Distinction, place, attendance, and observance,
Due to her birth, she always has commanded:
Out of my little fortune I've done this;
Because (tho' hopeless e'er to win your nature)
The world might see I lov'd her for herself;
Not as the heiress of the great Priuli.
Priuli. No more.

Jaff. Yes, all, and then adieu for ever.

There's not a wretch, that lives on common charity,
But's happier than me; for I have known
The luscious sweets of plenty; every night
Have slept with soft content about my head,
And never wak'd, but to a joyful morning:
Yet now must fall, like a full ear of corn,
Whose blossom 'scap'd, yet's wither'd in the ripening.
Priuli. Home, and be humble; study to retrench;
Discharge the lazy vermin of thy hall,

Those pageants of thy folly:

Reduce the glitt'ring trappings of thy wife
To humble weeds, fit for thy little state:
Then to some suburb cottage both retire;

Drudge to feed loathsome life; get brats and starve--
Home, home, I say.

Jaff. Yes, if my heart would let me

[Exit.

This proud, this swelling heart: home I would go,
But that my doors are hateful to my eyes,
Fill'd and damm'd up with gaping creditors:
I've now not fifty ducats in the world,
Yet still I am in love, and pleas'd with ruin.
Oh Belvidera! Oh! she is my wife▬▬▬
And we will bear our wayward fate together,
But ne'er know comfort more.

Enter PIERRE.

Pierre. My friend, good-morrow,
How fares the honest partner of my heart?
What, melancholy! not a word to spare me!

Jaff. I'm thinking, Pierre, how that damn'd starving quality,

Call'd honesty, got footing in the world.

Pierre. Why, powerful villany first set it up, For its own ease and safety. Honest men Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves Repose and fatten. Were all mankind villains, They'd starve each other; lawyers would want practice,

Cut-throats rewards: each man would kill his brother
Himself; none would be paid or hang'd for murder.
Honesty! 'twas a cheat invented first,

To bind the hands of bold deserving rogues,
That fools and cowards might sit safe in power,
And lord it uncontroll'd above their betters.
Jaff. Then honesty is but a notion?
Pierre. Nothing else;

Like wit, much talk'd of, not to be defin'd:
He, that pretends to most, too, has least share in't.
'Tis a ragged virtue. Honesty! no more on't.
Jaff. Sure thou art honest.?

Pierre. So, indeed, men think me;

But they are mistaken, Jaffier: I am a rogue
As well as they;

A fine, gay, bold-fac'd villain as thou seest me.
'Tis true, I pay my debts, when they're contracted;
I steal from no man; would not cut a throat
To gain admission to a great man's purse,
Or a whore's bed; I'd not betray my friend,
To get his place or fortune; I scorn to flatter

A blown up fool above me, or crush the wretch beneath

me;

Yet, Jaffier, for all this I am a villain.

Jaff. A villain!

Pierre. Yes, a most notorious villain;
To see the sufferings of my fellow-creatures,
And own myself a man; to see our senators
Cheat the deluded people with a show

Of liberty, which yet they ne'er must taste of.
They say, by them our hands are free from fetters;
Yet whom they please they lay in basest honds;
Bring whom they please to infamy and sorrow;
Drive us, like wrecks, down the rough tide of power,
Whilst no hold's left to save us from destruction.
All, that bear this are villains, and I one,
Not to rouse up at the great call of nature,
And check the growth of these domestic spoilers,
That make us slaves, and tell us 'tis our charter.
Jaff. I think no safety can be here for virtue,
And grieve, my friend, as much as thou, to live
In such a wretched state as this of Venice,
Where all agree to spoil the public good.
And villains fatten with the brave man's labours.
Pierre. We've neither safety, unity, nor peace, my
friend,

For the foundation's lost of common good;
Justice is lame, as well as blind, amongst us;
The laws (corrupted to their ends that make them)
Serve but for instruments of some new tyranny,
That every day starts up, t'enslave us deeper.
Now could this glorious cause but find out friends
To do it right, O Jaffier! then might'st thou
Not wear those seals of woe upon thy face;
The proud Priuli should be taught humanity,
And learn to value such a son as thou art.

