win

De Wilde pinx

dudinde,

M" Qvickas TonyLUMPKIN.
There's an M, and a T, and an Sebutwhether
the next be an Izzardoran R, confound

me!
cannottelt.

TO

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D.

BY inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so much to compliment you as myself. It may

do me some honour to inform the public, that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, ihat the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.

I have, particularly, reason to thank you for your partiality to this performance. The undertaking a Comedy, 'not merely sentimental, was very dangerous; and Mr. Colunan, who saw this picce in its vari. Ous stages, always thought it so. However I venture ed to trust it to the public; and, though it was necessarily delayed till late in the season, I have every reason to be grateful.

I am, dear Sir,

Your most sincerc friend

and admirer, OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.

This play is a paradox : its characters are all as natural as were ever drawn, and yet they do nothing probable nor possible from the beginning of the play to the end. No house of a gentleman was ever thus mistaken for an inn; nor did any change of dress ever disguise the acquaintance of the morning into a stranger in the evening. A man must part with two of his senses to be deceived by a young lady, he knows, in the plain dress of a chambermaid, neither features nor tones changing with the habit.

The HARDCASTle family exists in every county in England ; but the first praise must be conferred upon the design of MARLOW : it is so common that no circle of company ever wanted a hero of the sort, bold and insulting among the loose and dissolute of the sex, confounded and abashed in the presence of the elegant and the virtuous; a kind of mean mischiefs that could never soar to tempt an angelic nature.

The dialogue is written with little ambition of wit : humour there is in abundance ; much in the diction, more in the situations, most improbable.

OR, THE MISTAKES OF A NIGHT

A

COMEDY,

By Dr. GOLDSMITH,

ADAPTED FOR

THEATRICAL REPRESENTATION,

AS PERFORMED AT THE

THEATRES.ROYAL,

DRURY-LANE AND COVENT.GARDEN,

REGULATED FROM THE PROMPT-BOOKS,

By Permission of the Managers.

* The lines distinguished by inverted Commas, are omitted in the Representation."

LONDON :

Printed for the Proprietors, under the Dire&tion of

John BELL, British Library, STRAND, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

With a sententious look, that nothing means,
( Faces are blocks, in sentimental scenes)
Thus I begin--All is not gold that glitters,
Pleasure seems sweet, but proves a glass of bitters.
When ign’rance enters, folly is at hand;
Learning is better far than house and land.
Let not your virtue trip, who trips may stumble,
And virtue is not virtue, if she tumble.

I give it up--morals won't do for me ;
To make you laugh I must play tragedy.
One hope remains--hearing the maid was ill,
A doctor comes this night to shew his skill.
To cheer her heart, and give your muscles motion,
He in five draughts prepar’d, presents a potion :
A kind of magic charm--for be assur’d,
If you will swallow it, the maid is cur’d:
But despårate the Doctor, and her case is,
If you rejeet the dose, and make wry faces !
This truth he boasts, will boast it while he lives,
No pois’nous drugs are mix'd with what he gives;
Should he succeed, you'll give him his degree;
If not, within he will receive no fee !
The college you, must his pretensions back,
Pronounce him regular, or dub him quack.