For 't is observ'd of every scribbling man,
He grows a fop as fast as e'er he can ;
Prunes up, and asks his oracle, the glass,
If pink and purple best become his face.
For our poor wretch, he neither rails nor prays;
Nor likes your wit just as you like his plays;
He has not yet so much of Mr. Bayes.
He does his best; and if he cannot please,
Would quitely sue out his writ of ease.
Yet, if he might his own grand jury call,
By the fair sex he begs to stand or fall.
Let Cæsar's power the men's ambition move,
But grace you him who lost the world for love!
Yet if some antiquated lady say,

The last age is not copied in his play; [drudge
Heaven help the man who for that face must
Which only has the wrinkles of a judge.
Let not the young and beauteous join with
those;
[focs,
For should you raise such numerous hosts of
Young wits and sparks he to his aid must call;
'T is more than one man's work to please you
all.

PROLOGUE TO LIMBERHAM.

TRUE wit has seen its best days long ago;
It ne'er look'd up, since we were dipt in show;
When sense in doggerel rhymes and clouds
was lost,

And dulness flourish'd at the actor's cost.
Nor stop it here; when tragedy was done,
Satire and humour the same fate have run,
And comedy is sunk to trick and pun.
Now our machining lumber will not sell,
And you no longer care for heaven or hell;
What stuff can please you next, the Lord can
Let them, who the rebellion first began [tell.
To wit, restore the monarch, if they can;
Our author dares not be the first bold man.
He, like the prudent citizen, takes care
To keep for better marts his staple ware;
His toys are good enough for Sturbridge fair.
Tricks were the fashion; if it now be spent,
'Tis time enough at Easter to invent;
No man will make up a new suit for Lent.
If now and then he takes a small pretence,
To forage for a little wit and sense,
Pray pardon him, he meant you no offence.
Next summer, Nostradamus tells, they say,
That all the critics shall be shipp'd away,
And not enow be left to damn a play.
To every sail beside, good heaven, be kind;
But drive away that swarm with such a wind,
That not one locust may be left behind!

EPILOGUE TO MITHRIDATES,

KING OF PONTUS. BY MR. N. LEE, 1678. You've seen a pair of faithful lovers die : And much you care; for most of you will cry 'T was a just judgment on their constancy. For, heaven be thank'd, we live in such an age; When no man dies for love, but on the stage And e'en those martyrs are but rare in plays. A cursed sign how much true faith decays. Love is no more a violent desire; 'Tis a mere metaphor, a painted fire. In all our sex, the name examin'd well, 'Tis pride to gain, and vanity to tell. In woman, 't is of subtle interest made : Curse on the one that made it first a trade! She first did wit's prerogative remove, And made a fool presume to prate of love. Let honour and preferment go for gold; But glorious beauty is not to be sold: Or, if it be, 't is at a rate so high, That nothing but adoring it should buy. Yet the rich cullies may their boasting spare; They purchase but sophisticated ware. 'T is prodigality that buys deceit, Where both the giver and the taker cheat. Men but refine on the old half crown way; And woman fight, like Swissers, for their pay.

PROLOGUE TO CEDIPUS.

WHEN Athens all the Grecian state did guide,
And Greece gave laws to all the world beside
Then Sophocles with Socrates did sit,
Supreme in wisdom one, and one in wit:
And wit from wisdom differ'd not in those,
But as 't was sung in verse, or said in prose,
Then, Edipus, on crowded theatres,
Drew all admiring eyes and list'ning ears:
The pleas'd spectator shouted every line,
The noblest, manliest, and the best design!
And every critic of each learned age,
By this just model has reform'd the stage.
Now, should it fail, (as heaven avert our fear)
Damn it in silence, lest the world should hear.
For were it known this poem did not please,
You might set up for perfect savages:
Your neighbours would not look on you as men,
But think the nation all turn'd Picts again.

Faith, as you manage matters, 't is not fit
You should suspect yourselves of too much wit:
Drive not the jest too far, but spare this piece;
And, for this once, be not more wise than
Greece.

See twice! do not pellmell to damning fall,
Like true born Britons, who ne'er think at all:
Pray be advis'd; and though at Mons you won,
On pointed cannon do not always run.
With some respect to ancient wit proceed;
You take the four first councils for your creed.
But, when you lay tradition wholly by,
And on the private spirit alone rely,
You turn fanatics in your poetry.
If, notwithstanding all that we can say,
You needs will have your penn'orths of the play,
And come resolv'd to damn, because you pay,
Record it, in memorial of the fact,
The first play buried since the woollen act.

EPILOGUE TO EDIPUS.

