Chapter 35

_Glum_. [1]I need not ask if you are Huncamunca. Your brandy-nose proclaims----

[Footnote 1: I know some of the commentators have imagined that Mr Dryden, in the altercative scene between Cleopatra and Octavia, a scene which Mr Addison inveighs against with great bitterness, is much beholden to our author. How just this their observation is I will not presume to determine.]

_Hunc_. I am a princess; Nor need I ask who you are.

_Glum_. A giantess; The queen of those who made and unmade queens.

_Hunc_. The man whose chief ambition is to be My sweetheart hath destroy'd these mighty giants.

_Glum_. Your sweetheart? Dost thou think the man who once Hath worn my easy chains will e'er wear thine?

_Hunc_. Well may your chains be easy, since, if fame Says true, they have been tried on twenty husbands. [1]The glove or boot, so many times pull'd on, May well sit easy on the hand or foot.

[Footnote 1: "A cobling poet indeed," says Mr D.; and yet I believe we may find as monstrous images in the tragick authors: I'll put down one:

Untie your folded thoughts, and let them dangle loose as a bride's hair.--_Injured Love_.

Which line seems to have as much title to a milliner's shop as our author's to a shoemaker's.]

_Glum_. I glory in the number, and when I Sit poorly down, like thee, content with one, Heaven change this face for one as bad as thine.

_Hunc_. Let me see nearer what this beauty is That captivates the heart of men by scores. [_Holds a candle to her face_. Oh! Heaven, thou art as ugly as the devil.

_Glum_. You'd give the best of shoes within your shop To be but half so handsome.

_Hunc_. Since you come [1]To that, I'll put my beauty to the test: Tom Thumb, I'm yours, if you with me will go.

[Footnote 1: Mr L---- takes occasion in this place to commend the great care of our author to preserve the metre of blank verse, in which Shakspeare, Jonson, and Fletcher, were so notoriously negligent; and the moderns, in imitation of our author, so laudably observant:

Then does Your majesty believe that he can be A traitor?--_Earl of Essex_.

Every page of Sophonisba gives us instances of this excellence. ]

_Glum_. Oh! stay, Tom Thumb, and you alone shall fill That bed where twenty giants used to lie.

_Thumb_. In the balcony that o'erhangs the stage, I've seen a whore two 'prentices engage; One half-a-crown does in his fingers hold, The other shews a little piece of gold; She the half-guinea wisely does purloin, And leaves the larger and the baser coin.

_Glum_. Left, scorn'd, and loathed for such a chit as this; [1] I feel the storm that's rising in my mind, Tempests and whirlwinds rise, and roll, and roar. I'm all within a hurricane, as if [2] The world's four winds were pent within my carcase. [3] Confusion, horror, murder, guts, and death!

[Footnote 1: Love mounts and rolls about my stormy mind. --_Aurengzebe_. Tempests and whirlwinds thro' my bosom move. --_Cleomenes_. ]

[Footnote 2: With such a furious tempest on his brow, As if the world's four winds were pent within His blustering carcase.--_Anna Bullen_. ]

[Footnote 3: Verba Tragica.]