Par. Happy's the wooing that's not long a doing; For, if I guess right, Tom Thumb this night Shall give a being to a new Tom Thumb.

Thumb. It shall be my endeavour so to do.

Hunc. Oh! fie upon you, sir, you make me blush.

Thumb. It is the virgin's sign, and suits you well: [1] I know not where, nor how, nor what I am; [2] I am so transported, I have lost myself.

[Footnote 1:
Nor know I whether
What am I, who, or where. —Busiris.

I was I know not what, and am I know not how.
—Gloriana.
]

[Footnote 2: To understand sufficiently the beauty of this passage, it will be necessary that we comprehend every man to contain two selfs. I shall not attempt to prove this from philosophy, which the poets make so plainly evident.

One runs away from the other:

——Let me demand your majesty,
Why fly you from yourself? —Duke of Guise.

In a second, one self is a guardian to the other:

Leave me the care of me. —Conquest of Granada.

Again:

Myself am to myself less near. —Ibid.

In the same, the first self is proud of the second:

I myself am proud of me. —State of Innocence.

In a third, distrustful of him:

Fain I would tell, but whisper it in my ear,
That none besides might hear, nay, not myself.
—Earl of Essex.

In a fourth, honours him:

I honour Rome,
And honour too myself. —Sophonisba.

In a fifth, at variance with him:

Leave me not thus at variance with myself. —Busiris.

Again, in a sixth:

I find myself divided from myself. —Medea.

She seemed the sad effigies of herself. —Banks.

Assist me, Zulema, if thou would'st be
The friend thou seem'st, assist me against me.
—Albion Queens.

From all which it appears that there are two selfs; and therefore Tom Thumb's losing himself is no such solecism as it hath been represented by men rather ambitious of criticising than qualified to criticise. ]

Hunc. Forbid it, all ye stars, for you're so small.
That were you lost, you'd find yourself no more.
So the unhappy sempstress once, they say,
Her needle in a pottle, lost, of hay;
In vain she look'd, and look'd, and made her moan,
For ah, the needle was forever gone.

Par. Long may they live, and love, and propagate, Till the whole land be peopled with Tom Thumbs! [1] So, when the Cheshire cheese a maggot breeds, Another and another still succeeds: By thousands and ten thousands they increase, Till one continued maggot fills the rotten cheese.

[Footnote 1: Mr F—— imagines this parson to have been a Welsh one from his simile.]

SCENE X.—NOODLE, and then GRIZZLE.

Nood. [1] Sure, Nature means to break her solid chain,
Or else unfix the world, and in a rage
To hurl it from its axletree and hinges;
All things are so confused, the king's in love,
The queen is drunk, the princess married is.

[Footnote 1: Our author hath been plundered here, according to custom

Great nature, break thy chain that links together
The fabrick of the world, and make a chaos
Like that within my soul.—Love Triumphant.

——Startle Nature, unfix the globe,
And hurl it from its axletree and hinges.
—Albion Queens.

The tott'ring earth seems sliding off its props.
]

Griz. Oh, Noodle! Hast thou Huncamunca seen?

Nood. I have seen a thousand sights this day, where none Are by the wonderful bitch herself outdone. The king, the queen, and all the court, are sights.

Griz. [1] D—n your delay, you trifler! are you drunk, ha! I will not hear one word but Huncamunca.

[Footnote 1:
D—n your delay, ye torturers, proceed;
I will not hear one word but Almahide.
—Conquest of Granada.
]

Nood. By this time she is married to Tom Thumb.

Griz. [1] My Huncamunca!

[Footnote 1: Mr Dryden hath imitated this in All for Love.]

Nood. Your Huncamunca, Tom Thumb's Huncamunca, every man's Huncamunca.

Griz. If this be true, all womankind are damn'd.

Nood. If it be not, may I be so myself.

Griz. See where she comes! I'll not believe a word Against that face, upon whose [1] ample brow Sits innocence with majesty enthroned.

[Footnote 1: This Miltonic style abounds in the New Sophonisba:

—And on her ample brow
Sat majesty.
]

GRIZZLE, HUNCAMUNCA.

Griz. Where has my Huncamunca been? See here. The licence in my hand!

Hunc. Alas! Tom Thumb.

Griz. Why dost thou mention him?