WHAT Sophocles could undertake alone,
Our poets found a work for more than one;
And therefore two lay tugging at the piece,
With all their force, to draw the ponderous mass
from Greece;

A weight that bent e'en Seneca's strong muse,
And which Corneille's shoulders did refuse.
So hard it is the Athenian harp to string!
So much two consuls yield to one just king.
Terror and pity this whole poem sway
The mightiest machines that can mount a play.
How heavy will those vulgar souls be found,
Whom two such engines cannot move from
ground!
[birth,
When Greece and Rome have smil'd upon this
You can but damn for one poor spot of earth:
And when your children find your judgment
such,
[born Dutch;
They'll scorn their sires, and wish themselves
Each haughty poet will infer with ease,
How much his wit must underwrite to please.
As some strong churl would, brandishing ad-

vance

The monumental sword that conquer'd France; So you, by judging this, your judgment teach, Thus far you like, that is, thus far you reach. Since then the vote of full two thousand years Has crown'd this plot, and all the dead are theirs,

Think it a debt you pay, not alms you give, And, in your own defence, let this Play live. Think them not vain, when Sophocles is shown, To praise his worth they humbly doubt their

own.

Yet as weak states each other's power assure,
Weak poets by conjunction are secure.
Their treat is what your palates relish most,
Charm! song! and show! a murder and a ghost!
We know not what you can desire or hope,
To please you more, but burning of a Pope.

PROLOGUE TO TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

SPOKEN BY MR. BETTERTON, REPRESENTING THE GHOST OF SHAKESPEARE.

SEE, my lov'd Britons, see your Shakespeare An awful ghost confess'd to human eyes! [rise. Unnam'd, methinks, distinguish'd I had been From other shades, by this eternal green, About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive, And with a touch their wither'd bays revive. Untaught, unpractis'd, in a barbarous age, I found not, but created first the stage. And, if I drain'd no Greek or Latin store, "T was, that my own abundance gave me more. On foreign trade I needed not rely, Like fruitful Britain, rich without supply. In this my rough drawn play you shall behold Some master strokes, so manly and so bold, That he who meant to alter, found 'em such, He shook, and thought it sacrilege to touch. Now, where are the successors to my name What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short liv'd issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christen'd on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell for their departed sense. Dullness might thrive in any trade but this: 'T would recommend to some fat benefice. Dullness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace, Might meet with reverence in its proper place. The fulsome clench, that nauseates the town, Would from a judge or alderman go down, Such virtue is there in a robe and gown! And that insipid stuff which here you hate, Might somewhere else be call'd a grave debate ; Dullness is decent in the church and state. But I forget that still 't is understood, Bad plays are best decried by showing good. Sit silent then, that my pleas'd soul may see A judging audience once, and worthy me; My faithful scene from true records shall tell, How Trojan valour did the Greek excel; Your great forefathers shall their fame regain, And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain.

PROLOGUE TO CESAR BORGIA.

BY MR. N. LEE, 1680. THE unhappy man,*who once has traiï'd a pen, Lives not to please himself, but other men ;

• The unhappy man] Lee had so melodious a voice, and such pathetic elocution, that reading one of his own scenes to Major Mohun at a rehearsal, Mohun

Is always drudging, wastes his life and blood,
Yet only eats and drinks what you think good.
What praise soe'er the poetry deserve,
Yet every fool can bid the poet starve.
Toat fumbling lecher to revenge is bent,
Because he thinks himself or whore is meant:
Name but a cuckold, all the city swarms
From Leadenhall to Ludgate is in arms:
Were there no fear of Antichrist, or France,
In the blest time poor poets live by chance.
Either you come not here, or, as you grace
Some old acquaintance, drop into the place,
Caress and qualmish with a yawning face:
You sleep o'er wit, and by my troth you may;
Most of your talents lie another way.
You love to hear of some prodigious tale,
The bell that toll'd alone, or Irish whale.
News is your food and you enough provide,
Both for yourselves, and all the world beside.
One theatre there is of vast resort, [Court;
Which whilom of Requests was call'd the
But now the great Exchange of News 't is hight
And full of hum and buzz from noon till night.
Up stairs and down you run, as for a race,
And each man wears three nations in his face.
So big you look, though claret you retrench,
That, arm'd with bottled ale, you huff the
But all your entertainment still is fed [French.
By villains in your own dull island bred.
Would you return to us, we dare engage
To show you better rogues upon the stage.
You know no poison but plain ratsbane here;
Death's more refin'd, and better bred elsewhere.
They have a civil way in Italy,

By smelling a perfume to make you die;
A trick would make you lay your snuff-box by.
Murder's a trade, so known and practis'd there,
That 't is infallible as is the chair. [pranks;
But, mark their feast, you shall behold such
The pope says grace, but 't is the devil gives
[thanks.

