my chamber, and get off this travelling drefs, before I fee my father and his grave fon-in-law.

Maria. Do fo. [Exit Frederick.] Well, Maria, how is it with thee now? This Bellafont will be too hard for thee at last. My brother's report has done his caufe no little fervice. Marry! befhrew the fellow! Of all things in the world, what I' wifh moft to avoid, is falling in love; and methinks I take every method of throwing myself in its way.

Ah! what can defend a poor maiden from love?
Ye prudes, your expedient impart,

This pleafing intruder how shall I remove,

And guard the foft pafs to my heart?

Of mothers and wives how wretched the lives,
Your's alone is the fenfible plan;

They only are bleft like you who detest

That horrible creature call'd man.

But when at our feet the fond wretches we view,
How can one refuse 'em,

Or fcornfully use 'em,

Ah! was it your cafe, ye coy virgins, cou'd you?'

This performance has given us higher pleafure in perufing, than we could, perhaps, have received from a compofition. more fuited to the principles of the drama, which ought to be rather adapted to innocent, virtuous entertainment, than to cold lifeless regularity.

MONTHLY CATALOGUE.

12. A Letter toJ. K, M. D. with an Account of the Cafe of Mr. T, of the City of Od. To which are fubjoined fame Obfervations on the ulcered fore Throat. By }.S 80. Pr. Is. Wilfon.

M.D.

Narcalm and ridicule, which hath chofen the learned pro

OTHING has contributed fo much to that spirit of

feffions for its fubject, as the mutual jealousy and detraction of the profeffors themselves.-To the fhame of the faculty be it fpoken, one feldom or never fees two phyficians fettled in the fame neighbourhood, living together in friendship, or even upon terms of any tolerable decorum; for, if their tongues do not actually wag against each other, they never fail to act fuch a pantomime of fcandal and malignity, by grinning, nodding, fhrugging, and fignificant referve, as proves more effectual towards the purpose of calumny, and much lefs dangerous, than any use they could make of articulate language. There is no VOL. XX. December, 1755. Hh

fence

fence againft this fpecies of malignity. Innocence, candour, and circumfpection, will not ferve a practitioner against the inalevolence of his brethren. But, extraordinary fuccefs in practice will infallibly expofe him to the whole artillery of their vengeance. We know a physician in Ireland, who, at his first entrance in life, had very near been totally ruined by the perfecution of fome of the principal doctors of the place, because he faved the life of a patient whofe case they had abandoned as defperate They went fo far as to publish pamphlets, in which they undertook to prove the abfurdity of any man's pretending to cure a patient in fuch extremity; and this was the greatest favour they could have done to the gentleman against whom their refentment was directed; for, the public confidering the patient was alive and well, far from acquiefcing in their deduction, naturally concluded for themselves, that fuch a cure must have been the effect of extraordinary skill and fagacity; and the young doctor's bufine's and fame increased accordingly.

This perfon no fooner rethan the other physi

By the letter now before us, it appears that the author (Dr. S-, of Oxford) has been illiberally calumniated much in the fame manner, for having refcued a patient's life from the mal-practice of Dr. K- who had miftaken a malignant, ulcered, fore throat, for a quinfey. covered, under the care of Dr. Scian, who, had he been wife, would not have faid a word of the matter, began to revile the faid Dr. S——, as an ignorant perfon, who had fhamefully mistaken one difeafe for another; and who had, by clandeftine, underhand arts, endeavoured to filch the patient out of his hands. Thefe malicious reports being induftriously circulated, and beginning to gain ground, Dr. S, in juftice to himself, wrote the other an expoftulatory letter, to which, having received no answer, he has committed to the public, the hiftory of the whole tranfaction, confirmed by a journal of the cafe, written by the patient's wife, and authenticated by her affidavit. Our author has very judiciously avoided all expreflions of afperity, and refted his vindication upon a bare representation of facts, which to us appear unanswerable,

The obfervations on the ulcered fore throat, which he has fubjoined to this difcuffion, are clear, explicit, curious, and ufeful; and will be found, by practitioners, a neceffary fupplement to all that Fothergill and Huxam have faid on the fame fubject.

13. An Answer to the Letter of Mr. Keyfer, Surgeon and Chemift of Paris. In which the Infufficiency of his Medicine, for the Cure of the Venereal Disease, is further confidered. Also, some of the Evidences of the anonymous Author of the Parallel are produced," and confirmed by the Teftimony of M. Faber, Prefident of the Com-: pany

I

pany of Surgeons, and Counsellor to the Committee of the Royal Academy of Surgery in Paris. By Jonathan Wathen, Surgeon. 8vo. Pr. 6d. Rivington.

In this pamphlet, Mr. Wathen has endeavoured to prove three things, with refpect to Mr. Keyfer's pill, which would be fufficient not only to deprive it of the reputation it is faid to have acquired, but even to deny it the efficacy of common mercurials. The three points are, ift. That great arts were ufed to recommend it first to the public. 2d. That it was introduced into the French army and hofpitals, by the arbitrary commands of the Erench miniftry, and this for no better reason than that it was cheaper to the king than any other mercurial; contrary to the general fenfe of the furgeons who were to ufe ir. 3d. That the atteftations given of its efficacy, by fome of the furgeons, were wrefted from them by the threats of being difplaced; and that, where this influence did not prevail, the reports of it have been very generally to its dif credit.

Mr. Wathen has fupported thefe charges by teftimonies of confiderable authority; which, together with his own obfervations and arguments, feem to justify fufficiently his former charge against this preparation. We are happy to find, that this gentleman has not imitated the petulance and acrimony of his antagonist; an example too apt to be followed, and to injure truth by the exaggeration of malice or mifreprefentation. The world indeed has been fo univerfally impofed upon by noftrums, that the very name, though not abfolutely fuffi cient entirely to difcredit a preparation, fhould certainly throw upon it a ftrong fufpicion of fallhood and impofture.

4. Pollio: an Elegiac Ode. Written in the Wood near R— Caftle, 1762. 4to. Pr. Is. Payne. 410. 15.

6

This poetically penfive ode was (as we are told by its ele gant author) firft fuggefted, and the ideas contained in it raifed, on revifiting the ruins and woods that had been the scene of his early amufements with a deferving brother, who died in his twenty first year.'. It was bold in this author to attempt a manner and a fubject, in which fo many preceding writers have excelled. We own that we never vifit rural landscapes; we never view the spreading poplar, straying into the winding wood, hear the murmur of the river, and see the various scenes of awful, melancholy, folitary, mofs-grown life, but we tremble for the steadiness, the delicacy, and the warmth of the poetical pencil that draws them. We look upon most of the descriptive poetry, at this time, as a game at huftle-cap. The author claps into his hat a parcel of epithets, fubftantives, and verbs,