MIRABELL, FAINALL, BETTY. MIRA. What, is the chief of that noble family in town, Sir Wilfull Witwoud? FAIN. He is expected to-day. Do you know him? MIRA. I have seen him; he promises to be an extraordinary person. I think you have the honour to be related to him. FAIN. Yes; he is half-brother to this Witwoud by a former wife, who was sister to my Lady Wishfort, my wife’s mother. If you marry Millamant, you must call cousins too. MIRA. I had rather be his relation than his acquaintance. FAIN. He comes to town in order to equip himself for travel. MIRA. For travel! Why the man that I mean is above forty. FAIN. No matter for that; ’tis for the honour of England that all Europe should know we have blockheads of all ages. MIRA. I wonder there is not an act of parliament to save the credit of the nation and prohibit the exportation of fools. FAIN. By no means, ’tis better as ’tis; ’tis better to trade with a little loss, than to be quite eaten up with being overstocked. MIRA. Pray, are the follies of this knight-errant and those of the squire, his brother, anything related? FAIN. Not at all: Witwoud grows by the knight like a medlar grafted on a crab. One will melt in your mouth and t’other set your teeth on edge; one is all pulp and the other all core. MIRA. So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and the other will be rotten without ever being ripe at all. FAIN. Sir Wilfull is an odd mixture of bashfulness and obstinacy. But when he’s drunk, he’s as loving as the monster in The Tempest, and much after the same manner. To give bother his due, he has something of good-nature, and does not always want wit. MIRA. Not always: but as often as his memory fails him and his commonplace of comparisons. He is a fool with a good memory and some few scraps of other folks’ wit. He is one whose conversation can never be approved, yet it is now and then to be endured. He has indeed one good quality: he is not exceptious, for he so passionately affects the reputation of understanding raillery that he will construe an affront into a jest, and call downright rudeness and ill language satire and fire. FAIN. If you have a mind to finish his picture, you have an opportunity to do it at full length. Behold the original. SCENE VI. [_To them_] WITWOUD. WIT. Afford me your compassion, my dears; pity me, Fainall, Mirabell, pity me. MIRA. I do from my soul. FAIN. Why, what’s the matter? WIT. No letters for me, Betty? BET. Did not a messenger bring you one but now, sir? WIT. Ay; but no other? BET. No, sir. WIT. That’s hard, that’s very hard. A messenger, a mule, a beast of burden, he has brought me a letter from the fool my brother, as heavy as a panegyric in a funeral sermon, or a copy of commendatory verses from one poet to another. And what’s worse, ’tis as sure a forerunner of the author as an epistle dedicatory. MIRA. A fool, and your brother, Witwoud?