Still varying topics for her sportive rhymes,
From all the follies of these fruitful times;
Uncheck'd by forms, with flippant hand may
cull:-

Prologues, like peers, by privilege are dull-
In solemn strain address th' assembled pit,
The legal judges of dramatic wit,
Confining still, with dignified decorum,
Their observations-to the play before 'em.
Now when each bachelor a helpmate lacks,
(That sweet exemption from a double tax)
When laws are fram'd with a benignant plan
Of light'ning burdens on the married man,
And Hymen adds one solid comfort more
To all those comforts he conferr'd before;
To smooth the rough laborious road to fame,
Our bard has chosen-an alluring name.
As wealth in wedlock oft is known to hide
The imperfections of a homely bride,
This tempting title he, perhaps, expects,
May heighten beauties and conceal defects:
Thus Sixty's wrinkles, view'd through For-
tune's glass,

The rosy dimples of Sixteen surpass.
The modern suitor grasps his fair-one's hand,
O'erlooks her person, and adores-her land;
Leers on her houses with an ogling eye,
O'er her rich acres heaves an am'rous sigh,
His heart-felt pangs through groves of-timber

vents,

And runs distracted for-her three per cents.
Will thus the poet's mimic Heiress find
The bridegroom critic to her failings blind,
Who claims, alas! his nicer taste to hit,
The lady's portion paid in sterling wit?
On your decrees, to fix her future fate,
Depends our Heiress for her whole estate:
Rich in your smiles, she charms th' admiring
town;

A very bankrupt, should you chance to frown:
O may a verdict given, in your applause,
Pronounce the prosp'rous issue of her cause,
Confirm the name an anxious parent gave her,
And prove her Heiress of the public favour!

$115. Prologue to The Ambitious Step-mother. RowE.

Ir dying lovers yet deserve a tear; If a sad story of a maid's despair Yet move compassion in the pitying fair; This day the poet does his arts employ, The soft accesses of your souls to try. Nor let the stoic boast his mind unmov'd ; The brute philosopher, who ne'er has prov'd The joy of loving and of being lov'd; Who scorns his human nature to confess, And, striving to be more than man, is less. Nor let the men the weeping fair accuse, Those kind protectors of the tragic muse, Whose tears did moving Otway's labours crown, And made the poor Monimia's grief their own: Those tears their art, not weakness, has confest, Their grief approv'd the niceness of their taste, And they wept most, because they judg'd the

best.

O! could this age's writers hope to find
An audience to compassion thus inclin'd,
The stage would need no farce, nor song, nor
dance,
[France;
Nor cap'ring Monsieur brought from active
Clinch, and his organ-pipe, his dogs and bear,
To native Barnet might again repair,
Or breathe, with Captain Otter, Bankside air:
Majestic Tragedy should once again
In purple pomp adorn the swelling scene;
Her search should ransack all the ancient store,
The fortunes of their loves and arms explore,
Such as might grieve you, but should please the

ROWE.

§ 116.
Epilogue to the same.
THE spleen and vapours, and this doleful play,
Have mortified me to that height to-day,

That I am almost in the mortal mind
To die indeed and leave
Know then, since I resolve in peace to part,
all behind.
you
I mean to leave to one alone my heart:
(Last favours will admit of no partage,
Ì bar all sharing but upon the stage :)
To one who can with one alone be blest,

The peaceful monarch of a single breast:
To one-But, oh! how hard 'twill be to find
That phoenix in your fickle, changing kind!
New loves, new interests, and religions new,
Still your fantastic appetites pursue.

Your sickly fancies loathe what you possess,
And ev'ry restless fool would change his place.
Some, weary of their peace and quiet grown,
Want to be hoisted up aloft, and shown;
Whilst from the envied height the wise get
safely down.

We find your wav'ring temper to our cost,
Since all our pains and care to please is lost.
Music in vain supports with friendly aid
Her sister Poetry's declining head:
Show but a mimic ape, or French buffoon,
You to the other house in shoals are gone,
And leave us here to tune our crouds alone.
Must Shakspeare, Fletcher, and laborious Ben,
Be left for Scaramouch and Harlequin?

