For sure I don't wrong you, you seldom are slack, When the ladies are calling, to blush and hang back; For you 're always polite and attentive, Still to amuse us inventive, And death is your only preventive: Your hands and your voices for me. MRS. BULKLEY. Well, madam, what if, after all this sparring, MISS CATLEY. And that our friendship may remain unbroken, And now, with late repentance, Un-epilogu'd the poet waits his sentence: Condemn the stubborn fool who can 't submit To thrive by flattery-though he starves by wit. [Exeunt. EPILOGUE WRITTEN FOR SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER.' THERE is a place-so Ariosto sings A treasury for lost and missing things; Lost human wits have places there assign'd themAnd they who lose their senses, there may find them. 1 From The miscellaneous works, 1801.-This epilogue, which had been given by its author to the Rev. Thomas Percy, was first published in the above collection. It is there described as An epilogue intended for Mrs. Bulkley; but it is stated, in a note, "for what comedy it was intended is not remembered." Neither Steevens nor Reed could give the information required. Now, the letter appended to the quarrelling epilogue decides the question: it is the second attempt of its author-the epilogue which Colman declined to sanction.-Line 1. There is a place-so Ariosto sings. But where's this place, this storehouse of the age? At least, in many things, I think, I see His lunar, and our mimic world agree. Comes here at night, and goes a prude away; ΙΟ The poet alludes to the thirty-fourth canto of The Orlando furioso. Ariosto, as translated by Mr. Stewart Rose, observes of the lunar world: "There wilt thou find, if thou wilt thither post, Astolpho undertakes the journey; discovers a portion of his own sense; and, in an ample flask, the lost wits of Orlando. Line 9, Both shine at night-for, but at Foote's alone. Foote gave a morning rehearsal of Piety in pattens, an anti-sentimental piece, on the 6th of March 1773. Line 22. Nancy Dawson a favourite air. Anstey attests its popularity; and Colman wrote a ballad to the same lively air. Hither the affected city dame advancing, 20 The gamester too, whose wits all high or low, How can the piece expect or hope for quarter? 30 40 |