But with the Parson 'tis another case,
He, without holiness, may rise to grace;
The Poet has one disadvantage more,
That if his play be dull, he's damn'd all o’er,
Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor. 20
But dulness well becomes the sable garment;
I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a Priest's preferment:
Wit's not his business, and as wit now goes,
Sirs, 'tis not so much yours as you suppose,
For you like nothing now but nauseous beaux. 25
You laugh not, gallants, as by proof appears,
At what his beauship says, but what he wears;
So 'tis your eyes are tickled, not your ears:
The tailor and the furrier find the stuff,
The wit lies in the dress, and monstrous muff. 30
The truth on't is, the payment of the pit
Is like for like, clipt money for clipt wit.
You cannot from our absent author hope,
He should equip the stage with such a fop:
Fools change in England, and new fools arise, 35
For though the immortal species never dies,
had 1207. and now it is 100%. and 150%. There were plays on Sundays till the third year of Charles the First's reign. Otway had but one benefit for a play. Southerne was the first who had two benefits from a new representation. Farquhar had three for Constant Couple, in 1700. Three of Ben Jonson's plays, Sejanus, Catiline, and the New Inne, and two of Beaumont and Fletcher's, viz. The Faithful Shepherdess, and the Knight of the Burning Pestle, were damned the first night. Even the Silent Woman had like to have been condemned. Dr. J. W.
Yet every year new maggots make new flies.
But where he lives abroad, he scarce can find
One fool, for million that he left behind.
PROLOGUE TO THE PILGRIM.*
REVIVED FOR OUR AUTHOR'S BENEFIT, ANNO 1700.
How wretched is the fate of those who write!
Brought muzzled to the stage, for fear they bite.
Where, like Tom Dove, they stand the common foe;
Lugg'd by the critic, baited by the beau.
Yet worse, their brother Poets damn the Play, 5
And roar the loudest, though they never pay.
The fops are proud of scandal, for they cry,
At every lewd, low character-That's I.
He, who writes letters to himself, would swear
The world forgot him, if he was not there.
What should a Poet do? "Tis hard for one
To pleasure all the fools that would be shown:
And yet not two in ten will pass the town.
Most coxcombs are not of the laughing kind;
More goes to make a fop than fops can find. 15
* This play, with alterations by Sir John Vanbrugh, and a secular masque, together with this prologue and an epilogue written by our author, was revived for his benefit in 1700, his fortune being at that time in as declining a state as his health; they were both spoken by Mr. Cibber, then a very young actor, much to Dryden's satisfaction. D.
Quack Maurus, though he never took degrees In either of our universities;
Yet to be shown by some kind wit he looks,
Because he play'd the fool, and writ three books.
But, if he would be worth a Poet's pen,
He must be more a fool, and write again:
For all the former fustian stuff he wrote
Was dead-born doggerel, or is quite forgot;
His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe,
Is just the proverb, and As poor as Job.
One would have thought he could no longer jog;
But Arthur was a level, Job 's a bog.
There, though he crept, yet still he kept in sight;
But here, he founders in, and sinks downright.
Had he prepar'd us, and been dull by rule, 30
Tobit had first been turn'd to ridicule :
But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,
O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;
Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no
For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.
But when, if after all, this godly geer
Is not so senseless as it would appear;
Our mountebank has laid a deeper train,
His cant, like Merry Andrew's noble vein,
Catcalls the sects to draw 'em in again.
At leisure hours, in epic song he deals,
Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels,
Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule,
But rides triumphant between stool and stool.
Well, let him go; 'tis yet too early day, To get himself a place in farce or play.
We know not by what name we should arraign him, For no one category can contain him;
A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack,
Are load enough to break one ass's back:
At last grown wanton, he presum❜d to write,
Traduc'd two kings, their kindness to requite;
One made the doctor, and one dubb'd the knight.
EPILOGUE TO THE PILGRIM.*
PERHAPS the parson stretch'd a point too far,
When with our theatres he waged a war.
He tells you, that this very moral age
Received the first infection from the stage.
But sure, a banish'd court, with lewdness fraught,
The seeds of open vice, returning, brought.
Thus lodg'd (as vice by great example thrives)
It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives.
London, a fruitful soil, yet never bore
* Dryden in this epilogue labours to throw the fault of the licentiousness of dramatic writers, which had been so severely censured by the Rev. Jeremy Collier, upon the example of a court returned from banishment, accompanied by all the vices and follies of foreign climates; and whom to please was the poet's business, as he wrote to eat. D.
So plentiful a crop of horns before.
The Poets, who must live by courts, or starve,
Were proud so good a government to serve;
And, mixing with buffoons and pimps profane,
Tainted the Stage, for some small snip of gain.
For they, like harlots, under bawds profest,
Took all the ungodly pains, and got the least.
Thus did the thriving malady prevail,
The court, its head, the Poets but the tail.
The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true;
The scandal of the sin was wholly new.
Misses they were, but modestly conceal'd;
Whitehall the naked Venus first reveal'd.
Who standing as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
The strumpet was ador'd with rites divine.
Ere this, if saints had any secret motion,
'Twas chamber practice all, and close devotion.
I pass the peccadillos of their time;
Nothing but open lewdness was a crime.
A monarch's blood was venial to the nation,
Compar'd with one foul act of fornication.
Now, they would silence us, and shut the door,
That let in all the barefac'd vice before.
As for reforming us, which some pretend,
That work in England is without an end:
Well may we change, but we shall never mend. 35
Yet, if you can but bear the present Stage,
We hope much better of the coming age.
What would you say, if we should first begin
To stop the trade of love behind the scene:
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