Allow you are inconstant, yet 'tis strange,
For sense is still the same, and ne'er can change;
Yet even in that you vary as the rest,
And ev'ry day new notions are profest.
Nay, there's a wit has found, as I am told,
New ways to heaven, despairing of the old :
He swears he'll spoil the clerk and sexton's
trade,

Bells shall no more be rung, nor graves be made:
The hearse and six no longer be in fashion,
Since all the faithful may expect translation.
What think you of the project? I'm for trying;
I'll lay aside these foolish thoughts of dying,
Preserve my youth and vigour for the stage,
And be translated to a good old age.

§ 117. Prologue to The Tender Husband, or the Accomplished Fools. ADDISON. IN the first rise and infancy of farce, When fools were many, and when plays were

scarce,

The raw unpractis'd author could with ease
A young and inexperienc'd audience please;
No single character had e'er been shown,
But the whole herd of fops were all their own:
Rich in originals, they set to view,
In ev'ry piece, a coxcomb that was new.

But now our British theatre can boast
Drolls of all kinds, a vast unthinking host!
Fruitful of folly and of vice, it shows [beaux;
Cuckolds, and cits, and bawds, and pimps, and
Rough country-knights are found of ev'ry shire,
Of every fashion gentle fops appear;
And punks of diff'rent characters we meet,
As frequent on the stage as in the street :
Our modern wits are forc'd to pick and cull,
And here and there, by chance, glean up a fool:
Long ere they find the necessary spark,
They search the town and beat about the Park:
To all his most frequented haunts resort,
Oft dog him to the ring, and oft to court,
As love of pleasure or of place invites ;[White's.
And sometimes catch him taking snuff at
Howe'er, to do you right, the present age
Breeds very hopeful monsters for the stage;
That scorn the paths their dull forefathers trod,
And won't be blockheads in the common road.
Do but survey this crowded house to-night:
-Here's still encouragement for those that

write.

Our author, to divert his friends to-day, Stocks with variety of fools his play; And, that there may be something gay and new, Two ladies-errant has expos'd to view: The first a damsel travell'd in romance ; The other more refin'd, she comes from France. Rescue, like courteous knights, the nymph from danger; [stranger. And kindly treat, like well-bred men, the

$118. Epilogue to the same. STEELE. BRITONS, who constant war, with factious For liberty, against each other wage, [rage, From foreign insults save this English stage. * Asgill.

No more th' Italian squalling tribe admit,
In tongues unknown; 'tis popery in wit.
The songs (themselves confess) from Rome
they bring,

And 'tis high-mass, for aught you know, they sing.

Husbands, take care, the danger may come nigher,

The women say their eunuch is a friar.
But is it not a serious ill to see
Europe's great arbiters so mean can be ;
Passive, with an affected joy to sit,
Suspend their native taste of manly wit;
Neglect their comic humour, tragic rage,
For known defects of nature and of age?
Arise! for shame! ye conqu'ring Britons, rise!
Such unadorn'd effeminacy despise;
Admire (if you will dote on foreign wit)
Not what Italians sing, but Romans writ.
So shall less works, such as to-night's slight play,
At your command, with justice die away;
Till then forgive your writers, that can't bear
You should such very tramontanes appear,
The nations, which contemn you, to revere.

Let Anna's soul be known for all its charms;
As fam'd for lib'ral sciences as arms :
Let those derision meet, who would advance
Manners, or speech, from Italy or France.
Let them learn you, who would your favour
find,

And English be the language of mankind.

§ 119. Epilogue to the Gamester.

CENTLIVRE. For his offences past, a pendulum, As one condemn'd, and ready to become, Then, like the swan, expires in a song; Does, ere he dies, bespeak the learned throng,

So I (tho' doubtful long which knot to choose, Condemn'd, good people, as you see, for life, Whether the hangman's, or the marriage noose), To play that tedious, juggling game, a wife, Have but one word of good advice to say, Before the doleful cart draws quite away.

