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 fow;
In your Lycæum firft themselves refin'd,
And delegated thence to human-kind.
But as ambassadors, when long from home,
For new inftructions to their princes come,
who your precepts have forgot,
Return, and beg they may be better taught:
Follies and faults elfewhere by them are shown,
But by your manners they correct their own.
Th'illiterate writer, emperic-like, applies
To minds difeas'd, unfafe, chance, remedies:
The learned in fchools, where knowlege firft
began,
Studies with care the anatomy of man;
Sees virtue, vice, and paffions in their caufe,
And fame from fcience, 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 some chance,
They call that nature, which is ignorance.
To fuch a fame let mere town-wits afpire,
And their gay nonsense their own cits admire.
Our poet, could he find forgiveness here,
Would wish it rather than a plaudit there.
He owns no crown from those Prætorian bands,
But knows that right is in the fenate's hands,
Not impudent enough to hope your praise,
Low at the Mufes 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.
Opoor Dutch peafant, wing'd with all his fear,
Flies with more hafte, when the French
arms draw near,
Than we with our poetic train come down,
For refuge hither, from th' infected town:
VOL. II.
Heaven for our fins this fummer has thought fit
To visit us with all the plagues of wit.
A French troop first swept all things in its way;
But thofe hot Monfieurs were too quick to ftay:
Yet, to our coft, in that short time, we find
They left their itch of novelty behind.
Th'Italian merry-andrews took their place,
And quite debauch'd the stage with lewd grimace:
Instead of wit, and humors, your delight
Was there to fee two hobby-horfes fight;
Stout Scaramoucha with rush lance rode in,
And ran a tilt at centaur Arlequin.
For love you heard how amorous affes bray'd,
And cats in gutters gave their ferenade.
Nature was out of countenance, and each day
Some new-born monfter fhewn you for a play.
But when all fail'd, to strike the ftage quite dumb,
Those wicked engines call'd machines are come.
Thunder and lightning now for wit are play'd,
And shortly scenes in Lapland will be laid :
Art magic is for poetry profest;
And cats and dogs, and each obscener beast,
To which Ægyptian dotards once did bow,
Upon our English stage are worshipp'd now:
Witchcraft reigns there, and raises to renown
Macbeth and Simon Magus of the town,
Fletcher's defpis'd, your Jonfon's out of fashion,
And wit the only drug in all the nation.
In this low ebb our wares to you are shown;
By you those staple authors worth is known;
For wit's a manufacture of your own.
When you, who only can, their scenes have prais'd,
We'll boldly back, and fay, their price is rais'd.
EPILOGU É,
Spoken at OXFORD,
FT has our poet wifh'd, this happy feat
Might prove his fading Mufe's laft retreat:
I wonder'd at his wifh, but now I find
He fought for quiet, and content of mind;
Which noiseful towne, and courts can never know,
And only in the shades like laurels grow.
Youth, ere it fees the world, here ftudies reft,
And age returning thence concludes it beft,
What wonder if we court that happiness
Yearly to fhare, which hourly you poffefs,
Teaching e'en you, while the vext world we show, Your peace to value more, and better know? 'Tis all we can return for favors paft,
Whose holy memory fhall ever last,
For patronage from him whose care prefides
Bathurst, a name the learn'd with reverence know,
And scarcely more to his own Virgil owe;
Whofe age enjoys but what his youth deferv'd,
To rule thofe Mufes whom before he ferv'd.
His learning, and untainted manners too,
We find, Athenians, are deriv'd to you:
Such antient hospitality there rests
In yours, as dwelt in the first Grecian breafts,
Whose kindness was religion to their guests.
Such modefty did to our sex appear,
As, had there been no laws, we need not fear,
Since each of you was our protector here.
Converse so chafte, and so strict virtue fhown,
As might Apollo with the Muses own.
Till our return, we must defpair to find
Judges fo juft, fo knowing, and fo kind.
|