"You cannot love, nor pleasure take, nor give,
But life begin when 'tis too late to live.
On a tired courser you pursue delight,
Let slip your morning, and set out at night.
If you have lived, take thankfully the past;
Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last.
If you have not enjoyed what youth could give,
But life sunk through you, like a leaky sieve."
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
DUKE OF ORMSKIKK.
EARL OF BRUDENEL, father to Lady Marian Heleigh, who has retired sometime into the country.
LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, a gamester, and Ormskirk's hireling.
MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk.
LADY MARIAN HELEIGH, betrothed to Ormskirk, a young, beautiful girl of a mild and tender disposition.
SCENE
The east terrace of Halvergate House.
APRIL'S MESSAGE
PROEM:—Apologia pro Auctore
It occurs to me that we here assume intimacy with a man of unusual achievement, and therefore tread upon quaggy premises. Yet I do but avail myself of to-day's privilege…. It is an odd thing that people will facilely assent to Don Adriano's protestation against a certain travestying of Hector,—"Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the dead, for when he breathed he was a man,"—even while through the instant the tide of romance will be setting quite otherwhither, with their condonation. For in all the best approved romances the more sumptuous persons of antiquity are very guilty of twaddle on at least one printed page in ten, and nobody remonstrates; and here is John Bulmer, too, lugged from the grave for your delectation.
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