PROLOGUE ΤΟ LIMBERHAM. TRUE wit has seen its best days long ago; It ne'er look'd up, fince we were dipt in show; When fenfe in doggrel rhimes and clouds was loft, 5 And dulnefs flourish'd at the actor's coft. Let them, who the rebellion firft began To wit, reftore the monarch, if they can; 10 15 Tricks were the fashion; if it now be spent, 20 25 EPILOGUE ΤΟ MITHRIDATES, KING OF PONTUS DY MR. N. LEE, 1678. YOU'VE feen a pair of faithful lovers die: cry, "Twas a juft judgment on their conftancy. Ver. 5. When no man dies for love,] One of the most remarkable differences betwixt ancient and modern tragedy arifes from the prevailing custom of defcribing only those diftreffes that are occafioned by the paffion of love: a paffion, which from the univerfality of its dominion, may justly claim a large share in reprefentations of human life: but which, by totally engroffing the theatre, hath contributed to degrade that noble fchool of virtue into an academy of effeminacy. When Racine perfuaded the celebrated Arnauld to read his Phædra, "Why," said that fevere critic to his friend, " have you falfified the manners of Hippolitus, and reprefented him in love?" "Alas!" replied the poet, "without that circumftance, how would the ladies and the beaux have received my piece ?" And it may well be imagined, that to gratify fo confiderable and important a part of his audience, was the powerful motive that induced Corneille to enervate even the matchlefs and affecting ftory of Edipus, by the frigid and impertinent epifode of Thefeus's paffion for Dirce. Shakspeare has thewn us, by his Hamlet, Macbeth, and Cæfar, and above all by his Lear, that very interefting tragedies may be 4 And e'en thofe martyrs are but rare in plays; 19 And made a fool prefume to prate of love, 15 21 Where both the giver and the taker cheat, written, that are not founded on gallantry and love; and that Boileau was mistaken, when he affirmed Eft de l'amour la fenfible peinture, pour aller au cœur la route la plus fure. The finest pictures of love in all antiquity are the Phædra, Medea, Simætha, fecond Idyllium of Theocritus, and the Dido of Virgil; all of thefe pictures are of the effects of love in wo men; no defcription of it in men, fo capital and fo ftriking, has been given. The tenth eclogue of Virgil is but feeble in com parison of these mentioned above. Dr. J. WARTON, PROLOGUE ΤΟ CEDIPUS. WHEN Athens all the Grecian state did guide, 5 And Greece gave laws to all the world befide; By this just model has reform'd the stage. |