T

When more indulgent to the writers ease,
You are too good to be fo hard to please;
No fuch convulfive pangs it will require
To write the pretty things which you admire.

Our author then, to please you in your way,
Prefents you now a bauble of a play:

In jingling rhyme, well fortifi'd and strong,
He fights entrench'd o'er head and ears in fong.
If here and there fome evil-fated line,
Should chance through inadvertency to fhine,
Forgive him, Beaux, he means you no offence,
But begs you for the love of fong and dance,
To pardon all the poetry and fenfe.

ANOTHER EPILOGUE,
Defigned for the fame.

WIT

IT once, like Beauty, without art or drefs,
Naked, and unadorn'd, could find fuccefs,
Till by fruition, novelty destroy'd,

The nymph muft find new charms to be enjoy'd.
As by his equipage the man you prize,
And ladies must have gems befide their eyes:
So fares it too with plays; in vain we write,
Unless the mufic and the dance invite,
Scarce Hamlet clears the charges of the night.
Would you but fix fome standard how to move,
We would trans form to any thing you love;
Judge our defire by our coft and pains,
Sure the expence, uncertain are the gains.
But though we fetch from Italy and France
Our fopperies of tune, and mode of dance,
Our sturdy Britons scorn to borrow sense:
Howe'er to foreign fashions we submit,
Still every fop prefers his mother wit.
In only wit this conftancy is shown,
For never was that arrant changeling known,
Who for another's fenfe would quit his own.

Our author would excuse these youthful scenes,
Begotten at his entrance in his teens :
Some childish fancies may approve the toy,
Some like the Muse the more for being a boy;
And ladies fhould be pleas'd, if not content,
To find so young a thing, not wholly impotent.
Our stage-reformers too he would difarm,
In charity fo cold, in zeal fo warm ;
And therefore to atone for ftage abuses,

And gain the church-indulgence for the Mufes,
He gives his thirds-to charitable uses.

PROLOGUE

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Thus critics fhould, like thefe, be branded foes,
Who for the poifon only, fuck the rose;
Snarling and carping, without wit or sense;
Impeach mistakes, o'erlooking excellence,
As if to every fop it might belong,
Like fenators to cenfure, right or wrong.
But
minds have more heroic views,
generous
And Love and Honour are the themes they choose.
From yon bright heaven our author fetch'd his fire
And paints the paffions that your eyes inspire :
Full of that flame, his tender fcenes he warms,
And frames his Goddess by your matchless charms.

E

EPILOGUE

To the Jew of Venice.

ACH in his turn, the Poet †, and the Prieft §,
Have viewed the ftage, but like false prophets
guefs'd.

The man of zeal, in his religious rage,
Would filence poets, and reduce the stage;
The poet, rafhly to get clear, retorts
On kings the fcandal, and befpatters courts.
Both err: for without mincing, to be plain,
The guilt's your own of every odious fcene:
The prefent time ftill gives the stage its mode,
The vices that you practice, we explode;
We hold the glafs, and but reflect your fhame,
Like Spartans, by expofing, to reclaim.
The fcribbler, pinch'd with hunger, writes to dine,
And to your genius must conform his line;
Not lewd by choice, but merely to submit:
Would you encourage fenfe, fenfe would be writ.
Good plays we try, which after the first day,
Unfeen we act, and to bare benches play;
Plain fenfe, which pleas'd your fires an age ago,
Is loft, without the garniture of show:

At vaft expence we labour to our ruin,
And court your favour with our own undoing;
A war of profit mitigates the evil,

But to be tax'd and beaten-is the devil.
How was the scene forlorn, and how despis'd,
When Timon, without mufic, moraliz'd?
Shakespeare's fublime in vain entic'd the throng,
Without the aid of Purcel's fyren fong.

In the fame antique loom thefe fcenes were wrought,
Embellish'd with good morals, and just thought ;
True Nature in her nobleft light you fee,
Ere yet debauch'd by modern gallantry,
To trifling jefts, and fulfome ribaldry.
What ruft remains upon the fhining mass,

To Mr. Bevil Higgon's excellent Tragedy, called the Antiquity muft privilege to pass.

Generous Conqueror.

