_Clink._ With what delight I embrace-- Sir _Trem._ With what pleasure I enter into-- _Clink._ Your ideas, most learned Sir Tremendous! Sir _Trem._ Your sentiments, most divine Mrs. Clinket. 2d _Play._ The play, for heaven's sake, the play. [_A tea-table brought in._] _Clink._ This finish'd drama is too good for an age like this. _Plotw._ The Universal Deluge, or the tragedy of Deucalion and Pyrrha. [_Reads_ _Clink._ Mr. Plotwell, I will not be deny'd the pleasure of reading it, you will pardon me. 1st _Play._ The deluge! the subject seems to be too recherche. _Clink._ A subject untouch'd either by ancients or moderns, in which are terror and pity in perfection. 1st _Play._ The stage will never bear it. Can you suppose, Sir, that a box of ladies will sit three hours to see a rainy day, and a feather in a storm; make your best of it, I know it can be nothing else. 2d _Play._ If you please, madam, let us hear how it opens. _Clink._ [_reads._] The scene opens and discovers the heavens cloudy. A prodigious shower of rain. At a distance appears the top of the mountain Parnassus; all the fields beneath are over-flowed; there are seen cattle and men swimming. The tops of steeples rise above the flood, with men and women perching on their weathercocks---- Sir _Trem._ Begging your pardon, Sir, I believe it can be proved, that weather-cocks are of a modern invention. Besides, if stones were dissolved, as a late philosopher hath proved, how could steeples stand? _Plot._ I don't insist upon trifles. Strike it out. _Clink._ Strike it out! consider what you do. In this they strike at the very foundation of the drama. Don't almost all the persons of your second act start out of stones that Deucalion and Pyrrha threw behind them? This cavil is levell'd at the whole system of the reparation of human race. 1st _Play._ Then the shower is absurd. _Clink._ Why should not this gentleman rain, as well as other authors snow and thunder?---- ---- [_reads._] Enter Deucalion in a sort of waterman's habit, leading his wife Pyrrha to a boat--Her first distress is about her going back to fetch a casket of jewels. Mind, how he imitates your great authors. The first speech has all the fire of Lee. Tho' heav'n wrings all the sponges of the sky, And pours down clouds, at once each cloud a sea. Not the spring tides---- Sir _Trem._ There were no spring tides in the Mediteranean, and consequently Deucalion could not make that simile. _Clink._ A man of Deucalion's quality might have travelled beyond the Mediteranean, and so your objection is answered. Observe, Sir Tremendous, the tenderness of Otway, in this answer of Pyrrha. --------------------Why do the stays Taper my waist, but for thy circling arms? Sir _Trem._ Ah! Anachronisms! Stays are a modern habit, and the whole scene is monstrous, and against the rules of tragedy. _Plot._ I submit Sir,--out with it.