A play, which, like a perspective set right, In plume and scarf, jack-boots, and Bilbo blade, secuting the war in Ireland, which is alluded to in these lines: 'Till rich from vanquish'd rebels you return; And the fat spoils of Teague in triumph draw, His firkin butter, and his usquebaugh.' This prologue,' says Colley Cibber in his Apology, had some familiar metaphorical sneers at the Revolution itself; and as the poetry of it was good, the offence of it was less pardonable. 'Go conquerors of your male and female foes. Men without hearts,and women without hose.' D. PROLOGUE TO THE MISTAKES.* ENTER MR. BRIGHT. GENTLEMEN, we must beg your pardon; here's no Prologue to be had to-day; our new play is like to come on, without a frontispiece; as bald as one of you young beaux, without your periwig. I left our young poet, snivelling and sobbing behind the scenes, and cursing somebody that has deceived him. ENTER MR. BOWEN. Hold your prating to the audience : here's honest Mr. Williams, just come in, half mellow, from the Rose Tavern. He swears he is inspired with claret, and will come on, and that extempore too, either with a prologue of his own or something like one : O here he comes to his trial, at all adventures; for my part I wish him a good deliverance. [Exeunt Mr. Bright and Mr. Bowen. ENTER MR. WILLIAMS. Save ye, sirs, save ye! I am in a hopeful way, I should speak something, in rhyme, now, for the play: But the deuce take me if I know what to say. So far I'm sure 't is rhyme-that needs no grant- verses' feet stumble-you see my own are wanting. But, for this play-(which till I have done, we How's this, you cry? an actor write? we know it; PROLOGUE TO KING ARTHUR, SPOKEN BY MR. BETTERTON. SURE there's a dearth of wit in this dull town, So have I seen, in hall of knight, or lord, Who, straining all he can, comes up to you: stagers Come in good time, to make more work for EPILOGUE TO HENRY II. BY MR. MOUNTFORT, 1693. SPOKEN BY MRS. BRACEGIRDLE. THUS you the sad catastrophe have seen, And nauseous matrimony sent a packing. Chapels of ease behind our scenes you find. -the mistress would be taken, And nauseous matrimony sent a packing.] The incident of Lady Easy's throwing her handkerchief over Sir Charles's head, whilst he was sleeping, seems to have been taken from the Memoirs of Bassompiere, concerning a Count d'Orgevillier and his mistress. tom. ii. p. 6. 1728. at Amsterdam. Dr. J. W. Though for your love, perhaps, I should not care, I could not hate a man that bids me fair. For should you letters of reprisal seal, These men write that which no man else would steal. PROLOGUE TO ALBUMAZAR. To say, this comedy pleased long ago, Is not enough to make it pass you now. Yet, gentlemen, your ancestors had wit; When few men censur'd, and when fewer writ. And Jonson, of those few the best, chose this, As the best model of his masterpiece. Subtle was got by our Albumazar, That Alchymist by this Astrologer; Here he was fashion'd, and we may suppose He lik'd the fashion well, who wore the clothes. But Ben made nobly his what he did mould; What was another's lead becomes his gold: Like an unrighteous conqueror he reigns, Yet rules that well, which he unjustly gains. But this our age such authors does afford, As make whole plays, and yet scarce write one Who, in this anarchy of wit, rob all, [word: And what's their plunder, their possession call: Who, like bold padders, scorn by night to prey, But rob by sunshine, in the face of day: Nay scarce the common ceremony use Of, Stand, Sir, and deliver up your Muse; But knock the Poet down, and, with a grace, Mount Pegasus before the author's face. Faith, if you have such country Toms abroad, 'Tis time for all true men to leave that road. Yet it were modest, could it but be said, They strip the living, but these rob the dead; Dare with the mummies of the Muses play, And make love to them the Egyptian way; Or, as a rhyming author would have said, Join the dead living to the living dead. Such men in Poetry may claim some part: They have the license, though they want the art; And might, where theft was prais'd, for Laureats stand, Poets, not of the head, but of the hand. "T is all his own, when once he has spit i' the chase : Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly [pace. She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices To some new frisk of contrariety. You roll like snowballs, gathering as you run, EPILOGUE TO THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.* LIKE some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit, So trembles a young Poet at a full pit. • This comedy was written by John Dryden, jun., our author's second son. It was acted at the theatre in Lincoln's-inn-fields, in 1696. D. Have not much learning, nor much wit to Where, like Tom Dove, they stand the com spare: And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce one But has as little as the very Parson: But 't is for a third day, and for induction. ment : Wit's not his business, and as wit now goes, • The poets gain is ne'er beyond his day] Dryden did not receive for his plays from the book seller above 551. The third night brought about 70%. The dedication five or ten guineas perhaps. Tonson paid Sir Richard Steel for Addison's Drummer, 501. 1715. And Dr. Young received 50l. for his Revenge. 7121. Southerene, for his Spartan Dame, in 1722, had 120, and now it is 1007, and 150. There were plays on Sundays till the third year of Charles the First's reign. Otway had but one benefit for the play. Southerne was the first who had two benefits from a new representation. Farquhar had three for the Constant Couple in 1700. Three of Ben Jonson's plays, Sejanus, Cataline, 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 worgan had like to have been condemned. Dr. J. W. mon foe; Lugg'd by the critic, baited by the beau. [grees Quack Maurus, though he never took deIn 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, Tobit had first been turn'd to ridicule : But our bold Briton, without fear or awe, O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha; [room 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. 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 satisfac tion. D Well, let him go; 't is yet too early day, To get himself a place in farce or play. [him, We know not by what name we should arraign 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. What would you say, if we should first begin While you have still your Oates, and we our EPILOGUE TO THE PILGRIM.* PERHAPS the parson stretch'd a point too far, The seeds of open vice, returning, brought. The Poets, who must live by courts, or starve, Thus did the thriving malady prevail, 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. TRANSLATIONS FROM THEOCRITUS, LUCRETIUS, AND HORACE. PREFACE TO THE SECOND FOR this last half year I have been troubled with the disease (as I may call it) of translation. The cold prose fits of it, which are always the most tedious with me, were spent in the History of the League; the hot, which succeeded them, in this volume of Verse Miscellanies. The truth is, I fancied to myself, a kind of ease in the change of the paroxysm; never suspecting but the humour would have wasted itself in two or three pastorals of Theocritus, and as many odes of Horace. But finding, or at least thinking I found, something that was more pleasing in them than my ordinary productions, I encouraged myself to renew my old acquaintance with Lucretius and Virgil; and immediately fixed upon some parts of them, which had most affected me in the reading. These were my natural impulses for the undertaking; but there was an accidental motive which was full as forcible, and God forgive him who was the occasion of it. It was my Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse; which made me uneasy till I tried whether or no I was capable of following his rules, and of reducing the speculation into practice. For many a fair precept in Poetry is like a seeming demonstration in the Mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanic operation. I think I have generally observed his instructions; I am sure my reason is sufficiently convinced both of their truth and usefulness; which, in other words, is to confess no less a vanity, than to pretend that I have at least in some places made examples to his rules. Yet, withal |