In grand affairs thy days are spent,
In waging weighty compliment,
With fuch as monarchs reprefent.
They, whom fuch vaft fatigues attend,
Want fome foft minutes to unbend,
To fhew the world that now and then
Great minifters are mortal men.
Then Rhenifh rummers walk the round;
In bumpers every king is crown'd;
Befides three holy mitred Hectors,
And the whole college of Electors.
No health of potentate is funk,
That pays to make his envoy drunk.
Thefe Dutch delights, I mention'd last
Suit not, I know, your English taste :
For wine to leave a whore or play
your Excellency's way.
Nor need this title give offence,
For here you were your Excellence,
For gaming, writing, speaking, keeping,
His Excellence for all but fleeping.
Now if you tope in form, and treat,
"Tis the four fauce to the fweet meat,
The fine you pay for being great.
Nay, here's a harder imposition,
Which is indeed the court's petition,
That fetting worldly pomp afide,
Which poet bas at font deny'd,
You would be pleas'd in humble way
To write a trifle call'd a Play.
This truly is a degradation
But would oblige the crown and nation
Next to your wife negotiation.
If you pretend, as well you may,
Your high degree, your friends will fay,
The duke St. Aignon made a play.
If Gallic wit convince you fcarce,
His
grace
of Bucks has made a farce,
And you, whofe comic wit is terfe all,
Can hardly fall below Rehearsal.
Then finish what you have began;
But fcribble fafter if you can:
For yet no George, to our difcerning,
Has writ without a ten years warning.
SURE there's a fate in plays, and 'tis in
To write, while thefe malignant planets reign.
The fuccefs of this play was but indifferent; but fo high was our author's opinion of its merit, that, on this very account, he bequeathed to this poet the writing of the last act of his Cleomenes; which, Southerne fays, "when it comes into the world, will appear fo confiderable a truft, that all the town will pardon me for defending this play, that preferred me to it." DERRICK
Ver. 1. Sure there's a fate] No two writers were ever of more diffimilar geniufes than Southerne and Dryden, the latter having no turn for, nor idea of the pathetic, of which the former was fo perfect a master, and of which his Oronooko and Ifabella will remain lafting and ftriking examples. But Dryden ufed to confefs that he had no relish for Euripides, and affected to defpife Otway. Of all our poets, Southerne was diftinguished by three remarkable circumstances, for the purity of his morals and irreproachable conduct, for the length of his life, and for gaining more by his dramatic labours than certainly any of his predeceffors, or perhaps of his fucceffors.
Some very foolish influence rules the pit,
Not always kind to sense, or just to wit:
And whilft it lafts, let buffoonry fucceed,
To make us laugh; for never was more need.
Farce, in itself, is of a nafty fcent;
But the gain fmells not of the excrement.
The Spanish nymph, a wit and beauty too,
With all her charms, bore but a single show: 10
But let a monfter Mufcovite appear,
He draws a crowded audience round the year. May be thou haft not pleas'd the box andpit;
Yet those who blame thy tale applaud thy wit:
So Terence plotted, but fo Terence writ. 15. Like his thy thoughts are true, thy language
E'en lewdness is made moral in thy fcene.
The hearers may for want of Nokes repine;
But reft fecure, the readers will be thine.
Nor was thy labour'd drama damn'd or hiss'd,
But with a kind civility difmifs'd;
With fuch good manners, as the Wife did use,
Who, not accepting, did but just refuse.
There was a glance at parting; fuch a look,
As bids thee not give o'er, for one rebuke.
But if thou wouldst be feen, as well as read,
Copy one living author, and one dead:
The standard of thy style let Etherege be
For wit, the immortal spring of Wycherly:
Learn, after both, to draw fome juft defign, 30
And the next age will learn to copy thine.
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