PROLOGUE TO SOPHONISBA, AT OXFORD, 1680.

THESPIS, the first professor of our art,
At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.

in the warmth of his admiration threw down his part, and exclaimed. Unless I were able to play it as well as you read it, to what purpose should I undertake it.' Yet it is a very remarkable circumstance, that Lee failed as an actor in attempting to: perform the character of Duncan in Macbeth, 1672. As did Otway, in a play of Mrs. Afra Behn, entitled the Jealous Bridegroom. After this failure, the first wrote his Alcibiades, and the last mentioned author his Nero. Dr. J. W.

To prove this true, if Latin be no trespass,
Dicitur et plaustris vexisse Poemata Thespis.
But Eschylus, says Horace in some page,
Was the first mountebank that trod the stage:
Yet Athens never knew your learned sport
Of tossing poets in a tennis-court.
But 'tis the talent of our English nation,
Still to be plotting some new reformation;
And few years hence, if anarchy goes on,
Jack Presbyter shall here erect his throne,
Knock out a tub with preaching once a day,
And every prayer be longer than a play.
Then all your heathen wits shall go to pot,
For disbelieving of a Popish-plot :
Your poets shall be us'd like infidels,
And worst, the author of the Oxford bells:
Nor should we scape the sentence, to depart,
E'en in our first original, a cart.

No zealous brother there would want a stone,
To maul us cardinals, and pelt Pope Joan :
Religion, learning, wit, would be suppress'd,
Rags of the whore, and trappings of the beast:
Scot, Suarez, Tom of Aquin, must go down,
As chief supporters of the triple crown;
And Aristotle's for destruction ripe;
Some say, he call'd the soul an organ-pipe,
Which, by some little help of derivation,
Shall then be prov'd a pipe of inspiration.

A PROLOGUE.

Ir yet there be a few that take delight
In that which reasonable men should write,
To them alone we dedicate this night.
The rest may satisfy their curious itch,
With city gazettes, or some factious speech,
Or whate'er libel, for the public good,
Stirs up the Shrovetide crew to fire and blood.
Remove your benches, you apostate pit,
And take, above, twelve pennyworth of wit;
Go back to your dear dancing on the rope,
Or see what's worse, the devil and the pope.
The plays that take on our corrupted stage,
Methinks, resemble the distracted age;
Noise, madness, all unreasonable things,
That strike at sense, as rebels do at kings.
The style of forty-one our poets write,
And you are grown to judge like forty-eight.
Such censures our mistaking audience make,
That 't is almost grown scandalous to take.
They talk of fevers that infect the brains;
But nonsense is the new disease that reigns.
Weak stomachs, with a long disease oppress'd,
Cannot the cordials of strong wit digest.

PROLOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY
OF OXFORD, 1681.

THE fam'd Italian muse, whose rhymes ad-
Orlando and the Paladins of France, [vance
Records that, when our wit and sense flown,
"T is lodg'd within the circle of the moon,
In earthen jars, which one, who thither soar'd,
Set to his nose, snuff'd up, and was restor❜d.
Whate'er the story be, the moral's true;
The wit we lost in town we find in you.
Our poets their fled parts may draw from hence,
And fill their windy heads with sober sense.
When London votes with Southwark's disagree,
Here may they find their long-lost loyalty.
Here busy senates, to the old cause inclin'd,
May snuff the votes their fellows left behind:
Your country neighbours, when their grain
grows dear,

May come, and find their last provision here:
Whereas we cannot much lament our loss,
Who neither carried back nor brought one cross.
We look'd what representatives would bring;
But they help'd us, just as they did the king.
Yet we despair not; for we now lay forth[worth;
The Sibyl's books to those who know their
And though the first was sacrific'd before,
These volumes doubly will the price restore.
Our poet bade us hope this grace to find,
To whom by long prescription you are kind.
He, whose undaunted Muse, with loyal rage,
Has never spar'd the vices of the age,

Bears range abroad, and hunt in tracks of snow:
But when the tedious twilight wears away,
And stars grow paler at the approach of day,
The longing crowds to frozen mountains run,
Happy who first can see the glimmering sun:
The surly savage offspring disappear,
And curse the bright successor of the year.
Yet, though rough bears in covert seek defence,
White foxes stay, with seeming innocence:
That crafty kind with daylight can dispense.
Still we are throng'd so full with Reynard's race,
That loyal subjects scarce can find a place:
Thus modest truth is cast behind the crowd:
Truth speaks too low; Hypocrisy too loud.
Let them be first to flatter in success;
Duty can stay, but guilt has need to press.
Once, when true zeal the sons of God did call,
To make their solemn show at heaven's White-
hall,

The fawning devil appear'd among the rest,
And made as good a courtier as the best.
The friends of Job, who rail'd at him before,
Came cap in hand when he had three times

more.

