_Cleopatra._ Indeed, Berenice, you talk more like a Shepherdess than a great Queen. You might perhaps in the simplicity of pastoral life have engaged some humble Swain, but there was too much of nature and too little of art in your conduct, to captivate a man used to flattery, to pleasures, to variety. I find you was but the mirror of Titus, you gave him back his own image, while I presented every hour a new Cleopatra to Anthony. I was gay, voluptuous, haughty, gracious, fond and indifferent by turns; if he frown’d on me, I smiled on Dollabella; if he grew thoughtful, I turn’d the Banquet to a Riot. I dash’d the soberness of counsels by the vivacity of mirth, and gilded over his disgrace by show and magnificence; if his reason began to return, I subdued it by fondness, or disturb’d it by jealousy. Thus did I preserve my conquest, establish my fame, and put Anthony first in the list of “all the mighty names by love undone.” Had I only wept when honour and Octavia call’d him home I might have been the burthen of a love ballad, or subject of a tender Elegy, who now am the glory of our sex, and the great instance of beauty’s power. Do not you wish you had used the same managements? _Berenice._ I might have used them had I loved the same man: Cleopatra, the coquette was a proper mistress for the Reveller Anthony; but the god-like Titus, the delight as well as Master of Mankind, left no part of the heart unengaged and at liberty to dissemble. What had not yielded to his wisdom, submitted to his witt, was subdued by his magnanimity, or won by his gentleness; when affection does not vary, behaviour cannot change; and methinks Anthony should have quitted you from distrust of your love, and Titus have retain’d me from confidence in mine. After what you have told me, I am more than ever surprised at your fate and my own. _Cleopatra._ If you want this explain’d ask Eneas, Theseus, Jason, and the infinite multitude of faithless lovers, but if my authority will pass, believe me Anthony was preserved by his doubt of my love, and Titus was lost by his confidence in yours. Do not look so concern’d. From the era of your disaster to this very day you will find every faithful and fond Berenice discarded, while the gay, vain, and capricious fair one is to her Anthony a Cleopatra and the “world well lost.” From the following letter of Dr. Young’s to Mrs. Montagu it would appear that she had sent this dialogue for him to read. “DEAR MADAM, “I hope you will allow that a curiosity is better than a good thing. I send you a paper which may be called a curiosity, as it is printed, but not for the publick, only for your ease in perusing it. “I much thank you for the bright specimen of genius you was so kind as to send me. I admire it as much as you. I hope you are recover’d of the Indysposition you mention’d in your Last, and that you, the cloud remov’d, will continue to shine on,