I dare not speak, but my heart bleeds this moment. Jaff. Curs'd be the cause, tho' I, thy friend, be part on't:

Let me partake the troubles of thy bosom,
For I am us'd to misery, and perhaps
May find a way to sweeten't to thy spirit.

Pierre. Too soon 'twill reach thy knowledge-
Jaff. Then from thee

Let it proceed. There's virtue in thy friendship,
Would make the saddest tale of sorrow pleasing,
Strengthen my constancy, and welcome ruin.

Pierre. Then thou art ruin'd!

Jaff. That I long since knew;

I and ill fortune have been long acquaintance.
Pierre. I pass'd this very moment by thy doors,
And found them guarded by a troop of villains;
The sons of public rapine were destroying.
They told me, by the sentence of the law,
They had commission to seize all thy fortune:
Nay, more, Priuli's cruel hand had sign'd it.
Here stood a ruffian, with an horrid face,
Lording it o'er a pile of massy plate,
Tumbled into a heap for public sale:
There was another making villanous jests
At thy undoing: he had ta'en possession
Of all thy ancient most domestic ornaments,
The very bed, which, on thy wedding night,
Receiv'd thee to the arms of Belvidera,
The scene of all thy joys, was violated
By the coarse hands of filthy dungeon villains,
And thrown amongst the common lumber.
Jaff. Now, thank Heaven!

Pierre. Thank Heaven! for what?
Jaff. That I'm not worth a ducat.

Pierre. Curse thy dull stars, and the worse fate of
Venice,

Where brothers, friends, and fathers, all are false;
Where there's no truth, no trust; where innocence
Stoops under vile oppression, and vice lords it.
Hadst thou but seen, as I did, how, at last,
Thy beauteous Belvidera, like a wretch,
That's doom'd to banishment, came weeping forth,
Whilst two young virgins, on whose arm she lean'd,
Kindly look'd up, and at her grief grew sad,
As if they catch'd the sorrows that fell from her:
Ev'n the lewd rabble, that were gather'd round
To see the sight, stood mute when they beheld her
Govern'd their roaring throats, and grumbled pity;
I could have hugg'd the greasy rogues; they pleas'd me.

C

;

Jaff. I thank thee for this story, from my soul;
Since now I know the worst that can befall me.
Ah, Pierre! I have a heart that could have borne
The roughest wrong my fortune could have done me ;
But when I think what Belvidera feels,

The bitterness her tender spirits taste of,
I own myself a coward: bear my weakness;
If, throwing thus my arms about thy neck,
I play the boy, and blubber in thy bosom.
Oh, I shall drown thee with my sorrows.
Pierre. Burn,

First, burn and level Venice to thy ruin.

What! starve, like beggars' brats, in frosty weather,
Under a hedge, and whine ourselves to death!
Thou, or thy cause, shall never want assistance,
Whilst I have blood or fortune fit to serve thee:
Command my heart, thou'rt every way its master.

Jaff. No; there's a secret pride in bravely dying. Pierre. Rats die in holes and corners, dogs run mad;

Man knows a braver remedy for sorrow;

Revenge, the attribute of gods; they stamp'd it,
With their great image, on our natures. Die!
Consider well the cause, that calls upon thee;
And, if thou'rt base enough, die then. Remember
Thy Belvidera suffers; Belvidera!

Die!—damn first!-What! be decently interr'd
In a churchyard, and mingle thy brave dust
With stinking rogues, that rot in winding-sheets,
Surfeit-slain fools, the common dung o'th' soil!
Jaff. Oh!

Pierre. Well said, out with't, swear a little-
Jaff. Swear! By sea and air; by earth, by Heav'n
and hell,

I will revenge my Belvidera's tears!

Hark thee, my friend-Priuli-is-a senator!
Pierre. A dog!

Jaff. Agreed.