Hunc. Ah, me! Tom Thumb.

Griz. What means my lovely Huncamunca?

Hunc. Hum!

Griz. Oh! speak.

Hunc. Hum!

Griz. Ha! your every word is hum: [1] You force me still to answer you, Tom Thumb. Tom Thumb—I'm on the rack—I'm in a flame. [2]Tom Thumb, Tom Thumb, Tom Thumb—you love the name; So pleasing is that sound, that were you dumb, You still would find a voice to cry Tom Thumb.

[Footnote 1:
Your every answer still so ends in that,
You force me still to answer you Morat. —Aurengzebe.
]

[Footnote 2: Morat, Morat, Morat! you love the name.—Aurengzebe.]

Hunc. Oh! be not hasty to proclaim my doom! My ample heart for more than one has room: A maid like me Heaven form'd at least for two. [1]I married him, and now I'll marry you.

[Footnote 1: "Here is a sentiment for the virtuous Huncamunca!" says
Mr D——s. And yet, with the leave of this great man, the virtuous
Panthea, in Cyrus, hath an heart every whit as ample:

For two I must confess are gods to me,
Which is my Abradatus first, and thee.—Cyrus the Great.

Nor is the lady in Love Triumphant more reserved, though not so intelligible:

I am so divided,
That I grieve most for both, and love both most.
]

Griz. Ha! dost thou own thy falsehood to my face?
Think'st thou that I will share thy husband's place?
Since to that office one cannot suffice,
And since you scorn to dine one single dish on,
Go, get your husband put into commission.
Commissioners to discharge (ye gods! it fine is)
The duty of a husband to your highness.
Yet think not long I will my rival bear,
Or unrevenged the slighted willow wear;
The gloomy, brooding tempest, now confined
Within the hollow caverns of my mind,
In dreadful whirl shall roll along the coasts,
Shall thin the land of all the men it boasts,
[1] And cram up ev'ry chink of hell with ghosts.
[2] So have I seen, in some dark winter's day,
A sudden storm rush down the sky's highway,
Sweep through the streets with terrible ding-dong,
Gush through the spouts, and wash whole crouds along.
The crouded shops the thronging vermin skreen,
Together cram the dirty and the clean,
And not one shoe-boy in the street is seen.

[Footnote 1: A ridiculous supposition to any one who considers the great and extensive largeness of hell, says a commentator; but not so to those who consider the great expansion of immaterial substance. Mr Banks makes one soul to be so expanded, that heaven could not contain it:

The heavens are all too narrow for her soul. —Virtue Betrayed.

The Persian Princess hath a passage not unlike the author of this:

We will send such shoals of murder'd slaves,
Shall glut hell's empty regions.

This threatens to fill hell, even though it was empty; Lord Grizzle, only to fill up the chinks, supposing the rest already full. ]

[Footnote 2: Mr Addison is generally thought to have had this simile in his eye when he wrote that beautiful one at the end of the third act of his Cato.]

Hunc. Oh, fatal rashness! should his fury slay
My helpless bridegroom on his wedding-day,
I, who this morn of two chose which to wed,
May go again this night alone to bed.
[1] So have I seen some wild unsettled fool,
Who had her choice of this and that joint-stool,
To give the preference to either loth,
And fondly coveting to sit on both,
While the two stools her sitting-part confound,
Between 'em both fall squat upon the ground.

[Footnote 1: This beautiful simile is founded on a proverb which does honour to the English language:

Between two stools the breech falls to the ground.

I am not so well pleased with any written remains of the ancients as with those little aphorisms which verbal tradition hath delivered down to us under the title of proverbs. It were to be wished that, instead of filling their pages with the fabulous theology of the pagans, our modern poets would think it worth their while to enrich their works with the proverbial sayings of their ancestors. Mr Dryden hath chronicled one in heroick;

Two ifs scarce make one possibility. —Conquest of Granada.

My lord Bacon is of opinion that whatever is known of arts and sciences might be proved to have lurked in the Proverbs of Solomon. I am of the same opinion in relation to those above-mentioned; at least I am confident that a more perfect system of ethicks, as well as oeconomy, might be compiled out of them than is at present extant, either in the works of the ancient philosophers, or those more valuable, as more voluminous ones of the modern divines. ]