It is stated that the lady's name was Jackson, and that she brought Wycherley a fortune of £1,500. The following additional particulars are given, on the authority of Pope, in Spence's _Anecdotes_, "Wycherley's nephew, on whom his estate was entailed (but with power to settle a widow's jointure) would not consent to his selling any part of it; which he wanted much to do, to pay his debts, about a thousand pounds. He had therefore long resolved to marry, in order to make a settlement from the estate, to pay off his debts with his wife's fortune, and 'to plague his damned nephew,' as he used to express it.... After all, the woman he did marry proved a cheat; was a cast mistress of the person who recommended her to him; and was supplied by him with money for her wedding clothes." This last assertion is hardly to be reconciled with the assumption that Wycherley paid his debts with his wife's fortune. From an allusion to his nephew's "ill-carriage" to him, in a letter to Pope, dated Aug. 11, 1709, we gather that the quarrel between them was of old standing; of its origin we are completely ignorant.--ED. [20] It is difficult to understand in what the impropriety of these speeches is supposed to consist. They are both placed in the mouth of Sparkish, an affected fop, whose utmost ambition is to be recorded a wit, and to whom no sacrifice would seem excessive for the sake of a smart saying. His indifference to the young lady in question occasions his loss of her in the end.--ED. [21] Wycherley's "slowness" has been denied by both Pope and Lansdowne. The former declares that "he was far from being slow in general, and, in particular, wrote _The Plain Dealer_ in three weeks." And Lansdowne observes, "If it had been a trouble to him to write, I am much mistaken if he would not have spared himself that trouble." It seems certain, however, that he revised and altered his plays before committing them to the public, and he by no means belonged to the class of so-called Easy Writers, with respect to whom a _bon-mot_ of his is recorded in the ninth _Tatler_. "The town has for half an age been tormented with insects called Easy Writers, whose abilities Mr. Wycherley one day described excellently well in one word: 'That,' said he, 'among these fellows is called Easy Writing, which anyone may easily write.'"--ED. [22] A remarkably free translation, one would say; and the "whole scene" is, in fact, but a small portion of a scene. But see, for Wycherley's plagiarisms, the Introductions to the plays.--ED. [23] Democritus excludes sane poets from Helicon.--_De Art Poet._ 296-7. [24] See the Introduction to _The Gentleman Dancing-Master_. [25] _Some Account of the English Stage_, vol i. p. 135.