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Updated: June 11, 2025
The common feeling of all men, even the men meant to be best, in the plays of Wycherley and Vanbrugh, seems one that might find expression in some such words as these: "I should like to seduce every pretty married woman if I could, but if I have not time or chance for such delight it is at least a great pleasure and comfort to me to know that she has been seduced by somebody; it is always a source of glee to me to know that a husband has been deceived; and, if the husband himself comes to know it too, that makes my joy all the greater."
One must not seek noon at fourteen o'clock or clamor for better bread than was ever made from wheat." Mr. Wycherley laughed, after a pregnant silence. "By heavens, madam, you are in the right! So I shall walk no more in Figgis Wood, for its old magic breeds too many day-dreams. Besides, we have been serious for half-an-hour.
Clarendon made him promises of valuable employments, which were never fulfilled; and to soothe his disappointment the king sent him a present of three hundred guineas. Indignant at the neglect from which he suffered, his friend Wycherley spoke to the Duke of Buckingham on his behalf, saying it was a shame to the court a man of Butler's parts should be allowed to suffer want.
Wycherley paid him the promised visit. But what may not an hour bring forth? He came with mortification and regret in his face to tell Alfred that an order of transfer had been signed by the proper parties, and counter-signed by two Commissioners, and he was to go to Dr. Wolf's asylum that day. Alfred groaned. "I knew my father would out-wit my feeble friends somehow or other," said he.
They entered in, and dwelt together: and the second possession was worse than the first. We will now, as far as our limits will permit, pass in review the writers to whom Mr. Leigh Hunt has introduced us. Of the four, Wycherley stands, we think, last in literary merit, but first in order of time, and first, beyond all doubt, in immorality. William Wycherley was born in 1640.
They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows. The Widow Wycherley adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again. "Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they, eagerly. "We are younger but we are still too old! Quick give us more!"
So high did Wycherley stand in the royal favour that once, when he was confined by a fever to his lodgings in Bow Street, Charles, who, with all his faults, was certainly a man of social and affable disposition, called on him, sat by his bed, advised him to try change of air, and gave him a handsome sum of money to defray the expense of the journey.
For, in the prologue to the Country Wife, Wycherley described himself as "the late so baffled scribbler." In 1675 the Country Wife was performed with brilliant success, which, in a literary point of view, was not wholly unmerited.
It is pleasant to remark how soon Pope learned the cant of an author, and began to treat critics with contempt, though he had yet suffered nothing from them. But the fondness of Wycherley was too violent to last.
The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and under the special sanction of the head of the Church, publicly recited by female lips in female ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's Progress languished in a dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel to the poor.
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