nterested in nothing more serious than a lock of Amasia's hair;
the china cup she had, "round the sides of which were painted Trees,
and at the bottom a Naked Woman Weeping;" her box of patches, in which
she finds a silver penny; or the needlework embroidered on her gown.
When Amasia died there was no reason why Sylvius should continue to
exist, and he fades out of our vision like a ghost.

LOVE AND BUSINESS

LOVE AND BUSINESS: _in a Collection of occasionary Verse and
epistolary Prose not hitherto published. By Mr. George Farquhar_. En
Orenge il n'y a point d'oranges. _London, printed for B. Lintott, at
the Post-House, in the Middle Temple-Gate, Fleet Street_. 1702.

There are some books, like some people, of whom we form an indulgent
opinion without finding it easy to justify our liking. The young man
who went to the life-insurance office and reported that his father
had died of no particular disease, but just of "plain death," would
sympathise with the feeling I mention. Sometimes we like a book, not
for any special merit, but just because it is what it is. The rare,
and yet not celebrated, miscellany of which I am about to write
has this character. It is not instructive, or very high-toned, or
exceptionally clever, but if it were a man, all people that are not
prigs would say that it was a very good sort of fellow. If it be, as
it certainly is, a literary advantage for a nondescript collection of
trifles, to reproduce minutely the personality of its writer, then
_Love and Business_ has one definite merit. Wherever we dip into its
pages we may use it as a telephone, and hear a young Englishman, of
the year 1700, talking to himself and to his friends in the most
unaffected accents.

Captain George Farquhar, in 1702, was four-and-twenty years of age.
He was a smart, soldier-like Irishman, of "a splenetic and amorous
complexion," half an actor, a quarter a poet, and altogether a very
honest and gallant gentleman. He had taken to the stage kindly enough,
and at twenty-one had written _Love and a Bottle_. Since then, two
other plays, _The Constant Couple_ and _Sir Harry Wildair_, had proved
that he had wit and fancy, and knew how to knit them together into
a rattling comedy. But he was poor, always in pursuit of that timid
wild-fowl, the occasional guinea, and with no sort of disposition to
settle down into a heavy citizen. In order to bring down a few brace
of golden game, he shovels into Lintott's hands hi