Yet late repentance may, perhaps, be true;
Kings can forgive, if rebels can but sue:
A tyrant's power in rigour is express'd;
The father yearns in the true prince's breast.
We grant, an o'ergrown Whig no grace can
mend;

But most are babes, that know not they offend.
The crowd to restless motion still inclin'd,
Are clouds, that tack according to the wind.
Driven by their chiefs they storms of hailstones

pour;

Is forced to turn his satire into praise.

When tops of hills the longing patriarch saw,
And the new scene of earth began to draw;
The dove was sent to view the waves decrease,
And first brought back to man the pledge of
peace.

"T is needless to apply, when those appear,
Who bring the olive, and who plant it here.
We have before our eyes the royal dove,
Still innocent, as harbinger of love:
The ark is open'd to dismiss the train,
And people with a better race the plain.
Tell me, ye powers,why should vain man pursue,
With endless toil, each object that is new,
And for the seeming substance leave the true?
Why should he quit for hopes his certain good,
And loathe the manna of his daily food?
Must England still the scene of changes be,
Tost and tempestuous, like our ambient sea?
Must still our weather and our wills agree?
Without our blood our liberties we have:
Who that is free would fight to be a slave?
Or, what can wars to aftertimes assure,
Of which our present age is not secure?
All that our monarch would for us ordain,
Is but to enjoy the blessings of his reign.
Our land's an Eden, and the main's our fence,
While we preserve our state of innocence:
That lost, then beasts their brutal force employ,
And first their lord, and then themselves des-
troy.

What civil broils have cost we know too well;
Oh! let it be enough that once we fell!
And every heart conspire, and every tongue,
Still to have such a king, and this king long.

AN EPILOGUE FOR THE KING'S HOUSE.

WE act by fits and starts, like drowning men, But just peep up, and then pop down again. Let those who call us wicked change their

sense:

For never men liv'd more on Providence.
Not lottery cavaliers are half so poor,
Nor broken cits, nor a vacation whore.
Not courts, nor courtiers living on the rents
Of the three last ungiving parliaments:
So wretched, that, if Pharaoh could divine,
He might have spar'd his dream of seven lean
kine,

And chang'd his vision for the Muses nine.
The comet, that, they say, portends a dearth,
Was but a vapour drawn from playhouse earth:
Pent there since our last fire, and, Lilly says,
Foreshows our change of state, and thin third-
days.

"T is not our want of wit that keeps us poor;
For then the printer's press would suffer more.
Their pamphleteers each day their venom spit;
They thrive by treason, and we starve by wit.
Confess the truth, which of you has not laid
Four farthings out to buy the Hatfield maid?
Or, which is duller yet, and thore would spite us,
Democritus his wars with Heraclitus?
Such are the authors who have run us down,
And exercis'd you critics of the town.
Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes,
Y' abuse yourselves more dully than the
times.

Scandal, the glory of the English nation,
Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion.
Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise,
They had agreed their play before their prize.
Faith, they may hang their harps upon the wil-
lows:

'T is just like children when they box with pillows.

Then put an end to civil wars for shame ; Let each knight-errant, who has wrong'd a dame,

Throw down his pen, and give her, as he can, The satisfaction of a gentleman.

POETS, like lawful monarchs, rul'd the stage, Till critics, like damn'd Whigs, debauch'd our age.

Mark how they jump: critics would regulate
Our theatres, and Whigs reform our state :
Both pretend love, and both (plague rot them!)
The critic humbly seems advice to bring; [hate.
The fawning Whig petitions to the king:
But one's advice into a satire slides;
T'other's petition a remonstrance hides.
These will no taxes give, and those no pence;
Critics would starve the poet, Whigs the prince.
The critic all our troops of friends discards;
Just so the Whig would fain pull down the
guards.

Guards are illegal, that drive foes away, [prey.
As watchful shepherds, that fright beasts of

• The Loyal Brother or the Persian Prince, Mr. Southerne's first play, was acted at Drury Lane in 1682; a time in which the Tory interest, after long struggles, carried, all before it. The character of the Loyal Brother was a compliment intended for the Duke of York. This prologue is a continued invec tive against the Whigs. D.