ACT II. SCENE I. A Room in FITZDOTTREL'S House. Enter FITZDOTTREL, ENGINE, and MEERCRAFT, followed by TRAINS with a bag, and three or four Attendants. Meercraft. IR, money is a whore, a bawd, a drudge; With aqua vita, out of an old hogshead! Say, let the thousand pound but be had ready, creature Of flesh and blood, the man, the prince indeed, That could employ so many millions As I would help him to. Fitz. How talks he? millions! Meer. [to 2 Attendant.]-I'll give you an account of this to-morrow. [Exit 2 Atten. -Yes, I will take no less, and do it too; If they were myriads and without the Devil, By direct means, it shall be good in law. Eng. Sir. Meer. [to 3 Atten.] Tell master Woodcock, I'll not fail to meet him Upon the Exchange at night; pray him to have The writings there, and we'll dispatch it. [Exit 3 Atten.]-Sir, You are a gentleman of a good presence, I have a project to make you a duke now. You shall not avoid it. But you must hearken, then. You do not know master Fitzdottrel. Fitz. He does not know me indeed; I thank you, Engine, For rectifying him. Meer. Good! Why, Engine, then I'll tell it you. (I see you have credit here, And, that you can keep counsel, I'll not question.) He shall but be an undertaker with me, In a most feasible business. It shall cost him Eng. Good, sir. Meer. Except he please, but's countenance, (That I will have) to appear in't, to great men, For which I'll make him one. He shall not draw A string of's purse. I'll drive his patent for him. We'll take in citizens, commoners, and aldermen, To bear the charge, and blow them off again, Like so many dead flies, when it is carried. The thing is for recovery of drown'd land, 8 8 The thing is for recovery of drown'd land.] This was the age of projects and monopolies; and the prevailing humour is not un Whereof the crown's to have a moiety, If it be owner; else the crown and owners seasonably ridiculed by the poet. 'Tis probable, that a design of draining the fens was then talked of: and experience has since shewn, that the project was not wholly impracticable. WHAL. Thus Randolph : "I have a rare device to set Dutch windmills Upon Newmarket Heath and Salisbury Plain, But this was, as Whalley says, the age of projectors; and it is to the praise of the dramatic poets, that they spared no efforts to guard the public against them. Had not the scandalous rapacity of the courtiers found an interest in encouraging those daring depredators on the weak and wealthy, the united force of wit and satire must have driven them out of countenance. Our poet, who never loses sight of verisimilitude, is somewhat modest in his catalogue of projects; but his contemporaries wanton in their exposure of those pernicious follies. The Court Beggar of Brome is solely directed against them; and in that extraordinary drama, The Antipodes, they are attacked with no inconsiderable degree of humour. One example may be given: its pleasantry must apologize for its length. "As for your project Meer. Yes, which will arise To eighteen millions, seven the first year : Not at the skirts; as some have done, and lost 9 All that they wrought, their timber-work, their trench, Their banks, all borne away, or else fill'd up, By the next winter. Tut, they never went The way I'll have it all. : Eng. A gallant tract Of land it is! Meer. 'Twill yield a pound an acre: We must let cheap ever at first. But, sir, This looks too large for you, I see. Come hither, Has his black bag of papers there, in buckram, Not at the skirts; as some have done, and lost All that they wrought, &c.] Pan is not easily distinguished from skirt. Both words seem to refer to the outer parts, or ex'tremities. Perhaps Meercraft means on a broader scale, on a more extended front. The remainder of the speech apparently alludes to some well-known disaster of the time. Many schemes were set on foot about this period, not only for draining the fens of Lincolnshire, but for gaining land from the sea in various places; of these not a few failed; but the attempts were not wholly lost to the community, since they taught later adventurers to avoid the errors of the original projectors. The boldness of the plans for draining the fens, seems to have startled the public more than all the others exhibited to their consideration: hence the perpetual allusions to it in our old dramatists. One has just been mentioned; another is now before me: "Our projector Will undertake the making of bay-salt, Drying of fennes and marshes, like the Dutchmen." Holland's Leaguer, A. i. S. 5. Give me out one by chance. [TRAINS gives him a paper out of the bag.] "Project four: Dogs' skins." Twelve thousand pound! the very worst at first. Meer. 'Tis a toy, a trifle! Fitz. Trifle! twelve thousand pound for dogs' skins? Meer. Yes, But, by my way of dressing, you must know, sir, Of improved ware, like your borachio Meer. Yes; how heard you that? Eng. Sir, I do know you can. Meer. Within this hour; And reserve half my secret. Pluck another; See if thou hast a happier hand; [TRAINS draws out another.] I thought so. The very next worse to it!" Bottle-ale." Yet this is two and twenty thousand. Prithee Fitz. Good; stay, friend By bottle-ale two and twenty thousand pound? On the back-side, there you may see it, read, Of Spain.] "Borachio (says Minshieu) is a bottle commonly of a pigges skin, with the hair inward, dressed inwardly with rozen, to keep wine or liquor sweet: "-Wines preserved in these bottles contract a peculiar flavour, and are then said to taste of the borachio. 2 I will not bate a Harrington of the sum.] In 1613, a patent was granted to John Stanhope, lord Harrington, Treasurer of the Chambers, for the coinage of royal farthing tokens, of which he |