Maid. Superior natures! a fig!  If he’s hog by name, he’s not hog by nature, that don’t follow—­his name don’t make him anything, does it?  He don’t grunt the more for it, nor squeak, that ever I hear; he likes his victuals out of a plate, as other Christians do; you never see him go to the trough——­

Melesinda. Unfeeling wretch! yet possibly her intentions——­

Maid. For instance, Madam, my name is Finch—­Betty Finch.  I don’t whistle the more for that, nor long after canary-seed while I can get good wholesome mutton—­no, nor you can’t catch me by throwing salt on my tail.  If you come to that, hadn’t I a young man used to come after me, they said courted me—­his name was Lion, Francis Lion, a tailor; but though he was fond enough of me, for all that he never offered to eat me.

Melesinda. How fortunate that the discovery has been made before it was too late!  Had I listened to his deceits, and, as the perfidious man had almost persuaded me, precipitated myself into an inextricable engagement before——­

Maid. No great harm if you had.  You’d only have bought a pig in a poke—­and what then?  Oh, here he comes creeping——­

       Enter MR. H. abject.

Go to her, Mr. Hogs—­Hogs—­Hogsbristles, what’s your name?  Don’t be afraid, man—­don’t give it up—­she’s not crying—­only summat has made her eyes red—­she has got a sty in her eye, I believe——­ (going.)

Melesinda. You are not going, Betty?

Maid. O, Madam, never mind me—­I shall be back in the twinkling of a pig’s whisker, as they say.

[Exit.

Mr. H. Melesinda, you behold before you a wretch who would have betrayed your confidence—­but it was love that prompted him; who would have trick’d you, by an unworthy concealment, into a participation of that disgrace which a superficial world has agreed to attach to a name—­but with it you would have shared a fortune not contemptible, and a heart—­but ’tis over now.  That name he is content to bear alone—­to go where the persecuted syllables shall be no more heard, or excite no meaning—­some spot where his native tongue has never penetrated, nor any of his countrymen have landed, to plant their unfeeling satire, their brutal wit, and national ill manners—­where no Englishmen—­(Here_ MELESINDA, who has been pouting during this speech, fetches a deep sigh.) Some yet undiscovered Otaheite, where witless, unapprehensive savages shall innocently pronounce the ill-fated sounds, and think them not inharmonious.

Melesinda. Oh!

Mr. H. Who knows but among the female natives might be found——­

Melesinda. Sir! (raising her head.)

Mr. H. One who would be more kind than—­some Oberea—­Queen Oberea.

Melesinda. Oh!

Mr. H. Or what if I were to seek for proofs of reciprocal esteem among unprejudiced African maids, in Monomotopa?