Aricie.

Quoi vous pouves vous taire en ce peril extreme?  Vous laisses dans l’erreur un pere qui vous uime?  Cruel, si de mes pleurs meprisant le pouvoir, Vous consentez sans peine a ne me plus revoir, Partes, separes vous de la triste Aricie, Mais du moins en partaut assures votre vie.  Defendes votre honneur d’ un reproche honteux, Et forces votre pere a revoquer ses vaeux; Il en est tems encore.  Pourguoi, par quel caprice, Laisses vous le champ libre a votre accusatrice?  Ecclaircisses Thesee.

Hippolyte.

                             He que nai-je point dit? 
     Ai-je du mettre au jour l’opprobre de son lit? 
     Devois-je en lui faisant un recit trop sincere,
     D’un indigne rougeur couvrir le front d’un pere? 
     Vous seul aves perce ce mystere odieux,
     Mon coeur pour s’epancher, n’a que vous et les dieux: 
     Je n’ai pu vous cacher, juges si je vous aime,
     Tout ce que je voulois me cacher a moi-meme. 
     Mais songes sous quel sceau je vous l’ai revele;
     Oublies, si se peut, que je vous ai parle,
     Madame; et que jamais une bouche si pure
     Ne s’ouvre pour conter cette horrible avanture. 
     Sur l’equite des dieux osons nous confier,
     Ils ont trop d’interet a me justifier,
     Et Phedre tot ou tard de son crime punie,
     N’en sauroit eviter la juste ignominie.

2. Chedreux was the name of the fashionable periwigs of the day, and
   appears to have been derived from their maker.  A French
   peruqirier, in one of Shadwell’s comedies, says, “You talke of de
   Chedreux; he is no bodie to me.  Dere is no man can travaille vis
   mee.  Monsieur Wildish has got my peruke on his head.  Let me see,
   here is de haire, de curie, de brucle, ver good, ver good.  If dat
   foole Chedreux make de peruke like me, I vil be hanga.”  Bury Fair,
   Act I. Scene II.  It appears from the letter of the literary veteran
   in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1745, that our author, as he
   advanced in reputation, assumed the fashionable Chedreux periwig.

3.  This passage though, doubtless applicable to many of the men of
   rank at the court of Charles II., was particularly levelled at Lord
   Rochester with whom our author was now on bad terms.  It is hardly
   fair to enquire how far this description of the discourse and
   talents of a person of wit and honour agrees with that given in the
   dedication to Marriage a-la-Mode, when, in compliment to the same
   nobleman, we are told, that, “Wit seems to have lodged itself more
   nobly in this age, than in any of the former; and that his lordship
   had but another step to make, from the patron of wit, to become its
   tyrant.”  This last observation seems to have been made in the
   spirit of prophecy.

4.  Such is said to have been the answer of a philosopher to a friend,
   who upbraided him with giving up a dispute to the Emperor Adrian.