In comedy your little felves you meet ;
'Tis Covent-Garden drawn in Bridges-street.
Smile on our author then, if he has shown
A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
Ah! happy you, with eafe and with delight,
Who act thofe follies poets toil to write!
The fweating Mufe does almost leave the chafe;
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices pace.
Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly
To fome new frisk of contrariety.
You rowl liks fnow-balls, gathering as you run,
And get feven dev'ls, when difpoffefs'd of one.
Your Venus once was a Platonic queen;
Nothing of love befides the face was feen;
But ev'ry inch of her you now uncafe,
And clap a vizard-mask upon the face.
For fins like thefe, the zealous of the land,
With little hair and little or no band,
Declare how circulating peftilences
Watch, ev'ry twenty years, to foap offences.
Saturn e'en now takes doctoral degrees;
He'll do you work this fummer, without fees.
Let all the boxes, Phoebus, find thy grace,
And, ah, preferve the eighteen-penny place!
But for the pit confounders, let 'em go,
And find as little mercy as they thow:
The actors thus, and thus thy poets pray ;-
[For ev'ry critic fav'd, thou damn't a play..
PROLOGUE to the PROPHETESS.
(By Beaumont and Fletcher. Revived by Mr Dryden.)
"Hat Nostradame, with all his art, can guess
The fate of our approaching Prophetess ?
A play, which, like a perspective set right,
Prefents our vaft expences clofe to fight;
But turn the tube, and there we fadly view
Our diftant gains; and thofe uncertain too:
A fweeping tax, which on ourselves we raise,
And all, like you, in hopes of better days.
When will our loffes warn us to be wife?
Our wealth decreases, and our charges rife.
Money, the fweet allurer of our hopes,
Ebbs out in oceans, and comes in by drops.
We raife new objects to provoke delight;
But you grow fated ere the fecond fight.
Falfe men! e'en fo you ferve your miftreffes:
They rife three ftories in their tow'ring dress;
And, after all, you love not long enough
To pay the rigging, ere you leave 'em off.
Never content with what you had before,
But true to change, and English men all o'er.
Now honour calls you hence; and all your care
Is to provide the horrid pomp of war.
In plume and fearf, jack-boots, and Bilbo blade,
Your filver goes, that fhou'd fupport our trade.
VOL. II.
Go, unkind heroes, leave our stage to mourn;
'Till rich from vanquish'd rebels you return;
And the fat fpoils of Teaguejin triumph draw,
His firkin butter, and his ufquebaugh.
Go, conqu'rors of your male and female foes;
Men without hearts, and women without hofe.
Each bring his love a Bogland captive home;
Such proper pages will long trains become;
With copper collars, and with brawny backs,
Quite to put down the fashion of our blacks.
Then shall the pious Mufes pay their vows,
And furnish all their laurels for your brows;
Their tuneful voice fhall raife for your delights;
We want not poets fit to fing your fights.
But you, bright beauties, for whose only fake
Those doughty knights such dangers undertake,
When they with happy gales are gone away,
With your propitious prefence grace our play;
And with a figh their empty feats furvey:
Then think----on that bare bench my fervant fat;
I fee him ogle still, and hear him chat;
Selling facetious bargains, and propounding
That witty recreation, call'd dum-founding.
Their lofs with patience we will try to bear ;
And wou'd do more, to fee you often here;
That our dead stage, reviv'd by your fair eyes,
Under a female regency may rife.
PROLOGUE to the Univerfity of OXFORD.
Spoken by Mr Hart, at the acting of the
SILENT WOMAN.
Hat Greece, when learning flourish'd, only knew,
Athenian judges, you this day renew.
Here too are annual rites to Pallas done,
And here poetic prizes loft or won.
Methinks I fee you, crown'd with olives, fit,
And strike a facred horror from the pit.
A day of doom is this of your decree,
Where ev'n the best are but by mercy free: [to fee. A day, which none but Johnfon durft have wifh'd Here they, who long have known the useful stage, Come to be taught themselves, to teach the age.
As your commiffioners our poets go,
To cultivate the virtue which you
In your Lycaeum first themselves refin'd,
And delegated thence to human-kind.
But as ambaffadors, when long from home,
For new instructions to their princes come;
So poets, who your precepts have forgot,
Return, and beg they may be better taught:
Follies and faults elsewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own.
Th' illiterate writer, emp'ric like, applies
To minds difeas'd, unfafe, chance remedies:
The learn'd in schools, where knowledge firft began, Studies with care th' anatomy of man;
Sees virtue, vice, and paffions in their cause,
And fame from science, not from fortune, draws.
So poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
There haughty dunces, whofe unlearned pen
Could ne'er fpell grammar, would be reading men.
Such build their poems the Lucretian way;
So many huddled atoms make a play;
And if they hit in order by fome chance,
They call that nature, which is ignorance.
To fuch a fame let mere town-wits afpire,
And there gay nonfense their own cits admire.
Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would wish it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from thofe praetorian bands,
But knows that right is in the fenate's hands.
Not impudent enough to hope your praise,
Low at the Mufe's feet his wreath he lays,
And, where he took it up, refigns his bays.
Kings make their poets whom themselves think fit,
But 'tis your fuffrage makes authentic wit.
EPILOGUE, fpoken by the fame.
poor Dutch peafant, wing'd with all his fear, Flies with more hafte, when the French arms
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