YOUR comic writer is a common foe,

Yo

None can intrigue in peace, or be a beau,

Nor wanton wife, nor widow can be sped,
Not even Ruffel can inter the dead,
But ftraight this cenfor, in his whim of wit,
Strips, and prefents you naked to the Pit.

Ruffel, a famous undertaker for funerals; alluding to a Comedy written by Sir Richard Steele, entitled, The Funeral.

'Tis Shakespeare's play, and if these scenes mifcarry, Let Gormon take the stage-or Lady Mary †.

To the Ladies.

Mr. Dryden's Prologue to the Pilgrim. § Mr, Collier's View of the Stage.

* A famous prize-fighter.

† A famous rope-dancer fo called.

PRO

Written on a window in the Tower, where Sir Robert
Walpole had been confined,

OOD unexpected, evil unforeseen,

the fcene!

Some rais'd aloft, come tumbling down amain,
And fall fo hard, they bound and rife again.

*This character, however juft in other particulars, yet is injurious in one; Mr. Wycherley being reprefented as a laborious writer, which every man who has the leaft perfonal knowledge of him can contradict.

Thofe indeed who form their judgment only from his writings, may be apt to imagine fo many admirable reflections, fuch diverfity of images and characters, fuch strict enquiries into nature, fuch clofe obfervations on the feveral humours, manners, and affections of all ranks and degrees of men, and, as it were, fo true and so perfect a diffection of humankind, delivered with fo much pointed wit and force of expreffion, could be no other than the work of extraordinary diligence and application: whereas others, who have the happiness to be acquainted with the author, as well as his writings, are able to affirm these happy performances were due to his infinite genius and natural penetration. We owe the pleasure and advantage of having been fo well entertained and inftructed by him to his facility of doing it; for, if I mistake him not extremely, had it been a trouble to him to write, he would have fpared himself that trouble. What he has performed would indeed have been difficult for another; but the club which a man of ordinary fize could not lift, was but a walking-stick for Hercules.

V ERSE S

Written in a leaf of the Author's Poems, prefented to the QUEEN.

THE MUSE'S LAST DYING SONG.

A

MUSE expiring, who, with earlieft voice,
Made kings and queens, and beauty's charms
her choice;

Now on her death-bed, this laft homage pays,
O Queen! to thee: accept her dying lays.
So, at th' approach of death, the cygnet tries
To warble one note more-and finging dies.
Hail mighty Queen! whofe powerful smile alone
Commands fubjection, and secures the throne:
Contending parties, and plebeian rage,
Had puzzled loyalty for half an age:
Conquering our hearts, you end the long difpute,
All, who have eyes, confefs you absolute.
To Tory doctrines, even Whigs refign,
And in your perfon own a right divine.

Thus fang the Muse, in her last moments fir'd
With Carolina's praife-and then expir'd.

tings he is fevere, bold, undertaking; in his nature, gentle, modeft, inoffenfive; he makes ufe of his fatire as a man truly brave of his courage, only upon public occafions and for public good. He compaflionates the wounds he is under the neceffity to probe, or, like a good natured conqueror, grieves at the occafions that provoke him to make fuch havock.

There are who object to his verfification; but a diamond is not lefs a diamond for not being polished. Verfification is in poetry what colouring is in painting, a beautiful ornament; but if the proportions are juft, the posture true, the figure bold, and the refemblance according to nature, though the colours fhould happen to be rough, or carelessly laid on, yet may the piece be of ineftimable value; whereas the niceft and the finest colouring art can invent, is but labor in vain, where the rest is wanting. Our prefent writers indeed, for the most part, feem to lay the whole ftress of their endeavours upon the harmony of words; but then, like eunuchs, they facrifice their manhood for a voice, and reduce our poetry to be like echo, nothing but found.

In Mr. Wycherley, every thing is mafculine; his Mufe is not led forth as to a review, but as to a battle; not adorned for parade, but execution; he would be tried by the fharpnefs of his blade, and not by the finery; like your heroes of antiquity, he charges in iron, and feems to defpife all ornament but intrinfic merit; and like thofe heroes has therefore added another name to his own, and by the unanimous confent of his cotemporaries, is diftinguished by the just appel

Mr. Wycherley, in his writings, has been the fharp-lation of Manly Wycherley. eft fatirift of his time; but, in his nature, he has all the foftness of the tendereft difpofitions: in his wri

LANSDOWNE

PELEUS