You roaring boys, who know the midnight

cares

Who labour hard to bring your ruin on,
Of rattling tats, ye sons of hopes and fears;
And diligently toil to be undone ;

You're fortune's sporting footballs at the best,
Suppose then fortune only rules the dice,
Few are his joys, and small the gamester's rest:
And on the square you play; yet who, that's
Would to the credit of a faithless main
wise,
Trust his good dad's hard-gotten hoarded gain?
But then such vultures round a table wait,
And hov'ring watch the bubble's sickly state;
The
young fond gambler, covetous of more,
Like Esop's dog, loses his certain store;
Then the spunge, squeez'd by all, grows dry-

and now,

Completely wretched, turns a sharper too. These fools, for want of bubbles, too, play fair, And lose to one another on the square:

they glean,

Still spend on bullies, and grow poor again.
This itch for play has likewise fatal been,
And more than Cupid drawn the ladies in :
A thousand guineas for basset prevails,
A bait, when cash runs low, that seldom fails;
And when the fair-one can't the debt defray
In sterling coin, does sterling beauty pay.

In vain we labour to divert your care,, Nor song nor dance can bribe your presence here,

You fly this place like an infectious air;
To yonder happy quarter of the town
You crowd, and your own fav'rite stage disown;
We're like old mistresses; you love the vice,
And hate us only 'cause we once did please.
Nor can we find how else 'tis we deserve,
Like Tantalus, 'midst plenty thus to starve.

I hear?

I see the Tragic Muse herself appear! [The black scene opens, and discovers a romantic sylvan landscape, from which Sigismunda, in the character of the Tragic Muse, advances slowly to music, and speaks the following lines:

Hence with your flippant epilogue, that tries To wipe the virtuous tears from British eyes; That dares my moral, tragic scene profane, With strains at best, unsuiting, light, and vain. Hence from the pure, unsullied beams, that play

In yon fair eyes, where virtue shines-Away! Britons, to you, from chaste Castalian groves, Where dwelt the tender, oft unhappy loves; Where shades of heroes roam, each mighty

name,

THOMSON.

BOLD is the man, who in this nicer age Presumes to tread the chaste, corrected stage. Now, with gay tinsel arts we can no more Conceal the want of nature's sterling ore: Our spells are vanish'd, broke our magic wand, That us'd to waft you over sea and land: Before your light the fairy people fade; The demons fly-the ghost itself is laid. In vain of martial' scenes the loud alarms; The mighty Prompter thund'ring out to arms, The playhouse posse clattering from afar, The close-wedg'd battle, and the din of war, Now e'en the Senate seldom we convene; The yawning fathers nod behind the scene. Your taste rejects the glitt'ring false sublime, To sigh in metaphor, and die in rhyme. High rant is tumbled from his gallery throne: Description, dreams-nay, similes are gone. What shall we then? to please you how devise,

Whose judgment sits not in your ears and eyes? Thrice happy could we catch great Shak

121. Epilogue to the same. THOMSON. CRAMM'D to the throat with wholesome moral stuff;

Alas! poor audience! you have had enough.
Was ever hapless heroine of a play

In such a piteous plight as ours to-day?
Was ever woman so by love betray'd?

In Greece, and Rome, I watch'd the public weal;

The purple tyrant trembled at my steel;
Nor did I less o'er private sorrows reign,
And mend the melting heart with softer pain.
On France and you then rose my bright'ning star
With social ray-The arts are ne'er at war.
O! as your fire and genius stronger blaze;
As yours are gen'rous freedom's bolder lays;
Let not the Gallic taste leave yours behind,
In decent manners and in life refin'd;
Banish the motley mode, to tag low verse,
The laughing ballad, to the mournful hearse.
When through five acts your hearts have learnt
to glow,

Touch'd with the sacred force of honest woe,
O keep the dear impression on your breast,
Nor idly lose it for a wretched jest!

maid!

And murder'd belles unpeople half the nation!